#Canada sending $2.6M in humanitarian, refugee aid after months of Pakistan flooding.

Pakistan has been grappling since June with floods and heavy monsoon rains that have affected roughly four million people and killed more than 900.

Randeep Sarai, secretary of state for international development, says Canada is sending $2 million to the UN Refugee Agency in Pakistan, which primarily supports Afghan refugees but has also been providing emergency relief.

He says $350,000 will be sent to Save the Children Canada to provide emergency shelter, water and hygiene services.

The remaining $250,000 will support the Pakistan Red Crescent Society’s relief work.

Pakistan has experienced a rise in large-scale natural disasters that environmental experts have linked to climate change, including floods in 2022 that led Canada to announce $58 million in aid.

More than 60 containers fall off ship in Long Beach port. LOS ANGELES — More than 60 containers toppled off a cargo ship Tuesday morning in the Port of Long Beach, tumbling overboard and floating in the water.

The shipping containers fell off a vessel named the Mississippi shortly before 9 a.m., and no injuries have been reported, according to Port of Long Beach spokesperson Art Marroquin.

About 67 containers were in the water, the U.S. Coast Guard said on the social platform X.

Long Beach, about 20 miles (32 kilometres) south of Los Angeles, is one of the busiest seaports in the country, with 40% of all shipping containers in the United States coming through it or the Los Angeles port.

Some of the containers appeared to have fallen on the STAX 2, an anti-pollution vessel attached to the side of the Mississippi that captures emissions. When empty, a container can weigh between two to four metric tons (2.2 to 4.4 tons) depending on the size.

The Pier G container terminal, one of six at the port, temporarily stopped unloading and loading ships as authorities worked to secure the containers.

The Mississippi sails under the flag of Portugal and arrived in Long Beach after departing Aug. 26 from the Yantian port in Shenzhen, China, according to vessel #tracking websites.

Jaimie Ding, The Associated Press

#Syria has “strongly condemned” Israeli attacks on several sites in and around Homs city in the west of the country and around the coastal city of Latakia.

Kim Jong Un oversees test of new rocket engine for #ICBMs, North Korea says.

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Tuesday that leader Kim Jong Un supervised a test of a new rocket engine designed for intercontinental ballistic missiles, the latest step in his effort to build an arsenal that poses a viable threat to the continental United States.

North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said Monday’s event marked the ninth and final ground test of the solid-fuel rocket engine built with carbon fiber and capable of producing 1,971 kilonewtons of thrust, more powerful than past models. The report came a week after Kim visited the research institute that developed the engine, which North Korea then said will be used for future ICBMs, including a system called Hwasong-20.

North Korea in recent years has flight-tested a variety of ICBMs that demonstrated potential range to reach the U.S. mainland, including those with built-in solid propellants that are easier to move and conceal and can be prepared for launch more quickly than the North’s previous liquid-fuel missiles.

Kim has called for further advancements in North Korea’s long-range weapons, including the development of multi-warhead systems that would improve their chances of defeating missile defenses. All of North Korea’s ICBM tests so far have been conducted at steeper-than-normal trajectories to avoid neighboring territories, and experts say the country may not yet have perfected the technology needed to ensure its warheads survive the harsh conditions of atmospheric re-entry.

KCNA said Kim expressed satisfaction after Monday’s test, calling the “eye-opening” development of the new rocket engine a “significant change” in his effort to expand North Korea’s nuclear forces.

Kim has stepped up testing activities since the collapse of nuclear talks with the U.S. in 2019 under President Donald Trump ’s first term, demonstrating weapons of various ranges designed to strike U.S. allies in Asia and the U.S. mainland. Analysts say Kim’s nuclear push is aimed at eventually pressuring Washington to accept the idea of the North as a nuclear power and to negotiate economic and security concessions from a position of strength.

Kim is also trying to bolster his leverage by strengthening his cooperation with traditional allies Russia and China, in an emerging partnership aimed at undercutting U.S. influence.

Kim has sent thousands of troops and large quantities of military equipment to Russia to help fuel President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine. He visited Beijing last week, sharing the spotlight with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Putin at a massive military parade marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II and China’s fight against Japanese aggression. Experts say Kim’s rare foreign trip was likely intended to boost his leverage ahead of a potential resumption of talks with the United States.

In a separate report, #KCNA said Xi sent a letter to Kim on North Korea’s founding anniversary, which fell on Tuesday, and called for strengthened “strategic communication” between the countries.

