IPOH — Empat individu termasuk tiga pegawai Jabatan Imigresen Perak ditahan reman selama dua hari bagi membantu siasatan Suruhanjaya Pencegahan Rasuah Malaysia (SPRM) berkaitan penerimaan wang rasuah Program Repatriasi Migran (PRM).
Permohonan reman ke atas mereka yang berumur antara 30 hingga 55 tahun itu dibenarkan oleh Majistret Siti Nora Shariff mengikut Seksyen 117 Kanun Prosedur Jenayah, bermula hari ini.
Difahamkan, tiga warga kerja Jabatan Imigresen itu berpangkat penguasa (KP42) dan pegawai Imigresen masing-masing bertaraf KP19 dan KP22 manakala seorang lagi ejen pekerja asing.
Mereka yang terdiri tiga lelaki dan seorang wanita itu ditahan ketika hadir memberi keterangan di Pejabat SPRM Perak, di sini antara petang semalam hingga malam tadi.
Mereka disyaki terbabit dalam aktiviti meminta dan menerima wang rasuah berjumlah antara RM50 sehingga RM300 dari setiap pekerja asing yang ingin pulang ke negara asal secara sukarela melalui PRM.
Wang rasuah yang diterima itu adalah sebagai balasan untuk mempercepatkan kelulusan program terbabit dengan aktiviti itu dikesan bermula sejak dari Mac hingga September 2024.
Pengarah SPRM Perak, Datuk Ahmad Sabri Mohamed ketika dihubungi mengesahkan penahanan itu untuk siasatan mengikut Seksyen 17(a) Akta SPRM 2009.
A resident cleans up on a street after flood waters receded in Hanoi on Sept. 13, 2024. Yagi was the strongest typhoon to hit the Southeast Asian country in decades. (AFP)
HANOI — The death toll in the aftermath of a typhoon in Vietnam climbed to 233 on Friday as rescue workers recovered more bodies from areas hit by landslides and flash floods, state media reported.
State-run broadcaster VTV said emergency crews have now recovered 48 bodies from the area of Lang Nu, a small village in northern Lao Cai province that was swept away in a deluge of water, mud and debris from mountains on Tuesday.
Another 39 people are still missing.
Across Vietnam, 103 people are still listed as missing and more than 800 have been injured.
Yagi was the strongest typhoon to hit the Southeast Asian country in decades. It made landfall Saturday with winds of up to 149kph. Though it had weakened by Sunday, downpours continued and rivers remain dangerously high.
Roads to Lang Nu have been badly damaged, making it impossible to bring heavy equipment in to aid in the rescue effort.
Some 500 personnel with sniffer dogs are on hand, and in a visit to the scene on Thursday, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh promised they would not relent in their search for those still missing.
“Their families are in agony,” Chinh said.
In a sign of hope, eight people from two Lang Nu households were found safe early Friday morning, state-run VNExpress newspaper reported.
They had been out of the area at the time when the flash flood hit.
Hundreds of villagers in Myanmar waded or swam through chin-high waters, fleeing severe floods around remote capital Naypyidaw on Friday, as Vietnam began clearing up after Typhoon Yagi.
A swathe of northern Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar have been battling floods and landslides in the wake of Typhoon Yagi, which dumped a colossal deluge of rain when it hit the region last weekend.
Myanmar’s national fire service on Friday confirmed the new death toll, up from 17, while more than 50,000 people have been forced from their homes.
“We walked through neck-high water this morning,” one woman told AFP at Sin Thay village.
“We are very hungry and thirsty. It been about three days we don’t have food.”
Soldiers rescued residents of flooded villages in the complex network of rivers and creeks surrounding the sprawling, low-rise capital, with some forced to wade through deep muddy brown waters.
Houses and nearby banana and sugarcane plantations were all submerged.
“This is the very first time I have experienced such a flood,” another man said near the village, where people had gathered near a small bridge.
“We didn’t have time to prepare. It was a very scary experience.”
State media said flooding in the area around the capital had caused landslides and destroyed electricity towers, buildings, roads, bridges, and houses.
In Mandalay region, one group of villagers rode elephants to reach dry land, in footage posted on social media.
