NEPAL
Plane crash leaves 18 dead
A passenger plane yesterday crashed on takeoff at about 11:15am in Kathmandu, with the pilot rescued from the flaming wreckage, but all 18 others aboard killed, police said. The Saurya Airlines flight was carrying two crew and 17 of the company’s staff members, police spokesman Dan Bahadur Karki said. “The pilot has been rescued and is being treated,” he said. “Eighteen bodies have been recovered, including one foreigner.” The flight was being conducted for either technical or maintenance purposes, Gyanendra Bhul of the Civil Aviation Authority said, without giving further details.
EUROPEAN UNION
Global heat record broken
Monday was the hottest day on record globally, inching past Sunday, which had just taken the title, preliminary data from a EU monitoring agency showed. The global average surface air temperature rose to 17.15°C — 0.06°C higher than Sunday’s marginal record according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, which has been tracking such patterns since 1940. The record had last been set for four consecutive days in a row in early July last year.
UNITED STATES
Secret Service boss quits
The director of the Secret Service on Tuesday resigned in the aftermath of the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump. “I take full responsibility for the security lapse,” Kimberly Cheatle, who had served as director since August 2022, said an e-mail to staff. Cheatle’s resignation came a day after she appeared before a congressional committee and was berated for hours by Democrats and Republicans for the security failures. She called the attempt on Trump’s life the Secret Service’s “most significant operational failure” in decades.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
Hundreds of thousands of Guyana citizens living at home and abroad would receive a payout of about US$478 each after the country announced it was distributing its “mind-boggling” oil wealth. The grant of 100,000 Guyanese dollars would be available to any citizen of the South American country aged 18 and older with a valid passport or identification card. Guyanese citizens who normally live abroad would be eligible, but must be in Guyana to collect the payment. The payout was originally planned as a 200,000 Guyanese dollar grant for each household in the country, but was reframed after concerns that some citizens, including
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
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