Kim Tong-hyung, The Associated Press

VIDEO: Suspects accused of US$60,000 wedding gift theft arrested. The two men alleged to have stolen about $60,000 in wedding gifts in Glendale last week have been arrested, according to authorities.

The Glendale Police Department announced the arrests on Saturday morning, following an investigation lasting about a week. Video surfaced on Sept. 1 from the wedding of Nadeen and George Farahat, where, as guests were celebrating and dancing, a man could be seen grabbing a box and running away from the reception area.

That box, which the couple says was locked and secured, contained about $60,000 in cash and checks made out to the newlyweds.

Now, police say they found the man who did it, and his getaway driver.

Armean Shirehjini was arrested at his Sherman Oaks home on Friday afternoon while authorities executed a search warrant at his home, Glendale police said. He’s the primary suspect in the theft, while another man, alleged getaway driver Andranik Avetisyan, was also arrested. Neither has a criminal history, police said.

During the execution of search warrants at each of their homes, police found large amounts of cash and checks made out to the Farahats. Authorities also seized firearms and narcotics, they said.

“When we did arrest these males, they were found with several guns, lots of narcotics,” said GPD Sergeant Jose Barajas. “Not good guys from what it seems. So, we’re happy to take them off the street.”

Police also said that they found an all black outfit similar to what one of the suspects wore at the Farahats wedding while stealing the gift box.

The investigation remains ongoing, police said. The exact nature of their potential charges remains unclear.

They said they’re unsure of any connection between the suspects and the victims.

“We don’t know of any connection. We don’t know if the couple was specifically targeted,” Barajas said. “Like I said there’s various banquet halls throughout Glendale, weddings every single weekend. So they could’ve just looked at the venue itself and picked that one and this just happened to be the couple that was picked.”

No additional details were immediately made available as investigators continue searching for a motive in the crime.

The Farahat Family shared a statement with CBS News Los Angeles after they learned of the arrests.

“While this incident was deeply upsetting, we are grateful that is has brought out the kindness and solidarity of the entire community,” the statement said. “This was meant to be one of the happiest days of our lives, and despite what happened, we continue to hold on to the joy of celebrating with our loved ones.”

Last #Colombian soldiers freed from guerrilla-controlled zone. The remaining 45 soldiers from a group detained in guerrilla-controlled southwestern Colombia were freed on Monday, a Defense Ministry spokesman told AFP.

The troops had been seized Sunday while on an operation in the Cauca region, a drug-producing hotspot and bastion of a renegade faction of the defunct FARC guerrilla army. An initial batch of 27 were freed Sunday.

Colombian soldiers and police officers are often detained in areas controlled by armed groups.

According to the government, such detentions are often carried out by locals acting on the orders of armed groups in areas where there is little state presence.

In June, 57 soldiers were detained in the same region before being released days later following military intervention.

In late August, 33 soldiers were held captive for three days in a southeastern rural community, home to leftist guerrillas.

Colombia has been enduring rising violence from dissident groups who rejected a 2016 peace agreement with FARC after a six-decade insurgency.

Guided tours resume at the remote Hawaii leprosy settlement of Kalaupapa.

Tours and religious pilgrimages draw visitors to Kalaupapa, an isolated peninsula cut off by 2,000-foot (600-meter) cliffs. It traditionally has only been reachable by boat, small plane, mule ride or hours-long hike. Right now, travel to the area is only allowed by plane, Kalaupapa National Historical Park said in a news release.

Hawaii banished leprosy patients to Kalaupapa for over a century, starting in 1866 during Hawaiian Kingdom rule. The exile policy was only lifted in 1969.

More than 8,000 people died there, most of them Native Hawaiian. Saint Damien, a Catholic priest from Belgium who cared for patients in the late 19th century and was canonized by the church in 2009, also died there after contracting the disease.

Damien’s devotion to the ailing has inspired people worldwide, as has the work of Saint Marianne, a German-born nun who cared for the ill for decades before she died of natural causes on Kalaupapa in 1918. The church canonized her in 2012.

Today, the peninsula is governed by the state Department of Health while the the National Park Service operates the historical park.

Leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease, is spread by direct, person-to-person contact, although it’s not easily transmitted. It can cause skin lesions, mangle fingers and toes, and lead to blindness. It’s been curable since the development of sulfone drugs in the 1940s, and people treated with drugs aren’t contagious.

Patients are free to leave, but many have chosen to stay because it has become their home. Six patients, all cured, live there now. Privacy for these patients means guided tours are the only way visitors may travel to Kalaupapa.

