Two men are accused of carrying out the disputed region’s most deadly attack on civilians in nearly two decades, and two soldiers in Indian-administered Kashmir have destroyed their homes.
The Resistance Front (TRF), a branch of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET), are reportedly the attackers’ members, according to police. Pakistan rejects the claim.
Indian security forces are also conducting a massive manhunt for the suspects in Tuesday’s massacre of 26 men in Pahalgam.
Authorities have released wanted poster images of two Pakistanis identified as Ali Bhai and Hashim Musa as well as three suspected Kashmiri rebels Adil Hussain Thokar. Additionally, they are looking for another suspected rebel, Ashif Sheikh.
A police officer and their relatives reported that the two suspected rebels’ families had been taken into custody for questioning as well.
Sheikh’s sister Yasmeena reported late on Thursday night when soldiers cordoned off the street in the southern Tral neighborhood of Kashmir.
Yasmeena, who gave only one name, claimed that “one soldier climbed over the mud compound wall of our home.”
“The house was destroyed by a large, terrifying explosion after some time.” She claimed that no one was present at the time because everything inside had been destroyed.
Early on Friday, according to a police officer, soldiers also destroyed Thokar’s family home in the nearby Bijbehara region in the same way.
The officer, who was not authorized to speak to the media, told AFP news agency that “Both [suspected rebels] have been active for three to four years and are members of TRF, which is an offshoot of LeT.
The officer continued, “They are wanted militants [rebels] who have attacked security forces before and also.”
Pope Francis, the first Latin American leader and a champion of the poor, was the funeral of the tens of thousands of mourners in St. Peter’s Square.
Some people waited overnight to arrive at the ceremony’s opening, which will feature world leaders.
During his 12-year papacy, the Argentinian pontiff sought to change the epoch’s tradition to become more inclusive. He passed away on Monday at the age of 88.
During the three days of his burial at St. Peter’s Basilica, 250, 000 people showed their respects before his coffin, and a sizable crowd gathered on Friday morning to pay his last visit.
Andrea Ugalde, 39, who flew from Los Angeles to the Saturday mass, said, “He was not just the pope. He was what the definition of being human is.”
More than 50 heads of state are on the guest list, and the Vatican and Italy have organized a significant security operation for the occasion.
Snipers will be stationed on roofs surrounding the tiny city-state, and there is a no-fly zone in place.
Peruvian Gabriela Lazo, 41, described her entire night with the children in the car. Because we cherish the South American pope in our hearts, we are deeply sorry for what happened to him.
Francis, who succeeded him after Pope Benedict XVI resigned in 2013, will spend the first nine days of official Vatican mourning at the funeral.
Virginia Giuffre, 41, accused Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein of sexual abuse, and her family has reported that she passed away by suicide.
One of Epstein’s and his ex-partner Ghislaine Maxwell’s most well-known victims was Giuffre, one of whom was most well known. Prince Andrew has consistently refuted Prince Andrew’s claim that she was trafficked to the Duke of York when she was 17 years old.
She had been residing in Western Australia for a number of years before her death, according to her family, who said she passed away on Friday.
Virginia fought ferociously against sex trafficking and sexual abuse. She provided so many survivors with the light that was needed, the family said in a statement. She “shaoned so brightly despite the hardships she endured throughout her life.” She will be greatly missed.
Late on Friday, police in Western Australia reported being called to a home in Neergabby, a rural area on the outskirts of Perth. Unnamed woman, 41, passed away, and attempts to revive her were unsuccessful, they said. No suspicious activity is suspected.
Giuffre, a woman who was born in North Perth, had been living in the area with her husband Robert and their two children. However, recent reports suggested the couple had split after 22 years of marriage.
Giuffre claimed she had sustained serious injuries in a car accident three weeks ago on Instagram. Later, her family claimed that she had no intention of making the post public, and that the severity of the incident was disputed by local police.
In accordance with court records released in 2019, Giuffre and Maxwell allegedly met while working as a spa attendant at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida in the early 2000s.
She spent time with Epstein and Maxwell, traveling between his Palm Beach and Manhattan between his homes, and visiting his private island, Little Saint James, his ranch in New Mexico, and between 2000 and 2002.
