Worker trapped for 11 hours after collapse of medieval tower in central Rome
Claudia Chieppa/Anadolu via Getty Images
(ROME) — A worker who had been trapped for 11 hours in the partial collapse of a medieval tower in the heart of Rome was rescued late Monday, officials said.
The 66-year-old man was the last of several workers saved in the rescue operation that was briefly interrupted by a second collapse of the 95-foot-tall Torre de’ Conti tower, Luca Cari, a spokesperson for the Rome Fire Service, told ABC News.
Cari said the worker was extracted from the rubble and was being taken to a hospital ambulance with a police escort. His condition was not immediately released.
“We have achieved an exceptional feat: the injured man has been extracted, brought to ground level, and is already in the ambulance. We can give the exceptional news that he is alive,” Cari said.
Before being saved, the trapped worker was conscious and communicating with search-and-rescue crews, Cari said. About 140 firefighters responded to the scene, some digging with their bare hands to free the worker.
Rome Mayor Roberto Gualtieri told reporters on Monday evening, just before the last rescue was made, that doctors had reached the worker and supplied him with oxygen.
No firefighters were injured in the incident, officials said.
The tower is in the historic part of central Rome near the Roman Forum and the Colosseum.
Cari said the emergency unfolded around 11 a.m. local time. At the time of the first collapse, 11 workers from two companies were working on the tower.
“It all happened suddenly,” one of the workers told Italy’s ANSA news agency. “Then I only saw the cloud of dust and the rescuers.”
Cari said the second partial collapse occurred about an hour after the first, while firefighters were attempting to rescue the workers.
At least three other workers were pulled from the rubble, two of them unharmed, officials said. One rescued worker, a 64-year-old man, was taken to a hospital with a head injury, officials said.
At least 31 workers rescued after tunnel collapse in Los Angeles: LAFD The cause of the collapse remains under investigation.
The tower has been closed to the public since 2007, but recently received a large grant from Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan for the renovation, officials said.
The Torre dei Conti tower, which dates back to the 13th century, was built by Pope Innocent III as a residence for his family.
Palestinians, including children, who are struggling to access food due to Israel’s blockade and ongoing attacks on the Gaza Strip, wait in line to receive hot meals distributed by the charity organization in Gaza City, Gaza on July 30, 2025.(Photo by Abdalhkem Abu Riash/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — The U.N.-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said last week that famine was determined in parts of Gaza for the first time.
The IPC report projected that famine would expand in the region by the end of September and more than 100,000 children under age 5 were at risk of death from acute malnutrition through June 2026.
In a statement, the Israeli prime minister’s office called the IPC’s determination of famine “an outright lie” and “a modern blood libel.”
Humanitarian experts and doctors described the report as unsurprising — a situation they have warned about for months — but “appalling” nonetheless.
“The situation itself is appalling,” Scott Paul, director of peace and security for the non-governmental organization Oxfam America, told ABC News. “I think if anyone is surprised by this news, then they haven’t been paying attention to the repeated warnings of local communities, Palestinian organizations, international organizations and other states and humanitarian donors.”
Aid organizations have said the next steps after such a report are securing an immediate, and permanent, ceasefire and opening border crossings to allow unhindered access of humanitarian aid and medical supplies.
While some experts told ABC News it’s not too late to increase aid and ready-to-eat therapeutic food for cases of malnutrition, others are less optimistic that the report will result in meaningful change.
“What will be done will be nothing,” Dr. John Kahler, a pediatrician and co-founder of MedGlobal, who has been on multiple medical missions to Gaza, told ABC News. “There’s plenty of money and plenty of resources available. It’s 100% access. And so, this [famine determination] won’t do a thing to move that needle.”
He added, “I’m in a difficult position with organizations at large, because they think the production of yet another document has some dramatic meaning. We knew this.”
To determine if a famine is happening, three thresholds have to be met: 20% of households must be facing an extreme food shortage, 30% of children must be acutely malnourished and either two adults or four children must be dying every day per 10,000 people, according to the IPC.
A termination is separate from a declaration. The IPC itself doesn’t issue official declarations of famine, but its findings can inform governments and bodies such as the U.N. to make a famine declaration.
Humanitarian experts have said there is no legal mechanism that a government body or the U.N. would have to go through to formally declare a famine.
“Governments or international organizations might have their own sort of processes internally to go into famine mode, but I don’t think that anyone should be holding their breath for a piece of paper that says ‘famine declaration’ on the top, because that likely won’t come,” Paul, of Oxfam America, said.
He noted that the U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator already addressed the famine determination during a press conference with reporters on Friday and acknowledged it in the wake of the IPC classification.
“This isn’t the penultimate step. This is it. We have arrived at famine,” Paul said.
Kahler agreed, adding that the IPC report should not be taken as a warning — rather that the warning should have occurred months ago with previous reports.
“The health system’s collapsed, the educational system’s collapsed, the public health system’s collapsed,” he said. “I’m not sure what else to warn people about.”
Paul said normally what would follow would be an immediate “all hands-on deck” effort from the U.S. government and others to influence the Israeli government to secure a ceasefire and increase the flow of aid, which he said should have been done with prior warnings of emergency levels of food insecurity famine warnings.
Since May, the U.S. has participated in providing aid to Gaza through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which set up designated aid distribution sites rather than delivering aid throughout the strip. Palestinians and aid organizations reported incidents of people being shot at while trying to retrieve aid as well as general chaos at the sites, which continues to be an ongoing issue.
The Israel Defense Forces has previously said it only fires “warning shots” toward people who are allegedly “advancing while posing a threat to the troops.” The Israeli government has also previously claimed that Hamas shoots people waiting in food lines and films the events for propaganda videos. Hamas has denied these claims.
Israeli officials have argued there are hundreds of truckloads of aid sitting at the border for the U.N. and its partners to distribute. The U.N., however, said it can’t deliver the aid safely.
“One of the things that is not well understood is how complex it is for the United Nations to do our work here in the Gaza Strip,” Tess Ingram, a spokesperson for UNICEF who is currently in Gaza, told ABC News. “I think what is not well understood is the challenges that we face on a daily basis that impede our work. It’s like a game of ‘Snakes and Ladders.’ We take one step forward and then we have to take two steps backwards because there are constantly hurdles in front of us that we have to overcome, and many of these hurdles do not need to be there.”
These threats include poor road conditions, lack of route alternatives, poor telecommunications, large crowds of desperate people and unpredictable supply lines, according to the U.N.
Paul noted that a prior IPC report, issued at the end of July, found that a “worst-case scenario of famine” was unfolding in Gaza.
“It was less than a few weeks ago that the same technical body on hunger issued a very clear warning [on] famine, which is about as close as they can come to an official confirmation without doing it,” he said. “The situation will get worse, and famine will continue to spread as long as all routes for humanitarian assistance … is not immediately opened up.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Contributor/Getty Images)
(LONDON) — On NATO’s eastern edge, leaders of the Baltic nations have long considered themselves more awake to the threat from Moscow than their allies to the west, a collective memory of Russian and Soviet occupation seared into their national narratives.
“We know that Russia is going to move forward,” Lithuanian Defense Minister Dovile Sakaliene told ABC News during her visit to Kyiv last weekend. “We in Lithuania, we remember very well. So, that means that we have to prepare ourselves.”
“This terrible threat is also an opportunity for us to grow the muscle where we need it to be,” Sakaliene added.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine from February 2022 served as vindication for NATO’s eastern-most nations, who for years had been warning their Western allies that Moscow could not be a reliable partner.
With President Donald Trump now seeking to press Moscow and Ukraine into a peace deal, Sakaliene said the West should focus on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions rather than his words.
“I don’t want to sound pessimistic, but this is an ongoing process, which, again, in my opinion, is severely complicated by the fact that Putin keeps bombing, that Putin keeps annihilating Ukraine,” Sakaliene said.
“When he talks about peace, it’s not even funny — it’s just absurd,” she continued. “He is now playing the game of pretending to be participating in talks, of having a dialogue, while at the same time he’s moving full speed forward.”
“This stalling of our additional sanctions, of additional pressure, simply gives him room for further military actions in Ukraine,” Sakaliene said.
Trump presses Putin on peace
Putin and his top officials have claimed willingness to make a deal, though have demanded the freezing of the current front lines and Ukraine’s withdrawal from key battlefields including those in Donetsk Oblast in the east of the country.
Moscow also wants Ukraine permanently barred from NATO membership, opposes the deployment of any Western troops to the country as part of any future security guarantees and wants all international sanctions lifted.
The shape of the intended security guarantees is still being forged. Trump has committed some level of American involvement, though also this month ruled out deploying U.S. troops to Ukraine.
Following the Aug. 15 summit between Trump and Putin in Alaska, Trump appeared to have dropped his demand for a full ceasefire before peace negotiations. Ukraine and its European backers maintain that no terms can be agreed to while the fighting is ongoing.
“I think that we are moving forward, but slowly,” Sakaliene said.
“The killing has not stopped and it doesn’t really matter what term we use, the war is actively ongoing,” Sakaliene said when asked about the shape of any peace deal. “That means that talking about any security guarantees during the full-scale invasion — which is going on in a full-blown capacity — is not possible.”
Sakaliene said she was encouraged by Trump’s recent social media post suggesting that his predecessor, President Joe Biden, should have allowed Ukraine “to play offensive” by striking deep within Russia. “I agree wholeheartedly,” she said.
When asked if she thought Trump would greenlight such strikes, the minister replied, “We may hope.”
“All the patience and wish for diplomacy” so far demonstrated by Trump, she continued, “was not met with any goodwill from the other side. Russia has not demonstrated a single millimeter of goodwill.”
Trump this week again expressed his frustration with Russia’s continued long-range strikes on Ukraine, and again hinted at consequences “over the next week or two” if Moscow failed to make moves towards peace.
The president did not say what those consequences might be, though he has previously threatened more sanctions and secondary tariffs on customers of Russian energy exports. The White House has imposed an additional 25% tariff on Indian goods related to New Delhi’s continued purchases of Russian military equipment and energy goods.
“The United States has very powerful leverage,” Sakaliene said. Secondary sanctions, she added, could have “nuclear effects and we’d love to see them,” along with permission to “use whatever weapons to whatever targets” necessary to help Ukraine on the battlefield.
Those two measures are “the only tangible motivation for Putin to sit at the negotiation table,” Sakaliene said.
‘America First’
The Trump administration has made clear that Europeans — not Americans — will be expected to shoulder most of the burden of any future security guarantees for Ukraine. More broadly, Trump has long demanded that Europeans do, and pay, more to protect their own continent.
“We are going to do even more,” Sakaliene said, noting the recent agreement of NATO nations to raise the collective defense spending target to 5% of GDP. But the U.S., she said, will remain a key security partner and guarantor, regardless of Europe’s efforts to achieve greater self-reliance.
“When we talk about certain capabilities, let’s be honest, for at least a decade in certain areas, the United States is going to remain the ‘influencer,’ the main capability guarantor,” she said.
“Do you really want to lose the United States as the dominant power in security architecture globally?” Sakaliene asked. Without “a very clear dominance of the United States, then we have a dogfight,” she said.
“Then we have probably a very dangerous shift, a very dangerous shakedown of this current structure of power,” Sakaliene said. “I don’t think anybody’s going to like it. China is already trying to become number one.”
Europeans have already committed to buying more weapons from the U.S., both for themselves and for Ukraine. Indeed, arms sales have become a key metric of success for Trump.
Sakaliene said that both sides of the Atlantic will need each other in a coming era of great power competition.
“Regretfully, the level of our need is so much higher than the current level of supply,” she said of military resources. “And regretfully, this decade of wars is not over.”
Sakaliene traveled to Washington, D.C., in July with other Baltic defense ministers to meet with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. There, she said, the Baltic officials were assured that American forces are not about to abandon their allies.
“The United States is not leaving,” she said. “As they said, ‘The United States first, but the United States not alone’.”
For all the talk of America’s pivot to face down the China challenge in the Indo-Pacific, Sakaliene — who was sanctioned by Beijing after the European Union imposed sanctions on China over its policies in Xinjiang — suggested that different theaters cannot be so easily separated.
“Even though sometimes it seems that we can draw red lines on the map — this is the Indo-Pacific, this is Europe, this is the Middle East — that’s not how it works,” she said.
A secure and peaceful Europe would be a vital ally for the U.S. in any future conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific, Sakaliene said. Continued conflict with Russia on the continent, though, may hamstring Europeans and undermine a united Western front in Asia.
“This world has become as small as ever,” she said. “Joint coordinated actions by Russia and China and their smaller evil allies — this is what we are facing right now, and this is the main challenge of this decade, in my opinion.”
On the Baltic front
The Baltic region, Sakaliene suggested, can offer valuable lessons to the U.S. and its fellow NATO allies for the conflicts of the future.
