At least 16 dead as 7.0-magnitude earthquake hits Tibet

At least 16 dead as 7.0-magnitude earthquake hits Tibet

The Independent

Oct 23, 2026

At least 16 people have been killed and 65 injured after a magnitude-7 earthquake hit the Tibet region on Thursday evening, collapsing hundreds of homes in the northern regional city of Nagqu, official media said.

Search and rescue efforts continued following the collapse of at least 339 homes and 20 livestock sheds, the Nagqu media office said, citing city government officials.

The US Geological Survey said the quake occurred at 10.33pm local time, with its epicentre 191km (119 miles) east-northeast of Nagqu, in a sparsely populated, high-altitude area of northern Tibet. It put the earthquake’s depth at 18km (11 miles).

Watch more on Independent TV: https://tinyurl.com/yc7ukx9n

A Tycoon Linked to Haitian Gangs Has Died

Tycoon Linked to Haitian Gangs Has Died
Reportedly the wealthiest man in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Gilbert Bigio was sanctioned for ties to criminal gangs. He was 91.

A photo of Gilbert Bigio, holding a Torah scroll.
Gilbert Bigio in 2003 holding a Torah scroll. A scion of immigrant Sephardic Jews from Syria, he was Israel’s honorary consul in Haiti for 25 years.Credit...Larry Luxner

By Adam Nossiter
Oct. 19, 2026

Gilbert Bigio, a Haitian industrialist widely described as the country’s first billionaire, and who was sanctioned by Canada for ties to criminal gangs in his homeland, died on Sept. 29 in Florida. He was 91.

His death was reported in the Haitian press.

With interests in steel, energy, logistics, consumer goods, construction and banking, Mr. Bigio’s holding company, long known as the GB Group and eventually renamed BGO, touched the impoverished island nation’s economy in every corner.

Mr. Bigio’s family remain major players in what the International Monetary Fund and others have described as Haiti’s tiny economic elite. BGO supplies cooking oils and soap to Haitian households, steel from Haiti’s only steel mill to its builders and deepwater port facilities to its shippers. BGO became a regional economic force as well, owning gas stations in Jamaica and the Dominican Republic.

The elite plays an outsize role in Haiti’s chaotic politics, and Mr. Bigio appears not to have been an exception, though he stayed largely out of public view and rarely granted interviews. In December 2022, Canada sanctioned him, along with two other Haitian businessmen.

“Canada has reason to believe these individuals are using their status as high-profile members of the economic elite in Haiti to protect and enable the illegal activities of armed criminal gangs, including through money laundering and other acts of corruption,” a foreign ministry statement said.

“The sanctions Canada has imposed are intended to put pressure on those responsible for the ongoing violence and instability in Haiti,” the statement continued. “These people must stop providing funds and weapons to criminal gangs in Haiti.”

According to Reuters, the GB Group did not immediately reply to the sanctions; one Haiti expert, Jake Johnston, of the Center for Economic Policy and Research in Washington, said in an interview that Canada’s decision was a largely “symbolic” move with little practical impact. Members of Mr. Bigio’s family did not respond in recent days to queries for this obituary.

Mr. Johnston said Mr. Bigio’s immense wealth — he bought an ultraluxury $132,000 Mercedes Maybach from the estate of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, The Miami Herald reported — was important to contrast with the brutal poverty of his native land.

Major fire breaks out in Alberta after deadly incident at Canadian military base

ROB GILLIES
Updated Sat, October 17, 2026 at 9:18 PM EDT

Paramedics load an injured person into an ambulance at the Wainwright Health center after a fire at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright, outside of Wainwright, Alberta Saturday, Oct. 17, 2026. (John Ulan/The Canadian Press via AP) (John Ulan/The Canadian Press via AP)

Emergency crews and military personnel gather at the Wainwright Health Centre as injured military members are treated after a fire at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright, outside of Wainwright, Alberta Saturday, Oct. 17, 2026. (John Ulan/The Canadian Press via AP) (John Ulan/The Canadian Press via AP)

Paramedics load an injured person into an ambulance at the Wainwright Health Centre as injured military members are treated after a fire at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright, outside of Wainwright, Alberta Saturday, Oct. 17, 2026. (John Ulan/The Canadian Press via AP) (John Ulan/The Canadian Press via AP)


EDMONTON, Alberta (AP) — Canada's defense minister said Saturday that people were killed and injured in an incident at a military base in Alberta that caused a major fire, while reports said that large numbers of injured people were transported to hospitals.