Giuffre allegedly met Prince Andrew at this time. In Maxwell’s London townhouse, in a notorious photo taken in March 2001, she was standing next to Andrew and holding his arm around her bare midriff.
Giuffre was one of the first voices to call for the prosecution of Epstein. Authorities claim he committed suicide in his New York prison cell a few weeks after being charged with sex trafficking in July 2019.
Ghislaine Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence in Florida after being found guilty of assisting Epstein’s abuse of teenage girls.
Giuffre settled a lawsuit against Prince Andrew in 2022, which is reportedly worth $12 million, without the prince releasing any evidence of his guilt. The prince has consistently refuted the allegations.
Donald Trump, the president of the US, promised to make all of the details of the case known, including the names of prominent associates. No significant revelations were made during the release of the first batch of files in February. Trump has been designated as an Epstein associate.
A beautiful, sunny day is April 4, 1975, in Saigon, which will soon be known as Ho Chi Minh City. But there is violence and turmoil in the air. North Vietnamese forces have surrounded the city as it enters its final weeks, causing chaos as South Vietnamese citizens and US allies try to evacuate those who are most vulnerable to reprisals.
Untold numbers will ultimately be left behind, but more than 100,000 politicians, military figures, and others associated with the now-rapidly losing side will be airlifted for resettlement. Among the latter are dozens of orphaned infants and children, many of whom are “Amerasians” born of relationships between Vietnamese mothers and American soldiers, now destined for placement with families in the United States and other countries around the world.
The children were seated in the troop compartment on one plane, a massive C-5A US military transporter, according to lieutenant flight nurse Regina Aune, who was also present. Those in the cargo compartment “were placed on blankets and secured to the floor with litter straps and cargo tie-down straps”, she explained in her book, Operation Babylift: Mission Accomplished, published in 2015 to mark the mission’s 40th anniversary.
Young Vietnamese women hand over their children, sobbing at the thought of giving them to “strangers and foreigners from another country, speaking a language they couldn’t comprehend.”
Just after 4pm, the plane departs from Tan Son Nhut airport, carrying nearly 300 people, but mere minutes after takeoff, the locks on the rear loading ramp fail, causing the cargo door to separate and the plane to decompress 7000 metres (23,000ft) in the sky. Aune barely escapes being sucked out, and later recalls seeing her colleague “hanging by his arm, the rest of his body dangling into the void”.
The plane descends quickly because the flight controls have suffered severe damage. It is clear that the craft will not be able to make it back to the airport, so the pilots aim for a nearby rice paddy, throttling up to lift the nose before touchdown.
Adopted passengers on one of the flights [Courtesy of Frederick Burkle]
When it does hit the ground, the plane skids before skipping back aloft like a stone, then smashes into a dyke and breaks into four pieces. Aune is tossed along the entire length of the compartment, sustaining a broken foot as well as other injuries.
When she makes her way outside, she notices “wreckage and debris in every direction.” The flight deck is 90 metres (100 yards) away and upside down. Before assisting with the rescue, her dangling coworker managed to maintain control, and he now splints his broken leg with a crutch and seatbelts.
A human chain forms amidst the devastation to pass surviving children to rescue helicopters, and Aune helps shuttle infants to safety until she faints. Later that year, she will be the first woman to receive the Cheney Award, a US Air Force medal for valour and self-sacrifice.
Despite her and other people’s efforts that day, 138 people died in the plane crash, 78 of whom were children.
It was the first official flight of Operation Babylift – a US government-sanctioned effort to evacuate the orphanages of South Vietnam – and the highly publicised disaster thrust the mission into the international spotlight. In its wake, thousands of prospective parents in the US and other countries signed up to receive adoptees, and the young people, some of them American service members’ children, were dispersed across new homes in faraway countries.
In the end, more than 3,000 children would be taken abroad over the course of three weeks. While the legacy of the operation later came into question when it was found that some of the adoptees had living parents or relatives who had not, in fact, consented to their removal, now on its 50th anniversary, one thing is undeniable – it reshaped the identities and families of those affected by it for a lifetime.
[Courtesy of Frederick Burkle] File boxes that were attached to the seats of the aircraft were where babies were being airlifted out of Saigon.