“See the bigger picture,” she said when asked what lessons she wants to impart to her NATO counterparts. “I’ve had some very useful meetings with my colleagues from the Indo-Pacific and the problems that we see in the Baltics are very similar to what the Philippines, or Singapore, or Japan — or of course, Taiwan — see.”
The use of shadow fleets to evade sanctions, attacks on underwater critical infrastructure, cyber attacks and electronic warfare — most prominently the use of GPS jamming and spoofing technologies — have all become commonplace in the Baltic Sea. Such tactics could also become more visible and common in the waters of the Indo-Pacific in years to come, Sakaliene said.
For now, she suggested, the capacity of Europe’s military industry still lags far behind its civil industry. Western allies need to produce quality technology at great speed and in greater mass, Sakaliene said, potentially aided by combining civil and military capacities.
“Technologies do evolve,” she said. “We really have to speed it up.”
The United Nations headquarters is seen in Manhattan on Sept. 9, 2025 as the annual U.N. General Assembly, the 80th, began with thousands of delegates and world leaders expected to attend over the next few weeks. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
(LONDON) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged attendees of this week’s United Nations General Assembly sessions in New York to use the meeting of world leaders to apply “strong political pressure” on Russia, as Moscow’s war on its neighbor wears on.
Zelenskyy posted to social media on Monday morning, following Russia’s latest overnight strike on Ukrainian cities across the country. Drones hit Donetsk, Dnipro, Sumy, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, Zelenskyy said.
At least three people were killed in Zaporizhzhia, the president said. Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 141 drones into the country, of which 132 were downed or suppressed.
“This is already the fourth time that Russia accompanies one of the highest annual global diplomatic events with killings,” Zelenskyy said in his post, referring to this week’s UNGA sessions.
“That is why it is so important for this diplomatic week to be productive,” he added. “We must act so that killings and war do not become routine.”
“There is a real need for strong pressure on Russia, new joint steps from everyone in the world who believes that international law must work again,” Zelenskyy said, calling specifically on “Europe, the USA, the G7 and G20 countries — all those who have real influence on Russia.”
“Strong sanctions, strong political pressure, Russia’s accountability for the war — all of this is necessary,” Zelenskyy wrote. “All of this will happen.”
U.S.-led peace talks have thus far failed to produce a ceasefire in Ukraine, where Russian forces remain on the offensive at multiple points along the front line three-and-a-half years into Moscow’s full-scale invasion.
Russian attacks on Ukraine have intensified since U.S. President Donald Trump met with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Alaska in August.
And in recent weeks, repeated Russian drone and aircraft violations of NATO airspace in Poland, Romania and Estonia have further raised tensions between Moscow and its Western adversaries.
At Tallinn’s request, the United Nations Security Council will convene an emergency meeting on Monday to discuss the violation of Estonian airspace by three Russian fighter aircraft on Sept. 12.
Trump — who is expected to meet with Zelenskyy in New York this week — has repeatedly expressed his frustration with Putin over the failure of peace efforts and Moscow’s continued long-range strikes. While in the U.K. last week, Trump said Putin had “let me down.”
Nonetheless, Trump has refused to impose on Russia the full raft of additional sanctions and tariffs that he has threatened. The White House did introduce additional 25% tariffs on all Indian imports in response to New Delhi’s continued purchases of Russian oil and military goods.
Trump said last week that he would not introduce further measures until European nations — who have broadly been more full-throated than the White House in their continued military and political backing for Kyiv — impose steep tariffs on India and China.
Oleksandr Merezhko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament and chair of the body’s foreign affairs committee, told ABC News that the planned Trump-Zelenskyy meeting in New York this week is positive.
“It’s always good and gives a chance to make him more receptive to our needs,” he said. “At the same time, I don’t have high expectations. Trump seems reluctant to employ serious sanctions against Russia and its allies.”
Kyiv will be watching closely to see how many states back a planned resolution expressing support for Ukraine. “It’s indicative of our support in the world, including in the Global South,” Merezhko said.
Russian officials, meanwhile, have signaled no imminent willingness to agree to a ceasefire or to a meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy, an idea proposed by Trump after his Alaska summit with the Russian president.
Last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Trump’s disappointment with the pace of the negotiations with Russia can be “partly explained by the fact that he wants quick solutions.”
ABC News’ Anna Sergeeva and Ellie Kaufman contributed to this report.
