COLOMBO: A Hindu religious festival in Sri Lanka ended in chaos after an elephant in the procession panicked, with 13 people in the crowd injured as they fled, police said Sunday.
Video footage shared on social media showed one of the elephant’s keepers trying to pull the agitated animal by its tail in a desperate attempt to control it, while screaming devotees lining the street rushed to escape.
The images show a parade of elephants covered in red, blue and gold robes from trunk to tail, in front of a large crowd while cymbals clanged.
Thirteen people were taken to hospital and treated for minor injuries in Kataragama, 280 kilometers (175 miles) south of the capital Colombo, a police spokesman said.
A spokesman for the state-run Kataragama hospital said on Sunday, the day after the incident, that all the injured had been discharged.
Elephants are considered sacred in Sri Lanka, but animal cruelty laws are rarely enforced.
Animal rights groups have criticized the widespread use of elephants at temple ceremonies in Sri Lanka.
There have been instances when the animals have gone berserk at parades involving loud music and fireworks.
In August 2023, dozens of pilgrims jumped into a lake in the central city of Kandy to escape five agitated young elephants. Several people were hurt and one woman was hospitalized.
In 2019, at least 17 people were injured when elephants ran amok at a temple festival in Colombo.
Official records show there are about 200 domesticated elephants in the island nation, along with a wild population of around 7,500.
The government has banned the capture of wild elephants but dozens of calves have been stolen in recent years, often after their mothers were killed by their captors.
Sri Lanka pilgrims flee as elephant runs amok
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Sri Lanka pilgrims flee as elephant runs amok
- Thirteen people were taken to hospital and treated for minor injuries in Kataragama
Dormant Russia volcano erupts for first time in 450 years
Pictures released by Russian state media show a towering plume of ash spewing from the Krasheninnikov volcano, which last erupted in 1550, according to the Smithsonian Institution’s Global Volcanism Program.
The plume is estimated to have reached an altitude of 6,000 meters (19,700 feet), Kamchatka’s Ministry of Emergency Situations said in a post on Telegram.
“The plume is spreading eastward from the volcano toward the Pacific Ocean. There are no populated areas along its path, and no ashfall has been recorded in inhabited localities,” the ministry said.
The volcano has been assigned an “orange” aviation hazard code, the ministry added, meaning flights in the area may be disrupted.
It came after Klyuchevskoy, another volcano in the region — the highest active in Europe and Asia — erupted on Wednesday.
Eruptions of Klyuchevskoy are quite common, with at least 18 occurring since 2000, according to the Global Volcanism Program.
Both recent eruptions followed one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded, which struck on Wednesday, sparking tsunami warnings and evacuations of millions of people from coastal areas from Japan to Hawaii to Ecuador.
The worst damage was seen in Russia, where a tsunami crashed through the port of Severo-Kurilsk and submerged a fishing plant, officials said.
The magnitude 8.8 quake struck off Petropavlovsk on Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula and was the strongest since 2011 when a magnitude 9.1 quake off Japan caused a tsunami that killed more than 15,000 people.
At this summer camp run by grandmas, kids learn cooking skills and life advice
- The camp's held at a community center in Fullerton, a city in Orange County that’s home to a large Arab population, and many of the campers and grandmas come from those communities
LOS ANGELES: The smell of frying garlic and ginger is inescapable as it wafts through the room, while a row of fidgety kids watches an older woman in a blue plaid apron cooking in front of them.
“When I was growing up my mom used to make this a lot,” she says, showing a chicken stir fry recipe.
At this “Intergenerational Summer Camp” in a Southern California suburb, the grandmas are in charge. Every week, they taught a group of 8-to-14-year-olds how to cook a new dish and a do a handicraft such as sewing, embroidering, clay jewelry and card marking.
“Isolation and loneliness is something that seniors are challenged with, and they love having younger people around them,” said Zainab Hussain, a program manager at Olive Community Services, a nonprofit aimed at bringing older adults together that hosted the camp.
The camp was held at a community center in Fullerton, a city in Orange County that’s home to a large Arab population, and many of the campers and grandmas come from those communities. In between activities, the small room bustled with energy as the girls chatted and munched on snacks. Some of the volunteer grandmas milled around and watched, content to just be around the youngsters.
In July, during the final week of camp, Janna Moten and her friends were learning how to use a sewing machine and make pouches.
“Slowly, slowly,” one grandma chided as Moten stomped on the machine’s pedal, causing the needle to rapidly jerk up and down.
She pressed her foot down again, gingerly, and managed to sew a straight line.
“Honestly, I’m just here for the food,” the 9 year old quipped. Still, she beamed as she showed the two pieces of fabric she sewed together and turned inside out, forming a rectangular pocket.
Moten said she’s been practicing hand-stitching at home after learning embroidery a previous week.
“Sewing’s pretty easy, it’s just hard keeping the lines straight,” she said. She added that her own grandma was stricter than the ones at summer camp.
Haqiqah Abdul Rahim, the instructor for sewing, said many kids don’t learn these skills at school anymore through home economics classes, so they’re “filling in a gap.”
She stood in front of the room at the start of the activity, holding up various tools and explaining what they were: seam roller, thread snipper, rotary fabric cutter.
Rahim also doesn’t get to spend a lot of time with her grandchildren because they don’t live close.
“It is heartwarming to be able to interact with those who love being around you,” Rahim said.
The kids have learned about kitchen safety and how to cook with a grandma’s touch — such as mixing spices with water before adding them to a dish so they don’t burn, or using fresh turmeric.
The summer camp was held in partnership with the Golden Connections Club, started by high school student Leena Albinali last year to foster interactions between teens and elders.
The 14-year-old lives with her grandma but realized other students didn’t have the same opportunity to spend as much time with their grandparents. She also learned about ageism and other challenges faced by senior adults in one of her classes.
