PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Landslide rescuers arrive
Rescue crews yesterday arrived at the site of a massive landslide in the remote highlands, helping villagers search for hundreds of people feared dead under towering mounds of rubble and mud. The disaster struck an isolated part of Enga Province at about 3am on Friday, wiping out swathes of the hillside settlement as villagers slept. “While verified casualty numbers are still pending, people living in the approximately 60 destroyed homes are unaccounted for,” a UN situation report said. So far, at least four bodies have been recovered, said a UN official based in the capital Port Moresby. A rapid response team of medics, military and police began pouring into the disaster zone yesterday morning after a journey complicated by the rugged terrain and damage to major roads.
INDIA
Heatwave hits election
As people participate in the next-to-last phase of voting in the world’s largest election, temperatures were forecast to surge to 47°C in the capital, New Delhi. More than 111 million people in 58 constituencies across eight states and federal territories are eligible to vote in the general election’s sixth phase, which recorded a turnout of 10.82 percent in the first two hours of the 11-hour poll. The overall turnout in the same phase of the last elections in 2019 was about 63 percent. “There is a concern, but we hope that people will overcome the fear of the heatwave and come and vote,” Delhi Chief Electoral Officer P. Krishnamurthy said. The Election Commission has deployed paramedics with medicines and oral hydration salts at polling stations in Delhi, which have additionally been equipped with mist machines, shaded waiting areas and cold water dispensers for voters. In some parts of the northern state of Haryana, people residing near polling booths also pitched in to help voters beat the heat, handing out cold drinks, dry fruits and milk free of charge.
MEXICO
Hijackers steal avocados
Highway bandits made off with more than 36 tonnes of avocados, federal prosecutors said on Friday. The Attorney General’s Office said the avocados were stolen in two separate robberies in the western state of Michoacan, Mexico’s main producer of the fruit. In both cases, armed men stopped freight trucks carrying about 18 tonnes each, and stole the shipments. Avocado growers have long been targeted by drug cartel extortion demands in Michoacan, but hijackings of entire shipments are rare.
UNITED STATES
Sean Kingston arrested
Rapper and singer Sean Kingston and his mother allegedly committed more than US$1 million in fraud in the past few months, stealing money, jewelry, a Cadillac Escalade and furniture, documents released on Friday said. Kingston, 34, and his 61-year-old mother, Janice Turner, have been charged with conducting an organized scheme to defraud, grand theft, identity theft and related crimes, arrest warrants released by the Broward County Sheriff’s Office said. The two were arrested on Thursday after a SWAT team raided Kingston’s rented mansion in suburban Fort Lauderdale. Turner was arrested in the raid, while Kingston was arrested at Fort Irwin, an army training base in California’s Mojave Desert where he was performing. Kingston, who had a No. 1 hit with Beautiful Girls in 2007, is being held at a California jail awaiting his return to Florida. His mother was being held on Friday at the Broward County jail on US$160,000 bond.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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