World

The Indian rupee dropped to a record low on Tuesday, with unresolved trade strains with the United States fuelling heavy dollar demand and prompting central bank intervention to support the currency.

The rupee hit a lifetime low of 88.80, slipping past the prior low of 88.7975 struck last week. It was last quoting at 88.7550.

Market participants have seen little reason to bet on a turn in fortunes for the currency with a trade deal with the U.S. remaining elusive, while a recent hike in U.S. H-1B visa fees has compounded the currency’s weakness.

Analysts warn the U.S. decision to hike H-1B visa fees could weigh on revenues in India’s technology sector and trigger renewed equity outflows.

Foreign investors have accelerated their selling of Indian stocks following the visa fee increase, pulling more than $2 billion from the market over the past six sessions.

That's a marked pickup from the roughly $800 million withdrawn in the first three weeks of September, underscoring the pressure on portfolio flows. The rupee's decline has been exacerbated by dollar demand from jewellery importers ahead of the October festival season.

The Reserve Bank of India has been intervening through state-run banks to temper the rupee’s decline, with intervention likely continuing on Tuesday.

Bankers said the central bank sold dollars to limit intraday volatility and prevent the currency’s record low from triggering a broader impact.

"The RBI is stepping in to keep the rupee from spiralling," said a Mumbai-based currency trader.

"While they’re selling dollars to smooth the market, the flows on the other side remain heavy."

The RBI intervened in the local spot market and the non-deliverable market last week, per bankers.

"RBI is widely expected to slow the pace of move in line with the stated policy of containing volatility and in order to keep market expectations from becoming 'one-sided' ahead of big figure change around 90," BofA Global Research said in a note.

However, "all rationale points towards a more measured approach this time" from the RBI.

(Source - reuters)

A man who crashed his vehicle through the front doors of a Michigan church opened fire with an assault rifle and set the church ablaze, killing at least four people and wounding at least eight others before dying in a shootout with police, officials said.

Police said the perpetrator, identified as Thomas Jacob Sanford, 40, a former U.S. Marine from the nearby town of Burton, deliberately set fire to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which was engulfed in flames and billowing smoke.

Two of the shooting victims died and eight others were hospitalized, officials said. Several hours after the shooting, police reported finding at least two more bodies in the charred remains of the church, which had not yet been cleared and may contain other victims.

"There are some that are unaccounted for," Grand Blanc Township Police Chief William Renye told a press conference.

An official with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said investigators believe the shooter used an accelerant - probably gasoline - to fuel the fire, and that some explosives were recovered. The FBI said it was leading the investigation of what it considered "an act of targeted violence."

Hundreds of people were in the church when Sanford drove into the building, Renye said.

Two law enforcement officers rushed to the scene within 30 seconds of receiving emergency calls and engaged the suspect in an exchange of gunfire, shooting him dead in the parking lot about eight minutes after the incident began, Renye said.

Investigators will search the shooter's home and phone in search of a motive, Renye said.

U.S. military records show Sanford was a U.S. Marine from 2004 to 2008 and an Iraq war veteran.

Coincidentally, another 40-year-old Marine veteran who served in Iraq is a suspect in a North Carolina shooting that killed three people and wounded five others less than 14 hours before the Michigan incident.

Police in Southport, North Carolina, accused Nigel Max Edge of firing on a waterfront bar from a boat on Saturday night. Edge has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder and five counts of attempted murder, police said.

According to court records, a federal lawsuit that Edge had filed against the U.S. government, and others, describes him as a decorated Marine who suffered severe wounds including traumatic brain injury in Iraq. The lawsuit, which was dismissed, showed Edge was previously known as Sean William DeBevoise before changing his name.

'I LOST FRIENDS'

In Michigan, one witness told WXYZ television she heard "a big bang and the doors blew."

“I lost friends in there and some of my little primary children that I teach on Sundays were hurt. It’s very devastating for me," said the woman, who gave her name as Paula.

President Donald Trump in a statement on Truth Social said that the shooting "appears to be yet another targeted attack on Christians in the United States of America" and that, "THIS EPIDEMIC OF VIOLENCE IN OUR COUNTRY MUST END, IMMEDIATELY!"

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the Mormon church, follows the teachings of Jesus and also the prophecies of Joseph Smith, a 19th-century American.

Grand Blanc, a town of 7,700 people, is about 60 miles (100 km) northwest of Detroit.

The Michigan rampage marked the 324th mass shooting in the U.S. in 2025, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

It was also the third U.S. mass shooting in less than 24 hours, including the North Carolina incident and a shooting a few hours later at a casino in Eagle Pass, Texas, that killed at least two people and injured several others.

(Source - reuters)

At least 69 people have been killed in the Philippines after buildings and walls of houses collapsed in a magnitude-6.9 earthquake.

The quake, which struck the central Cebu province just before 10pm on Tuesday, injured many others and sent residents scrambling out of their homes into the night as the intense shaking cut off power, officials said.

The epicentre was about 19 kilometres north-east of Bogo, a coastal city of about 90,000 people.

Raffy Alejandro, a civil defence official, told reporters the hospital in Bogo city has been "overwhelmed".

The death toll of 69 was based on data from the Cebu provincial disaster office and was subject to validation, said Jane Abapo, an information officer at the regional Civil Defense office.

At least 12 residents died when they were hit by falling ceilings and walls of their houses, some while sleeping, in Medellin near Bogo, said Gemma Villamor, who heads the town's disaster-mitigation office.

In San Remigio town, also near Bogo, five people, consisting of three coastguard personnel, a firefighter, and a child, were killed separately by collapsing walls while trying to flee to safety from a basketball game, the town's vice-mayor, Alfie Reynes, told the DZMM radio network.

Cr Reynes appealed for food and water, saying San Remigio's water system had been damaged.

Earthquake monitoring agencies had pegged the depth of the quake at 10km and recorded multiple aftershocks, the strongest being a magnitude-6.

World Vision's Lucille Latonio was about 2-3 hours from the epicentre but still felt the earthquake.

"I was having dinner with my husband at a convenience store," she told the ABC.

"The place started to shake and items from the shop fell down … people were panicking, shouting."

She said many people were staying out of their homes because of fears of aftershocks.

"I'm a little tense because there are still aftershocks happening," Ms Latonio said.

"Some of my family members, we couldn't reach them. So there's that fear and anxiety."

Workers were trying to transport a backhoe to hasten search and rescue efforts in a cluster of shanties in a mountain village hit by a landslide and boulders, Bogo city disaster-mitigation officer Rex Ygot said.

"It's hard to move in the area because there are hazards," Glenn Ursal, another disaster-mitigation officer, said, adding that some survivors were brought to a hospital.

In Bogo, the quake damaged houses, a fire station and concrete and asphalt roads, firefighter Rey Cañete said.

"We were in our barracks to retire for the day when the ground started to shake and we rushed out but stumbled to the ground because of the intense shaking," Mr Cañete said, adding that he and three other firefighters sustained cuts and bruises.

Terrified residents gather in the open Hundreds of terrified residents gathered in the darkness in a grassy field near the fire station and refused to return home hours after the earthquake struck in Bogo.

Cebu Governor Pamela Baricuatro said the extent of the damage and injuries in Bogo and outlying towns in the northern section of the province would not be known until daybreak.

"It could be worse than we think," she said in a video message posted on Facebook.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology briefly issued a tsunami warning and advised people to stay away from the coastlines in Cebu and in the nearby provinces of Leyte and Biliran due to possible waves of up to 1 metre.

Teresito Bacolcol, director of the institute, said the tsunami warning was later lifted with no unusual waves being monitored.

Cebu and other provinces were still recovering from a storm that battered the central region on Friday, leaving at least 27 people dead, knocking out power in entire cities and towns, and forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of people.

The Philippines, one of the world's most disaster-prone countries, is often hit by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions due to its location on the Pacific "Ring of Fire," an arc of seismic faults around the ocean.

The archipelago is also lashed by about 20 typhoons and storms each year.

(Source - Wires/ABC)

Vietnam closed airports and evacuated thousands of people in areas under storm threat on Sunday, as intensifying Typhoon Bualoi barrelled towards the country, days after causing at least 10 deaths and widespread flooding in the Philippines.

