UNITED STATES
College lockdown lifted
A lockdown has been lifted at North Carolina Central University in Durham after an on-campus shooting left one student injured. The university said in a statement that the shooting happened at about 11pm on Sunday on the edge of campus. The student was taken to a hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening, it said. The school sent a tweet from its official account at 11:15pm that mentioned an “active shooter” and urged students to seek shelter “away from gunfire.” An “all clear” was issued at 11:50pm, the statement said. University spokeswoman Ayana Hernandez says no arrests have been made. Campus police are investigating.
TURKEY
Six killed in clashes
Two policemen and four Islamic State (IS) militants were killed in a firefight early yesterday after police raided a house in the Kayapinar District of the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, security sources said, adding that fighting was ongoing. Authorities have extended operations into suspected IS cells after a double suicide bombing in Ankara that killed more than 100 people was blamed on the militant group. Last week, President Tayyip Erdogan said Syrian intelligence and Kurdish militants, not just IS, were behind the attack that targeted a rally of pro-Kurdish activists and civic groups. Erdogan said Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants, the Syrian mukhabarat secret police and the Syrian Kurdish PYD militia had worked together with Islamic State in the bombing on Oct. 10.
PAKISTAN
Snow strands hundreds
Hundreds of tourists were stranded yesterday after the earliest snowfall in 40 years blocked a main highway in the north, dumping 0.9m of snow on one town in less than 24 hours. Authorities sent heavy machinery along with troops and rescue workers to clear the roads in the Naran Valley in Mansehra District. Pakistanis enjoying a long weekend for Ashura in the holy month of Muharram had traveled to the area, popular for its natural beauty, when they were caught off guard by the unprecedented snowfall. “More than 1,200 people have so far been evacuated, but still some 800 to 1,000 people are stranded there and rescue work is ongoing,” said Najeeb Ur Rehman, the top police official in Mansehra District. One coal miner was killed late on Sunday when a mine collapsed due to a glacier break-off in Babusar area, about 40km from Naran. Authorities rescued 15 other coal miners trapped by the collapse, Rehman said. The snowfall has also damaged the power lines and some small bridges.
UNITED STATES
Storm batters Louisiana
Torrential rainstorms on Sunday battered Louisiana, leaving thousands without power, after pounding southeastern Texas as the remnants of Hurricane Patricia converged with a second storm. The heaviest band of rain moved over the Gulf of Mexico, triggering coastal flood warnings and flash flood watches in southwest Louisiana and soaking New Orleans, the National Weather Service (NWS) said. About 22,000 people were left without power in the greater New Orleans area. Some streets were flooded, while a high tide surge brought some coastal flooding as well. Rainfall has totaled as much as 18cm since late Saturday night, and forecasters predicted another 13cm could fall. The NWS issued a tornado watch for southeastern Louisiana and coastal Mississippi into early yesterday, and warned that severe thunderstorms could develop in the region.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema