Cargo plane crash in Iran kills 15

Wreckage of a Boeing 707 military cargo plane, which crashed to the west of Iranian capital Tehran on Monday. The decades-old plane reportedly carrying meat from Kyrgyzstan crashed while trying to land, killing 15 people on board and leaving a lone survivor, authorities said. The plane skidded* off the runway and crashed through a perimeter fence* and into a residential neighborhood.Xinhua

Mayor stabbed onstage at Polish charity event

The popular veteran mayor of the Polish city of Gdansk, Pawel Adamowicz, was stabbed on Sunday evening by a man who burst onto an open-air stage at a national charity event, police said.

Television footage showed the man screaming that “Adamowicz is dead” because his former party, Civic Platform, which held power from 2007 to 2015, had purportedly* tortured him when he was in prison.

Adamowicz, 53, was attending the finale of the annual Great Orchestra of Christmas charity event, in which volunteers collected millions of euros for medical equipment for hospitals.

Gas blast kills three in Paris shopping district

Two French firefighters and a Spanish woman died and nearly 50 people were injured in a massive gas explosion that gutted* the ground floor of a building in a central Paris shopping district on Saturday, authorities said.

The accident occurred with the center of the capital under security lockdown* for a ninth consecutive day on Saturday of “yellow vest” protests. Large parts of the city were blocked off by riot police, although the protests have reduced in scale compared with November.

Runaway Saudi teen settles in Canada

A “very, very happy” Saudi teenager who caused a sensation* by defying her family and seeking asylum* abroad was welcomed with open arms in Toronto on Saturday at the end of a dramatic but exhausting international odyssey*.

Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland greeted Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun after she landed in Toronto, wearing a skirt, a gray hoodie* emblazoned* in red with the word “CANADA” and a blue cap with the logo of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Winter storm causes five deaths in US Midwest

A winter storm that dumped heavy snow on the U.S. Midwest, causing at least five roadway deaths, stranding some motorists in Missouri and canceling dozens of flights, marched east toward Washington on Saturday.

The weather system, which started as rain from Mexico but has since turned into snow, is forecast to affect a 2,900-km swath* of the United States from Colorado to the Mid-Atlantic.

Israel acknowledges Syria air raid

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged on Sunday Israel’s weekend attack on what he called an Iranian arms cache in Syria, and said it had also completed a hunt for cross-border tunnels dug by Tehran-allied Lebanese Hezbollah fighters.

Long wary of publicity around its operations against Iran-linked targets on its northern front, Israel has lifted the veil in recent days — a sign of confidence in a campaign waged amid occasional tensions with Syria’s big-power backer, Russia.

(SD-Agencies)