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Authorities in Western Australia have recovered a tiny but dangerous radioactive capsule that fell off a truck while being transported along a 870-mile highway last month. An official says it's like finding the needle in the haystack. The capsule the size of a pea was found south of Newman on the Great Northern Highway. It was detected by a search vehicle travelling at 43 miles per hour when specialist equipment picked up radiation emitting from the capsule. Portable search equipment was then used to locate it 6.5 feet from the side of the road. Search crews had spent six days scouring the entire length of the highway. The capsule emits dangerous amounts of radiation, equivalent of receiving 10 X-rays in an hour.

Mourners are paying respects to Cardinal George Pell in a Sydney cathedral before the funeral of the polarizing church leader who was once the most senior Catholic convicted of sex abuse. Pell spent more than a year in prison before his convictions were overturned in 2020. He died at age 81 in January from heart complications after hip surgery. Pell will lie in St. Mary’s Cathedral until he is interred at the cathedral crypt after a funeral Mass on Thursday. Police dropped an attempt to stop a protest of his funeral after a compromise was reached with protesters over the location.

The Pakistani city of Peshawar was once known as “the city of flowers” but has borne the brunt of rising militancy in the region for the past decades. Now it's reeling after one of Pakistan’s most devastating militant attacks in years, in which a suicide bomber hit a mosque, killing  at least 100 people and wounding 225, mostly police. Analysts say the carnage is the legacy of decades of flawed policies by Pakistan and the United States. In the 1980s, the city became the center of the U.S. and Pakistani program to back the mujahedeen fighting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, creating a legacy of radicalism and violence that continues until today,

It's been more than 375 years since Alse Young became the first person on record to be executed in the American colonies for witchcraft. Now, Connecticut lawmakers are considering exonerating her, as well as 10 others who were executed and dozens more who were accused of having ties to Satan. Young was killed in 1647, decades before the infamous Salem witch trials in Massachusetts. While there have been exoneration efforts in the past, lawmakers are optimistic it will happen this year. That's because amateur historians, researchers and descendants of the accused witches and their accusers from across the U.S. are urging Connecticut officials to officially acknowledge this dark period of the state’s colonial history.

The long-running dispute over the West Bank Bedouin community of Khan al-Ahmar has resurfaced this week as a focus of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Four years ago, Israel's Supreme Court ordered the evacuation of the entire village, saying it was built illegally on state land. Now Israel’s new far-right ministers are pushing the government to fulfill its long-stalled commitment. They vow to expand Israeli presence in what is known as Area C, the 60% of the occupied West Bank over which the Israeli military has full control. Palestinians seek that land for a future state. For Palestinians, Khan al-Ahmar is emblematic of the latest stage of the conflict, as Palestinians struggle for Israeli permission to build.

Prosecutors have linked Alec Baldwin to an expansive list of alleged failures in firearms safety in a filing of a felony involuntary manslaughter charge against the actor in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on a New Mexico movie set. A Santa Fe district attorney announced the charges Tuesday. Halyna Hutchins died shortly after being wounded during rehearsals at a ranch on the outskirts of Santa Fe on Oct. 21, 2021. Baldwin was pointing a pistol at Hutchins when the gun went off, killing her and wounding the director, Joel Souza. Film-set weapons supervisor Hannah Gutierrez-Reed also faces involuntary manslaughter charges.

The family of Tyre Nichols plans to lay him to rest on Wednesday, three weeks after he was beaten to death by Memphis police after a traffic stop. In those three weeks, five officers have been fired and charged with murder, and their specialized unit was disbanded. Two more officers have been suspended. Two Memphis Fire Department emergency medical workers and a lieutenant were also fired. And more discipline could be coming. But Wednesday will be about Nichols, a 29-year-old skateboarder, father, and amateur photographer who worked at FedEx, made friends during morning stops at Starbucks, and always greeted his mother and step-father with a sunny, “Hello, parents!”

Asian stock markets are higher after Wall Street rose ahead of what traders hope will be the last Federal Reserve interest rate hike for some time. Shanghai and Hong Kong declined. Tokyo rose. Oil prices gained. Traders assume the Fed will announce a rate hike of 0.25 percentage points but hope that will be the last for some time after U.S. wage growth slowed in late 2022. They worry U.S. and European rate hikes to cool inflation might tip the global economy into recession. Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 index gained after traders took the wage data as a sign the U.S. central bank might think its efforts to slow economic activity are taking effect.

Emboldened anti-abortion activists are looking to the next presidential election as an opportunity to solidify their influence over the Republican Party. Leaders of the influential group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America are telling potential GOP presidential hopefuls they expect Republican candidates to support national restrictions on the procedure. Exceptions in cases of rape, incest or the mother's life are acceptable to the group, while leaving the question up to states is not. That directive is creating an early litmus test for Republicans considering entering the presidential race. It also could create problems for the party’s eventual nominee in the general election.

Today in History

Inflation is cooling, and parts of the economy appear to be weakening. But Chair Jerome Powell is likely Wednesday to underscore that the Federal Reserve’s primary focus remains the need to fight surging prices with still-higher interest rates. With markets anticipating that the Fed will stop raising rates soon and possibly even cut them later this year, analysts say Powell will need to push back against such optimism. Powell’s tough message will likely emerge at a news conference after the Fed’s policy committee announces its latest action. The policymakers are set to raise their benchmark rate by a quarter-point to its highest level in about 15 years.

On the eve of the funeral for Tyre Nichols, who died days after a brutal beating by Memphis police officers, his family are sharing remembrances and expressing grief. Nichols’ older brother, Jamal Dupree, lamented he was not there to save his brother from the attack he suffered at the fists and feet of the five officers, who have been charged with second-degree murder and other offenses. “I’ve been fighting my whole life and the one fight I needed to be here for, I wasn’t here,” he said. The family gathered Tuesday evening with the Rev. Al Sharpton at the historic Mason Temple Church of God in Christ in Memphis. Sharpton will eulogize Nichols at his funeral Wednesday morning.