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A woman shot and killed two people and wounded a third Monday at two different locations in Atlanta's Midtown neighborhood and was later taken into custody at the city's airport, police said. Atlanta police said they did not immediately know what prompted the attack, but they believe the victims were targeted. The suspect's name was not released. “We do not believe these were random acts of violence," interim police chief Darrin Schierbaum told a news conference. Also read: 1 dead, 5 wounded in shooting in NE Washington Officers responded to a report of a shooting around 1:45 p.m. and found two victims at the first building. One of the victims died, and the other was taken to a hospital, Atlanta police said. While there, police received another report of a shooting at a second building less than a mile (1.6 km) away. That victim was also taken to the hospital and later died. Atlanta police said they are investigating how the two sites are connected. Law enforcement officers from multiple agencies descended on the Midtown area, telling residents to stay inside as they searched the area. Atlanta police said an “extensive camera network” helped them track the suspect and she was eventually located at the Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Also read: 2 dead after all-night shooting rampage in Vancouver, Canada Mayor Andre Dickens said the woman was arrested before entering a restricted area and that the “security of the airport was never compromised."

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert who became a household name — and the subject of partisan attacks — during the COVID-19 pandemic, announced Monday he will depart the federal government in December after more than five decades of service. Fauci, who serves as President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, has been the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation. He was a leader in the federal response to HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases even before the coronavirus hit. “I will be leaving these positions in December of this year to pursue the next chapter of my career,” Fauci said in a statement, calling those roles “the honor of a lifetime.” Fauci became the face of the government response to COVID-19 as it hit in early 2020, with frequent appearances on television news and at daily press conferences with White House officials, including then-President Donald Trump. But as the pandemic deepened, Fauci fell out of favor with Trump and his officials when his urgings of continued public caution clashed with the former president’s desire to return to normalcy and to promote unproven therapies for the virus. Fauci found himself marginalized by the Trump administration, increasingly kept out of major decisions about the federal response, but he continued to speak out publicly in media interviews, advocating social distancing and face coverings in public settings before the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines. He was also the subject of political attacks and death threats and was granted a security detail for his protection. When Biden won the White House, he asked Fauci to stay on in his administration in an elevated capacity. The president praised Fauci in a statement, saying, “Whether you’ve met him personally or not, he has touched all Americans’ lives with his work. I extend my deepest thanks for his public service. The United States of America is stronger, more resilient, and healthier because of him.” Fauci said despite retiring from federal service he planned to continue working. “I want to use what I have learned as NIAID Director to continue to advance science and public health and to inspire and mentor the next generation of scientific leaders as they help prepare the world to face future infectious disease threats,” he said.

Authorities have been searching for days for an Arizona woman reported missing after being swept away by floodwaters in Utah’s Zion National Park as strong seasonal rain storms hit parts of the U.S. Southwest. National Park Service officials said rangers and members of the Zion Search and Rescue Team were in the Virgin River area Sunday looking for Jetal Agnihotri, 29, of Tucson. They said Agnihotri was among several hikers who were swept off their feet Friday afternoon by rushing water in the popular Narrows area in the park, known for its spectacular red-rock cliffs and narrow canyons, in southern Utah near the Arizona border. All of the hikers except Agnihotri were found on high ground and were stranded until water levels receded. Rain can turn hiking in the park deadly when the moisture runs off the desert landscape and quickly fills canyons with water, rocks and debris, especially during the summer when seasonal afternoon thunderstorms develop. The storms can lead to flooding in normally dry washes and in areas stripped of vegetation by wildfires that have plagued the drought-stricken region. Vegetation normally slows and partially absorbs precipitation. Read:31 dead in India flash floods & landslides On Sunday, an approximately 20-mile (32-kilometer) stretch of Colorado's main east-west highway, Interstate 70, was temporarily closed because of the risk of flooding and mudslides from forecasted storms in Glenwood Canyon, where a wildfire burned in 2020. Elsewhere in Utah, flooding in Moab, the gateway to Arches National Park, on Saturday night closed trails in the city on Sunday as crews assessed the damage. A video posted on the city's Twitter account showed a creek gushing under a downtown bridge. Meanwhile, in New Mexico, officials at Carlsbad Caverns National Park said about 150 tourists were evacuated late Saturday night after being stranded by rising water. Park officials told people at the visitor's center to wait there for hours because of flash flooding. Authorities said several rivers and streams in New Mexico have nearly reached historic flood levels not seen since the 1960s due to recent heavy rainfall. In Arizona, emergency crews rescued four hikers stranded in Sabino Canyon east of Tucson on Friday and helped 41 students and staff from Marana off school buses that got stuck in high water when the storms began to move in. More than 3 inches (7.62 centimeters) of rain fell Saturday in the mountains northeast of Tucson, according to the National Weather Service. The rain comes amid a drought that scientists say is the worst in the U.S. West in 1,200 years and aggravated by climate change. Colorado River reservoirs have fallen to historic lows as a result. Earlier this week, states that rely on the river missed a deadline for deciding how to cut the amount of water they use from the river. For Nevada, recent storms have given the Las Vegas metro area its wettest monsoon season in 10 years. “Most locales in Arizona, New Mexico, the California deserts, southern Nevada, and a few other scattered areas have measured at least 200 percent of normal (rainfall) over the past 2 months,” the U.S. Drought Monitor said in a report issued on Aug. 11.

Republicans have found success in Democratic strongholds like Maryland and Massachusetts when they have fielded moderate candidates who could appeal to voters in both parties. With Democrats facing headwinds this year, Republicans had hoped that strategy could pay off yet again. But Republican voters have nominated loyalists of former President Donald Trump in several Democratic states, including Maryland and Connecticut, making the GOP’s odds of winning those general election races even longer. Massachusetts will face its own test next month as GOP voters decide between a Trump-backed conservative and a more moderate Republican for the party's gubernatorial nominee. “It can’t continue,” said former Connecticut U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays, a moderate Republican and Trump critic, referring to the GOP choosing pro-Trump candidates. "One of the things that will happen is that a lot of the Trump candidates who won the primary will lose the general election. And there are a lot of unhappy Republicans who hold office now who believe that the Senate now is in jeopardy of staying Democratic.” Trump's influence was on full display earlier this month when his last-minute endorsement helped propel Leora Levy, a member of the Republican National Committee who opposes abortion rights, to victory in a Republican U.S. Senate primary in Connecticut over the party’s endorsed candidate, former House Minority Leader Themis Klarides. Klarides supports abortion rights and said she didn't vote for Trump in 2020. “Sad day for CT ...,” tweeted Brenda Kupchick, the Republican first selectwoman of Fairfield and a former state representative, after the Aug. 9 race was called for Levy. Days earlier, after Trump endorsed Levy on speakerphone at a GOP picnic, Kupchick tweeted, “How is that helpful in the general election in CT?” Kupchick's tweets sparked criticism in both GOP camps. Trump supporters accused Klarides of not being a “true conservative." Moderate Republicans predicted that Levy's nomination ensured Democratic U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal would sail to victory in November, despite a Quinnipiac poll in May registering his lowest job approval since he took office in 2011. The last Republican to represent Connecticut in the U.S. Senate was Lowell P. Weicker Jr., who served from 1971 to 1989, though Connecticut has elected a moderate Republican governor as recently as 2006, with M. Jodi Rell. Levy, who has never before served in elective office, contends her message of controlling high inflation and energy prices, stopping “government intrusion between parent and child” and addressing crime will resonate with a wide range of voters. A similar dynamic has unfolded in liberal Maryland, where Dan Cox, a far-right state legislator endorsed by Trump, won the Republican primary for governor over a moderate rival backed by outgoing Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, a Trump critic. And in heavily Democratic Massachusetts, Republican voters casting ballots in the state's Sept. 6 gubernatorial primary will choose between Geoff Diehl, a Trump-backed former state representative, and Chris Doughty, a businessman with moderate views. Centrist Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, a Trump critic, decided against seeking a third term. The Democratic nominees in Maryland and Massachusetts are viewed as strong