JAPAN
Storm toll rises to 29
About 400,000 people were ordered or advised to leave their homes yesterday as heavy rain pounded the southwest for a third day, leaving 29 dead or missing, officials and media said. The Japan Meteorological Agency warned of more landslides and floods on the island of Kyushu as rainfall of up to 11cm per hour was recorded yesterday. Evacuation orders were issued to about 260,000 people in the north of the island where more rivers burst their banks, Kyushu’s local media reported. They were told to go to designated shelters such as schools and other public facilities. Nearly 140,000 other people were advised to leave their homes to avoid possible disaster, according to officials in the four affected prefectures in Kyushu. In Fukuoka prefecture alone, 78,600 people were ordered to evacuate their homes as rivers overflowed in dozens of places and 181 landslides occurred, an official said.
CHINA
Hundreds stuck in Shanghai
More than 200 United Airlines passengers have been stranded for three days in Shanghai in a delay that began with an aircraft mechanical problem. The passengers were supposed to leave on Wednesday for Newark, New Jersey. The airline says the Boeing 777 had a mechanical problem so the flight was canceled. The plane was not fixed in time to fly them out on Thursday. United spokesman Rahsaan Johnson said the plane was fixed by Friday, but a boarding issue delayed the flight. That meant that the crew did not have enough time to make the flight under federal safety rules. So that flight was canceled, too. The passengers have been staying in hotels. They were expected to be able to leave yesterday. The airline said they would get refunds.
SPAIN
Four injured in last bull run
Officials say four people are being treated for cuts and bruises, but no one was gored, as thousands of runners packed the streets of the San Fermin festival, eager to share in the adrenaline fueled experience of this year’s final running of the bulls. Doctor Ignacio Iribarren, a spokesman for Pamplona’s Navarra hospital, said only four people had been admitted for treatment — two with head concussions and two with arm and leg injuries. The run, which featured large bulls from the Torrehandilla ranch, took just two minutes and 33 seconds to cover the 849m course from the holding stables just outside the city walls to a central bullring.
ISRAEL
Gaza chair condemned
The government has condemned UNESCO’s decision to establish a chair at the Islamic University of Gaza, calling the institution “a breeding ground for terrorists.” The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Thursday that “[Palestinian militant group] Hamas uses Gaza University laboratories to develop and produce explosives and rockets and has even run a course on explosive making.” Israel, the US, the EU and others consider Gaza’s Hamas rulers a terror group because of their suicide bombings and attacks on civilians that have killed hundreds. UNESCO said the chair is to promote astronomy, astrophysics and space sciences. Earlier this month, it approved Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity as an endangered site.
UNITED STATES
Dark matter device relocated
The world’s most sensitive dark matter detector settled into a new home on Friday in an old US gold mine and when it starts collecting data later this year, scientists say it could lead to another breakthrough in studies of the universe, on the scale of the recent celebration over the so-called “God particle.” “Dark matter presents a much bigger problem to detect,” said Tom Shutt, a physics professor with Case Western Reserve University who is working on the Large Underground Xenon detector. “If we find it, it is going to be a much bigger shift in our understanding of physics.” Dark matter is elusive matter that scientists believe makes up about 25 percent of the universe. They know it is there by its gravitational pull, but unlike regular matter and antimatter, it is so far undetectable.
CUBA
Miami ship docks in Havana
A cargo vessel carrying humanitarian aid docked at Havana Bay on Friday with the first maritime shipment from Miami to the nation in half a century. The Ana Cecilia arrived shortly after 7am, carrying family goods, food, medicine and clothing, as well as medical equipment such as orthopedic mattresses and electric wheelchairs. Shipper International Port Corp hopes to launch a weekly service from the US, with a ship leaving Miami every Wednesday for the 16-hour trip to Havana. The company’s clients include charitable, religious and humanitarian groups, as well as relatives of people living in the country, which the US considers humanitarian aid from family members and sanctioned groups. The Ana Cecilia, a small cargo ship, can hold 16 containers of supplies. US President Barack Obama has eased the embargo, lifting some travel restrictions and allowing Cuban Americans to send unlimited remittances back home, a significant move as 80 percent of the estimated 1.5 million members of the Cuban diaspora live in the US.
SOUTH AFRICA
Train collision kills dozens
Twenty-six people were killed on Friday when a goods train plowed into a truck carrying farm workers at a level crossing, officials said, raising an earlier toll. The train transporting coal to Mozambique collided with a 4-tonne truck and dragged it down the tracks, leaving dismembered bodies in its wake in what rescue officials described as a gruesome scene. The accident occurred shortly before 7:30am near the town of Malelane in Mpumalanga Province, south of the Kruger National Park. The truck was carrying more than 40 farm workers and two dozen of them suffered severe injuries. Some were airlifted to hospitals, with the death toll estimated at 30.
