BRAZIL
Plane crash kills 10
A small plane on Sunday crashed into a Brazilian town that is popular among tourists, killing all 10 passengers on board and injuring more than a dozen people on the ground, the Brazilian Civil Defense Agency said. The agency in a post on X said the plane hit the chimney of a home and then the second floor of a building before crashing into a mobile phone shop in a largely residential neighborhood of Gramado. More than a dozen people who were on the ground were taken to hospitals with injuries including smoke inhalation, with two said to be in critical condition. It is not immediately clear what caused the crash. Local media reported that the plane was piloted by Luiz Claudio Galeazzi, a Brazilian businessman who was travelling with his family to Sao Paulo. In a statement published on LinkedIn, Galeazzi’s company, Galeazzi & Associados, confirmed that the 61-year-old was on the plane, adding that he was traveling with his wife, their three daughters, several other family members and another company employee, who perished in the crash. “In this moment of intense pain we are deeply thankful with the manifestations of solidarity and love that we have received from friends, colleagues and the community” the statement reads.
ITALY
Trevi Fountain reopens
Rome’s iconic Trevi Fountain reopened on Sunday after three months of renovations, just in time for the inauguration of the 2025 Jubilee Holy Year that is expected to draw millions of visitors. The renovation work on the 18th-century monument that is one of the Italian capital’s main attractions cost 327,000 euros (US$340,495). To avoid overcrowding, the monument would be limited to 400 visitors at a time. “This way visitors will have ample opportunity to observe it and understand the values it embodies,” said Claudio Parisi Presicce, Rome’s superintendent for cultural heritage. To manage the overwhelming number of visitors, and the huge crowd expected for the Jubilee, Rome City officials have been devising a plan to block off the area around the fountain. Visitors would be required to book online and pay 2 euros to enter. Once inside, they would have 30 minutes to enjoy the fountain. During the renovation work, visitors could make their traditional coin toss into a makeshift pool. City lore has it that tossing a coin into the Baroque fountain would ensure a return trip to Rome. The tradition generates an estimated 1.5 million euros annually, which has been donated to the Catholic charity Caritas for the past 15 years.
COOK ISLANDS
Passport proposal denied
New Zealand has rejected a proposal by the Cook Islands, a self-governing nation in free association with the larger Pacific country, to allow the creation of its own passports and citizenship, but said it could discuss independence. New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs spokesman Winston Peters said in a statement late on Sunday that a separate passport, citizenship and membership of the UN are only available to fully independent and sovereign countries. As such, the Cook Islands could access these things while it remains in free association with New Zealand and would need to become fully independent for it to do so, the spokesperson said. “If the goal of the government of the Cook Islands is independence from New Zealand, then of course that’s a conversation we are ready for them to initiate,” the spokesperson said. He added any decision on Cook Islands’ future would be made by referendum.
SUPPORT: Elon Musk’s backing for the far-right AfD is also an implicit rebuke of center-right Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz, who is leading polls German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a swipe at Elon Musk over his political judgement, escalating a spat between the German government and the world’s richest person. Scholz, speaking to reporters in Berlin on Friday, was asked about a post Musk made on his X platform earlier the same day asserting that only the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “can save Germany.” “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multi-billionaires,” Scholz said alongside Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain
FREEDOM NO MORE: Today, protests in Macau are just a memory after Beijing launched measures over the past few years that chilled free speech A decade ago, the elegant cobblestone streets of Macau’s Tap Seac Square were jam-packed with people clamouring for change and government accountability — the high-water mark for the former Portuguese colony’s political awakening. Now as Macau prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of its handover to China tomorrow, the territory’s democracy movement is all but over and the protests of 2014 no more than a memory. “Macau’s civil society is relatively docile and obedient, that’s the truth,” said Au Kam-san (歐錦新), 67, a schoolteacher who became one of Macau’s longest-serving pro-democracy legislators. “But if that were totally true, we wouldn’t
Two US Navy pilots were shot down yesterday over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the US military said, marking the most serious incident to threaten troops in over a year of US targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Both pilots were recovered alive after ejecting from their stricken aircraft, with one sustaining minor injuries. However, the shootdown underlines just how dangerous the Red Sea corridor has become over the ongoing attacks on shipping by the Iranian-backed Houthis despite US and European military coalitions patrolling the area. The US military had conducted airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels at the
MILITANTS TARGETED: The US said its forces had killed an IS leader in Deir Ezzor, as it increased its activities in the region following al-Assad’s overthrow Washington is scrapping a long-standing reward for the arrest of Syria’s new leader, a senior US diplomat said on Friday following “positive messages” from a first meeting that included a promise to fight terrorism. Barbara Leaf, Washington’s top diplomat for the Middle East, made the comments after her meeting with Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus — the first formal mission to Syria’s capital by US diplomats since the early days of Syria’s civil war. The lightning offensive that toppled former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on Dec. 8 was led by the Muslim Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in al-Qaeda’s
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