A chaotic escape
US President Gerald Ford made the announcement to formally appoint an organization to help Vietnamese children, including the Holt International adoption agency, the Friends of Children of Vietnam, and several Catholic orphanages and other organizations, on April 3, the day before the crash. It soon became apparent that military efforts would be too slow as resources were stretched thin, so private flights operated by Pan Am and World Airlines joined the campaign.
“The people who deserve recognition never got it and never will,” Frederick M “Skip” Burkle Jr, medical director of the little-reported airlifts undertaken by World Airlines, tells Al Jazeera, referring to the many nurses, flight crews, and support staff who participated in the airlift.
By the time of Operation Babylift in 1975, Burkle, 84, had already served in Vietnam as a member of the medical corps, and was in charge of a hospital in Quang Tri’s battle-torn front-line region.
“People came from all over the northern part of south Vietnam to see me because nobody could take care of them,” Burkle recalls. From ill local children to ill soldiers, these patients ranged in age. “And these were wonderful people. We laughed together. We made jokes together. The war was going on, but we didn’t discuss the insanity because we couldn’t understand that. You had to function in a setting that didn’t make sense, even though it did not. ”
After this he attended the University of California, Berkeley to study global health, a specialisation in which he would become an important figure, and it was there he received a phone call asking if he would join a medical team that was being put together by World Airways, to assist with the evacuation of orphans from Saigon.
According to Burkle, “I said I needed to make sure I could leave my classes.” He told the caller that he had previously overseen a hospital in Vietnam and spoke the language, “and they said, Wow! You’d choose to direct, right? ”
Frederick Burkle carries an infant on board an evacuation plane [Courtesy Frederick Burkle]
The US had a strategically important base there for more than 70 years, and the team was soon dispatched there. Operation Babylift was already in full swing, but they were told that the airport in Saigon would no longer receive civilian aircraft. The capital was under sporadic attack, and North Vietnamese forces had already taken control of Xuan Loc, the last defense system before Saigon, which had just two hours away.
“Everyone was looking around and they turned to me and said, You know the language. Would you be willing to go in? Burkle recalls. “And it was actually the last thing I wanted to do, because I knew that if my wife had known she would have said no. He described how, after receiving false reports of his death, she “went through hell.”
But he agreed anyway, and their flight continued from the Philippines, arriving in Vietnam on April 26 – three days before the operation’s final flight and four before the Fall of Saigon. During its approach to Tan Son Nhut airport, Burkle saw rockets crisscrossing through the air as they passed over the wreckage of the first Babylift plane.
According to Burkle, “The radio was yelling at us, Don’t land, don’t land.” “It was not safe. We made our approach as quickly as they could to avoid being shot down.
Saigon had swelled with millions of refugees and forward North Vietnamese forces, and now Burkle had to make his way to orphanages scattered across the city to find infants and verify lists of those slated to go.
“So I went to about five of these. How did I accomplish it, exactly? I don’t know how I was allowed to do it. The North Vietnamese obviously knew I was there, knew I was there, and knew they could stop me at any time, but I believe they were curious about what was happening in the wider world and what I was going to do with all of this? ”
Each orphanage was told to bring the children to Tan Son Nhut airport the next morning, and once they arrived they were divided between two planes. The most seriously ill, who had been suffering for years due to the war’s hardships, were placed in first-class seats, and a novel method was developed to secure infants in the cargo hold.
“We had file boxes, which, believe it or not, were just great to put an infant in and lay them on their back,” says Burkle, referring to cardboard cartons used for organising paperwork. I advised putting the straps through the holes and simply line them up because the planes were the C-130s that had straps and had straps that were attached to them. We got in as many as possible. On the sides and on top of each other. ”
Babies were placed into filing boxes with seatbelts looped through the carry-holes [Courtesy of Frederick Burkle]
More than 300 children, the majority of them infants and babies, were aboard.
There were also a number of Vietnamese adults, and a “cool, calm, and collected” American in a Hawaiian shirt who told Burkle: “Thank god, we’ve been waiting for you. I’m CIA. We must remove these individuals from the planet. ”
From there, the situation didn’t become any less chaotic. Just before takeoff, a Vietnamese saboteur was discovered and prevented from placing a bomb on one of the planes. At some point, the pilot began vomiting, explaining that he “just can’t stand the sight of sick kids”. The cockpit windshield then began to crack under the pressure when they finally started to take off quickly, “at 90 degrees – all we could see was blue sky and the engines were roaring.” But eventually, both planes made it to the safety of Clark Airbase in the Philippines, roughly three hours away.
Burkle chuckles, “I hadn’t slept at all.” He’d spent three days preparing the team, gathering orphans, and making the trip, “so I was pretty exhausted”.
There, the children were moved onto a single 747 which carried them to San Francisco, where public health officials were initially reluctant to let the children deplane due to concerns over potential contagions. However, they gave in, and Burkle was permitted to travel back to Oakland after being told by a State Department official that she should not discuss this with anyone. This did not happen. ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ”
His wife picked him up from the airport and he finally got some sleep before attending class the next morning. “Nobody knew a thing about what I’d been up to for the last four days. ”
Burkle went on to have a prominent career in global medicine and was frequently tapped to provide health crisis assessments in war zones and other disasters in places like Myanmar, Somalia and Iraq. In the case of Iraq, President George W. Bush appointed him as the Coalition Provisional Authority’s first health minister in 2003, but he was immediately fired after Burkle declared the nation a public health emergency as a result of its devastation to the healthcare system.
“I didn’t last very long because I declared that what Bush was doing was wrong,” he explains, “and they had to declare Iraq a public health emergency or they were going to lose a lot of lives. They didn’t like that, so I was sent out. And of course, it turned out to be one of the worst ever public health emergencies. ”
After being placed in file boxes and secured to their seats on the plane, Vietnamese adoptees are examined by a doctor.
Picked out ‘like puppies’
Public opinion of the operation during and immediately following it was positive, and there was a general assertion that a great humanitarian victory had been achieved. However, certain aspects of it quickly came into question.
Almost immediately, there were reports of Vietnamese mothers and relatives protesting that they had handed over their children for care without realising they would be evacuated from the country. The majority of these adoptees, if ever, would never reunite with their families.
Then there were issues with the adoption process itself. While some agencies had secured homes for children under more or less normal adoption circumstances, children without placement were gathered in San Francisco, where one Vietnamese translator later said aspiring parents were picking them out “like puppies”. Many of the birth families’ records were muddled, forged, or illegibly absent, making identification challenging and resolving future reunion efforts.
And in some cases, children were placed in homes with people who were entirely unfit to be parents. Later, there would be reports of racism, neglect, and abuse.
But it would be inaccurate to describe Operation Babylift as either entirely benevolent or inherently harmful. As many adoptees have explained, the reality was much more complicated.
[Photo by Frederick Burkle of the infant he accompanied out of Saigon] Burkle feeds an adoptee.
The search of a lifetime
The adoptees, the majority of whom now reside in the US and some in Australia and Europe, had little to no memory of Vietnam in the years that followed.
“Growing up, I just wanted to be that all-American boy,” says Saul Tran Cornwall, whose Vietnamese parents relinquished him to a Holt orphanage shortly after his birth in 1972. “I wanted to fit in and be popular. Although I wasn’t sure what assimilation was or meant, I was doing it. I knew I was from Vietnam and that I was adopted, but I didn’t really explore the cultural heritage of that. ”
Canh Oxelson, born in 1971 to a Vietnamese mother and African American soldier, had a similar experience early on. “I was an all-American swimmer. I wasn’t white, Asian, or Black. I was a swimmer. That is how I perceived it. ” But once Oxelson graduated from university, new questions about his identity emerged. “I figured, gosh, I’m not a competitive swimmer any more and never will be, so who am I? ”
During his high school years, he had dreamed of making it to the Olympics, where – just maybe – his birth parents would recognise him. He began to seriously consider looking for them after swimming was over.
As it turned out, his adoptive parents had been saving money for years for just such an eventuality, and, in the late 1990s, as he was approaching the age of 30, they went to Vietnam as a family where they visited the Sacred Heart Orphanage in the city of Da Nang.
“It was one of the first times an adoptee had come back with their adopted family, so for them it was like seeing what they had hoped for and all they sacrificed for as nuns – they got to see it come full circle. ”
Canh Oxelson reunites with Vietnamese siblings [Courtesy of Cahn Oxelson]
It was a powerful experience for Oxelson, who is now 53.
