Heavy overnight monsoon rains inundated several Pakistani villages and killed at least 15 people, bringing the death toll over the past day to 26, officials said.
Rescuers recovered three more bodies from a bus that had skidded off a rain-soaked road and fallen into a canal, taking the death toll in the accident to 11, said Mohammed Larif, an area police official.
Twelve people were rescued from the bus on Friday and were listed in stable condition in a hospital, he said.
Ten people died late on Friday from rains and flash floods in Malakand, a remote town in northwestern Pakistan, while three people died further north when the roof of a house caved in under heavy rains.
Two other people died when the roof of a house collapsed in the Bhara Kahu neighborhood in Islamabad, said Mohammed Rafique, a local police official.
Heavy rain also flooded several areas on the outskirts of Islamabad, where rescue official Mohammed Ibrar said army boats, police and divers were on alert.
Flash floods also inundated several villages in northwestern Pakistan yesterday, but there was no word of casualties, according to Pakistan's private Geo news channel.
Meanwhile, authorities on Friday opened spillways of the Rawal Dam, a key source of drinking water for Islamabad and a nearby city, to prevent damage to the dam from the excess water.
The last time the spillways were opened was five years ago.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion