UGANDA
Landslide kills at least 30
Six more bodies, including those of two children, were recovered on Wednesday from the site of a massive garbage landslide in Kampala, bringing the death toll so far to 30, police said. Several dozen people are also still missing, police said, after the collapse at the landfill in the northern district of Kiteezi on Saturday that buried people, homes and livestock in mountains of fetid waste. “Today, the team retrieved six dead bodies by 5:30pm. This makes a total of 30 bodies so far recovered,” police said on X. Earlier, Kampala metropolitan police spokesman Patrick Onyango gave a death toll of 26 and said 39 people were still missing.
JAPAN
Typhoon disrupts traffic
Typhoon Ampil bore down on Tokyo yesterday, prompting airlines to cancel hundreds of flights and railways to suspend part of their operations in the peak summer travel season. The typhoon, categorized as “strong” by the Japan Meteorological Agency, was about 690km off Japan’s Pacific coast at 9am, heading toward Tokyo and surrounding regions. The agency has two higher categories: “very strong” and “violent.” Ampil was blowing winds of 56kph, with maximum gust of 80kph, the agency said. “With this typhoon approaching, we urge the public to be highly vigilant against storms, high waves and heavy rains,” an agency official told a news conference. Japan Airlines said it planned to cancel 191 domestic and 26 international flights, many of them leaving or arriving at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport today. Another major airline, ANA, announced it would cancel 280 domestic flights that were slated for today, affecting more than 60,000 passengers. Central Japan Railway said it would cancel all the Shinkansen bullet train services between Tokyo and Japan’s industrial heartland of Nagoya today.
FRANCE
Jets collide midair
Two pilots died on Wednesday after their Rafale jets collided in midair in eastern France, President Emmanuel Macron said, in a rare accident involving the cutting-edge military aircraft. One pilot ejected following the crash over northeastern France, but authorities had launched a desperate search for a missing instructor and a student pilot on the second jet. “We learn with sadness the death of Captain Sebastien Mabire and Lieutenant Matthis Laurens in an air accident in a Rafale training mission,” Macron posted on X. “The nation shares the grief of their families and brothers in arms at Air Base 113 in Saint-Dizier” in eastern France, he added. “One of the pilots was found safe and sound,” Minister of the Armed Forces Sebastien Lecornu said earlier on X. It was not immediately clear what caused the collision that authorities said occurred over Colombey-les-Belles, a town in northeastern France. “The military authorities will report on the causes of the accident,” the local prefecture said. Accidents involving Rafale jets are rare.
PUERTO RICO
Storm causes blackout
More than 700,000 homes and businesses are without electricity in the wake of storm Ernesto, which strengthened into a hurricane after thrashing the island’s fragile power grid. Authorities are not able to say when service would be restored to the more than 50 percent of customers without power. Governor Pedro Pierluisi said he directed grid manager Luma Energy to move quickly to lower the number of outages. Ernesto was about 1,230km southwest of Bermuda at 5pm on Wednesday, the US National Hurricane Center said in an advisory.
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
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
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
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