Boat capsizes, at least 42 dead ADVERTISING Boat capsizes, at least 42 dead CAIRO (AP) — A boat carrying African migrants headed to Europe capsized Wednesday off the Mediterranean coast near the Egyptian city of Alexandria, killing at least 42
Boat capsizes, at least 42 dead
CAIRO (AP) — A boat carrying African migrants headed to Europe capsized Wednesday off the Mediterranean coast near the Egyptian city of Alexandria, killing at least 42 people, Egyptian authorities said.
The army gave the toll in a statement, saying it “thwarted an illegal immigration attempt” and that the boat was 12 nautical miles off the coast when it sank.
Health Ministry spokesman Khaled Megahed said the total number of dead remained unknown. Local official Alaa Osman from Beheira province said more than 150 people had been rescued, but bodies were still being pulled from the water.
Egypt’s official news agency MENA said the boat was carrying 600 people when it sank near the coast, some 112 miles north of Cairo.
Airstrike hits medics in Syria
BEIRUT (AP) — An airstrike in northern Syria killed four medics responding to an earlier bombing raid, a relief group said Wednesday.
The escalation of violence against humanitarian workers has all but destroyed a cease-fire that took effect Sept. 12, and stoked tensions between the truce’s architects, the United States and Russia.
The attack that killed the medics took place Tuesday, shortly after they arrived at the scene of an airstrike in the rebel-controlled town of Khan Touman. As the medics deployed, planes circled around and struck the area, Dr. Oubaida Al Moufti, vice president of the International Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations, said. Two nurses and two ambulance drivers were killed, while a third nurse remained in critical condition.
Software deciphers ancient scroll
JERUSALEM (AP) — The charred lump of a 2,000-year-old scroll sat in an Israeli archaeologist’s storeroom for decades, too brittle to open. Now, new imaging technology revealed what was written inside: the earliest evidence of a biblical text in its standardized form.
The passages from the Book of Leviticus, scholars say, offer the first physical evidence of what has long been thought: that the version of the Hebrew Bible used today goes back 2,000 years.
The discovery, announced Wednesday in a Science Advances journal article by researchers in Kentucky and Jerusalem, was made using “virtual unwrapping,” a 3-D digital analysis of an X-ray scan. Researchers say it is the first time they could read the text of an ancient scroll without having to physically open it.