favorites to flip the governor's mansions in those states. Read:Trump CFO’s plea deal could make him a prosecution witness Trump's backing has propelled his candidates to victory in top races in battleground states, too, boosting Democrats' optimism of winning the general election. In Arizona, former TV news anchor Kari Lake, who has said she would not have certified President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, defeated lawyer and businesswoman Karrin Taylor Robson, who had been endorsed by former Vice President Mike Pence and outgoing GOP Gov. Doug Ducey. In Wisconsin, Trump-backed businessman Tim Michels beat former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, who had been endorsed by Pence and the state party. Both Michels and Kleefisch, however, falsely claimed the 2020 presidential election was rigged. In Connecticut, Levy's nomination is already being used as a rallying cry for Democrats, who contend she's out of the mainstream for a state where Republicans are outnumbered by unaffiliated voters and by Democrats. Aside from opposing abortion rights — reversing her position years ago of supporting abortion rights — Levy has spoken out against job-related COVID-19 vaccine requirements and transgender rights. Levy effusively thanked the former president during her acceptance speech, promising, “I will not let you down.” A day after the primary, Blumenthal's campaign sent out a fundraising message that warned, “The primary results are in, and I’m officially facing off against Trump’s hand-picked candidate in the general election — a radical Republican who will be nothing but a rubber stamp on Mitch McConnell’s disastrous agenda.” Levy, in turn, has tied Blumenthal to Biden, casting him as a “rubber stamp” for the Democratic president's “failed policies” as president and blaming Blumenthal for playing a “a key role in creating virtually every challenge our country faces today.” “Dick Blumenthal wants this election to be a referendum on a President. Donald Trump is not on the ballot in November, but Joe Biden is,” she said in a news release issued after the primary. Shays, who now lives in Maryland, said he believes an endorsement by Trump is disqualifying. He said he contributed to the campaign of Wes Moore, the Democrat running against Cox in Maryland, and would vote for Blumenthal if he still lived in Connecticut. “I will vote against anyone who seeks the support of Donald Trump because that tells me so much about their character and what they intend to do if elected. That’s the bottom line to me," Shays said. Ben Proto, chair of the Connecticut Republicans, dismissed any suggestion that the primary victory by Levy signaled a political evolution within the state GOP. Rather, he said, the party this year has “candidates across the board who hold different opinions on particular issues.” But what they have in common, he said, is the goal of getting inflation under control, making Connecticut more affordable, addressing crime and allowing parents to be the “primary stakeholder” in their children's lives. “At the end of the day, the issues that are important to the people of the state of Connecticut, we’re pretty solid on," he said.

Last week’s attack on author Salman Rushdie and the indictment of an Iranian national in a plot to kill former national security adviser John Bolton have given the Biden administration new headaches as it attempts to negotiate a return to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. A resolution may be tantalizingly close. But as the U.S. and Europe weigh Iran’s latest response to an EU proposal described as the West’s final offer, the administration faces new and potentially insurmountable domestic political hurdles to forging a lasting agreement. Deal critics in Congress who have long vowed to blow up any pact have ratcheted up their opposition to negotiations with a country whose leadership has refused to rescind the death threats against Rushdie or Bolton. Iran also vows to avenge the Trump administration’s 2020 assassination of a top Iranian general by killing former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Iran envoy Brian Hook, both of whom remain under 24/7 taxpayer-paid security protection. Although such threats are not covered by the deal, which relates solely to Iran’s nuclear program, they underscore deal opponents’ arguments that Iran cannot be trusted with the billions of dollars in sanctions relief it will receive if and when it and the U.S. return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, a signature foreign policy accomplishment of the Obama administration that President Donald Trump withdrew from in 2018. “This is a tougher deal to sell than the 2015 deal in that this time around there are no illusions that it will serve to moderate Iranian behavior or lead to greater U.S.