In Vietnamese capital Hanoi, residents equipped with shovels, brushes and hoses were out clearing up debris and mud from the streets after the waters that had submerged parts of the city receded — and the sun came out for the first time in days.
The Red River through Hanoi reached its highest level in 20 years earlier this week as the rain brought by Yagi funnelled out toward the sea.
“This was the highest flooding I’ve ever seen, it was more than a meter on our first floor,” Nguyen Lan Huong, 40, told AFP.
“The water started to recede yesterday afternoon so we began cleaning up bit by bit. But it will take days for our family to fully recover, and even weeks for the community here I think.”
A total of 130,000 people were evacuated in northern Vietnam since Yagi hit on Saturday — and many have not yet been able to return home — while more than 135,000 homes have been damaged according to the authorities.
In the deadliest single incident, a landslide wiped out a village in mountainous Lao Cai province, killing 48 people.
But in a rare piece of good news, eight people missing in the landslide and feared dead have returned safe.
Some had been staying with relatives while others managed to escape in time.
Northern Thailand was also badly affected, with one district on the Myanmar border reporting its worst floods in 80 years.
Officials said Friday a fatality in a landslide in Chiang Rai province had taken the toll in the kingdom to 10.
Flights to Chiang Rai airport resumed on Friday a day after airlines halted them.
Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra was set to visit Chiang Rai on Friday to see relief efforts, which are being led by the military.
There are flood warnings for several locations along the River Mekong, including Laotian capital Vientiane.
The Mekong River Commission said low-lying areas around Vientiane are expected to be flooded over the next few days.
BEIRUT — The Lebanese health ministry said a child was among three people killed in an Israeli strike in the country’s south on Thursday, amid ongoing exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group has been trading near-daily cross-border fire with Israeli forces since Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, sparking war in the Gaza Strip.
The Lebanese health ministry said an “Israeli enemy strike” hit the village of Kfarjouz near Nabatieh, around 10 kilometers (six miles) from the border with Israel.
The strike killed “three people, among them a child, and wounded three others,” the ministry said, without providing further details.
A source close to Hezbollah confirmed that one of the dead was “a fighter in Hezbollah” and the two others were “civilians.”
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said the strike “targeted two motorcycles on the Nabatieh-Kfarjouz road,” adding that a passing car was also hit.
In a statement posted to Telegram early Friday, Hezbollah said it had fired a barrage of Katyusha rockets at Israel’s Northern Command “in response to the attack and assassination carried out” in Kfarjouz.
The Israeli military said shortly after that “approximately 20 projectiles were identified crossing from Lebanon into Israeli territory” around Safed, where the Northern Command is based.
“Most were successfully intercepted, the rest fell in open areas,” the army said in a statement, adding that no injuries were reported but teams were working to “extinguish the fire that erupted due to a fall in the area.”
Earlier Thursday, Hezbollah said it had launched a number of attacks on military positions in northern Israel, some with drones.
The Israeli military said at the time that “approximately 15 projectiles” were identified crossing from Lebanon, with some intercepted and no casualties reported.
The cross-border violence since early October has killed about 622 people in Lebanon, mostly fighters but also including at least 142 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
On the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan Heights, authorities have announced the deaths of at least 24 soldiers and 26 civilians.
TEHRAN — Three police officers were killed Thursday in southeastern Iran in an attack claimed by a jihadist group that is active in the region, the country’s official news agency said.
“Three members of the police forces were killed and a civilian injured in an attack carried out by armed criminals in Mirjaveh in Sistan and Baluchestan province,” the IRNA news agency said.
Sistan and Baluchestan, one of the poorest regions in Iran, is mostly inhabited by the minority Baloch community, who largely practice Sunni Islam in a country where the theocratic government is staunchly Shiite.
The officers were attacked at a petrol station, IRNA said.
The Pakistani-based Sunni jihadist group Jaish Al-Adl, which means Army of Justice in Arabic, claimed responsibility for the attack in a post on Telegram.
The same group claimed responsibility for an attack last month that killed the head of the criminal investigation department in the city of Khash in Sistan and Baluchestan province.
Jaish Al-Adl also claimed two attacks in April in the region that saw 10 members of the security forces killed.
TAWAU — “Anakku dirogol,” kata lelaki warga Indonesia sejurus selesai dihadapkan ke Mahkamah Majistret hari ini, atas pertuduhan membunuh jiran yang juga rakan senegaranya awal bulan lalu.
