NEWS OF THE DAY
From Around the World
_1 Elephants killed: Nine elephants were electrocuted near a village in eastern Botswana this week after they came into contact with a fallen power line near a water source, officials said. The country’s government said Wednesday that the Botswana Power Corp. detected problems Monday in the power system that serves an area near the eastern village of Dukwi, and sent an official to investigate. He discovered eight dead elephants near the broken line, which they had apparently damaged near a pool of water that had formed from a leaking pipe. A ninth elephant was near death. Electricians cut off the power flow in an unsuccessful bid to save it. Botswana’s director of Wildlife and National Parks, Otisitswe Tiroyamodimo, said that investigations into the electrocuted elephants were still in the early stages, but that “what we have discovered so far is that the elephants were helping themselves to water from a damaged supply pipe.”
_2 Pedophile priests: Pope Francis acknowledged that the Catholic Church was slow to address the sex abuse crisis, including its widely criticized but not publicly acknowledged practice of moving priests who had abused children to other churches instead of reporting them to the police, saying “the church’s conscience came a bit late.” The pope gave off-the-cuff remarks to a commission in Vatican City that he created to tackle the issue, acknowledging the slow pace of church trials and an overall lack of awareness of the problem inside St. Peter’s walls. “Pedophilia is a sickness,” Pope Francis said. “Today one repents, moves on, we forgive him, then two years later he relapses. We need to get it in our heads that it’s a sickness.” The pope announced he would do away with Vatican appeal trials for cases where evidence of abuse against minors is proven. “If there’s evidence, that is final,” he said.
_3 Border clash: Pakistan’s military says Indian troops opened fire from across the frontier in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, killing at least six. The military said Pakistani troops returned fire but blamed India for initiating the gunbattle that took place Thursday in the village of Charwa. It was unclear whether there were any casualties on the Indian side. Such exchanges of gunfire are common in Kashmir, which has been the cause of two of three wars between the two nuclear-armed countries since 1947.
_4 Military exercises: Thousands of Polish and other NATO troops have launched major defensive exercises in northwest Poland amid security concerns raised by war games recently held by neighboring Russia and Belarus. The Dragon-17 exercise involves 17,000 land, air force and navy troops and 3,500 units of equipment and runs through Sept. 29. For the first time the biannual drill is being joined by Poland’s new Territorial Defense Forces, which train civilian volunteers to support regular troops. Cybersecurity is also being tested.
_5 Bomb suspects released: Two of the six men arrested over last week’s London subway bombing were released without charge Thursday, British police said. Four others remained in custody. One of those released is a 21-year-old, originally from Syria, detained outside a fast-food restaurant in west London on Saturday, a day after the rush-hour attack on a subway train. The other is a 48year-old man arrested Wednesday in Newport, Wales. Thirty people were injured when a homemade bomb partly detonated on a train stopped at London’s Parsons Green station.