Fire crews scrambled late into the night as fierce winds whipped flames beyond Canadian Forces Base Wainwright and into the surrounding rural area.

It was not immediately clear how many people were killed or injured, but a doctor at a hospital in the city of Edmonton, 180 kilometers (120 miles) northwest, told Canada's national broadcaster that patients were being brought to hospitals across the city as healthcare facilities around the base became "completely overwhelmed" by the number of people needing care.

"This number of patients would overwhelm the city of Edmonton," Dr. Warren Thirsk, an emergency department physician at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, told CBC News. "It is more patients than any of us want to count right now. It's a disaster. It's a one in every 15- to 25-year disaster."

Acute Care Alberta said several hospitals across the province had activated a "Code Orange," an emergency designation used when multiple severely injured patients require coordinated medical care. The agency said emergency medical resources were stretched so thin that extremely few ambulances were available in the Edmonton area. It urged people to avoid the University of Alberta Hospital emergency department if possible.

Wainwright Mayor Bruce Pugh said the town's small hospital was not designed to handle a mass-casualty incident but praised the response of local medical personnel. He said helicopters and planes had been transporting patients to other facilities for treatment.

Four dead and thousands without power after Hurricane Isaias lashes US

Madeline Halpert

New York





Watch: Florida thrashed as Hurricane Isaias makes landfall


Four people have died and hundreds of thousands are without power after Hurricane Isaias battered parts of the southern US with powerful winds and heavy rain.

Officials reported two deaths each in the states of Alabama and Florida, which included people who were killed when trees fell on their houses.

An estimated 500,000 people in total were without power in several states as of Saturday evening, according to tracker PowerOutage.

Isaias made landfall in Florida late on Friday with maximum sustained winds of 105mph (168km/h) before being downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone.

The storm felled trees and ripped the roofs off buildings. Alabama, Florida and Georgia all declared states of emergency ahead of its arrival, while both Florida and Alabama issued mandatory evacuation orders to thousands of people.

Meanwhile, Hurricane Simon is bearing down on Mexico's Pacific coast and has strengthened to category four. It is expected to make landfall sometime overnight.

Tropical Storm Rachel, also in the Pacific Ocean, is expected to hit southern California later on Saturday.

Getty Images

The roof was blown off an apartment complex in Milton, Florida

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Pro-Israel, pro-Palestinian crowds converge on Union Square for Oct. 7 vigil

Giulia Heyward/Gothamist

 By Giulia Heyward

Published Oct 7, 2026 at 7:33 p.m. ET


Union Square was on high alert Wednesday night as demonstrators poured in ahead of a vigil marking the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, where Mayor Zohran Mamdani was expected to attend.

Demonstrators waved Israeli and Palestinian flags and held signs as dozens of police vehicles surrounded the area. Members of the NYPD’s counterterrorism unit were among the NYPD deployment around the park.

Laura Liben, a Jewish Upper West Side resident, said she arrived around 6:30 p.m. to participate in the vigil and complained about the pro-Palestinian demonstrators who’d gathered around.

“I feel like they kind of came and took over the whole thing,” Liben said. “I think if they had come maybe asking questions or starting a dialogue, but this feels really hostile.”

About 1,200 people were killed in the attacks and roughly 250 others were taken hostage. The ensuing war in Gaza has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians, according to data provided by Gaza’s health ministry. Both the attacks and the war that followed remain a source of deep tension in the five boroughs and Mamdani, the first Muslim mayor of New York, has faced accusations of antisemitism from his detractors for supporting Palestinians and accusing Israel of genocide.

