Two kids dead, 11 people hurt in stabbing attack at Taylor Swift dance event in United Kingdom, 17-year-old arrested
Getty Images – STOCK/Mykola Romanovskyy
(LONDON) — Two children were killed and 11 people were injured in a stabbing attack at a Taylor Swift-themed event at a dance school in the United Kingdom, police said.
The 11 injured includes nine children — six of whom are in critical condition — and two adults who are in critical condition, Merseyside police said. It appears the adults were trying to protect the children, police said.
A 17-year-old boy has been arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder, police said.
The incident isn’t being treated as terror-related and no other suspects are being sought, police said. A motive isn’t clear, police added.
Officers responded just before noon local time to reports of a stabbing at a property on Hart Street in Southport, a seaside town about 20 miles north of Liverpool, according to Merseyside police.
Officers who arrived at the scene were shocked at the “ferocious” attack, police said.
“Horrendous and deeply shocking news emerging from Southport,” U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer wrote on social media. “My thoughts are with all those affected. I would like to thank the police and emergency services for their swift response. I am being kept updated as the situation develops.”
King Charles said in a statement, “My wife and I have been profoundly shocked to hear of the utterly horrific incident in Southport today. We send our most heartfelt condolences, prayers and deepest sympathies to the families and loved ones of those who have so tragically lost their lives, and to all those affected by this truly appalling attack.”
Prince William and Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, said in a statement, “As parents, we cannot begin to imagine what the families, friends and loved ones of those killed and injured in Southport today are going through. We send our love, thoughts and prayers to all those involved in this horrid and heinous attack.”
The town of Southport sits in the county of Merseyside, in England’s northwest.
(LONDON) — Gazing into a mirror framed by a vase of bright flowers, Taiba Sulaimani begins to sing. The lyrics, in Farsi, offer a message of hope — I will fly one day, I will be free one day.
Sulaimani is one of hundreds of Afghan women and allies around the world uploading videos of themselves singing on social media platforms. The videos are meant to protest a law passed by the Taliban last week banning women’s voices in public and mandating that they cover their entire bodies.
Women in Afghanistan are not allowed to show any skin, including their eyes. Before this law was passed, however, it was put forth as a recommendation — not enforced — and many women would show the upper half of their faces in public.
The new law “effectively [attempts] to render them into faceless, voiceless shadows,” a spokesperson for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner said on Tuesday.
In response, women like Sulaimani are demonstrating that they refuse to be silenced.
“I recorded the video because I wanted to tell the Taliban, you can’t tell me what to do,” she told ABC News.
Sulaimani, who fled from Afghanistan to Canada three years ago after the Taliban regained power in 2021, didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye to her family. But, even though she currently lives more than 10,000 miles away, the Taliban still tried to intimidate her, warning her by phone that they can’t do anything to her, but that she also shouldn’t forget her family is still in Afghanistan.
But, in defiance, this only motivated Sulaimani further.
“It makes me sure that I have to go ahead with power, even more than ever,” she told ABC News.
Elsewhere, an Afghan woman now living in Norway, Hoda Khamosh, echoed the sentiment.
“We came to the conclusion that every voice can become thousands, showing that we women are not just a few individuals who can be erased,” she said.
Khamosh, who founded the Afghan Women’s Justice Movement, posted a video of herself singing a revolutionary poem saying that if you close your doors on us, we will use the windows to make her voices heard.
“We do not go to the field with a gun, but our voice, our image,” she said. “Protest is a war and a struggle.”
Even women inside Afghanistan are now recording videos of themselves singing, sometimes solo and sometimes in pairs or small groups, yet always wearing burqas that conceal their identities.
Zahra, a journalist in Afghanistan who asked only to be identified by her first name for her safety, said the situation on the ground is rapidly changing. Last week, there were many women outside, but since the passage of the law mandating women to veil their bodies, as well as their voices, she said the streets have emptied of women.
The new law now considers a woman’s voice intimate and they are forbidden to sing, recite or read anything in public. This comes in addition to other regulations forbidding women to leave their houses alone or allowing them to look or speak to men who they’re not related to by blood or marriage.
The combination of these restrictions makes leaving the home impractical at best, and even impossible in some cases. If a person violates the rules, they can be punished with a warning or be arrested, with a Taliban spokesperson saying the new law would “be of great help in the promotion of virtue and the elimination of vice.”
Now, many male family members often instruct their female relatives to stay at home since they don’t want trouble, Zahra said.
“Sometimes we have nightmares that [the Taliban] will come and arrest us,” she said, citing common anecdotes of rape and torture in prisons.
Although hope alone may not seem meaningful to many Afghan women, some now feel empowered by the outpouring of global support in response to the videos of women singing. Now — they hope — the international community will step in and tangibly do something to help protect Afghan women.
“Please don’t leave us alone with the Taliban,” Sulaimani said. “We all need your support.”
A red giant star and white dwarf orbit each other in this animation of a nova similar to T Coronae Borealis. (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center)
(NEW YORK) — Stargazers should have their eyes fixed on the skies, as astronomers say a “once-in-a-lifetime” view of an astronomical explosion is expected any night.
T Coronae Borealis, also known as the “Blaze Star,” is actually a pair of stars located 3,000 light-years away. The star system is a recurring nova, with Earth-visible explosions every 79 to 80 years, according to NASA.
The last recorded outburst from T Coronae Borealis — which includes a hot, red giant star and a cool, white dwarf star — was in 1946, according to the space agency, which forecasts it will do so again before September 2024.
The star system is located in the Northern Crown, a horseshoe-shaped curve of stars west of the Hercules constellation, according to NASA, which reports viewers can look for it in between the bright stars of Vega and Arcturus.
When the explosion comes into Earth’s view, “it’s going to be one of the brightest stars in the sky,” Louisiana State University physics and astronomy professor Bradley Schaefer, told ABC News, encouraging the public to go outside and view the explosion as soon as it’s in view.
The exact day and time of the explosion are “unknown,” according to Schaefer, but looking at the star system’s historical behavior and current “pre-eruption dip” indicate the view of the explosion is imminent.
A pre-eruption dip is a sudden decrease in brightness that some celestial objects experience about a year before erupting, according to the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO), which announced T Coronae Borealis had faded in March 2023.
T Coronae Borealis, which is normally located at magnitude +10, which NASA reports is “far too dim to see with the unaided eye,” will jump to magnitude +2 during the explosion.
Schaefer has been studying T Coronae Borealis for decades, saying the chance to see the explosion from Earth with the naked eye will be “magnificent.”
“It’s a way of humbling ourselves for the titanic forces that are happening, fortunately, very far away, that’s happening above our heads,” he said, likening the power of the explosion to a hydrogen bomb.
“It really actually is a hydrogen-fusion bomb just like in the movie Oppenheimer,” Schaefer said.
The difference between nova and supernova events, according to NASA, is in a recurring nova, the dwarf star stays intact during the explosion. In contrast, a supernova occurs when a dying star is destroyed in one final eruption.
“There are a few recurrent novas with very short cycles, but typically, we don’t often see a repeated outburst in a human lifetime, and rarely one so relatively close to our own system,” Dr. Rebekah Hounsell, an assistant research scientist specializing in nova events at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a June press release.
T Coronae Borealis is one of just 10 recurring novas known in the Milky Way that erupt on time scales of less than a century, according to NASA.
“It’s incredibly exciting to have this front-row seat,” Hounsell added.
The agency says during the event, the star system will be similar in brightness to the North Star, Polaris, and may shine this bright for days or a week after first appearing.
“Typically, nova events are so faint and far away that it’s hard to clearly identify where the erupting energy is concentrated,” Dr. Elizabeth Hays, chief of the Astroparticle Physics Laboratory at NASA Goddard said in the press release. “This one will be really close, with a lot of eyes on it, studying the various wavelengths and hopefully giving us data to start unlocking the structure and specific processes involved. We can’t wait to get the full picture of what’s going on.”
The exact date and time of the astronomical explosion is unknown, but once it happens, Hounsell says the once-in-a-lifetime event is sure to inspire the next generation of skywatchers.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event that will create a lot of new astronomers out there, giving young people a cosmic event they can observe for themselves, ask their own questions, and collect their own data,” Dr. Hounsell said in the release, adding, “It’ll fuel the next generation of scientists.”
(LONDON) — A group of six Ukrainian lawmakers appealed to their counterparts in Mongolia to execute the International Criminal Court arrest warrant issued against President Vladimir Putin when the Russian leader visits the nation this week.
In a letter provided to ABC News, the parliamentarians — all members of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People Party — requested that Mongolian authorities detain Putin under to the ICC warrant issued in March 2023 related to the alleged unlawful deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia during Moscow’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor.
Ukraine and Mongolia are both signatories to the Rome Statute, which underpins the ICC and grants it jurisdiction over crimes in the categories of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression.
“The abduction of Ukrainian children is just one of the many crimes for which Putin and the rest of the military and political leadership of the Russian Federation must face justice,” the Ukrainian politicians wrote in their letter to members of Mongolia’s State Great Hural parliament.
“As members of the Ukrainian parliament, we call on the Mongolian authorities to execute the binding international arrest warrant and hand over the head of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, to the International Criminal Court in The Hague,” the letter said.
“We look forward to your support,” the letter concluded.
Oleksandr Merezhko — one signatory of the letter and the chair of the Ukrainian parliament’s foreign affairs committee — told ABC News that the lawmakers were yet to receive a response as of early Monday morning. ABC News reached out to Mongolian officials for comment.
Mongolia will be the first Rome Statute signatory to host Putin since the ICC arrest warrant against him was issued. The Russian leader decided not to travel to summits in South Africa and Brazil — both also Rome Statute signatories — last year.
Merezhko acknowledged there is “little hope” that Mongolia will deliver Putin to the ICC when he visits on Tuesday.
“Putin wants to create a precedent that the ICC arrest warrants are not respected,” Merezhko said. “He failed to do it with South Africa and Brazil, and decided to use Mongolia.”
The nation — wedged between China to the south and Russia to the north — is heavily dependent on its mammoth neighbors. Putin, Merezhko suggested, is seeking to “abuse” this influence to undermine the ICC warrant.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters at a press conference last week that the administration had “no worries” about the planned visit.
“We have an excellent rapport with our partners from Mongolia,” Peskov said. “Of course, all aspects of the president’s visit have been carefully prepared.”
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Kyiv “hopes that the government of Mongolia is aware of the fact that Vladimir Putin is a war criminal,” adding: “We call on the Mongolian authorities to execute the binding international arrest warrant and transfer Putin to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.”
The Rome Statute allows for signatories to raise disputes against others via the body’s Assembly of States Parties. Merezhko hinted that Kyiv may look to do so if Putin’s visit proceeds smoothly.
“If Mongolia violates the Rome Statute, there must be serious consequences,” he said.