-Iran cooperation,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The Iranian government stands to get tens of billions in sanctions relief, and the organizing principle of the regime will continue to be opposition to the United States and violence against its critics, both at home and abroad,” he said. Iran has denied any link with Rushdie’s alleged attacker, an American citizen who was indicted for attempted murder and has pleaded not guilty in the Aug. 12 stabbing at a literary event in Western New York. But Iranian state media have celebrated Iran’s long-standing antipathy toward Rushdie since the 1988 publication of his book “The Satanic Verses,” which some believe is insulting to Islam. Media linked to Iran’s leadership have lauded the attacker for following through on a 1989 decree, or fatwa, calling for Rushdie to be killed that was signed by Iran’s then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. And the man who was charged with plotting to murder Bolton is a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Justice Department alleges the IRGC tried to pay $300,000 to people in the United States to avenge the death of Qassam Suleimani, the head of its elite Quds Force who was killed by a U.S. airstrike in Iraq in 2020. “I think it’s delusional to believe that a regime that you’re about to enter into a significant arms control agreement with can be depended on to comply with its obligations or is even serious about the negotiation when it’s plotting the assassination of high-level former government officials and current government officials,” Bolton told reporters Wednesday. “It certainly looks like the attack on Salman Rushdie had a Revolutionary Guard component,” Bolton said. “We’ve got to stop this artificial division when dealing with the government of Iran between its nuclear activities on the one hand and its terrorist activities on the other.” Read: Iran submits a ‘written response’ in nuclear deal talks Others agree. “Granting terrorism sanctions relief amid ongoing terror plots on U.S. soil is somewhere between outrageous and lunacy,” said Rich Goldberg, a former Trump administration national security council staffer and longtime deal critic who is now a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which has also lobbied against a return to the JCPOA. While acknowledging the seriousness of the plots, administration officials contend that they are unrelated to the nuclear issue and do nothing to change their long-held belief that an Iran with a nuclear weapon would be more dangerous and less constrained than an Iran without one. “The JCPOA is about the single, central challenge we face with Iran, the core challenge, what would be the most threatening challenge we could possibly face from Iran, and that is a nuclear weapon,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said this week. “There is no doubt that a nuclear-armed Iran would feel an even greater degree of impunity, and would pose an even greater threat, a far greater threat, to countries in the region and potentially well beyond.” “Every challenge we face with Iran, whether it is its support for proxies, its support for terrorist groups, its ballistic missiles program, its malign cyber activities — every single one of those — would be more difficult to confront were Iran to have a nuclear weapons program,” he said. That argument, however, will be challenged in Congress by lawmakers who opposed the 2015 deal, saying it gave Iran a path to develop nuclear weapons by time-limiting the most onerous restrictions on its nuclear activities. They say there’s now even more tangible evidence that Iran’s malign behavior make it impossible to deal with. Two of the most outspoken critics of the deal, Republican senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, have weighed in on what the Rushdie attack should mean for the administration. “The ayatollahs have been trying to murder Salman Rushdie for decades,” Cruz said. “Their incitement and their contacts with this terrorist resulted in an attack. This vicious terrorist attack needs to be completely condemned. The Biden administration must finally cease appeasing the Iranian regime.” “Iran’s leaders have been calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie for decades,” said Cotton. “We know they’re trying to assassinate American officials today. Biden needs to immediately end negotiations with this terrorist regime.” Under the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, or INARA, the administration must submit any agreement with Iran for congressional review within five days of it being sealed. That begins a 30-day review period during which lawmakers may weigh in and no sanctions relief can be offered. That timeline means that even if a deal is reached within the next week, the administration will not be able to start moving on sanctions relief until the end of September, just a month from crucial congressional midterm elections. And, it will take additional time for Iran to begin seeing the benefits of such relief because of logistical constraints. While deal critics in the current Congress are unlikely to be able to kill a deal, if Republicans win back control of Congress in the midterms, they may be able to nullify any sanctions relief.   Read: US-Iran tensions thrust foreign policy into Democrats' race “Even if Iran accepts President Biden’s full capitulation and agrees to reenter the Iran nuclear deal, Congress will never vote to remove sanctions,” the GOP minority on the House Armed Services Committee said in a tweet on Wednesday. “In fact, Republicans in Congress will work to strengthen sanctions against Iran.”