Tertuduh Yohanes Kopong Jawan, 31, mengangguk faham terhadap pertuduhan yang dibacakan di hadapan Majistret Don Stiwin Malanjum yang dijalankan secara Zoom.
Bagaimanapun tiada pengakuan direkodkan memandangkan kesalahan kes bunuh di bawah bidang kuasa Mahkamah Tinggi.
Tertuduh yang juga pemegang pasport Indonesia itu didakwa membunuh mangsa, Martin Sili, 33, di sebuah rumah di sini antara jam 7.30 malam pada 31 Ogos hingga 12 tengah hari 1 September lalu.
Dia didakwa mengikut Seksyen 302 Kanun Keseksaan yang memperuntukkan hukuman mati atau penjara antara 30 hingga 40 tahun dan jika tidak dihukum mati hendaklah disebat tidak kurang 12 kali, jika sabit kesalahan.
Pendakwaan dikendalikan Pegawai Pendakwa, Asisten Superintendan Nur Intan Jamrin tidak menawarkan sebarang jaminan dan memohon satu tarikh baharu untuk sebutan semula kes sementara menunggu keputusan laporan bedah siasat diperoleh.
Mahkamah kemudian membenarkan permohonan itu dan menetapkan tarikh 16 Oktober depan sebagai tarikh sebutan semula kes.
Terdahulu, pada 1 September lalu media melaporkan kejayaan Bahagian Siasatan Jenayah Ibu Pejabat Polis Daerah (IPDk Tawau, berjaya menahan suspek dan menyelesaikan kes bunuh dalam tempoh kurang 24 jam.
Ketua Polis Daerah Tawau Asisten Komisioner Jasmin Hussin dalam kenyataannya berkata, tangkapan dibuat susulan laporan diterima daripada seorang individu yang memaklumkan adik lelakinya dibunuh oleh seorang lelaki yang dikenalinya.
PUTRAJAYA — Kontroversi berhubung pensijilan halal berpunca daripada salah faham pelbagai pihak, kata Ahli Parlimen Seputeh, Teresa Kok.
Menerusi posting dimuat naik di akaun Facebook rasminya, beliau turut menyerahkan kepada Jabatan Kemajuan Islam Malaysia (JAKIM) sebagai pihak selayaknya untuk membuat penjelasan mengenai isu berkenaan.
“Nampaknya kontroversi pensijilan halal ini berlaku atas sebab salah faham daripada pelbagai pihak.
Saya rasa lebih baik JAKIM beri penjelasan mengenai isu ini,” katanya.
Isu pensijilan halal menjadi polemik selepas Teresa dalam laporan media berkata, pensijilan halal seharusnya bersifat sukarela untuk membolehkan pengusaha membuat keputusan berdasarkan permintaan pasaran, bukan dilaksanakan secara paksa.
Beliau dipetik mendakwa, cadangan mewajibkan restoran dan syarikat makanan memiliki sijil halal hanya akan menambah kesukaran operasi perniagaan serta beban kepada perniagaan kecil, selain bertentangan dengan semangat kepelbagaian budaya dan mungkin menjadikan Malaysia sebagai bahan ejekan di luar negara.
Ia susulan kenyataan Menteri di Jabatan Perdana Menteri (Hal Ehwal Agama), Datuk Dr Mohd Na’im Mokhtar, bahawa JAKIM sedang mengkaji cadangan untuk mewajibkan restoran serta syarikat makanan untuk memiliki sijil halal.
Terdahulu, Naib Presiden DAP itu menghadiri mesyuarat Jawatankuasa Pilihan Khas Kewangan dan Ekonomi di Parlimen.
Pada mesyuarat itu, JAKIM dan Halal Development Corporation Bhd (HDC) turut dijemput memberi pembentangan mengenai usaha mereka untuk mempromosi pensijilan halal.
“Saya sempat mengambil gambar dengan Datuk Dr Sirajuddin Suhaimee (Timbalan Ketua Pengarah JAKIM) dan Mohd Zamri Mohamed (Pengarah Sekretariat Majlis Halal Malaysia JAKIM).