The typhoon was generating winds of up to 133 km/h (83 mph) as of 1000 GMT and is forecast to make landfall in central Vietnam around 0100 on Monday, slowing as it nears the coast, state-run Thanh Nien newspaper reported.

"This is a rapidly moving storm - nearly twice the average speed - with strong intensity and a broad area of impact," the national weather forecast agency said.

"It is capable of triggering multiple natural disasters simultaneously, including powerful winds, heavy rainfall, flooding, flash floods, landslides, and coastal inundation."

Northern and central provinces may see up to 600 mm of rain through October 1, with rivers rising by 9 meters and risks of flooding and landslides, it said.

Authorities in the central province of Ha Tinh have started to evacuate more than 15,000 people, the government said, adding thousands of troops were standing ready.

Residents in Vinh, capital of Nghe An province where the typhoon is expected to make landfall, were rushing to secure homes, tie down boats, and stack sandbags or water-filled sacks on rooftops.

"We already suffered from losses from recent Typhoon Kajiki this year and haven't recovered yet," said Bui Thi Tuyet, a 41-year-old resident. "Over the last 20 years living here, I have not felt this terrified because of storms."

Vietnam suspended operations at four coastal airports from Sunday, including Da Nang International Airport, and adjusted the departure time of several flights, the Civil Aviation Authority said.

Schools in the typhoon-affected area will be closed on Monday, with closures potentially extended if necessary, according to news site VnExpress. Heavy rain has already caused flooding in Hue and Quang Tri, the government said.

With a long coastline facing the South China Sea, Vietnam is prone to typhoons that are often deadly. Last year, Typhoon Yagi killed around 300 people and caused $3.3 billion of property damage.

(Source - reuters)

Lufthansa opens new tab could face a strike at its main airline after pilots' union VC on Tuesday said its members voted in favour of a walkout in a dispute over pensions.

The vote is the union's last attempt to escalate pressure on Lufthansa to agree to a better deal for pilots and comes only a day after the airline group held its capital markets day, presenting its plan to become more efficient.

The airline has pushed back on deeper pension changes and threatened to move more jobs to its cheaper subsidiaries, Discover and City Airlines.

VC, or Vereinigung Cockpit, said in a statement that a vast majority of members voted for a strike, but gave no timeline for the proposed industrial action.

Still, it opens the door to more costly and disruptive labour action for Lufthansa, which has already faced several labour challenges over recent years as it struggles to cut costs and pursue growth.

On Monday, it unveiled plans to cut 4,000 administrative jobs by 2030 and set higher profitability targets.

(Source - reuters)

Taiwan searched on Thursday for 22 people missing after a strong typhoon flooded a lake above a small town on its remote east coast, leading to a disaster as many victims were too elderly to follow evacuation guidance to go upstairs in their homes.

The deaths, their tally revised down to 14 from 17, followed heavy rains brought by the outer bands of Super Typhoon Ragasa to Hualien county, causing a barrier lake in the mountains to overflow and release a wall of water on the town of Guangfu.

Sub-tropical Taiwan normally has a well-honed drill for evacuations ahead of typhoons, especially in the mountainous and sparsely populated east coast, which limits casualties.

But the number of dead this time has prompted questions whether an order to head upstairs from the ground floor was appropriate, and what could have been done differently.

"Beyond mourning the victims, we must investigate the causes of death, which predominantly occurred on the first floors," Premier Cho Jung-tai told a cabinet meeting on Thursday.

"Clarifying these factors is essential for refining future evacuation protocols."

The government also revised down to 22 from 33 the tally of those missing, as more people were traced.

ELDERLY POPULATION

Many rural parts of Taiwan, especially in the east, have large elderly populations as the young move to cities to seek better job opportunities. The elderly with disabilities made up the majority of the dead, many found on the first floors of homes, Hualien official Lin Jung-lu told Reuters. "They had difficulty walking," he added.

Chang Chih-hsiung, a youth representative of the Fata'an tribe of the Amis indigenous group which calls Hualien home, said the digital gap and ineffective communication were among the reasons why some older people did not evacuate.

"Some of them are not familiar with using cellphones," he told Reuters. "The village chief had held briefings, but people didn't think it was that serious until it happened."

Another problem was the sheer scale of flooding and the difficulty of predicting where it could hit.

Parts of the village were entirely evacuated with people moved to shelters, but that area escaped the flood, Chang added, while other spots where many opted to move to higher floors, however, were hit far worse than expected.

CUT BRIDGE

Wang Tse-an, head of the village of Dama in the Guangfu region, said a mandatory evacuation order meant the hamlet suffered no deaths. "Dama was the first to be hit, but the damage is the smallest," he said.

"That's because we designated houses for mandatory evacuation. But when the flood came to other villages people there thought they could just do 'vertical evacuation.' They did not expect the flood to reach that high."

While Guangfu's train station has resumed services, the main highway has been cut off after flood waters swept away a bridge.

Drone imagery from Reuters showed only the bridge supports left in the river bed after the road links snapped at both ends. In other images, homes were marooned in mud that blocked entrances. Wang said many meetings had been held since the lake was discovered in July, with several briefings delivered to villagers about the coming dangers and evacuation plans, some in the Amis language, as not all residents spoke Chinese.

The rain has stopped, but the government maintains warnings on the barrier dam in a remote mountain area behind Guangfu.

The tricky issues of how to tackle the lake, though much smaller than before, and prevent another disaster remain.

Agriculture Minister Chen Junne-jih said using explosives to blow up the bank holding back the lake was too dangerous as it could set off more landslides.

"While the red warning is still in place please do not go near to the river," he told reporters in Taipei.

(Source - Reuters)

The United States is planning to deport some 400 Iranians, most of whom entered the country illegally, as part of U.S. President Donald Trump's broader crackdown on immigration, a senior Iranian official said on Tuesday.

"In the first step, they decided to deport 120 Iranians who entered the U.S. illegally, most of whom through Mexico," the Iranian foreign ministry's director general for parliament affairs, Hossein Noushabadi, told the semi-official Tasnim news agency.

The deportation, an uncommon instance of cooperation between the two countries, came after months of talks, according to the New York Times, which first reported the move.

CALL TO RESPECT IRANIANS' RIGHTS

Noushabadi said the U.S. was "planning to deport around 400 Iranians, most of whom entered the country illegally, in line with the new anti-immigrant approach of the U.S. government."

The first group of 120 would reach Iran in the next one or two days, he said.

The New York Times reported that a U.S.-chartered flight took off from Louisiana on Monday and was scheduled to arrive in Iran via Qatar sometime on Tuesday.

Some of the Iranians had volunteered to leave after being in detention centers for months, and some had not, the newspaper said.

Noushabadi called on Washington to respect the rights of Iranian migrants in the United States.

"Some (returnees) had residence permits but due to reasons stated by the U.S. immigration office they were included in the list. Of course, their own consent was obtained for their return," he said.

The White House and the U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Trump plans to deport a record number of people living in the U.S. without legal status, after what he describes as high illegal border crossings under his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden.

However, his administration has struggled to increase deportation levels, even as it has created new avenues to send migrants to countries other than their own. The U.S. in February deported 119 people from different countries, including Iran, to Panama as part of an agreement between the two countries.

(Source - reuters)

Over 80 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip yesterday.

According to foreign media reports, most of the victims were residents of Gaza City.

On the night of the 24th, an attack on a building and a shelter housing families in Gaza killed around 20 people, including women and children.

Israel stated that these attacks targeted Hamas fighters.

Internet and mobile telephone services were down across Afghanistan on Tuesday, residents and monitoring services said, but the Taliban administration offered no immediate explanation.

In the past, the Taliban have voiced concern about online pornography, and authorities cut fibre-optic links to some provinces in recent weeks, with officials citing morality concerns.

Internet connectivity in Afghanistan was flatlining around the 1% mark, said NetBlocks, an international internet access monitoring organisation.

Connectivity was cut in phases on Monday, with the final stage affecting telephone services, which share infrastructure with the Internet, NetBlocks said in an email to Reuters.

