PORT MORESBY (AFP) – A 7.6-magnitude earthquake shook Papua New Guinea Sunday, damaging buildings, triggering landslides and killing at least five people, with several others severely injured. Residents in northern towns near the epicenter reported intense shaking mid-morning that cracked roads and rattled the cladding off buildings. Local member of parliament Kessy Sawang said at least two people had died in remote mountain villages, with four others airlifted to hospital in critical condition. “There has been widespread damage,” she told AFP, adding that a landslide had buried homes and “split” one village where people had “lost their houses”. In nearby Wau, Koranga Alluvial Mining said three miners had been buried alive. There are limited communications in the area, few government resources and very few paved roads, making assessment and rescue efforts difficult. Small aviation companies and missionary groups were involved in airlifting some of the injured across the rugged jungle landscape. “It’s very difficult, the terrain, the weather. It’s challenging,” said Nellie Pumai of Manolos Aviation, which had transported one person out and was trying to return.

 

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TOKYO (TASS) – North Korea has sharply improved the specifications of its missiles since 2019 by shifting to solid fuel and making them harder to intercept, the Nikkei newspaper reported on Sunday. The shift to solid fuel is one of the main achievements as it complicates satellite surveillance, according to the report. Liquid fuel tanks take longer to fill, allowing satellites to detect preparations for launch. Also, liquid fuel missiles can’t be stored ready for launch for a long time once their tanks are filled. Solid fuel missiles can be launched unexpectedly, the report said. An analysis of North Korea’s missile launches showed solid fuel missiles made up 13% of them in 2016-2017, while that proportion climbed to more than 70% after. Pyongyang is now using the new models KN-23 and KN-24 that are similar to ones that are in use by the U.S. and Russia.

 

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BARCELONA (AP) – Catalan separatists will hold a rally in Barcelona in an attempt by the march’s organizers to reignite the independence movement that is fraying as it nears the five-year anniversary of its failed breakaway bid from the rest of Spain. For the past decade, the Sept. 11 rally held on Catalonia’s main holiday has been the focal point of the northeast region’s separatist movement. It has drawn in several hundreds of thousands of people clamoring to create a new country out of this corner of the western Mediterranean. But the unity between pro-independence political parties and the civil society groups that led the October 2017 independence push, which received no international support and was quickly quashed, is in danger of falling apart. The Catalan National Assembly (ANC), a civil group that organizes Sunday’s march, is strongly opposed to the talks that the Catalan government is holding with Spain’s central government in Madrid. The influential organization says it has lost faith in political parties and is ready to move on without them toward a new attempt at breaking with Spain

 

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STOCKHOLM (Reuters/AFP) – Swedes voted on Sunday in an election pitting the incumbent center-left Social Democrats against a right-wing bloc that has embraced the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats in a bid to win back power after eight years in opposition. Swedish voters headed to polls in a close-run election amid concerns about increased crime and an energy crisis. Polling stations opened at 8:00 am (0600 GMT) and will close at 8:00 pm on Sunday. “As it stands, we have two fairly clear blocs,” political scientist Katarina Barrling told AFP, noting it should be fairly easy to predict the next prime minister after election night. However, both blocs are beset by internal divisions that could make for laborious negotiations to build a coalition government. Andersson, who began her tenure with a bumpy ride and initially resigned just hours after she was appointed, represents the Social Democrats and the left bloc in the country.

 

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ISTANBUL (AP) – Greek Coast Guard ships opened fire on a cargo vessel sailing in international waters in the Aegean Sea, the Turkish Coast Guard said, escalating tensions between the regional rivals that have mounted in recent weeks. There were no casualties in the shooting 11 nautical miles southwest of the Turkish island of Bozcaada, the Turkish statement said. It added that after “harassment fire” from two Greek Coast Guard vessels, two Turkish Coast Guard ships went to the area and the Greek boats left. Calls to the Greek Embassy in Ankara went unanswered Sunday, and it wasn’t clear why the gunfire occurred. The neighboring countries have been embroiled in disputes for decades and frictions have ratcheted up in recent weeks, with both sides alleging airspace violations. Greek officials have raised concerns about another outbreak of conflict in Europe, following the war in Ukraine.

 

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MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The U.S. Navy’s office of the chief of naval operations rejected a Freedom of Information (FOI) request filed by the transparency organization The Black Vault seeking to unseal any further videos of reported UFO sightings that the military has in its possession. While the navy’s office did confirm that it possesses additional videos – breaking with the Pentagon’s usual “don’t confirm or deny anything” approach – the office of the chief of naval operations said it could not make those footages public due to their sensitive nature. “The release of this information will harm national security as it may provide adversaries valuable information regarding Department of Defense/Navy operations, vulnerabilities, and/or capabilities,” the office’s response to the request argued. The FOI request was filed after the Pentagon broke with the tradition of publically denying UFO existence and released three videos of reported sightings of what the U.S. military called “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” (UAP). It turned out that the Department of Defense even had a special task force dedicated to gathering reports and materials submitted by U.S. service personnel pertaining a UAP.