ISRAEL
Soldier killed in truck attack
A Palestinian truck driver yesterday killed an Israeli soldier in a ramming attack on a checkpoint on the boundary with the occupied West Bank, and was shot dead during an ensuing pursuit, Israeli police and medical officials said. The military said only that three of its troops were injured in the incident on the Israeli side of Maccabim checkpoint. Medical officials said one of them had died. Police initially said the driver, who had a permit to work in Israel, was shot and wounded outside the Palestinian village of Nilin. He was later pronounced dead, police said, describing the incident as a terrorist attack.
UNITED STATES
McConnell ‘freezes’ again
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday appeared to freeze again while taking questions from reporters at an event in Kentucky, raising fresh questions about the 81-year-old’s health. McConnell abruptly stopped and stared ahead for more than 30 seconds after a reporter asked his thoughts on running for re-election in 2026. An NBC reporter posted a video of the exchange on social media platform X. Eventually, a woman standing next to him stepped forward to ask if he had heard the question. When he did not move, she said to the group: “I’m sorry we’re going to be a minute.” Then she and another person went to him. Seconds later he said: “Okay,” but did not respond to the question. In July, McConnell briefly froze during a news conference on Capitol Hill. He was led away for a few minutes, but then returned to the microphones and said he was “fine” and able to do his job.
PHILIPPINES
Factory fire kills 15 people
A fire yesterday killed 15 people in a small apparel factory in Quezon City, where firefighters were delayed by flooding, traffic and a wrong address, a fire protection official said. Most of the victims appeared to be factory workers and carpenters who were sleeping in rooms when the fire broke out yesterday morning. Some were found dead on an aisle outside the rooms, and the factory owner and his child were among the dead, Bureau of Fire Protection Chief Superintendent Nahum Tarroza said. Three people survived with injuries by jumping off the second floor of the two-story factory in panic, and were taken to a hospital, Tarroza said. The firefighters’ arrival was delayed by about 14 minutes after a monsoon-season downpour and wind caused flooding and traffic jams, and a wrong address was given to firefighters, he said, adding that he would order an investigation into the firefighters’ delayed response.
ITALY
PM’s partner draws fire
The partner of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has been accused of victim blaming after comments he made about rape on his television talk show. Andrea Giambruno, who hosts the Diario del giorno (Daily Diary) program on the Rete 4 commercial station, was commenting after a gang rape of a young woman in Palermo hit the headlines. “If you go dancing, you have every right to get drunk — there shouldn’t be any kind of misunderstanding and any kind of problem — but if you avoid getting drunk and losing your senses, you might also avoid running into certain problems and coming across a wolf,” he said on Monday night. Opposition politicians condemned the comments. “I say to Giambruno that boys should be educated to show respect, rather than girls taught to be careful. Teach them [males] the value of consent, rather than girls to be wary,” Partito Democratico Senator Cecilia D’Elia said.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.