“Sirajuddin memaklumkan mereka datang ke Parlimen selepas memberi keterangan kepada pegawai polis di Bukit Aman berkenaan kontroversi pensijilan halal yang membabitkan Menteri di Jabatan Perdana Menteri (Hal Ehwal Agama), Datuk Dr Mohd Na’im Mokhtar dan saya,” katanya.
Teresa berkata, mesyuarat jawatankuasa berkenaan dengan usaha pensijilan halal itu dijalankan dalam suasana mesra.
Several people were killed and others injured in an attack by unknown armed individuals in Afghanistan on Thursday, the country’s Interior Ministry spokesman said, the first attack on civilians in Daykundi province since the Taliban took power.
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, the group said on Thursday on its Telegram channel. It did not immediately provide any evidence for its assertion.
Most of the residents of Daykundi province are Shia Muslims, and it was considered one of the safest provinces.
Islamic State-Khurasan, a local affiliate of the Middle East-based Islamic State, has waged an insurgency against the Taliban, who they see as their enemies.
Taliban authorities say they have mostly crushed the group, even as it continues to carry out attacks in Afghanistan.
Salman Rushdie’s “Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder,” his explicit and surprisingly resilient memoir about his brutal stabbing in 2022, is a nominee for the National Book Awards. (Getty Images/AFP)
NEW YORK — Salman Rushdie’s “Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder,” his explicit and surprisingly resilient memoir about his brutal stabbing in 2022, is a nominee for the National Book Awards. Canada’s Anne Carson, one of the world’s most revered poets, was cited for her latest collection, “Wrong Norma.”
The National Book Foundation, which presents the awards, released long lists of 10 Thursday for nonfiction and poetry. The foundation announced the lists for young people’s literature and books in translations earlier in the week and will reveal the fiction nominees on Friday. Judges will narrow the lists to five in each category on Oct. 1, and winners will be announced during a Manhattan dinner ceremony on Nov. 20.
Rushdie, 77, has been a literary star since the 1981 publication of “Midnight’s Children” and unwittingly famous since the 1988 release of “The Satanic Verses” and the death decree issued by Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini for the novel’s alleged blasphemy. But “Knife” brings him his first National Book Award nomination; he was a British citizen, based in London, for “Midnight’s Children” and other works and would have been ineligible for the NBAs. Rushdie has been a US citizen since 2016.
Besides “Knife,” the nonfiction list includes explorations of faith, identity, oppression, global resources and outer space, among them Hanif Abdurraqib’s “There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension,” Rebecca Boyle’s “Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are” and Jason De León’s “Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling.”
The other nonfiction nominees were: Eliza Griswold’s “Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church,” Kate Manne’s “Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia,” Ernest Scheyder’s “The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives,” Richard Slotkin’s “A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Battle for America,” Deborah Jackson Taffa’s “Whiskey Tender” and Vanessa Angélica Villarreal’s “Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders.”
Along with Carson’s “Wrong Norma,” poetry nominees include Pulitzer Prize winner Dianne Seuss’ latest, “Modern Poetry“; Fady Joudah’s elliptically titled “(…)”; Dorianne Laux’s “Life on Earth”; Gregory Pardlo’s “Spectral Evidence”; and Rowan Ricardo Phillips’ “Silver.”
Others on the poetry list were Octavio Quintanilla’s “The Book of Wounded Sparrows,” m.s. RedCherries’ “mother,” Lena Khalaf Tuffaha’s “Something About Living” and Elizabeth Willis’ “Liontaming in America.”
People check the damage at the scene where a vehicle exploded in the central Israeli city of Ramla on Sept. 12, 2024, reportedly killing several people and injuring others. (AFP)
RAMLA, Israel — Four people were killed and eight injured when a vehicle exploded in the central Israeli city of Ramla on Thursday in an apparent gangland hit, medics and police said.
Liad Aviel, spokesman for the Asaf Harofe Medical Center in central Israel, said it “mourns the deaths of four individuals injured in the Ramla incident,” adding that six other casualties were receiving treatment there.
The Israeli police said it had launched an investigation into the cause of the explosion which was suspected to be linked to “a criminal conflict between crime families in the Arab neighborhood.”
Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir visited the site of the explosion and said police would “continue to fight this crime with all the tools at its disposal.”