Tours are available through Kalaupapa Saints Tour, founded by patient Meli Watanuki. Seawind Tours will operate the tours on Watanuki’s behalf, CEO Randy King said.

All visitors must be at least 16 years old and have a Department of Health visitor permit, which Seawind Tours will facilitate.

Audrey Mcavoy, The Associated Press

Every evening, Everlyn Ayo left her village in northern Uganda, trekking with thousands of other children known as “night commuters” hoping to escape the horrors of Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army.

The messianic Kony, whose case is finally being heard by the International Crime Court (ICC) from Tuesday, led one of the world’s most barbaric insurgencies, massacring and mutilating tens of thousands of people across the region, kidnapping children and turning them into child soldiers and sexual slaves.

Ayo saw the brutality first hand when Kony’s forces attacked her school in Nwoya district when she was around five years old.

“The rebels raided the school, killed and cooked our teachers in big drums and we were forced to eat their remains,” she told AFP from her home in the nearby city of Gulu.

Twenty years ago, Kony became the first person ever issued with an arrest warrant by the ICC, though his war crimes hearing will be in absentia since he has never been caught.

Ayo, now 39, will be among those following the case on her radio, thousands of miles from the sterile courtroom in The Hague.

After her school was attacked, Ayo’s family sent her to relatives in a remote village.

But that was also considered dangerous, and so she became a so-called night commuter, one of the emblematic features of a conflict that raged through much of the 1990s and 2000s.

Every night, she would walk around five kilometres, joining thousands of other children trekking through forests and jungle to stay in towns or shelters where they hoped there was less risk of being kidnapped by Kony’s army.

“We would leave the villages at 4:00 pm because the distances were long and we feared the villages at night. In the morning, we had to wait for daylight at around 8:00 am to return,” Ayo said.

The shelters were sporadically guarded by government troops, though they would often abandon their posts, themselves fearful of Kony’s fanatical forces.

“We were so many children that even if you did not cover yourself at night, you did not feel cold because we were squeezed together,” Ayo recalled.

Each morning, after walking for hours, they would find new horrors.

“Many times, on our return to the village, we would find blood-soaked dead bodies. Seeing all that blood as a child traumatized my eyes.

“For many years now, I do not see well, all I see is blood.”

Justice?

Wilfred Lalobo, 60, showed AFP a monument built in Lukodi, just outside Gulu, for 69 people killed in an attack by Kony’s forces on May 19, 2004.

“When the rebels arrived, the government troops were few, and they fled,” he said.

“Then they started killing civilians. Some people were stabbed with bayonet, others hacked and the rest burned alive in their houses.”

“On that day, my four-year-old daughter, Akello Lalobo was among those killed. My brother’s wife and six other relatives of mine were also killed,” Lalobo added.

Kony’s trial will be closely followed here, particularly by those who have sought to rebuild the region’s many shattered lives.

Stella Angel Lanam was 10 when she was captured by the LRA, which indoctrinated her into becoming a child soldier. She spent nine years in captivity.

Now 38, she is director of the War Victims and Children Networking Initiative, which offers counselling, training and other support in the region.

Lanam said the trial was a comfort, offering some justice to Kony’s many victims.

“Even though we have passed through a lot, we cannot lose hope,” she said.

“Will the government or Kony repair me back to the way I was? No. But at least I will get justice.”

Ayo worries that the world has too quickly forgotten the extreme trauma suffered at the hands of Kony’s forces.

She hopes he will one day see real justice.

“Joseph Kony should be punished severely in a way that the world will never forget,” Ayo said.

‘All I see is blood’: Kony survivors recall horrors ahead of trial

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has announced a decision to resign from his post, Japan’s public broadcaster NHK reported on Sunday.

According to NHK, Ishiba has made this decision in order to avoid a split within his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

Survey results all incumbent LDP deputies and representatives of regional party organizations on the issue of staging early elections of the party chairman are slated to be revealed on Monday.

Ishiba-led LDP failed at the summer parliamentary elections in July and did not secure the majority in both houses of the parliament. It led to numerous calls within Ishiba’s party for him to resign from the post of the country’s prime minister.

"Amid growing calls for Ishiba to take responsibility for the election result, the LDP had been expected to decide on Monday whether to hold a special leadership contest," NHK reported.

"Ishiba met former Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide and Agriculture Minister Koizumi Shinjiro at his office on Saturday," according to the #Japanese broadcaster.

"Sources say Suga and Koizumi told Ishiba that party unity is more important than anything else and suggested he step down before Diet members submit documents on a special leadership election," NHK added.