In a statement on Wednesday, Mamdani denounced “every Israeli bomb dropped on ambulances waiting outside hospitals, every drone strike targeting a residential building or journalist, and every shipment of food aid turned away at a border crossing.”


The Anti-Defamation League’s New York/New Jersey office criticized Mamdani on Wednesday, saying “the grief and pain has not dulled in the three years since” the attacks.

“Mayor Mamdani had the opportunity to use this anniversary to mourn alongside his Jewish constituents,” the organization said on social media. “Instead he chose to use his considerable platform to level political charges against Israel, justifying the very violence he claims to condemn.”

City Councilmember Vickie Paladino from Queens also called Mamdani’s remarks “disgraceful.”

“He does this knowing that today leftist, Islamist and pro-Palestinian activist organizations — many of which he and his wife have aligned with — are openly celebrating the 10/7 attacks, in some of the most grotesque and disturbing actions we've ever seen in this country,” Paladino said.

New York has the largest Jewish population of any city in the world outside of Israel. The ADL has also criticized Mamdani over his administration’s recently released plan to combat hate crimes against Jewish New Yorkers, which did not adopt a formal definition of antisemitism.

Mamdani released the plan as reported antisemitic hate crimes continue to rise in the city. The NYPD said antisemitic hate crimes increased 9% during the first eight months of the year compared with the same period last year. Jewish New Yorkers were the targets of more than half of all confirmed hate crimes citywide during that period, according to Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch.


This is a developing story and will be updated.

Source

Remembering October 7th terror attacks on Israel three years later

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Mississippi police makes arrest in Tasia Fortune case after medical examiner rules death a homicide

Tasia Fortune is seen in an image posted to her family's GoFundMe account. From Etta Avolio/GoFundMe

By

Dalia Faheid,

Elise Hammond

Updated Sep 12, 2026

Police in Jackson, Mississippi, have arrested a man in the case of Tasia Fortune, the 29-year-old Black woman found hanging from a tree outside an abandoned house last month, following the state medical examiner ruling her death a homicide.

Jarques Ratliff, 51, has been charged with murder in connection with Fortune’s death, police said Friday. CNN is working to determine if he has legal representation. Ratliff will have his first court appearance Monday, police said.

“Last night, the medical examiner’s office officially classified Miss Fortune’s death as a homicide. With that determination, our investigators moved quickly,” Chief RaShall Brackney said at a Friday news conference.

Brackney told CNN on Saturday no one else had been arrested overnight, but she expects “more arrests to come.”



Jackson Police Chief RaShall Brackney explains her precise language in the Tasia Fortune case.

Ocasio-Cortez And Pressley's Controversial Claims On 'Modern-Day Lynchings' Contradict Police Reports

 By Maria Angelino | Saturday, 12 September 2026 05:15 AM

Image Credit : Wikimedia Commons

Far-left Democratic Representatives Ayanna Pressley and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are amplifying a narrative of “modern-day lynchings” of black Americans that is starkly at odds with the facts established by law enforcement in nearly every case they cite.

As reported by The Post Millennial, the two members of the progressive “Squad” have seized on a series of tragic deaths in which black individuals were found hanging from trees and portrayed them as racially motivated killings, despite police and medical findings that overwhelmingly point to suicide. Their rhetoric, which invokes the darkest chapters of American history, has been used to demand federal intervention and a congressional investigation, even though authorities have found no evidence of racial animus in these incidents.

Across the country in 2026, several black individuals have been discovered dead in trees, with local investigations consistently concluding that the deaths were self-inflicted and involved no foul play. Nonetheless, Ocasio-Cortez and Pressley publicly described these cases as “lynchings” and insisted that Congress must step in, framing the incidents as part of a broader campaign of racial terror.

