NEWS OF THE DAY
From Around the World
1 Military crash: The U.S. military has identified five Marines who were declared dead after their refueling plane collided with a fighter jet last week off Japan’s southern coast. The Marine Corps identified the crew members as Lt. Col. Kevin R. Herrmann, 38, of New Bern, N.C.; Maj. James M. Brophy, 36, of Staatsburg, N.Y.; Staff Sgt. Maximo A. Flores, 27, of Surprise, Ariz.; Cpl. Daniel E. Baker, 21, of Tremont, Ill.; and Cpl. William C. Ross, 21, of Hendersonville, Tenn. All were based at Iwakuni air station near Hiroshima The cause of the crash is under investigation.
2 Crimes against humanity: A former senior leader of a Central African Republic militia, who also is his country’s top soccer official, was arrested Wednesday in France on a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes including murder and torture. The Hague-based court said in a statement that Patrice-Edouard Ngaissona was the most senior leader of a mainly Christian militia that targeted Muslims after Muslim rebels seized power in the capital, Bangui, in 2013. The violence left thousands dead and displaced hundreds of thousands.
3 Church scandal: Pope Francis has removed two cardinals from his informal cabinet after they were implicated in the Catholic Church’s sex abuse and cover-up scandal, shedding embarrassing advisers ahead of a high-stakes Vatican summit on abuse early next year. The Vatican said Wednesday that Francis in October had written to Chilean Cardinal Javier Errazuriz and Australian Cardinal George Pell thanking them for their five years of service on the so-called Group of Nine, which was formed to help the pope reform the Vatican and reorganize its bureaucracy.
4 New Zealand vigil: More than 1,000 people across New Zealand joined candlelight vigils on Wednesday to commemorate British tourist Grace Millane, who police say was murdered earlier this month. The 22-year-old tourist’s death has struck a deep chord in a country where many young people take gap years to travel. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern summed up the national mood this week when she said there was an overwhelming sense of hurt and shame that the death occurred in New Zealand, a country that prides itself on its hospitality to visitors. The man accused of killing Millane made his first court appearance this week and has not yet entered a plea. He will remain in jail until his next court appearance in January. The court has temporarily blocked his name from being published.
5 Guard posts: Dozens of North and South Korean soldiers crossed over the world’s most heavily armed border Wednesday as they inspected the sites of their rival’s front-line guard posts to verify they’d been removed, part of inter-Korean engagement efforts that come amid stalled U.S.-North Korea nuclear disarmament talks. Soldiers from the two Koreas exchanged cigarettes and chatted as they inspected the dismantlement or disarmament of 22 guard posts — 11 from each country — inside the Demilitarized Zone that forms their 155-mile-long, 2.5-mile-wide border. The removals will leave South Korea with about 50 other DMZ posts and North Korea with 150, according to defense experts in South Korea — but they mark an extraordinary change in ties from last year, when North Korea tested a series of increasingly powerful weapons and threatened Seoul and Washington with war.