At monthly lunches, they invite seniors to the school and discuss topics where both groups can learn from each other, Albinali said.
“They treat us like we’re their grandchildren,” she said. The teens share what they know about artificial intelligence and its impact on their lives, and the elders share life stories and advice.
One of the most important things they’ve shared with her is to live in the moment, something that’s taken on new meaning for her.
“The people we have right now, they’re not going to be with us forever,” she said.
A Tunisian musician was detained in LA after living in US for a decade. His doctor wife speaks out
- The Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration has ensnared not only immigrants without legal status but legal permanent residents like Othmane who has green cards
LOS ANGELES: Dr. Wafaa Alrashid noticed fewer of her patients were showing up for their appointments at the Los Angeles area hospital where she works as immigration raids spread fear among the Latino population she serves.
The Utah-born chief medical officer at Huntington Hospital understood their fear on a personal level. Her husband Rami Othmane, a Tunisian singer and classical musician, began carrying a receipt of his pending green card application around with him.
Over the past few months, immigration agents have arrested hundreds of people in Southern California, prompting protests against the federal raids and the subsequent deployment of the National Guard and Marines. Despite living in the US for a decade as one of thousands of residents married to US citizens, he was swept up in the crackdown.
On July 13, Othmane was stopped while driving to a grocery store in Pasadena. He quickly pulled out his paperwork to show federal immigration agents.
“They didn’t care, they said, ‘Please step out of the car,’” Alrashid recalled hearing the officers say as she watched her husband’s arrest in horror over FaceTime.
Alrashid immediately jumped in her car and followed her phone to his location. She arrived just in time to see the outline of his head in the back of a vehicle driving away.
“That was probably the worst day of my life,” she said.
The Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration has ensnared not only immigrants without legal status but legal permanent residents like Othmane who has green cards. Some US citizens have even been arrested. Meanwhile, many asylum-seekers who have regular check-in appointments are being arrested in the hallways outside courtrooms as the White House works toward its promise of mass deportations.
Alrashid said her husband has been in the US since 2015 and overstayed his visa, but his deportation order was dismissed in 2020. They wed in March 2025 and immediately filed for a green card.
After his arrest, he was taken to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in downtown Los Angeles where he was held in a freezing cold room with “no beds, no pillows, no blankets, no soap, no toothbrushes and toothpaste, and when you’re in a room with people, the bathroom’s open,” she said.
The Department of Homeland Security in an emailed statement noted the expiration of his tourist visa but did not address the dismissal of the deportation order in 2020 nor his pending green card application.
The agency denied any allegations of mistreatment, and said “ensuring the safety, security, and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority at ICE.”
Alrashid said for years her husband has performed classical Arabic music across Southern California. They first met when he was singing at a restaurant.
“He’s the kindest person,” Alrashid said, adding that he gave a sweater she brought him to a fellow detainee and to give others privacy, he built a makeshift barrier around the open toilet using trash bags.
“He’s brought a lot to the community, a lot of people love his music,” she said.
More than a week after his arrest, fellow musicians, immigration advocates and activists joined Alrashid in a rally outside the facility.
A few of his colleagues performed classical Arabic music, drumming loud enough that they hoped the detainees inside could hear them. Los Jornaleros del Norte musicians, who often play Spanish-language music at rallies, also were there.
“In Latin American culture, the serenade — to bring music to people — is an act of love and kindness. But in this moment, bringing music to people who are in captivity is also an act of resistance,” said Pablo Alvarado, co-executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.
Leading up to the rally, Alrashid was worried because she hadn’t received her daily call from her husband and was told she couldn’t visit him that day at the detention facility. She finally heard from him that evening.
Othmane told her over the phone he was now at an immigration detention facility in Arizona, and that his left leg was swollen.
“They should ultrasound your leg, don’t take a risk,” she said.
Alrashid hopes to get her husband out on bail while his case is being processed. They had a procedural hearing on Thursday where the judge verified his immigration status, and have a bail bond hearing scheduled for Tuesday.
Until then, she’ll continue waiting for his next phone call.
Kyiv comes under Russian missile attack as Ukrainian drones set homes on fire in Russia’s Voronezh
KYIV: Russia and Ukraine exchanged missile and drone strikes early Sunday, resulting in more homes and utility buildings destroyed, officials from the warring neighbors said.
Kyiv came under Russian missile attack and witnesses said they heard a loud blast shaking the capital city soon after midnight Saturday, the military administration of the Ukrainian capital said on its Telegram messaging app.
In the southern Russian region of Voronezh, a woman sustained a leg injury from Ukraine’s overnight drone attack that also resulted in several homes and utility buildings catching fire from falling drone debris, the governor said.
Air defense units destroyed about 15 Ukrainian drones over the region, Governor Alexander Gusev, wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
“The threat of further drone attacks remains,” Gusev said in the post early on Sunday.
Reuters could not independently verify Gusev’s report. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.
Both sides deny targeting civilians in their strike in the war that Russia launched with a full-scale invasion on Ukraine in February 2022.
Kyiv says that its attacks inside Russia are aimed at destroying infrastructure key to Moscow’s war efforts and are in response to Russia’s relentless strikes on Ukraine.
The Russian defense ministry said that its units destroyed 41 drones just before midnight on Saturday over Russian regions bordering Ukraine and over the waters of the Black Sea.
IAEA reports hearing explosions, sees smoke near Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Saturday that its team at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) heard explosions and saw smoke coming from a nearby location.
The nuclear plant said one of its auxiliary facilities was attacked today, IAEA said in a statement.
“The auxiliary facility is located 1,200 meters from the ZNPP’s site perimeter and the IAEA team could still see smoke from that direction in the afternoon,” the nuclear watchdog said.
