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At least one person has died after a US military aircraft crashed off the coast of a Japanese island.

Six crew members were on board the Osprey aircraft when it crashed on Wednesday.

The Japanese coastguard said one crew member had been found – and was later pronounced dead – along with grey-coloured debris believed to be from the aircraft.

They were found at sea around half a mile off the eastern coast of Yakushima.

The cause of the crash and the status of the other people on the aircraft were not immediately known.

Fishing boats in the area found three people in the surrounding waters, a representative of a local fisheries cooperative said. Their condition is unknown.

Another Osprey landed safely at the island’s airport on Wednesday, at around the time of the crash.

“The government will confirm information about the damage and place the highest priority on saving lives,” Japan’s chief cabinet secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told reporters.

The Osprey is a hybrid aircraft that takes off and lands like a helicopter, but during flight can rotate its propellers forward and cruise much faster like an aeroplane.

US and Japanese officials said the aircraft belonged to Yokota Air Base in western Tokyo.

In Okinawa, where about half of the 50,000 American troops in Japan are based, Governor Denny Tamaki told reporters he will ask the US military to suspend all Osprey flights in Japan.

In August, a US Osprey crashed off the coast of northern Australia, killing three Marines and seriously injuring five others.

Another crash-landed in the ocean off Japan’s southern island of Okinawa in December 2016, prompting a temporary US military grounding of the aircraft.

It also comes after five US service members were killed after their aircraft suffered a “mishap” during a routine air refuelling mission in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

The pope asked an aide to read his speech for him at his weekly audience in the Vatican on Wednesday, with the 86-year-old “not well” enough.

Pope Francis, who on Tuesday cancelled a three-day trip for COP28 in Dubai scheduled for the weekend, coughed near the end of the hour-long audience with the public as he made some final comments.

He then stood up from his chair in the Vatican’s auditorium to give his blessing, and with a voice barely above a whisper he said “since I am not well” his reading would not sound “pretty”.

The pope then handed his printed speech to the aide – but he did speak at the end of the audience to voice support for the truce between Israel and Hamas.

He added he hopes “all the hostages are released and access necessary to permit humanitarian aid” to reach Gaza is provided.

“They lack bread, water, the people are suffering,” Pope Francis said.

Doctors had asked the pope – who had part of one lung removed as a young man and has a lung inflammation causing breathing problems – to cancel his trip to COP28.

The Vatican says his condition has improved, but noted he had the flu and “inflammation of the respiratory airways”.

Read more on Sky News:
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According to the Holy See, the pope still wants to participate in the discussions in some way.

Towards the end of Wednesday’s audience, circus performers came on stage to entertain him with an acrobatic act.

“I want to say thanks for this moment of joy,” Pope Francis said, adding the circus expresses the human dimension of “simple joy”.

He was taken to hospital earlier this year for three days for intravenous treatment with antibiotics of what the Vatican then said was bronchitis.

A CT scan, performed at a Rome hospital on 25 November, had ruled out pneumonia, according to the Vatican.

The incident illustrates the deep divisions that the war in Gaza has opened up within US government institutions.

The CIA has stressed to its officers that they should refrain from political statements on social media after one of its top officers shared a pro-Palestinian photo on Facebook.

The intelligence agency’s associate deputy director for analysis changed their Facebook cover photo to a man waving a Palestinian flag on October 21, two weeks after Israel launched an all-out offensive against Palestinian group Hamas, the Financial Times reported.

The officer reportedly deleted the post, along with another previously shared image with the words “Free Palestine”, after being contacted by the media.

The agency has since sent out an internal memo reiterating its policy against political messaging on social media, NBC News reported.

The CIA is the US’s top foreign intelligence agency, responsible for delivering intelligence and analysis to the president.

The official at the centre of the recent social media incident previously led the development of a top-secret document titled the President’s Daily Brief, the Financial Times reported.

Posting politically charged content on social media is highly unusual for officials with such sensitive intelligence roles.

Deep divisions

The social media post from the senior CIA officer underlines deep divisions within the US government over President Joe Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, which has killed some 15,000 Palestinians and left much of the besieged Gaza Strip in ruins.

While Biden has offered staunch backing to Israel’s government, despite the mounting death toll, hundreds of government officials and former campaign staffers have signed open letters urging him to lobby for a ceasefire to protect Palestinians.

The social media incident also comes after other US government officials faced backlash for their public comments about the Gaza war.

Last week, a former US State Department official was arrested after videos of him harassing a halal food vendor in New York and calling for more Palestinian children to die went viral on social media.

EXPLAINER

After machines broke down, rat miners successfully rescued 41 workers trapped in India’s Uttarakhand tunnel.

Forty-one construction workers. Seventeen days. A nation’s hopes.

On Tuesday, rescue workers managed to bring India a dose of good news, saving 41 men who had been trapped under a collapsed tunnel in India’s Himalayan Uttarakhand state since November 12.

But after days of attempts, it wasn’t just high-tech tools that brought success — a team of so-called rat miners, practicing a craft that’s officially illegal, proved saviours too.

Here’s how the workers were rescued.

What happened to the Uttarakhand tunnel?

The under-construction Silkyara Bend-Barkot tunnel collapsed in Uttarakhand early morning on November 12. Low-wage construction workers, mostly from other northern and eastern Indian states, were consequently trapped in a 4.5km (3-mile) space underground.

The tunnel was part of Indian PM Narendra Modi’s ambitious, $1.5m Char Dham pilgrimage program which aims to connect four Hindu pilgrimage sites.

Authorities did not confirm the exact reason for the tunnel caving in, but the region is prone to landslides, earthquakes and floods. Geologist CP Rajendran told Al Jazeera that the Himalayan terrain contains highly fragile rock and is “constantly plagued by stability issues”.

Additionally, the tunnel did not have emergency exits and was constructed through a geological fault, a member of a panel of experts investigating the disaster told Reuters.

How did the rescue unfold?

Even though contact was established with the men in the tunnel a day after the collapse, rescue operations faced several roadblocks that delayed the process.

Excavator teams deployed heavy auger machines to dig both vertically and horizontally through the debris. The first drilling machine broke down after developing snags, halting the operation until a second machine was brought in. However, after horizontally drilling about three-quarters worth of debris, the second machine also broke down.

After this, six miners from central India were tasked with drilling through the remaining rock with hand-held drills late on Monday, using a technique known as rat mining.

In an effort that took over 24 hours, the miners worked in two teams of three each, with one person drilling, the second collecting the debris and the third pushing it out of the pipe.

The rescue was successful on Tuesday evening when all the workers were retrieved from the tunnel, as they were wheeled out by rescuers on stretchers through a 90cm (3 feet) wide steel pipe.

“When we saw them inside the tunnel after the breakthrough, we hugged them like they were family,” said Nasir Hussain, one of the six miners.

The technique of manual drilling that finally rescued the workers is known as rat mining.

What is rat mining?

Rat mining or rat-hole mining is the process of narrow tunnel excavation by manually digging through.

The technique earns its name from its resemblance to rats burrowing holes into the ground. The practice was commonly used in the northeastern state of Meghalaya where the holes were typically just big enough for the workers to descend and extract thin seams of coal. For this reason, children were usually tasked with this job.

The lack of ventilation and safety measures brought controversy to the method, which was banned by an environmental court in 2014.

But the practice has continued to exist in the largely unorganised mining sector.

At least 15 miners were killed in one such mine in Meghalaya after being trapped for more than a month until January 2019. Rights groups say 10,000 to 15,000 have died in such mines between 2007 and 2014.

However, some of the miners in the rescue operation said they got their training in Delhi and were not coal miners.

Uttarakhand’s Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, met some of the workers before they were taken to hospital, presenting them with traditional marigold garlands. Ambulances and helicopters were on standby at the entrance of the tunnel. Sweets were distributed and firecrackers were set off in celebration.

Despite the deployment of ambulances for the construction workers, “Their condition is first-class and absolutely fine … just like yours or mine. There is no tension about their health,” said Wakil Hassan, a rescue team leader.