“Adoption is like a story that’s being told to you,” he explains. “And it wasn’t until I met people who were there at the beginning that I thought ‘oh my gosh, the story that I’ve been told for years is true! It was amazing to see my name appear on the registry. I’ll never forget: Number 867, and it had my full birth name, my birthday, and the date I left the orphanage. ”
But at the time, that was as far as his search went. It would take over a decade before he would finally reconnect with his birth family.
Cornwall’s journey to finding his took a similar amount of time.
It wasn’t until college (and shortly after spending two years working in post-adoption services for Holt – the very agency where his journey began as an infant) that he connected with Vietnamese and Asian refugees, prompting him to delve into his heritage. He joined the Holt Motherland Tour through Vietnam in 2000 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Operation Babylift at the age of 28. Visiting Vietnam, however, struck him like a normal tourist trip as he felt no connection to the country, and his early endeavours to find his family proved fruitless.
Sixteen years later, he returned to Vietnam, this time with his adoptive father, who had served in the war. And while “that was really special,” I was essentially done with Vietnam in 2016. He’d been three times, and online and DNA searches had turned up little beyond some distant relatives.
But then, in 2022, he received a Facebook message from Vietnamese adoptee Trista Goldberg, the founder of Operation Reunite, a nonprofit that works with FamilyTreeDNA to assist Vietnamese adoptees in reuniting with their birth families.
“You might want to sit down for this,” her message read. “We have some news. They appeared to have found his father, he said.
For Oxelson, DNA made the difference as well, linking him to a person who turned out to be a half-niece and whose grandmother proved to be his mother.
The men exchanged stories with various relatives in Vietnam, including his mother, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, and in the case of Oxelson, his mother. As Oxelson put it, ultimately the reunion gave him the sense that “I’ve climbed the mountaintop. To me, that’s what it felt like – one of those monumental, lifetime achievements. ”
Cornwall has continued to build his relationship with his birth family, and Oxelson has gone on to search for his father, eventually following the clues to Orangeburg, South Carolina.
He claims, “We’re close. “In fact, the genealogist believes that she has identified my grandmother or great-grandmother. ” And while he admits that there is always the possibility of another dead end, he is optimistic and undeterred. One might be searching for identity for their entire life. ”
At the orphanage where Saul Tran Cornwall was taken from in Vietnam in April 1975, Saul Tran Cornwall holds a sign with his name and birthdate.Saul Tran Cornwall as an adult, today [Courtesy of Saul Tran Cornwall]
An ‘unscripted journey’
Trista Goldberg, a genealogist, has assisted countless adoptees in their search for family and heritage.
“It’s been 50 years. It’s a little crazy, Goldberg claims. “Something I think is important – and you don’t realise this until you get a little bit older in life – is that your roots are really important whether you’re adopted or not. ”
She was born in 1970 to a Vietnamese mother and an American service member, and she became deeply interested in finding her mother in 2002. “After my own search I thought other adoptees could use assistance. ”
Goldberg was aided in her search by a unique link to her mother’s native country. Before being sent abroad at the age of four, she had lived with a Vietnamese foster family, the father of which had left a note among Goldberg’s things that was later discovered by her American adoptive mother. Her adoptive family granted her visa to resettle in the US after her foster family fled Vietnam to Guam with the wave of the “Boat People,” a mass exodus of about 800,000 Vietnamese refugees who emigrated by sea, frequently in great danger.
“So I grew up with my Vietnamese foster family and was exposed to a lot of Vietnamese culture that most adoptees are not,” Goldberg explains. I adopted customs as a child. I was able to celebrate the holidays of Tet. So when I came back to Vietnam, it wasn’t a mystery. It was already present in my system. ”
Additionally, her foster father was still able to assist with the search for her birth mother in Vietnam. Through this connection and the assistance of her private investigator adoptive father, Goldberg discovered that her Vietnamese family had relocated to the US in 1991, and thanks to a nascent tool called the internet, she managed to track down a brother living in the state of Kansas in 2000.
Trista Goldberg reunites with her birth mother in 2001 [Courtesy of Trista Goldberg]
Goldberg developed the ability to search the internet and make phone calls to a select group of Vietnamese people because they could not understand Vietnamese. Her search efforts were to be further honed with the introduction of DNA testing, which led to her partnership with the genetic ancestry company FamilyTreeDNA. We were actually the beta testers for the autosomal DNA, a method used to determine parenthood. ”
Since then, she has helped countless adoptees reconnect with their birth families.
She claims, “I don’t do the work for them.” “I just point them in the right direction. I believe that is a better way to plan your reunion because some of the beauty of a reunion can be missed if you are forced to participate in it automatically without actually struggling. I commend their courage, because it’s a really unscripted journey to take. ”
Goldberg, Oxelson, Cornwall, and dozens of other adoptees are celebrating the 50th anniversary of Operation Babylift and the end of the war by taking part in a number of events in the US and Vietnam.
“It really was a humanitarian mission,” Oxelson asserts when asked about the criticisms that have been levelled at Operation Babylift over the decades. You might find a political bent in this, but being in the middle of something like that is a different experience. I think your basic humanity comes out.
In Game 3 of their Western Conference first-round playoff series in Minneapolis, the Minnesota Timberwolves defeated the Los Angeles Lakers 116-104. Jaden McDaniels scored 30 points, Anthony Edwards had 29, and Anthony Edwards had 29.
Minnesota, which held the best-of-seven series to a 2-1 lead, added 22 points thanks to Julius Randle. On the bench, Naz Reid and Donte DiVincenzo each scored 11 and 10 points, respectively.
LeBron James led Los Angeles on Friday night with a game-high 38 points and 10 rebounds on 13-for-21 shooting. Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves each scored 17 points, but they only made 6 of 16 field shots and 2 of 8 from 3-point range, largely thanks to five 3-pointers. Doncic also collected eight assists and seven rebounds out of Los Angeles’ 19 turnovers, including five.
In the second half, the Timberwolves won 62-46.
With 4:37 left in the fourth quarter, Doncic headed toward the rim and made a step-back jumper to make the score 103-103. With 7:31 left, Reid knocked down a 3-pointer to give Los Angeles a 100-93 lead.
In the following few minutes, the Timberwolves extended their lead by seven points.
With 4:19 left, Edwards scored a 3-pointer from the top of the key to restore Minnesota’s lead to 106-103. Reid made it 109-103 with a 3-pointer from the left wing after that.
Edwards regained control after Reaves made one of two free throws to reduce the deficit to 109-104. With 2: 18 left, he drove against James and finished with a layup to make the Timberwolves’ 111-104 lead.
With 1:16 left, Edwards then dribbled between his legs and stepped back for a long triple, making it 113-104.
With 39.1 seconds left, the Lakers made it 116-104 with a 3-pointer from the right corner, adding to the late surge with Rui Hachimura’s missed 3-pointer on the opposite end.
At the conclusion of the third quarter, the Timberwolves held an 86-84 lead.
Minnesota overcame the Lakers with an 8-0 run early in the third quarter. The run ended with James scoring on an alley-oop dunk to bring Los Angeles within 67-65 after Edwards and Randle hit back-to-back 3-pointers.
With 4:39 remaining in the third quarter, Edwards gave the Timberwolves a 76-72 advantage on highlight-reel play. He soared past a leaping Doncic for a dunk before driving the baseline.
At halftime, the Lakers had a 58-54 lead.
On Sunday afternoon, Game 4 will take place in Minneapolis.
LeBron James #23 of the Los Angeles Lakers recorded a game-high 38 points in Game 3 of the NBA’s ‘Minneapolis, Minnesota, on April 25, 2025.
Gary Trent Jr. and Giannis Antetokounmpo each scored 37 points as the Bucks defeated the visiting Indiana Pacers 117-101 in the first-round playoff series to reduce Milwaukee’s lead to 2-1.
In Milwaukee on Sunday, Game 4 is scheduled.
In Game 3 of their Eastern Conference first-round playoff series, the Orlando Magic defeated the visiting Boston Celtics 95-93 after Franz Wagner broke a late tie with consecutive driving hoops over Kristaps Porzingis.
The Magic held serve at home after losing their opening two games of the best-of-seven series in Boston, so Wagner finished with a team-high 32 points and Paolo Banchero 29. On Sunday, Orlando will host Game 4.
In Game 3 of their first-round NBA playoff series at Fiserv Forum on April 25, 2025, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, US, Gary Trent Jr tied the franchise record for 3-pointers with nine 3-pointers. [John Fisher/Getty Images via AFP]
On Saturday, April 26, 2018, this is how things are going.
Fighting
In what Russian investigators and Kremlin officials described as a “terrorist attack,” a senior Russian general was killed in a car bombing attack in Balashikha, in eastern Moscow.
A Volkswagen Golf detonated after an improvised explosive device was triggered, killing Lieutenant General Yaroslav Moskalik, 59, a member of the Russian General Staff.
The car bomb, the most recent of a number of Russian military officers and pro-war figures to be killed since Russia’s first crackdown on Ukraine, was quickly put on hold by the Kremlin. Moscow’s claims that it was responsible for the killing were not addressed by Kyiv.
Moskalik was a rising star, according to Russian war bloggers. He had met with Western officials in order to try to reach an agreement on the Ukraine conflict through a number of high-level Russian delegations.
Three people were killed and ten others were hurt when a drone struck an apartment building in Pavlohrad, in the southeast of Ukraine, on Friday, inflicting further airstrikes on the country.
Serhii Lysak, the head of the regional administration in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, reported on Telegram that a child and a 76-year-old woman were among the civilians killed in the nighttime drone strike on Pavlohrad.
According to the Ukrainian air force, 103 Shahed and decoy drones were fired by Russian forces at five Ukrainian regions. Authorities in the Sumy and Kharkiv regions of Ukraine reported no casualties but damage to civilian infrastructure.
At least 12 people were killed on Thursday when the deadly Russian attack in Kiev’s capital, Kyiv, was carried out by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Zelenskyy claimed that the Russian forces launched almost 150 assaults on Ukrainian positions along the roughly 1, 000-kilometer (620-mile) front line using the attack on Kyiv as cover.
We traveled to the location of the ballistic missile strike in Kyiv today, along with diplomats from the countries and international organizations operating in the country. The location where 12 of our country’s citizens were killed when the missile exploded. My… pic. https://twitter.com/ncz8eXhioo
Additionally, President Zelenskyy claimed that US-made components were discovered in a missile used in the Kyiv attack.
Ceasefire
Zelenskyy reiterated to reporters that the Ukraine’s position on the Crimean Peninsula, which is alleged to have been being pressed by the US to renounce it as part of ceasefire negotiations with Moscow, had not changed.
Ukraine “will not formally recognize any territory that has been temporarily occupied.” According to Zelenskyy, it seems to me that this is a completely fair position because, first of all, it is legal from the perspective of the Ukrainian Constitution as well as from the perspective of international law,” it said.
“I concur with President Trump that Ukraine does not possess sufficient weapons to regain its possession of the Crimean Peninsula.” However, he continued, “We have sanctions options and the world.”
The latest example of how US President Donald Trump was pressuring Ukraine to make concessions will end the war came as Zelenskyy made the remarks in an interview released on Friday.
On Friday, President Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff met with Russian President Vladimir Putin for three hours in Moscow to discuss the US’s plan to end Ukraine’s conflict.
According to Yuri Ushakov, a Kremlin aide, Witkoff and Putin had a “constructive” discussion, which included “a discussion on the possibility of renewing direct negotiations” between Kyiv and Moscow. According to Ushakov, the meeting brought the US and Russian positions on Ukraine “closer together.”
Trump stated in a social media post following Witkoff’s meeting that a high-level meeting between Kyiv and Moscow would be necessary to reach a deal.
After setting foot in Rome for Pope Francis’ funeral on Saturday, Trump stated in the post, “Most of the major points are agreed to.”
Diplomacy
Due to the rise in Russian aggression against his country and his attendance at a “military meeting,” Ukrainian Zelenskyy has suggested that he may not attend the late Pope Francis’ funeral on Saturday in Rome. Zelenskyy questioned whether or not he should postpone his trip to Rome and whether it was significant to be here.
Ukraine will be honored to be a part of the conversation if I can’t make it. Zelenskyy told reporters in Kyiv that the First Lady [Olena Zelenska] and the Foreign Minister [Andrii Sybiha] would be present.
President Trump demanded on social media that Zelenskyy “IMMEDIATELY” sign a protracted agreement granting US access to Ukraine’s mineral resources.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the country’s top diplomat, has not yet ratified the crucial Rare Earths Agreement with the US. Trump claimed that it is “at least three weeks late.”