Two small planes collided in Northern California while trying to land at a local airport Thursday and at least two of the three occupants were killed, officials said. The planes crashed at Watsonville Municipal Airport shortly before 3 p.m., according to a tweet from the city of Watsonville. The city-owned airport does not have a control tower to direct aircraft landing and taking off. There were two people aboard a twin-engine Cessna 340 and only the pilot aboard a single-engine Cessna 152 during the crash, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Officials say multiple fatalities were reported but it was not immediately clear whether anyone survived. The pilots were on their final approaches to the airport before the collision, the FAA said in a statement. The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board, which did not immediately have additional details, are investigating the crash. No one on the ground was injured. The airport has four runways and is home to more than 300 aircraft, according to its website. It handles more than 55,000 operations a year and is used often for recreational planes and agriculture businesses. Watsonville, near the Monterey Bay, is about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of San Francisco. Read: Ukrainian cargo plane crashes in Greece Photos and videos posted on social media showed the wreckage of one small plane in a grassy field by the airport. One picture showed a plume of smoke visible from a street near the airport. A photo from the city of Watsonville showed damage to a small building at the airport, with firefighters on the scene. The planes were about 200 feet (61 meters) in the air when they crashed, a witness told the Santa Cruz Sentinel. Franky Herrera was driving past the airport when he saw the twin-engine plane bank hard to the right and hit the wing of the smaller aircraft, which “just spiraled down and crashed” near the edge of the airfield and not far from homes, he told the newspaper. The twin-engine aircraft kept flying but “it was struggling,” Herrera said, and then he saw flames at the other side of the airport. The manager of the Watsonville Municipal Airport was unavailable for a phone interview in the hours after the crash. The airport accounts for about 40% of all general aviation activities in the Monterey Bay area, according to the City of Watsonville’s website. The Watsonville Police Department referred calls to the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office, where a dispatcher had no information. Two other pilots also were hurt in aircraft crashes elsewhere in California on Thursday. A 65-year-old San Diego man received injuries that were major but not life-threatening when his single-engine plane crashed on a street near a busy freeway overpass in El Cajon, authorities said. The plane reportedly struck an SUV but nobody on the ground was hurt in the city nearly 20 miles (32 kilometers) northeast of downtown San Diego. Later, the pilot of an ultralight aircraft was critically injured when it crashed upside down on a building at the Camarillo Airport in Ventura County, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) from downtown Los Angeles.

One skyscraper stands out from the rest in the Manhattan skyline. It’s not the tallest, but it is the skinniest — the world’s skinniest, in fact. The 84-story residential Steinway Tower, designed by New York architecture firm SHoP Architects, has the title of “most slender skyscraper in the world” thanks to its logic-defying ratio of width to height: 1-to-23 1/2. “Any time it’s 1-to-10 or more that’s considered a slender building; 1-to-15 or more is considered exotic and really difficult to do,” SHoP Architects founding principal Gregg Pasquarelli said. “The most slender buildings in the world are mostly in Hong Kong, and they’re around 17- or 18-to-1.” The 60 apartments in the tower range in cost from $18 million to $66 million per unit, and offer 360-degree views of the city. It’s located just south of Central Park, along a stretch of Manhattan’s 57th Street known as “Billionaires’ Row.” At 1,428 feet (435 meters), the building is the second-tallest residential tower in the Western Hemisphere, second to the nearby Central Park Tower at 1,550 feet (470 meters). For comparison, the world’s tallest tower is Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, which stands at 2,717 feet (828 meters). Steinway Tower is so skinny at the top that whenever the wind ramps up, the luxury homes on the upper floors sway around by a few feet. “Every skyscraper has to move,” Pasquarelli said. “If it’s too stiff, it’s actually more dangerous — it has to have flexibility in it.” To prevent the tower from swaying too