logo
A Bangladesh Air Force training jet crashes into a Dhaka school, killing at least 19

A Bangladesh Air Force training jet crashes into a Dhaka school, killing at least 19

Toronto Star21-07-2025
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — A Bangladesh Air Force training aircraft crashed into a school campus in the capital, Dhaka, shortly after takeoff on Monday, killing at least 19 people including the pilot and injuring more than 100, officials said.
According to the military and a fire official, the Chinese-made F-7 BGI aircraft crashed into the campus of Milestone School and College, in the Uttara neighborhood, in the afternoon as students were attending classes.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Pope to bestow one of Catholic Church's highest honors on John Henry Newman, an Anglican convert
Pope to bestow one of Catholic Church's highest honors on John Henry Newman, an Anglican convert

Toronto Star

time15 minutes ago

  • Toronto Star

Pope to bestow one of Catholic Church's highest honors on John Henry Newman, an Anglican convert

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV on Thursday decided to declare St. John Henry Newman a 'doctor' of the church, bestowing one of the Catholic Church's highest honors on the deeply influential 19th century Anglican convert who remains a unifying figure in both the Anglican and Catholic churches. The Vatican said Leo confirmed the opinion of the Vatican's saint-making office during an audience Thursday with its prefect, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, and would make the decision official soon.

Pope to bestow one of Catholic Church's highest honors on John Henry Newman, an Anglican convert
Pope to bestow one of Catholic Church's highest honors on John Henry Newman, an Anglican convert

Winnipeg Free Press

time15 minutes ago

  • Winnipeg Free Press

Pope to bestow one of Catholic Church's highest honors on John Henry Newman, an Anglican convert

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV on Thursday decided to declare St. John Henry Newman a 'doctor' of the church, bestowing one of the Catholic Church's highest honors on the deeply influential 19th century Anglican convert who remains a unifying figure in both the Anglican and Catholic churches. The Vatican said Leo confirmed the opinion of the Vatican's saint-making office during an audience Thursday with its prefect, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, and would make the decision official soon. The designation is one of the most significant decisions of Leo's young papacy and also carries deep personal meaning: Newman was strongly influenced by St. Augustine of Hippo, the inspiration of Leo's Augustinian religious order. The title of doctor is reserved for people whose writings have greatly served the universal church. Only three-dozen people have been given the title over the course of the church's 2,000-year history, including St. Augustine, St. Francis de Sales and St. Teresa of Avila. Newman's path to being declared a doctor has been exceptionally quick, after Pope Benedict XVI beatified him during a visit to Britain in 2010. Pope Francis made him a saint in 2019, with then-Prince Charles in attendance. Newman, a theologian and poet, is admired by Catholics and Anglicans alike because he followed his conscience at great personal cost. When he defected from the Church of England to the Catholic Church in 1845, he lost friends, work and even family ties, believing the truth he was searching for could only be found in the Catholic faith. Newman was one of the founders of the so-called Oxford Movement of the 1830s, which sought to revive certain Roman Catholic doctrines in the Church of England by looking back to the traditions of the earliest Christian church. But he gave up a brilliant academic career at Oxford University and the pulpit of the university church to convert to Catholicism. As a Catholic, he became one of the most influential theologians of the era, bringing elements of the Anglican church into his new faith tradition. He died in Britain in 1890. Sundays Kevin Rollason's Sunday newsletter honouring and remembering lives well-lived in Manitoba. ___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

‘JUST A JUMBLE OF BONES': How a baby grave discovery has grown to haunt Ireland
‘JUST A JUMBLE OF BONES': How a baby grave discovery has grown to haunt Ireland