AUSTRIA
Kampusch case re-opened
Criminal investigators on Friday began poring over the notorious kidnapping of Natascha Kampusch, a Viennese girl who was snatched in 1998 when she was 10 and only escaped in 2006. The investigators, including an FBI expert, are searching for errors and missed opportunities in the probe into Kampusch’s abduction, interior ministry spokeswoman Johanna Mikl-Leitner told APA news agency. The team will have access to the entire investigative file and the task is expected to last until the end of the year. Kampusch’s abduction provoked one of the most intensive police investigations in the nation’s history. However, a parliamentary inquiry denounced serious errors made by investigators and recommended a re-examination of the case.
ETHIOPIA
Twenty activists jailed
Twenty Ethiopians, including a prominent blogger, journalists and opposition figures, were jailed for between eight years to life on Friday on charges of conspiring with rebels to topple the government. EU policy chief Catherine Ashton said she was “seriously concerned” by the severity of the sentences, which were also condemned by Amnesty International and other rights groups. Blogger and journalist Eskinder Nega, who was accused of trying to incite violence with a series of online articles, was jailed for 18 years. Five exiled journalists were sentenced in absentia to between 15 years to life.
ITALY
Police seize dubious assets
Police on Friday seized 350 million euros (US$428 million) in assets, including a giant wind farm, in a crackdown on the Ndrangheta mafia in the southern region of Calabria, investigators said. The main suspect in the investigation is 55-year-old Pasquale Arena, the nephew of a notorious local mob clan leader and head of urban planning for the town council in Isola Capo Rizzuto, Colonel Fabio Canziani said. Arena is suspected of having had a wind farm built on behalf of the clan through shell companies based in Germany, San Marino and Switzerland. The wind farm has 48 generators and is considered one of the biggest in Europe in surface area and output, investigators said in a statement. Arena himself has not been arrested and was present at the raids.
BRAZIL
Hundreds of penguins dead
More than 500 penguins have been found dead on beaches of Rio Grande do Sul state, authorities said on Friday. The Center of Coastal and Marine Studies said veterinarians were investigating the deaths of the 512 marine animals, which beached on the coast between the towns of Tramandai and Cidreira. About 30 samples from the penguins were being analyzed at Porto Alegre University and results were to be released within a month.
UNITED STATES
Surfing goats wow crowds
Two goats named Goatee and Pismo are wowing California beachgoers with their surfing skills. The goats’ owner, Dana McGregor, says he taught his goats to surf because he loves to ride the waves and thought they would like it, too. The goats stood on surfboards and cruised along the water on Wednesday at San Onofre State Beach, as bystanders watched in amazement. Goatee, a nanny goat, and her billy goat, Pismo, even rode the waves together, but after a few rides, Goatee swam to shore. McGregor says he got Goatee originally to eat unwanted plants on his property. He began taking the goat to the beach with him, eventually putting her on a surfboard. McGregor says he started putting Pismo on a board shortly after he was born in March.
UNITED STATES
Woman sues ‘noisy’ Bieber
A woman has filed a US$9.2 million lawsuit against pop star Justin Bieber, saying she suffered permanent hearing loss at his Portland, Oregon, concert two years ago. Stacey Betts filed the suit on Wednesday in the US District Court. It says the mother of five sustained the injury after Bieber climbed into a heart-shaped gondola and was pulled over the crowd. The lawsuit alleges Bieber enticed the fans into a “frenzy of screams” by waving his arms and the sound exceeded safe decibel levels. The gondola “acted as a sound conductor, creating a sound blast that permanently damaged both my ears,” the lawsuit says.
UNITED STATES
Worshipers flock to tree
People are flocking to a tree in New Jersey where some say they see the image of the Virgin Mary. People have been praying, crying, and leaving flowers and candles as they look at the small opening where the bark has been stripped away. A fence and other barricades have been set up around the tree, which is on a sidewalk along a commercial strip in West New York. Newark Archdiocese spokesman Jim Goodness told the Journal newspaper that the image is likely “some discoloration that resembles Our Lady of Guadalupe.”
CANADA
Suicide ruling to be appealed
The attorney general announced on Friday that he would appeal a lower-court ruling that has cleared the way for assisted suicides. “The government is of the view that the Criminal Code provisions that prohibit medical professionals, or anyone else, from counseling or providing assistance in a suicide are constitutionally valid,” Attorney General Rob Nicholson said in a statement. The Supreme Court of British Columbia last month said a ban against physician-assisted suicides was unconstitutional. The ruling related to the case of 64-year-old Gloria Taylor, a Lou Gehrig’s disease patient, who was among five plaintiffs seeking to overturn legislation that prohibits doctor-assisted suicides.
UNITED STATES
Fabio becomes a hurricane
Fabio strengthened into a hurricane off the coast of Mexico on Friday and it could gather speed over the weekend, but it was not expected to pose a threat to land, US forecasters said. The storm was packing maximum sustained winds of about 130kph, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing