TURKEY
Girl killed in rebel attack
Police said that a rocket fired by Kurdish rebels missed its target and hit a home in a town in the southeast, killing a nine-year-old girl. Five other people were injured in the incident. A police statement said rebels of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) aimed their attack late on Friday at a police vehicle in the town of Bismil, but hit the house instead. Yesterday, suspected PKK rebels detonated a bomb on a road in the mainly Kurdish Bitlis Province, injuring about 20 soldiers riding in a military vehicle, the private Dogan news agency reported. None of them was in serious condition. Violence between the PKK and the Turkish security forces reignited this summer, shattering a fragile peace process with the Kurds.
UNITED STATES
Super blood moon treat
Stargazers were in for a rare treat when a total lunar eclipse combined with a so-called supermoon. Those in the US, Europe, Africa and western Asia were able to view the coupling, weather permitting, on Sunday night or early yesterday. It was the first time the events have made a twin appearance since 1982, and they would not again until 2033. When a full moon makes its closest approach to Earth, it appears slightly bigger and brighter than usual and has a reddish hue. That coincides with a full lunar eclipse where the moon, Earth and sun will be lined up, with Earth’s shadow totally obscuring the moon. The so-called “super blood moon” occurred on the US east coast at 10:11pm and lasted about an hour. In Europe, the action unfolded before dawn yesterday. In Los Angeles, a large crowd filled the lawn of Griffith Observatory to watch the celestial show while listening to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata played by 14-year-old pianist Ray Ushikubo. “You always want to see the eclipse because they’re always very different,” observatory director Edwin Krupp said. The additional component of the Earth’s atmosphere adds “all kinds of twists and turns to the experience,” he said. “What we see tonight will be different from the last event: how dark it is, how red it is. It’s always interesting to see.”
PAKISTAN
Hundreds of pilgrims found
Minister for Religious Affairs Sardar Muhammad Yousaf said that authorities have tracked down 217 Pakistanis who went missing following last week’s stampede, which killed more than 700 pilgrims during the hajj in Saudi Arabia. Yousaf told state-run Pakistan Television on Sunday night from Saudi Arabia that 85 Pakistanis were still missing and efforts were under way to locate them. He said that 36 Pakistanis were killed and 35 injured in the stampede. Saudi authorities said that at least 769 people died when two large waves of pilgrims converged on a narrow road during the final days of the annual hajj, near the holy city of Mecca.
AUSTRALIA
Kiwi faces terror charges
Prosecutors yesterday said that a New Zealand man accused of trying to enter Syria to fight alongside extremists used four different phones to have coded conversations about “a big job” days before attempting to fly to Turkey. The allegations in Victoria state Supreme Court come two years after Amin Mohamed was stopped in Brisbane when trying to board a flight to Turkey. Mohamed was later charged with three counts of preparing to enter a foreign state to engage in hostile activities. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison on each count. He has pleaded not guilty.
Packed crowds in India celebrating their cricket team’s victory ended in a deadly stampede on Wednesday, with 11 mainly young fans crushed to death, the local state’s chief minister said. Joyous cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket final on Tuesday night. However, the euphoria of the vast crowds in the southern tech city of Bengaluru ended in disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra calling it “absolutely heartrending.” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said most of the deceased are young, with 11 dead
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
RSS