IRAN
Tehran threatens retaliation
Tehran yesterday again threatened retaliation for the deaths of seven Revolutionary Guards in a strike on Damascus, with the army chief saying his country’s enemies will “regret” the killings. The government has vowed to avenge Monday’s airstrike on the Syrian capital that it blamed on its archenemy Israel, which has not commented. The attack leveled the Iranian embassy’s consular annex in Damascus, killing seven Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps members including two generals. Iran’s response “will be carried out at the right time, with the necessary precision and planning, and with maximum damage to the enemy so that they regret their action,” Armed Forces Chief of Staff Major General Mohammad Bagheri said yesterday.
UKRAINE
Shelling kills six people
A Russian nighttime attack on Kharkiv killed six people and wounded almost a dozen, Kyiv said yesterday. The northeastern city 30km from the Russian border — has seen increased deadly attacks in the past few months as Moscow’s invasion drags on for more than two years. “Six killed and 11 wounded as a result of the enemy’s nighttime missile attack on Kharkiv,” the local prosecutor’s office wrote on social media. Authorities said the strike hit just after midnight. “At about 12:20am, the Russian armed forces launched missile attacks on the residential Shevchenkivskyi district of Kharkiv,” the prosecutor’s office said. It added that “high-rise buildings, administrative buildings, dormitories, a kindergarten, shops, cafes and cars were damaged.”
KAZAKHSTAN
Russian space capsule lands
A Russian space capsule with two women and one man yesterday safely landed in a steppe after their missions aboard the International Space Station. The Soyuz MS-24 carrying Russia’s Oleg Novitsky, NASA’s Loral O’Hara and Marina Vasilevskaya of Belarus touched down southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan at 12:17pm. O’Hara arrived at the International Space Station on Sept. 15 last year, spending 204 days there, NASA said.
GERMANY
Counterfeit US money seized
Police on Friday said they had seized counterfeit US dollars with a face value of US$103 million, thought to have been destined for the US market. Four pallets with 75 boxes full of fake notes were found during raids at a house in the northern town of Juebek and two business addresses in Hamburg. The forgeries could be “identified on closer inspection,” investigators in Kiel said in a statement. Police received a tip-off from US investigators which led them to the stash. The dodgy cash was suspected to have come from a “wholesaler in Turkey,” storing the bills in Germany on their way to the US.
UNITED STATES
Salmon escape truck crash
Tens of thousands of endangered salmon being transported by truck to a river survived a road crash by escaping into a nearby creek, officials said. A large tanker vehicle transporting the young salmon was travelling in a mountainous area of the northwestern state of Oregon on March 29 when it rolled on its side and skidded off the road. The 16m-long truck ended up on its roof — fortuitously for its slippery passengers, right next to a small creek. “About 77,000 smolts made it into the creek when the tanker overturned,” the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife said in a statement. The truck driver sustained minor injuries, while about 25,000 smolts failed to reach the river.
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
Chinese authorities increased pressure on CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd over its plan to sell its Panama ports stake by sharing a second newspaper commentary attacking the deal. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office on Saturday reposted a commentary originally published in Ta Kung Pao, saying the planned sale of the ports by the Hong Kong company had triggered deep concerns among Chinese people and questioned whether the deal was harming China and aiding evil. “Why were so many important ports transferred to ill-intentioned US forces so easily? What kind of political calculations are hidden in the so-called commercial behavior on the
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