BULGARIA
Floods claim at least 12
At least 12 people, including two children, died and more were missing in heavy floods after torrential rain lashed the country, Minister of the Interior Tsvetlin Yovchev said yesterday. Nine of the victims, including the children, were in the worst-hit Black Sea city of Varna, where cars were swept into the sea by the flood, which submerged streets and houses late on Thursday, the minister said. Another body was found in the nearby northeastern town of Dobrich, where 150 people were evacuated from their flooded homes. “The situation is beginning to calm down but it is still critical,” Yovchev said. Heavy rain was forecast to continue throughout yesterday.
DENMARK
Photographer freed in Syria
A Danish freelance photographer has been freed after being held hostage in Syria for 13 months, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. Daniel Rye Ottesen was captured in Syria on May 17 last year after traveling there to document the conflict and living conditions of civilians, especially children, his family said in a statement e-mailed by the ministry late on Thursday. The family said the 25-year-old was “under the circumstances [feeling] well and is now about to be reunited with his family.”
NEPAL
Landslide buries family
A police official said a landslide triggered by heavy rainfall has buried a house in a west Nepal village, killing nine members of the same family. Police official Nishant Shrivastav said yesterday that the landslide buried the house at about midnight in Aglung village, about 200km west of Kathmandu. Rescuers were able to pull out all the bodies from the debris. The grandparents were living in the same house with their children and grandchildren. Monsoon season began this month in Nepal.
SOUTH KOREA
National fire drill run
Workers, shoppers and hotel guests evacuated buildings across South Korea yesterday in an unprecedented nationwide fire drill to beef up public safety following a ferry disaster that claimed about 300 lives in April. Public buildings, including department stores, shopping malls, bus terminals and schools, emptied simultaneously as the 20-minute exercise began at 2pm. South Korea has held mass civil emergency drills — largely connected to the risk of attack by North Korea — for decades, but a spokesman for the National Emergency Management Agency said yesterday’s exercise was the first of its kind. The spokesman said the drill was aimed at honing emergency response times to a major fire, with a particular focus on the “golden hour” — the time period following traumatic injury during which there is the highest likelihood that prompt medical treatment will prevent death. “We want to see how quickly we can create and maintain proper access for fire vehicles and ambulances during the golden hour,” the spokesman told reporters.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of