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.
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
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