Toronto Sun

timean hour ago

  • Toronto Sun

‘JUST A JUMBLE OF BONES': How a baby grave discovery has grown to haunt Ireland

Published Jul 31, 2025 • 9 minute read TUAM, Ireland (AP) — This story begins with a forbidden fruit. It was the 1970s in this small town in the west of Ireland when an orchard owner chased off two boys stealing his apples. The youngsters avoided being caught by clambering over the stone wall of the derelict Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home. When they landed, they discovered a dark secret that has grown to haunt Ireland. One of the boys, Franny Hopkins, remembers the hollow sound as his feet hit the ground. He and Barry Sweeney pushed back some briars to reveal a concrete slab they pried open. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account 'There was just a jumble of bones,' Hopkins said. 'We didn't know if we'd found a treasure or a nightmare.' Hopkins didn't realize they'd found a mass unmarked baby grave in a former septic tank — in a town whose name is derived from the Irish word meaning burial place. It took four decades and a persistent local historian to unearth a more troubling truth that led this month to the start of an excavation that could exhume the remains of almost 800 infants and young children. The Tuam grave has compelled a broader reckoning that extends to the highest levels of government in Dublin and the Vatican. Ireland and the Catholic Church, once central to its identity, are grappling with the legacy of ostracizing unmarried women who they believed committed a mortal sin and separating them from children left at the mercy of a cruel system. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Word of Hopkins' discovery may never have travelled beyond what is left of the home's walls if not for the work of Catherine Corless, a homemaker with an interest in history. Corless, who grew up in town and vividly remembers children from the home being shunned at school, set out to write an article about the site for the local historical society. But she soon found herself chasing ghosts of lost children. 'I thought I was doing a nice story about orphans and all that, and the more I dug, the worse it was getting,' she said. Mother and baby homes were not unique to Ireland, but the church's influence on social values magnified the stigma on women and girls who became pregnant outside marriage. Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The homes were opened in the 1920s after Ireland won its independence from Britain. Most were run by Catholic nuns. In Tuam's case, the mother and baby home opened in a former workhouse built in the 1840s for poor Irish where many famine victims died. It had been taken over by British troops during the Irish Civil War of 1922-23. Six members of an Irish Republican Army faction that opposed the treaty ending the war were executed there in 1923. Two years later, the imposing three-story gray buildings on the outskirts of town reopened as a home for expectant and young mothers and orphans. It was run for County Galway by the Bon Secours Sisters, a Catholic order of nuns. The buildings were primitive, poorly heated with running water only in the kitchen and maternity ward. Large dormitories housed upward of 200 children and 100 mothers at a time. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Corless found a dearth of information in her local library but was horrified to learn that women banished by their families were essentially incarcerated there. They worked for up to a year before being cast out — most of them forever separated from their children. So deep was the shame of being pregnant outside marriage that women were often brought there surreptitiously. Peter Mulryan, who grew up in the home, learned decades later that his mother was six months pregnant when she was taken by bicycle from her home under the cover of darkness. The local priest arranged it after telling her father she was 'causing a scandal in the parish.' Mothers and their children carried that stigma most of their lives. But there was no accountability for the men who got them pregnant, whether by romantic encounter, rape or incest. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. More shocking, though, was the high number of deaths Corless found. When she searched the local cemetery for a plot for the home's babies, she found nothing. Long-lost brothers Around the time Corless was unearthing the sad history, Anna Corrigan was in Dublin discovering a secret of her own. Corrigan, raised as an only child, vaguely remembered a time as a girl when her uncle was angry at her mother and blurted out that she had given birth to two sons. To this day, she's unsure if it's a memory or dream. While researching her late father's traumatic childhood confined in an industrial school for abandoned, orphaned or troubled children, she asked a woman helping her for any records about her deceased mom. Corrigan was devastated when she got the news: before she was born, her mother had two boys in the Tuam home. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'I cried for brothers I didn't know, because now I had siblings, but I never knew them,' she said. Her mother never spoke a word about it. A 1947 inspection record provided insights to a crowded and deadly environment. Twelve of 31 infants in a nursery were emaciated. Other children were described as 'delicate,' 'wasted,' or with 'wizened limbs.' Corrigan's brother, John Dolan, weighed almost 9 pounds when he was born but was described as 'a miserable, emaciated child with voracious appetite and no control over his bodily functions, probably mental defective.' He died two months later in a measles outbreak. Despite a high death rate, the report said infants were well cared for and diets were excellent. Corrigan's brother, William, was born in May 1950 and listed as dying about eight months later. There was no death certificate, though, and his date of birth was altered on the ledger, which was sometimes done to mask adoptions, Corrigan said. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Ireland was very poor at the time and infant mortality rates were high. Some 9,000 babies — or 15% — died in 18 mother and baby homes that were open as late as 1998, a government commission found. In the 1930s and 1940s, more than 40% of children died some years in the homes before their first birthday. Tuam recorded the highest death percentage before closing in 1961. Nearly a third of the children died there. In a hunt for graves, the cemetery caretaker led Corless across the street to the neighbourhood and playground where the home once stood. A well-tended garden with flowers, a grotto and Virgin Mary statue was walled off in the corner. It was created by a couple living next door to memorialize the place Hopkins found the bones. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Some were thought to be famine remains. But that was before Corless discovered the garden sat atop the septic tank installed after the famine. She wondered if the nuns had used the tank as a convenient burial place after it went out of service in 1937, hidden behind the home's 10-foot-high walls. 'It saved them admitting that so, so many babies were dying,' she said. 'Nobody knew what they were doing.' A sensational story When she published her article in the Journal of the Old Tuam Society in 2012, she braced for outrage. Instead, she heard almost nothing. That changed, though, after Corrigan, who had been busy pursuing records and contacting officials from the prime minister to the police, found Corless. Corrigan connected her with journalist Alison O'Reilly and the international media took notice after her May 25, 2014, article on the Sunday front page of the Irish Mail with the headline: 'A Mass Grave of 800 Babies.' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The article caused a firestorm, followed by some blowback. Some news outlets, including The Associated Press, highlighted sensational reporting and questioned whether a septic tank could have been used as a grave. The Bon Secours sisters hired public relations consultant Terry Prone, who tried to steer journalists away. 'If you come here you'll find no mass grave,' she said in an email to a French TV company. 'No evidence that children were ever so buried and a local police force casting their eyes to heaven and saying, 'Yeah a few bones were found — but this was an area where famine victims were buried. So?'' Digging equipment and workers at the site of St Mary's home for unmarried mothers, in Tuam, Ireland, July 7, 2025. Photo by Peter Morrison / AP Despite the doubters, there was widespread outrage. Corless was inundated by people looking for relatives on the list of 796 deaths she compiled. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Those reared with the stain of being 'illegitimate' found their voice. Mulryan, who lived in the home until he was 4 1/2, spoke about being abused as a foster child working on a farm, shoeless for much of the year, barely schooled, underfed and starved for kindness. 'We were afraid to open our mouths, you know, we were told to mind our own business,' Mulryan said. 'It's a disgrace. This church and the state had so much power, they could do what they liked and there was nobody to question them.' Then-Prime Minister Enda Kenny said the children were treated as an 'inferior subspecies' as he announced an investigation into mother and baby homes. When a test excavation confirmed in 2017 that skeletons of babies and toddlers were in the old septic tank, Kenny dubbed it a 'chamber of horrors.' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Pope Francis acknowledged the scandal during his 2018 visit to Ireland when he apologized for church 'crimes' that included child abuse and forcing unmarried mothers to give up their children. It took five years before the government probe primarily blamed the children's fathers and women's families in its expansive 2021 report. The state and churches played a supporting role in the harsh treatment, but it noted the institutions, despite their failings, provided a refuge when families would not. Some survivors saw the report as a damning vindication while others branded it a whitewash. Prime Minister Micheal Martin apologized, saying mothers and children paid a terrible price for the nation's 'perverse religious morality.' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'The shame was not theirs — it was ours,' Martin said. The Bon Secours sisters offered a profound apology and acknowledged children were disrespectfully buried. 'We failed to respect the inherent dignity of the women and children,' Sister Eileen O'Connor said. 'We failed to offer them the compassion that they so badly needed.' The dig When a crew including forensic scientists and archaeologists began digging at the site two weeks ago, Corless was 'on a different planet,' amazed the work was underway after so many years. It is expected to take two years to collect bones, many of which are commingled, sort them and use DNA to try to identify them with relatives like Corrigan. Dig director Daniel MacSweeney, who previously worked for the International Committee of Red Cross to identify missing persons in conflict zones in Afghanistan and Lebanon, said it is a uniquely difficult undertaking. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'We cannot underestimate the complexity of the task before us, the challenging nature of the site as you will see, the age of the remains, the location of the burials, the dearth of information about these children and their lives,' MacSweeney said. Nearly 100 people, some from the U.S., Britain, Australia, and Canada, have either provided DNA or contacted them about doing so. Some people in town believe the remains should be left undisturbed. Patrick McDonagh, who grew up in the neighbourhood, said a priest had blessed the ground after Hopkins' discovery and Masses were held there regularly. 'It should be left as it is,' McDonagh said. 'It was always a graveyard.' A week before ground was broken, a bus delivered a group of the home's aging survivors and relatives of mothers who toiled there to the neighbourhood of rowhouses that ring the playground and memorial garden. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. A passageway between two homes led them through a gate in metal fencing erected to hide the site that has taken on an industrial look. Beyond grass where children once played — and beneath which children may be buried — were storage containers, a dumpster and an excavator poised for digging. It would be their last chance to see it before it's torn up and — maybe — the bones of their kin recovered so they can be properly buried. Corrigan, who likes to say that justice delayed Irish-style is 'delay, deny 'til we all go home and die,' hopes each child is found. 'They were denied dignity in life, and they were denied dignity and respect in death,' she said. 'So we're hoping that today maybe will be the start of hearing them because I think they've been crying for an awful long time to be heard.' Sunshine Girls Celebrity Sunshine Girls Wrestling Canada

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store