30/09/2025

TUESDAY | SEPT 30, 2025

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Four dead in church attack GRAND BLANC: A man opened fire in a Mormon church in Michigan and set the building ablaze on Sunday, killing at least four people in the latest deadly tragedy that President Donald Trump called part of a national “epidemic of violence”. o Attacker killed by police victims announced earlier in the day, two more bodies had been recovered among debris at the burned-down church. He said earlier that eight people had also been wounded in the attack, one of whom was in critical condition. set fire to the church. Some suspected explosive devices were found but it was unclear if they were used to start the fire, they said. Photos also showed the truck apparently driven by the attacker into the side of the building, with two US flags on poles in the vehicle’s rear.

Optus suffers fresh emergency call outage SYDNEY: Australian telco Optus said yesterday it had suffered an emergency call outage in an area south of Sydney, 10 days after a broader disruption that it said had probably caused four deaths when customers were unable to get timely aid. The Australian government has been seeking answers about the disruptions at the country’s No. 2 telecom, which is owned by Singapore Telecommunications. Singtel Group CEO Yuen Kuan Moon plans to meet Communications Minister Anika Wells this week, a spokesperson for the minister’s office said. Yuen will meet Wells along with Optus Chairman John Arthur and CEO Stephen Rue, Singtel said. “Singtel takes this matter seriously and will extend full co-operation to the Australian government and authorities to address the Optus issue,” a spokesperson said. Optus said yesterday that a faulty mobile phone tower site in Dapto, around 100km south of Sydney, interrupted services, including emergency calls, on Sunday morning and affected 4,500 people. “Optus continues to investigate the cause ... the issue has been restored,”a spokesperson said by email. The company said it “confirmed with police, all callers who attempted to contact emergency services are OK.” A network firewall upgrade triggered the deadly 13-hour outage on Sept 18 that disrupted emergency call services in two states and the Northern Territory and potentially affected around 600 customers, some in remote areas who were unable to make calls, leading to the four. Anger over the outage has been growing in Australia, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese calling it “completely unacceptable”. Rue has said checks suggested the first outage could have been caused by human error and admitted procedures were not followed during the outage. An independent review has been set up and that is expected to be completed by year-end. – Reuters Nepal imposes travel ban on ex-premier KATHMANDU: Nepal has imposed travel bans on ousted prime minister KP Sharma Oli and four former senior officials as part of an investigation into deadly unrest earlier this month, the interior minister said yesterday. Protests that began on Sept 8 over a brief social media ban, economic hardship and corruption quickly morphed into nationwide fury after a deadly crackdown. Two days of violence left at least 73 people dead, the parliament and government offices were burned down and forced the government’s collapse. In addition to Oli, travel bans have been placed on former home minister Ramesh Lekhak, former head of the National Investigation Department security agency, Hutaraj Thapa, and two other senior bureaucrats. Interim Prime Minister Sushila Karki, who is leading the Himalayan nation until elections in March 2026, set up a commission to investigate the violence. The restrictions were recommended on Sunday by the commission. Commission member Bigyan Raj Sharma said in a statement on Sunday that the five men must obtain permission to even leave the Kathmandu Valley as they “may need to appear for investigation at any time”. – AFP

Journalists in the nearby town of Burton saw a large police presence outside the home of the suspected shooter, whom Renye identified as Thomas Jacob Sanford, aged 40. Renye and other officials did not provide any further details on Sanford. US media reports said he had grown up in the area and was a military veteran. Images of the aftermath at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc, a suburb of the city of Flint, showed most of the building reduced to ashes. Authorities said the suspect used petrol and

FBI Special Agent Reuben Coleman told the news conference that the FBI was now leading the investigation and was looking at the attack “as an act of targeted violence”. Trump called the shooting “horrendous” and said it was “yet another targeted attack on Christians in the United States of America”. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose leader died the previous night aged 101, called Sunday’s attack a “tragic act of violence”. – AFP

Police said the shooter first rammed the church with his vehicle before opening fire with an assault rifle and then set the building on fire. The attacker was killed by police in the parking lot eight minutes after the first emergency call came in, Grand Blanc Police Chief William Renye told a news conference. Renye said that, in addition to two deceased

Smoke and fire rise from the church on Sunday in this screengrab from social media video. – REUTERSPIC

Seoul scrambles to restore digital public services SEOUL: South Korea brought back online yesterday less than a 10th of public services disrupted after a fire at a data centre affected government websites, exposing its digital infrastructure vulnerabilities. Authorities said 62 systems were restored, from about 647 affected by Friday’s fire during routine maintenance in a server room at the state-run National Information Resources Service in the city of Daejeon, home to the government data centre.

government had no better backup after similar service outages in 2023. Vice-Safety Minister Kim Min-jae said the government had extended deadlines for some tax payments, while waiving fees for the issue of documents, but at least four weeks would be needed to restore some 96 systems completely damaged in the fire. Experts said the latest outage suggested the government lacked adequate systems for immediate recovery of critical public services despite major tech disruptions in recent years. – Reuters

One of the world’s most wired countries, South Korea has put many government services online but officials have given no timetable for full restoration of services. Affected agencies ranged from police and fire to customs authorities, said the Safety Ministry, its own website among those out of service yesterday.

“We see services restoring every hour,” Safety Minister Yun Ho-jung told a briefing, citing recovery of Government24, Korea’s main portal for public services, and financial and postal systems run by Korea Post. President Lee Jae Myung has apologised for the disruption, saying it was surprising the

Four teenagers held after high-speed car chase MELBOURNE: Four teenage boys have been arrested after a car tore through Melbourne’s city centre yesterday, injuring one pedestrian. The incident sent jitters through the city because it occurred in the same part of Melbourne as a deadly rampage in 2017, when a man drove his car into pedestrians, killing five. Police began pursuing the car, believed to have been stolen, in the latest incident after it was seen driving “erratically” on a highway in the east of Australia’s second-largest city, Victoria police said. The car then tore into the city’s central business district, where it hit a woman who was later taken to hospital with injuries that were said not to be life-threatening. The suspects then dumped the vehicle, fleeing on foot before being arrested outside a

shopping centre, police said. The chase lasted around an hour, a police spokesperson said. They also denied news reports that the suspects were armed with machetes. The suspects are between the ages of 15 and 17, police said. TV footage showed the car, a white BMW, with a large dent in its front windscreen. – AFP