Pressley escalated the language dramatically, declaring, "Black folks are being found hanged in America. This is a national crisis and we CANNOT stand by while strange fruit hangs from trees across the country. We're demanding a federal investigation NOW so we can stop modern-day lynchings." Her invocation of “strange fruit” — a direct reference to the infamous song about Jim Crow-era lynchings — appears designed to stir public outrage, even as investigators on the ground report no such pattern of racist violence.

Ocasio-Cortez echoed and amplified Pressley’s claims, stating, "This year, there have already been 10 reported hangings of Black people in the U.S. I’m proud to have signed onto @RepPressley‘s letter to address these widespread modern-day lynchings and put a stop to this racial terror." By framing these tragedies as “widespread modern-day lynchings,” she suggested an organized campaign of racial killings, a claim that is not supported by the official findings in the cases highlighted by activists and sympathetic media.

In Cobb County, Georgia, 21-year-old Kyle Bassinga was found hanging in March, and police determined there was no foul play and that he was alone at the time of his death, according to CBS News. In Charlotte, North Carolina, 16-year-old Juliana Umba Nzita was discovered hanging from a tree on church property in May, and investigators ruled her death a suicide, WBTV reported.

The Falling Man Photo That Shocked The World

9/11 25th Anniversary Ceremony in NYC: Watch live from Ground Zero

9/11 25th Anniversary Ceremony in NYC: Watch live from Ground Zero

New York Post

Watch live as New York City commemorates the 25th anniversary of the horrific terror attacks on September 11th, 2001. The ceremony will be attended by survivors, family members of victims and leaders including Vice President JD Vance. 

The first of seven moments of silence will come at 8:46 a.m. in observance of when hijacked Flight 11 struck the North Tower, followed by the reading of names of the 2001 and 1993 WTC bombing victims by the loved ones they left behind.

For the first time, there will be a seventh moment of silence to honor those who have since died from 9/11-related illnesses and injuries.

Taiwan pet owners honor departed pets

 

The Apostle Peter in Rome

Jesus’ chief disciple examined
Nicola Denzey Lewis June 28, 2026 

In this blog post, Brown University Religious Studies professor Nicola Denzey Lewis answers frequently asked questions about the apostle Peter. Denzey Lewis appears in the CNN series Finding Jesus: Faith, Fact, Forgery, which aims to investigate artifacts that shed light on the world in which Jesus lived.—Ed.

What traditions connect the apostle Peter to Rome?

The Repentant St. Peter by El Greco. Photo: The Phillips Collection.

Jesus’ chief disciple, Peter (also called Simon Peter or Cephas), has been associated with Rome for nearly 2,000 years. The earliest testimony to the apostle Peter’s presence in Rome is a letter from a Christian deacon named Gaius. Writing probably toward the end of the second century C.E.—so, around 170 or 180 C.E.—Gaius tells about the wondrous things in Rome, including something called a tropaion (see below for more) where Peter established a church—in fact, the Church, the Roman Catholic church at the site where St. Peter’s Basilica is today. But there are other traditions besides Peter’s tropaion.

One early Christian text, the Apocryphal Acts of Peter, recounts many things that Peter did in the city. At one point in Acts of Peter, Peter is taunted by a flamboyant heretic, Simon Magus. Simon challenges Peter to a flying contest around the Roman Forum, but Peter’s prayers make Simon crash to the ground, proving that Simon’s powers are not as great as his own.

At the end of this text, Peter, not wishing to be martyred for his faith, flees from Roman authorities on the Via Appia leading out of the city. Rather unexpectedly, Peter meets Jesus, who is traveling in the opposite direction. He asks Jesus, “Where are you going?” Jesus tells Peter that he is going to Rome “to be crucified again.” Peter realizes, from this, that he cannot flee from his fate.

“Where are you going?” in Latin is “Quo Vadis?” and there’s a medieval church in Rome called the Church of Quo Vadis at the spot where Peter met Jesus. To prove that his vision was real, you can still see there a bit of marble pavement which the faithful say miraculously preserve Jesus’ footprints.

