9/11 remembered here and abroad, train carrying North Korea’s KIm Jong Un reportedly headed to Russia and possible meeting with Putin.
1. Americans are looking back on the horror and legacy of 9/11, gathering Monday at memorials, firehouses, city halls and elsewhere to observe the 22nd anniversary of the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil. Commemorations stretch from the attack sites — at New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pennsylvania — to Alaska and beyond. President Joe Biden is due at a ceremony on a military base in Anchorage.
2. A vacant nine-story residential tower provided the setting Monday for a memorial stair climb at this airlift hub in western Tokyo, an event that’s become synonymous with 9/11 commemorations in the U.S. and beyond. About 100 people gathered at Yokota for the event, part of a widespread tradition 22 years after the terrorist attacks that brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and killed hundreds more at the Pentagon and in a downed airliner in Pennsylvania.
3. A North Korean train presumably carrying leader Kim Jong Un has departed for Russia for a possible meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, South Korean media said Monday. Citing unidentified South Korean government sources, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported that the train likely left the North Korean capital of Pyongyang on Sunday evening and that a Kim-Putin meeting is possible as early as Tuesday. The Yonhap news agency and some other media published similar reports. Japan’s Kyodo news agency cited Russian officials as saying that Kim was possibly heading for Russia in his personal train.
4. President Joe Biden closed a visit to Vietnam on Monday by spotlighting new business deals and partnerships between the two countries and paying respects at a memorial honoring his late friend and colleague Sen. John McCain, who endured a lengthy imprisonment in Hanoi during the Vietnam War. Biden met with Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính, who also accompanied Biden to a quick drop by at a meeting of business leaders. Biden also sat down with President Võ Văn Thưởng, who hosted the U.S. president for a formal state luncheon. The two sides are looking to strengthen their partnership amid shared concerns about China’s assertiveness in the Pacific.
5. Two foreign aid workers were reportedly killed in eastern Ukraine on Sunday as Russian shelling hit a van carrying a team of four working with a Ukrainian nongovernmental organization, while dozens of Russian drones targeted Kyiv and wounded at least one civilian. The four volunteers from the Road to Relief group, which helps evacuate wounded people from front-line areas, were trapped inside the van as it flipped over and caught fire after being struck by shells near the town of Chasiv Yar, the organization said on its Instagram page.
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