While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, Sept 10, 2026
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A plane carrying Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky landing in Gardermoen, Norway, on Sept 8. Zelensky’s plane was almost hit by a drone when taking off from Moldova, said Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Zelensky plane almost hit by drone en route to Oslo
Ukraine and Moldova on Sept 9 played down claims from Norway’s prime minister that a plane carrying President Volodymyr Zelensky was almost hit by a drone as it flew to Oslo.
Jonas Gahr Store told Norwegian public broadcaster NRK that Zelensky’s plane was “almost hit by a drone when it was taking off from Moldova”.
But a source in the Ukrainian presidency described the claim that Zelensky was at risk as “exaggerated”.
“It was an alert in Moldova when a Russian (drone) entered Moldovan and Romanian airspace,” the source told AFP.
Norway bids farewell to King Harald, nation’s ‘grandfather’
PHOTO: AFP
Norway bid farewell on Sept 9 to King Harald V in a funeral reflecting his open and unifying nature, and attended by dignitaries including Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky and Britain’s Prince William.
After a procession through the streets of Oslo packed with crowds and a funeral service at Oslo’s Lutheran cathedral, the king’s casket was transported to the Akershus Castle church where it was to be placed in the royal crypt.
Until his death on Aug 28 at age 89, Harald was the oldest reigning monarch in Europe and hugely popular among Norwegians, despite the scandals that dogged his family toward the end of his reign.
Apple debuts passport-shaped foldable phone
PHOTO: REUTERS
Apple on Sept 9 unveiled a foldable phone called Duo, introducing the biggest change in years in the company’s flagship product.
The Duo is sized and shaped like a passport, with rounded edges. It opens into a horizontal, wide screen that also can be viewed vertically. There is a smaller single screen on the front, when the phone is folded.
When open, it is Apple’s thinnest phone, the company said.
Hasina’s daughter resigns as WHO regional head
PHOTOS: REUTERS
Saima Wazed, the World Health Organisation’s South-east Asia head and daughter of ousted Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, resigned on Sept 9, according to her resignation letter seen by Reuters, following fraud investigations by the UN agency and Bangladeshi authorities.
Wazed’s case shows how the fallout from Hasina’s ouster following a deadly uprising against her around mid-2024 has spread to her family members, beyond her political allies.
Many of Hasina’s allies face criminal charges, including for alleged corruption in Bangladesh, or live in self-imposed exile like Hasina.
Cyberattack ruled out in Britain air traffic glitch
PHOTO: EPA
Air travellers in Britain faced more misery on Sept 9 with nearly 300 flights scrapped across the country, as air traffic control service scrambled to recover from a technical glitch that it ruled out as a cyberattack.
After 1,746 flights were cancelled on the first day of the outage on Sept 8, another 291 were axed on Sept 9 – the majority to and from London Heathrow, Britain’s biggest and one of Europe’s busiest airports – according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.
“We ended up sitting in our plane for just over five hours,” Matt Ernster, 28, who was returning to Boston via Heathrow from his honeymoon in Paris on Sept 8, said.