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.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
Two former Chilean ministers are among four candidates competing this weekend for the presidential nomination of the left ahead of November elections dominated by rising levels of violent crime. More than 15 million voters are eligible to choose today between former minister of labor Jeannette Jara, former minister of the interior Carolina Toha and two members of parliament, Gonzalo Winter and Jaime Mulet, to represent the left against a resurgent right. The primary is open to members of the parties within Chilean President Gabriel Boric’s ruling left-wing coalition and other voters who are not affiliated with specific parties. A recent poll by the
TENSIONS HIGH: For more than half a year, students have organized protests around the country, while the Serbian presaident said they are part of a foreign plot About 140,000 protesters rallied in Belgrade, the largest turnout over the past few months, as student-led demonstrations mount pressure on the populist government to call early elections. The rally was one of the largest in more than half a year student-led actions, which began in November last year after the roof of a train station collapsed in the northern city of Novi Sad, killing 16 people — a tragedy widely blamed on entrenched corruption. On Saturday, a sea of protesters filled Belgrade’s largest square and poured into several surrounding streets. The independent protest monitor Archive of Public Gatherings estimated the
Irish-language rap group Kneecap on Saturday gave an impassioned performance for tens of thousands of fans at the Glastonbury Festival despite criticism by British politicians and a terror charge for one of the trio. Liam Og O hAnnaidh, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, has been charged under the UK’s Terrorism Act with supporting a proscribed organization for allegedly waving a Hezbollah flag at a concert in London in November last year. The rapper, who was charged under the anglicized version of his name, Liam O’Hanna, is on unconditional bail before a further court hearing in August. “Glastonbury,