Pastor, 6 others executed extrajudicially in Sudan

By Anugrah Kumar, Christian Post Contributor Saturday, August 08, 2026

EBRAHIM HAMID/AFP via Getty Images

A pastor in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains was executed extrajudicially along with six other people after members of an armed faction arrested him at his church residence in the town of Heban.

The Rev. Adil Idris Jangoul, of the Sudanese Episcopal Church, was detained on July 23 inside the church compound in Heban’s Erie neighborhood, where he lived, the religious freedom advocacy group Christian Solidarity Worldwide reported this week.

Members of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement-North, or SPLM/N, an armed group in the region, seized his money and arrested him without incident.

However, his body was later found on a road alongside those of six other people, all from the Otoro ethnic group. All seven had been killed in extrajudicial executions.

A related attack struck Heban the same day. Members of the Otoro ethnic group, the same community whose members had been killed alongside Jangoul, carried out the raid, killing at least 10 people and seizing more than 20 hostages, among them children, CSW said.

One hostage was the Rev. Yakoub Brahim Tia. He once served as general secretary of the Sudanese Church of Christ and belongs to the Shawaya ethnic group. Six of his relatives were also seized.

All the hostages were released unharmed on July 28, after ministers from several ethnic communities appealed for their freedom.

What Is Candida Auris and Where Is the Deadly Fungus Spreading?

Over 3,400 infections caused by Candida auris have been documented in the U.S. in 2026.

By Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder
|
Aug. 6, 2026, at 5:38 p.m.

Deadly Fungus Spreading in U.S.



NICOLAS ARMER|PICTURE ALLIANCE|GETTY IMAGES

A petri dish holding the yeast Candida Auris.



Cases of a drug-resistant and potentially deadly fungal infection are spreading in the U.S., according to federal data.

Over 3,400 infections caused by Candida auris have been documented in 2026 across 27 states, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

According to the CDC, “cases continue to rise each year, but the rate of increase has slowed down since 2022.”

What Is Candida Auris?

Candida auris is a drug-resistant fungus that can cause potentially life-threatening illness.

“Resistant infections can be difficult, and sometimes impossible, to treat,” according to the CDC.

Candida auris, which is a type of yeast, spreads easily in healthcare facilities like hospitals and mostly affects people who are already very sick. It can spread from person to person or through contaminated medical equipment.

“Most patients who become sick with C. auris were already very sick,” according to the CDC. “When patients with C. auris die, it is hard to know how much C. auris contributed to their death compared to other pre-existing illnesses.”

People who do not have risk factors usually don’t get sick or can recover easily on their own.

It was first found in 2009 in Japan and has since been documented in dozens of countries. It was first documented in the U.S. in 2016.

The Clintons: Scandal After Scandal

Thousands of Moroccan migrants leave after storming Spanish enclave

 

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 Spain Escorts Thousands of Migrants Back to Morocco After Deadly Ceuta Border Crisis | AC1G

 

Boston Police Find Dead Body At Home Owned By Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley's Husband

Mark Tanos Updated Sun, July 19, 2026 at 11:47 AM EDT

Boston Police Find Dead Body At Home Owned By Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley's Husband ©(Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)


Boston homicide detectives are investigating a death at a Mattapan rental property that city records tie to the husband of Democratic Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley.

Officers reached 25 Malta St. at 1:52 p.m. after a caller asked police to check on a person there, department spokesperson James Moccia told CBS News Boston. They found the individual dead, Moccia said, adding that he had nothing further to share and that the homicide unit had taken the case.

A second department spokesperson, Sgt. Det. John Boyle, characterized the matter to The Boston Globe as a death investigation. Police have not named the deceased or disclosed a cause of death, and few specifics had surfaced by Saturday evening, the Globe reported. (RELATED: Ayanna Pressley Screams At Top Of Her Lungs As Somali Fraud Hearing Descends Into Mayhem)

Red crime scene tape ringed the property and a cruiser idled out front that evening, CBS News Boston reported. An officer stood watch at the front door, and officers on scene would not say whether anyone had been staying there, according to Mass Daily News.