PAKISTAN
Storms kill 15, injure more
Violent rainstorms in the northwest have caused at least 15 deaths and injured dozens, officials said yesterday. Latif Khan, a senior disaster management official, said most of the deaths from the severe weather overnight were caused by the collapse of mud and stone walls and houses. He says the heavy rains also caused flash flooding in some places. Another official, Inayatur Rehman, said the roof of a seminary collapsed in the Bajur tribal region, killing six children and injuring nine. Motorists were killed and wounded in the cities of Nowshera and Peshawar by falling billboards and downed electrical cables. 0Khan said the toll could rise as rescue and relief operations continue.
SOUTH KOREA
North’s plan welcomed
The Presidential Office yesterday said it welcomed North Korea’s schedule to dismantle its nuclear test site next week. “This shows they are willing to keep their promise made at the inter-Korean summit through action beyond words,” Blue House spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom told a media briefing. Pyongyan has scheduled the dismantlement of its nuclear bomb test site for some time between Wednesday and Thursday next week to uphold its pledge to discontinue nuclear tests, state media reported on Saturday.
CHINA
Iranian minister visits
Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Javad Zarif arrived in Beijing yesterday as part of a whirlwind diplomatic tour in the wake of Washington’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear accord. Zarif is leading a large delegation to “exchange views with relevant parties on the developments of the Iranian nuclear issue,” local officials said. The delegation is scheduled to head to Moscow and Brussels afterwards and will hold meetings with all of the remaining parties to the 2015 agreement, an Iranian official said. “China is highly concerned with the direction of the Iranian nuclear issue and is willing to maintain communication with all relevant parties, including Iran,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Geng Shuang (耿爽) said ahead of Zarif’s arrival.
PHILIPPINES
Mayor survives attack
A mayor accused of involvement in narcotics trafficking yesterday survived an ambush, police said, four months after President Rodrigo Duterte publicly threatened to kill him. Retired police chief superintendent Vicente Loot, a mayor in Cebu Province, had been repeatedly named by Duterte as one of the so-called “narco-generals” protecting the illegal drug trade. Loot was on a boat arriving with his family at a port in the town of Daanbantayan yesterday when unidentified gunmen opened fire and wounded four people, police said. The mayor was unhurt. “We are looking at all possible motives and angles, including his being tagged in the narco-list, politics, or his previous work in the police force,” acting town police chief Senior Inspector Irish Dilem said.
AUSTRALIA
Father blames grandfather
The grieving father of four children who were killed in a family mass murder and suicide case yesterday said their grandfather was to blame for what he called a planned shooting. Aaron Cockman’s children, his estranged wife, Katrina Miles, and her parents, Peter and Cynda Miles, were found dead on Friday by police at the Miles’ farm in Osmington. “Peter didn’t snap… I think he’s thought this through. I think he’s been thinking this through for a long time,” Cockman said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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