“But I warn: crime in the Arab community requires more extensive tools and broader powers.”
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid criticized Ben-Gvir’s visit to the scene.
“There have been incompetent ministers before him, but he’s the first to turn failure into a profession,” he wrote on social media platform X.
Israel’s emergency medical service Magen David Adom said the vehicle “exploded while parked on the sidewalk near a store and residential building” in Ramla.
“As a result of the explosion, several passersby were injured by the blast and shrapnel,” rescue worker Benny Cohen said in a statement.
“The burning car was parked next to the store entrance, which prevented people inside the store from getting out.
“We moved the injured we were treating away from the fire scene… The rescued victims were unconscious, and our teams began advanced resuscitation efforts and transported them to hospitals in critical condition.”
Liat Cohen, another paramedic at the scene, said the unconscious victims included a month-old infant and a 50-year-old woman.
All suffered from smoke inhalation and were transported to hospital, he said.
“They tell us it’s a settlement of personal scores, but an explosion downtown in midday in a crowded area, that’s crazy,” Judith Touati, a Ramla resident and mother of seven, told AFP.
“My children were there just an hour before.”
Located east of Israel’s commercial hub of Tel Aviv, Ramla is a mixed city, home to both Jews and Arabs.
Arab communities in Israel have long complained of violence connected to organized crime.
Organizations such as the Mossawa Center, a nonprofit representing Arabs in Israel, argue such violence should receive more attention from the government.
GAZA — One civilian was killed today after being targeted by an Israeli drone while riding a bicycle in the Qizan Rashwan area south of Khan Yunis city in the southern Gaza Strip.
Earlier today, at least four civilians were killed , including two brothers, and others were injured after the occupation warplanes bombed a house in Khan Yunis city in the southern Gaza Strip.
TUBAS — Two Palestinian young men were injured by live ammunition fired by Israeli occupation forces earlier today in the town of Tammoun, located in the occupied West Bank province of Tubas.
The injuries occurred during a renewed raid by Israeli troops into the town, local sources said. The sources reported that the nature of the injuries sustained by the two men remains unclear.
Meantime, the Israeli forces obstructed the work of emergency medical teams and attempted to arrest one of the injured individuals.
Simultaneously, the Israeli forces have surrounded a house within the town and deployed snipers in several locations.
BETLEHEM — Israeli occupation forces today raided the Dhat al-Nitaqayn Girls’ School in the town of al-Khader, south of Bethlehem, and sprayed racist graffiti on the facade of one of its classrooms.
The head of the al-Khader Municipal Council, Ahmad Salah, said the occupation forces stormed the school grounds and sprayed racist graffiti on the facade of one of the classrooms.
It is noteworthy that the al-Khader school complex has been subjected to daily attacks by the occupation forces and colonists since October 7, especially during official working hours, due to its location near the separation wall.
GAZA — Several civilians were killed and others were injured on Thursday after the occupation warplanes bombed a house in the city of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip.
Medical sources reported that at least four civilians, including two brothers, were killed and a number of others were injured after the occupation fighter jets targeted a house in the European area east of the city of Khan Yunis.
Since the beginning of the aggression on October 7, 2023, 41,118 people have been killed, most of them children and women, and 95,125 others have been injured.
Rescue teams are still facing great difficulties in reaching thousands of victims who are still under the rubble or on the streets.
HANOI — Typhoon Yagi and the consequent landslides and floods have left 226 dead and 104 missing in Vietnam as of Thursday afternoon, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development announced.
The hardest-hit province of Lao Cai reported 98 deaths including 47 people in a flash flood in Nu village. Eighty-one others remain missing in the province.
Fatalities also came from Cao Bang province (43), Yen Bai (42) and Quang Ninh (15), among others.
Flood water on the Red River in capital Hanoi has slowly decreased below alert level 2 and above alert level 1 out of 3 since Thursday afternoon, according to the National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting.
Landslide warnings remain in northern localities, said the center.
Search and rescue efforts are ongoing across the region to overcome the typhoon’s aftermath and soon stabilize local livelihoods, local media reported.
International relief made by partner countries and organizations is being delivered to Vietnam for people affected by the flash floods and landslides following Typhoon Yagi, Vietnam News reported.
