World

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams returned to Earth with a soft splashdown off Florida’s Gulf Coast, ending an unplanned nine-month wait to come home after their Boeing Starliner capsule suffered problems that derailed a short test mission to the International Space Station. The pair touched down in a SpaceX capsule on March 18 near Tallahassee, closing a mission that was supposed to last about a week. A NASA photo showed recovery teams working on the spacecraft shortly after it was secured in the water.…

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The man believed to have killed two students in a mass shooting at Brown University and to have fatally shot an MIT physicist in Boston was found dead in New Hampshire, authorities said, ending a multistate manhunt that gripped two of the nation’s top universities. Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez identified the suspect as Claudio Neves-Valente, 48, a Portuguese national and student at Brown. Perez said Neves-Valente “took his own life tonight” and was discovered at a storage unit in New Hampshire…

Australia will launch a sweeping national gun buyback in response to the Bondi Beach mass shooting, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said, as hundreds of residents returned to the surf Saturday to honor the victims with a solemn ocean gathering. Albanese vowed to “get guns off our streets” and to tighten firearms laws that allowed the suspected gunman, 50-year-old Sajid Akram, to legally own six high-powered rifles. The prime minister said it would be the largest buyback since 1996, when Australia overhauled gun laws after…

The U.S. Justice Department has released more than 300,000 pages of records from investigations into Jeffrey Epstein, responding to mounting political pressure and a new law compelling disclosure. The trove, posted online with redactions, immediately intensified a yearslong fight over transparency around the late financier and convicted sex offender’s connections to powerful figures. It was not immediately clear how much of the material is new, given extensive disclosures since Epstein’s 2019 death in a New York jail, ruled…

Rome to charge €2 for close access to Trevi Fountain starting Feb. 1 ROME — Tourists hoping to step down to the edge of Rome’s Trevi Fountain will have to pay €2 from Feb. 1 under a new policy to manage crowds and raise funds from one of Italy’s most visited landmarks, the city’s mayor said. Mayor Roberto Gualtieri announced the change and said the payment system is projected to bring in about €6.5 million a year. He argued the small fee will help tame congestion around the monument without shutting off views or penalizing…

Ukraine says it struck a Russian “shadow fleet” tanker with aerial drones in the Mediterranean, its first attack in those waters since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion nearly four years ago. A source in Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) described the operation as “new, unprecedented,” saying it took place in neutral waters roughly 2,000 kilometers from Ukraine’s borders. The source said the targeted vessel, identified as the QENDIL, was empty at the time, sustained “critical damage” and “cannot be used for its intended…

The Trump administration announced an immediate pause to the U.S. diversity visa green card lottery on Thursday, citing the case of a Portuguese national suspected in a mass shooting at Brown University and the killing of an MIT professor who, officials say, entered the country through the DV1 program in 2017. Homeland security chief Kristi Noem said in a social media post that Claudio Neves Valente, 48, “entered the United States through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program (DV1) in 2017 and was granted a green…

Harrison Ford will receive the SAG-AFTRA Life Achievement Award at the rebranded Actor Awards in March, honoring a career that has delivered some of cinema’s most enduring characters from Han Solo to Indiana Jones. The 32nd annual ceremony, formerly known as the Screen Actors Guild Awards, will stream live on Netflix on March 1. The union’s highest honor is presented annually to a performer who embodies the “finest ideals of the acting profession,” SAG-AFTRA said in announcing the lifetime achievement award for Ford.…

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Warsaw on Friday for talks with Polish President Karol Nawrocki, his first official visit to Poland since Nawrocki took office in August. The agenda centers on European security, efforts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, and sensitive historical issues that have strained relations between the neighbors. The trip follows Zelensky’s address to an EU Council summit in Brussels, where he urged European leaders to tap frozen Russian assets to finance Ukraine’s budget and defense…

Man who disarmed gunman in Bondi Beach mass shooting receives more than A$2.5 million in donations A man credited with saving lives by wrestling a gun from one of the alleged attackers in the Bondi Beach mass shooting has received a cheque for more than A$2.5 million (€1.4 million) after tens of thousands of people contributed to an online fundraising campaign. Ahmed al Ahmed, 43, was presented with an oversized cheque at his bed in St. George Hospital by social media influencer Zachery Dereniowski, a co-organiser of the…