UKRAINE
Missile hits Reuters staff
A member of the Reuters team covering the war in Ukraine was missing and two others were hospitalized after a strike on a hotel in the eastern city of Kramatorsk on Saturday. In a statement, the news agency said that the Hotel Sapphire, where a six-person Reuters crew was staying, was hit “by an apparent missile strike.” Three other staff members have been accounted for, it said. “We are urgently seeking more information, working with the authorities in Kramatorsk, and supporting our colleagues and their families. We will give an update when we have more information,” it added. The General Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement on Telegram that it had opened a “pre-trial investigation” into the strike.
PAKISTAN
Bus crashes kill 34
At least 34 people were yesterday killed in two separate bus accidents, including 12 pilgrims who had been trying to reach Iran, rescue officials said. At least 22 people, including a child, were killed when the bus they were travelling in plunged into a ravine near the town of Azad Pattan on the border between Punjab province and Kashmir, said Farooq Ahmed, a spokesman for Rescue 1122 emergency services in Punjab. In a separate incident, 12 men died when their bus crashed into a ravine on the Makran Coastal Highway in Balochistan, after being prevented from crossing into Iran. On Saturday, the bodies of 28 pilgrims who died in a bus crash in Iran were returned to Pakistan.
FRANCE
Arson suspect arrested
Police on Saturday arrested a man suspected of setting fires and causing an explosion at a synagogue in what officials suspect was a terror attack, Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin said. “The suspected perpetrator of the criminal fires at the synagogue has been detained,” Darmanin wrote on X, adding that officers who made the arrest came under fire. Police earlier said they were hunting for a man who, draped in a Palestinian flag, was believed to have set fires at a synagogue and triggered an explosion that injured an officer in the seaside resort of La Grande Motte. Interim Prime Minister Gabriel Attal earlier visited the site of the attack along with Darmanin. “We narrowly avoided an absolute tragedy,” he said, adding that “if the synagogue had been filled with worshippers ... there probably would have been human victims.”
THAILAND
Authorities raid bitcoin mine
Authorities raided an illegal bitcoin mine west of Bangkok after residents complained of frequent blackouts in the area for more than a month, local authorities said yesterday. Police and officials from the Provincial Electricity Authorities raided the house in Ratchaburi town on Friday. “We found bitcoin mining rigs, pointing to people using this house to operate a mine and using power they didn’t fully pay for,” chief district security officer Jamnong Chanwong said. Records showed that electricity consumption in the house was large, but they had paid for very little of it, he said. Jamnong said his team tried to enter the house on Thursday, but a guard denied them entry. They then returned with a search warrant and found most of the equipment had been moved. The house had been rented by a company for about four months, but the power outages began last month when the mine likely became fully operational, he said.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
RSS