NEW DELHI — General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) Sitaram Yechury passed away at the age of 72 in New Delhi on Thursday.
He was admitted to a government hospital after he suffered from an acute chest infection.
A Communist leader in Indian politics for several decades, Yechury served as a lawmaker in Indian parliament’s upper house Rajya Sabha during 2005-2017.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed condolences over his demise.
A view shows a damaged civilian cargo vessel, carrying wheat grain to Egypt, which was hit by a Russian missile strike after it left Ukrainian maritime border in the Black Sea on Sept. 12, 2024. (Reuters)
KYIV — A Russian missile on Thursday morning hit an Egypt-bound cargo ship in the Black Sea carrying wheat, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
The Black Sea is a crucial trading route for Ukraine, one of the world’s largest agricultural producers and exporters, but was turned into a naval battleground when Russia invaded Ukraine.
“Russian missile against a wheat cargo bound for Egypt … Russia launched a strike on an ordinary civilian vessel in the Black Sea right after it left Ukrainian territorial waters,” Zelensky said in a post on social media.
There were no casualties from the attack, Zelensky added, urging global condemnation after the strike.
“Domestic stability and normal life in dozens of countries around the world are dependent on the normal and unhindered operation of our food expert corridor,” he said.
Moscow last year pulled out of a UN-brokered deal guaranteeing safe passage for Ukraine’s agricultural exports on the Black Sea, but Kyiv has carved out a maritime corridor allowing trade to continue.
Over 5,000 ships have sailed through the grain corridor since it was created, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said Wednesday.
Global food prices shot up when Russia invaded Ukraine amid fears conflict in the Black Sea would hobble global food supplies.
Sweden’s government said Thursday it would drastically increase grants for immigrants who choose to leave the country, in order to encourage more migrants to make the choice. (Reuters/File)
STOCKHOLM — Sweden’s government said Thursday it would drastically increase grants for immigrants who choose to leave the country, in order to encourage more migrants to make the choice.
As of 2026, immigrants who voluntarily return to their home countries would be eligible to receive up to 350,000 Swedish kronor ($34,000), up from the current 10,000 kronor, the right-wing government, which is propped up by the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, said in a statement.
A cargo truck of the International Committee of the Red Cross burns after a Russian military strike in the village of Viroliubivka, near a front line in Donetsk region, on Sept. 12, 2024. (Reuters)
KYIV — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said a Russian attack on vehicles of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Thursday in his country’s east had killed three people.
“Today, the occupier attacked the vehicles of the International Committee of the Red Cross humanitarian mission in Donetsk region,” Zelensky said.
Artillery shelling killed three Ukrainian citizens working for the ICRC and wounded another two, the Ukrainian parliamentary commissioner for human rights Dmytro Lubinets said.
The attack took place in the village of Virolyubivka, a dozen of kilometers away from the front line in Donetsk.
There was no immediate comment from Russia, which routinely says it only hits military targets.
The UN Humanitarian mission to Ukraine said 50 workers were killed or injured in Ukraine in 2023, including 11 killed in the line of duty.
“Since the beginning of the year, this repeated pattern of attacks appears to have intensified,” the UN humanitarian coordinator Denise Brown said in a statement in February.
A truck carrying bells is parked outside Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral, in Paris, on Sept. 12, 2024. (AP)
PARIS — Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris is getting its bells back, just in time for the medieval landmark’s reopening following a devastating 2019 fire.
A convoy of trucks bearing eight restored bells — the heaviest of which weighs more than 4 tons — pulled into the huge worksite surrounding the monument Thursday on an island in the Seine River.
They are being blessed in a special ceremony inside the cathedral before being hoisted to hang in its twin towers for the Dec. 8 reopening to the public.
Cathedral Rector Olivier Ribadeau Dumas, wearing a hardhat as he prepared to enter the cathedral and bless the bells, called them ‘’a sign that the cathedral will again resonate, and that its voice will be heard again. A sign of the call to prayer, and a sign of coming together.”
The bells will be raised one by one and tested out, but they won’t ring in full until the day of the reopening, said Philippe Jost, overseeing the massive Notre Dame reconstruction project. He called the bells’ arrival ‘’a very beautiful symbol of the cathedral’s rebirth.”
While construction on the cathedral started in the 12th century, the bronze bells damaged in the fire are from the 21st century.
