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.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the