far, the architects created a counterbalance with tuned steel plates. And while the exterior has the de rigueur reflective glass, it also includes a textured terracotta and bronze facade that creates wind turbulence to slow the acceleration of the building, Pasquarelli said. About 200 rock anchors descend at most 100 feet (30 meters) into the underlying bedrock to provide a deep foundation. Steinway Tower has a long history as the former location of Steinway Hall, constructed in 1924. JDS Development Group and Property Markets Group bought the building in 2013, and now they’re looking to the future. “What I’m hoping is that 50 years from now, you’ve only known New York with 111 West 57th St.,” Pasquarelli said. “I hope it holds a special place in all future New Yorkers’ hearts.” ___

The overall number of Covid cases has now surged past 596 million amid a rise in new infections in parts of the world. According to the latest global data, the total case count mounted to 596,934,012 and the death toll reached 6,459,290 on Wednesday morning. The US has recorded 94,869,936 cases so far and 1,063,087 people have died from the virus in the country, the data shows. India's daily Covid-19 caseload rose to 8,813 on Tuesday, officials said. According to federal health ministry data released on Tuesday, 8,813 new cases of Covid were reported in 24 hours, taking the total tally to 44,277,194 in the country. The cases reported on Tuesday marked a sharp decline in comparison to the daily caseload of 14,917 reported on Monday. India's active caseload currently stands at 111,252, according to the ministry. Read: Global Covid cases top 594 million The country also logged 29 related deaths in 24 hours, pushing the overall death toll to 527,098 since the beginning of the pandemic, the ministry said. Meanwhile, the Chinese mainland on Tuesday reported 566 locally transmitted confirmed Covid cases, of which 482 were in Hainan Province, the National Health Commission said Wednesday. Covid in Bangladesh Bangladesh reported zero Covid deaths and 93 new cases in 24 hours till Tuesday morning. The country last reported zero Covid-linked death on August 13. With the latest numbers, Bangladesh's total fatalities remained static at 29,314 while the caseload rose to 2,009,222, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS). The daily case test positivity rate rose to 4.41 percent from Monday's 4.09 percent as 2,110 samples were tested. The mortality rate remained unchanged at 1.46 percent. The recovery rate rose to 97.15 percent from Monday's 97.14 percent. In July, the country reported 142 Covid-linked deaths and 31,422 cases, the highest monthly death toll and caseload since March this year. Bangladesh registered its highest daily caseload of 16,230 on July 28 last year and daily fatalities of 264 on August 10 in the same year.  

The United States and South Korea will begin their biggest combined military training in years next week in the face of an increasingly aggressive North Korea, which has been ramping up weapons tests and threats of nuclear conflict against Seoul and Washington, the South’s military said Tuesday. The allies’ summertime drills, which will take place from Aug. 22 to Sept. 1 in South Korea under the name of Ulchi Freedom Shield, will include field exercises involving aircraft, warships, tanks and potentially tens of thousands of troops. The drills underscore Washington and Seoul’s commitment to restore large-scale training after they canceled some of their regular drills and downsized others to computer simulations in recent years to create space for diplomacy with Pyongyang and because of COVID-19 concerns. The U.S. Department of Defense also said the U.S., South Korean and Japanese navies took part in missile warning and ballistic missile search and tracking exercises off the coast of Hawaii from Aug. 8 to 14, which it said was aimed at furthering trilateral cooperation in face of North Korean challenges. While the United States and South Korea describe their exercises as defensive, Ulchi Freedom Shield will almost surely draw an angry reaction from North Korea, which describes all allied trainings as invasion rehearsals and has used them to justify its nuclear weapons and missiles development. Before they were shelved or downsized, the U.S. and South Korea held major joint exercises every spring and summer in South Korea. The spring ones had been highlighted by live-fire drills involving a broad range of land, air and sea assets and usually involved around 10,000 American and 200,000 Korean troops. Tens of thousands of allied troops had participated in the summertime drills, which had mainly consisted of computer simulations to hone joint decision making and