A small plane crashed on a Utah highway, killing two couples heading for a holiday but narrowly missing cars when it barrelled across the lanes through a gap in traffic. The plane went down shortly after takeoff from a municipal airport popular with private pilots north of Salt Lake City, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Allen Kenitzer said. No injuries were reported on the ground after it snarled traffic and left behind blackened wreckage. Layne Clarke, 48, was flying his wife and two friends, said family friend and colleague Jeff Henderson. Also killed in the crash was his wife, Diana Clarke, 46, of Taylor, Utah, and their friends Perry, 45, and Sarah Huffaker, 42, of West Haven, Utah.
The Northern Territory Government has again backed calls for regulated trophy hunting of crocodiles in collaboration with indigenous groups. Both the NT Government and the Opposition remain in favour of safari hunting, Chief Minister Michael Gunner said. However Gunner noted that no federal government, Liberal or Labor, had been supportive of the idea in recent years. The NT Government estimates there are more than 100 000 crocodiles in the wild with their numbers exploding from near extinction after becoming protected in 1971.
Ukraine's President has rescinded the citizenship of Mikheil Saakashvili, the former president of Georgia who moved to Ukraine to become leader of one of its most corruption-plagued regions and later resigned, the country's migration service announced. The move by President Petro Poroshenko came after Ukraine received unspecified documents from Georgia, the service said. Saakashvili was stripped of his Georgian citizenship in 2015 after being appointed as Governor of Ukraine's Odessa region. Georgia is seeking the ex-leader's extradition to face charges connected to the violent dispersal of protests and a raid on a private television station.
Israel has removed railings and an overhead metal bridge it had recently installed near a contested Jerusalem holy site, meeting a demand by Muslim protesters. Palestine TV showed thousands of Palestinians celebrating in the streets. They danced, chanted "God is Great" and set off fireworks. Israel had installed metal detectors, the railings and more security cameras after a July 14 shooting attack from the shrine by Arab gunmen who killed two Israeli policemen. The metal detectors were later removed.