Private channel Tolo News, which warned viewers of a disruption to its services, said authorities had set a one-week deadline for the shutdown of 3G and 4G internet services for cell phones, leaving only the older 2G standard active.

Cloudflare Radar, a global internet traffic monitor, said that Kabul, the capital, suffered the sharpest drop in internet connectivity, followed by the western city of Herat and Kandahar in the south.

Strictures ordered by the Taliban leadership, based in Kandahar, have grown increasingly hardline.

This month, authorities stopped women working for the United Nations from entering its offices. Earlier, women were banned from many lines of employment and girls from attending high school.

The Taliban have said they respect women's rights in line with their interpretation of Islamic law.

Women's rights activist Sanam Kabiri said the Taliban had already closed schools, universities, recreation, and sports facilities for women.

"The Taliban are using every tool at their disposal to suppress the people," Kabiri, who is based outside of Afghanistan, told journalists in a video posting.

"What else do these ignorant men of another century want from our oppressed people?"

Women faced with curbs on leaving their homes to work had turned to the internet for an economic lifeline that allowed some to work from home.

(Source - reuters)

Residents in an eastern Taiwan town where flooding from a strong typhoon killed 14 people took to shelters on Wednesday fearing further disaster, as Premier Cho Jung-tai called for an inquiry into what went wrong with evacuation orders.

Sub-tropical Taiwan, frequently hit by typhoons, normally has a well-oiled disaster mechanism that averts mass casualties by moving people out of potential danger zones quickly.

But many residents in Guangfu, an inundated town in the beauty spot of Hualien thronged by tourists, said there was insufficient warning when the lake overflowed during Tuesday's torrential rains brought by Super Typhoon Ragasa.

Cho said the immediate priority was to find the 129 still missing - a number that climbed to 152 after he spoke - but questions remained. "For the 14 who have tragically passed away, we must investigate why evacuation orders were not carried out in the designated areas," he told reporters in Guangfu.

"This is not about assigning blame, but about uncovering the truth."

The barrier lake, formed by landslides triggered by earlier heavy rain in the island's sparsely populated east, burst its banks to send a wall of water into Guangfu.

As heavy rain continued on and off in Hualien, police cars sounded sirens for a new flood warning in Guangfu on Wednesday, sending people scrambling for safer areas as residents and rescuers shouted, "The flood waters are coming, run fast."

"We will not return until the overflow is finished or the risk of it bursting is reduced. It's too dangerous," said a woman who gave her family name as Tsai from a packed emergency shelter in an elementary school.

Deputy disaster command centre chief Huang Chao-chin said with rainfall easing and much of the water from the lake already released, he did not expect a repeat of Tuesday's mass flooding.

Lamen Panay, a Hualien councillor, said government evacuation requests before the flood had not been mandatory.

Referring to guidance for people to head to higher floors, she said, "What we were facing wasn't something 'vertical evacuation' could resolve."

Taiwan has been lashed since Monday by the outer rim of Typhoon Ragasa, which was downgraded from a super typhoon and is now hitting China's southern coast and the Asian financial hub of Hong Kong.

LIKE A 'TSUNAMI'

The water hit like a "tsunami", said Guangfu postman Hsieh Chien-tung, who was able to flee to the second floor of the post office just in time. Later, he got home to find his car had been swept into the living-room.

Fire officials said all the dead and missing were in Guangfu, where the waters destroyed a major road bridge across a river.

Regions across Taiwan have dispatched rescue teams to Hualien, with the military sending 340 troops to help.

In Guangfu, soldiers operating from an armoured personnel carrier to keep clear of thick mud in the streets went door-to-door handing out water and instant noodles. Wrecked cars and scooters were littered around.

About 5,200 people, or 60% of the population, sought shelter on the higher floors of their own homes while most of the rest left to stay with families, government data showed.

The government said the overflow of the barrier lake released about 60 million tonnes of an estimated 91 million tonnes of water, enough to fill about 36,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

China's Taiwan Affairs Office offered condolences, in a rare sign of goodwill from Beijing, which has a deep dislike of Taipei's government.