planning, although South Korea’s military has emphasized the revival of large-scale field training this time. Officials at Seoul’s Defense Ministry and its Joint Chiefs of Staff did not comment on the number of U.S. and South Korean troops that would be participating in Ulchi Freedom Guardian Shield. The drills, which will kick off along with a four-day South Korean civil defense training program led by government employees, will reportedly include exercises simulating joint attacks, frontline reinforcements of arms and fuel, and removals of weapons of mass destruction. Read:China sets sanctions on Taiwan figures to punish US, island The allies will also train for drone attacks and other new warfare developments shown during Russia’s war on Ukraine and practice joint military-civilian responses to attacks on seaports, airports and major industrial facilities like semiconductor factories. “The biggest meaning of (Ulchi Freedom Shield) is that it normalizes the South Korea-U.S. combined exercises and field training, (contributing) to the rebuilding of the South Korea-U.S. alliance and the combined defense posture,” Moon Hong-sik, a Defense Ministry spokesperson, said during a briefing. Some experts say North Korea may use the drills as an excuse to stir up tensions. The North has already warned of a “deadly” retaliation against South Korea over its COVID-19 outbreak it dubiously claims was caused by anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets and other objects flown across the border by balloons launched by southern activists. There are concerns that the North Korean threat, issued last week by the powerful sister of leader Kim Jong Un, portends a provocation, which may include a nuclear or major missile test or even border skirmishes. In an interview with Associated Press Television last month, Choe Jin, deputy director of a think tank run by Pyongyang’s Foreign Ministry, said the United States and South Korea would face “unprecedented” security challenges if they don’t drop their hostile military pressure campaign against the North, including joint military drills. Kim Jun-rak, spokesperson of South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the South Korean and U.S. militaries were maintaining a close watch on North Korean military activities and facilities. Animosity has built up on the Korean Peninsula since U.S.-North Korea nuclear negotiations derailed in early 2019 over exchanging the release of crippling U.S.-led sanctions against the North and the North’s disarmament steps. Kim Jong Un has since declared to bolster his nuclear deterrent in face of “gangster-like” U.S. pressure and halted all cooperation with the South. Exploiting a division in the U.N. Security Council over Russia’s war on Ukraine, North Korea has dialed up weapons testing to a record pace this year, conducting more than 30 ballistic launches. They have included the country’s first demonstrations of intercontinental ballistic missile technology since 2017 and further tests of tactical systems designed to be armed with small battlefield nukes. Kim has punctuated his testing binge with repeated warnings that the North would proactively use its nuclear weapons in conflicts with South Korea and the United States, which experts say indicate an escalatory nuclear doctrine that could cause greater concerns for its neighbors. South Korea and U.S. officials say North Korea is also gearing up for its first nuclear test since September 2017, when it claimed to have developed a thermonuclear warhead to fit on its ICBMs.

A gas explosion Monday at a southeast Missouri home killed one person and injured nine others, authorities said. The explosion happened around 7 a.m. in Wyatt, a town of about 280 people that's about 130 miles (210 kilometers) south of St. Louis, Capt. Barry Morgan with the Mississippi County Sheriff’s Office said. He said authorities were trying to determine whether a water heater or stove were to blame. He identified the person killed only as a man in his mid-20s. Nine other people — the youngest just 6 months old — had serious or critical burn injuries. Several were flown to hospitals in St. Louis and Memphis, Tennessee. Also read: Officials: Fire at Coptic church in Cairo kills 41, hurts 14 “That is a ton of people in a house," he said. “So that’s what we’re trying to determine why there were so many people in there, because when I arrived on scene, it was just there was victims lying everywhere, badly burned." The garage of a neighboring home also caught fire, but no one inside that structure was hurt, Morgan said. Also read: Deputy coroner: House explosion in southern Indiana kills 3 The State Fire Marshal and a state propane commission were investigating.