They were built according to historical tradition to replace older bells that had become discordant, to mark the monument’s 850th anniversary.
The cathedral’s roof and spire, which collapsed in the fire, have been replaced, and scaffolding is being gradually removed from the site.
Hundreds of people turned out at a beach in Washington for an evening vigil remembering Aysenur Ezgi Eygi. (AP)
SEATTLE — For her 26th birthday in July, human rights activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi gathered friends for a bonfire at one of her favorite places, a sandy beach in Seattle where green-and-white ferries cruise across the dark, flat water and osprey fish overhead.
On Wednesday night, hundreds of people traveled to the same beach in grief, love and anger to mourn her. Eygi was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers last Friday in the occupied West Bank, where she had gone to protest and bear witness to Palestinian suffering.
“I can’t imagine what she felt like in her last moments, lying alone under the olive trees,” one of her friends, Kelsie Nabass, told the crowd at the vigil. “What did she think of? And did she know all of us would show up here tonight, for her?”
Eygi, who also held Turkish citizenship, was killed while demonstrating against settlements in the West Bank. A witness who was there, Israeli protester Jonathan Pollak, said she posed no threat to Israeli forces and that the shooting came during a moment of calm, following clashes between stone-throwing protesters and Israeli troops firing tear gas and bullets.
The Israeli military said Eygi was likely shot “indirectly and unintentionally” by its soldiers, drawing criticism from American officials, including President Joe Biden, who said he was “outraged and deeply saddened” her killing.
“There must be full accountability,” Biden said in a statement released Wednesday. “And Israel must do more to ensure that incidents like this never happen again.”
The deaths of American citizens in the West Bank have drawn international attention, such as the fatal shooting of a prominent Palestinian-American journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, in 2022 in the Jenin refugee camp. The deaths of Palestinians who do not have dual nationality rarely receive the same scrutiny.
Eygi’s family has demanded an independent investigation.
As the sun set, turning the sky on the horizon a pale orange, friends recalled Eygi as open, engaging, funny and devoted. The crowd spilled beyond a large rectangle of small black, red, green and white Palestinian flags staked in the sand to mark the venue for the vigil.
Many attendees wore traditional checked scarves — keffiyehs — in support of the Palestinian cause and carried photographs of Eygi in her graduation cap. They laid roses, sunflowers or carnations at a memorial where battery-operated candles spelled out her name in the sand.
Several described becoming fast friends with her last spring during the occupied “Liberated Zone” protest against the Israeli agression on Gaza at the University of Washington. Yoseph Ghazal said she introduced herself as “Baklava,” a name she sometimes used on messaging apps, reflective of her love of the sweet Mediterranean dessert.
Eygi, who attended Seattle schools and graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in psychology this year, helped negotiate with the administration on behalf of the protesters at the encampment, which was part of a broader campus movement against the Gaza war.
“She felt so strongly and loved humanity, loved people, loved life so much that she just wanted to help as many as she could,” Juliette Majid, 26, now a doctoral student at North Carolina State University, said in an interview. “She had such a drive for justice.”
Eygi’s uncle told a Turkish television station that she had kept her trip a secret from at least some of her family, blocking relatives from her social media posts. Turkish officials have said they are working to repatriate her body for burial, per the family’s wishes.
Sue Han, a 26-year-old law student at the University of Washington, only knew Eygi for a few months after meeting her at the university encampment, but they quickly became close, laughing and blasting music in Eygi’s beat-up green Subaru. Eygi would pick Han up at the airport after her travels. Most recently, Eygi greeted her with a plastic baggie full of sliced apples and perfectly ripe strawberries.
Han saw Eygi before she left. Eygi was feeling scared and selfish for leaving her loved ones to go to the West Bank with the activist group International Solidarity Movement; Han said she couldn’t imagine anyone more selfless.
Eygi loved to connect people, bringing disparate friends together for coffee to see how they mixed, Han said. The same was true when she would bring people together on the beach, and it was true of the vigil, too.
“I was looking around at everybody sharing stories about Aysenur, sharing tears and hugs, and this is exactly what she would have wanted,” Han said.
“These new relationships all sharing Aysenur as the starting seed — it’s the legacy she would have wanted.”