China views Taiwan as its own territory, despite the strong objections of the island's democratically-elected government.

Besides the wilderness beauty that makes it one of Taiwan's top tourist draws, Hualien is also home to many members of the island's indigenous groups, including the Amis.

The typhoon brought about 70 cm (28 inches) of rain to Taiwan's east, though the populous west coast, home to the crucial semiconductor industry, was not affected.

In 2009, Typhoon Morakot brought destruction to Taiwan's south, killing about 700 and causing damage of up to $3 billion.

(Source - Reuters)

In Indonesia, the collapse of a school building in Central Java has killed three students and trapped 38 others under the rubble, according to reports.

Foreign media report that 101 more people were injured and taken to hospitals.

Among the deceased is a 13-year-old boy, while many of the injured are reported to have serious injuries, and the death toll may rise.

Rescue operations are ongoing to free the 38 students believed to be trapped.

The students at the school were aged between 12 and 17. Reports say the building collapsed while they were gathered for a prayer session.

The animal handler who was fatally mauled by a tiger in Oklahoma last week was killed as horrified onlookers – including his wife and daughter – watched during a big cat show, officials said Monday.

According to the Associated Press, the tiger attacked Ryan Easley, 37, at the end of a performance on Sept. 20 at Growler Pines Tiger Preserve near Hugo, Oklahoma.

Facility tours are canceled until further notice, the preserve posted, asking for privacy and compassion for Easley's family.

Easley's passing was also acknowledged by former zookeeper Joseph Maldonado, more popularly known as Joe Exotic, profiled in the smash hit Netflix documentary series "Tiger King." Maldonado is serving a 21-year sentence at Fort Worth's Federal Medical Center after he was convicted in a highly-publicized murder-for-hire case.

Tiger attack in Hugo, Oklahoma

More details of how the attack occurred have emerged since the incident on Sept. 20.

Choctaw County Sheriff Terry Park told the AP that the tiger "unexpectedly started to bite" during the big cat show, and the tiger then shook Easley while the two were inside a larger cage.

The Sheriff noted that Easley's wife and young daughter were present when the attack happened.

The Growler Pines Tiger Preserve, in its statement Sunday, wrote that Easley's "love for animals, especially Big Cats, was evident in every aspect of his life," saying that his legacy would live on in the example he set for others also passionate about wildlife.

Joe Exotic shares thoughts on Easley

Joseph Maldonado, mostly known as Joe Exotic, noted Easley's death saying that he would be praying for his family.

"Prayers go out to his family," Maldonado said in since-removed posts on Instagram and Facebook. "Ryan took great care of his animals! He loved everyone of those tigers and was an advocate for tigers as well as elephants."

In another Facebook post Sunday afternoon, Maldonado shared a link to PETA's statement and disputed some of the organization's claims.

"Always got to lie and drag me into everything," Maldonado wrote. "Ryan built a huge compound to keep his tigers in on the backside of my zoo. PeTa (sic) doesn't know crap."

Since his death, PETA has made a statement regarding apex predators and wild animal exhibitors.

"It’s never safe for humans to interact directly with apex predators, and it’s never a surprise when a human is attacked by a stressed big cat who has been caged, whipped, and denied everything natural and important to them. PETA is calling for the remaining wild animal exhibitors who aren’t dead or in federal prison to get out of the business now and send the animals to accredited sanctuaries where they can finally live in peace," said Debbie Metzler, PETA Foundation's senior director of captive wildlife.

As the tigers are not native to Oklahoma, they had to receive a permit from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, according to AP reports.

Can you own a tiger in Oklahoma? Exotic pet laws

In Oklahoma City, city ordinances do allow for exotic animals, but only under certain criteria.

People are generally banned from owning big cats in Oklahoma City like lions, tigers, cougars and lynxes. Yet, if you wish to own one, you must be able to have at least five acres of land, and all neighbors must approve of the new pet. The cat must also be microchipped and registered with the city.

Other exceptions to OKC's exotic wildlife law include provisions for the zoo, animal welfare, circuses, government agencies, veterinarians, research facilities and nature parks qualified to handle the animals.

(Source - The Oklahoman)