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.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
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