PHILIPPINES
Flooding forces evacuations
Authorities yesterday moved thousands of residents of the capital, Manila, out of their low-lying communities as heavy monsoon rain, compounded by a tropical storm, flooded the city and nearby provinces. The national disaster agency said 14,023 people, most of them from a flood-prone Manila suburb, had moved into evacuation centers. In some parts of the capital region, flood waters, in places waist-deep, cut off roads to light vehicles. “Some houses were flooded up to the roof,” Humerlito Dolor, governor of Oriental Mindoro province south of the capital, told DZMM radio station.
CHINA
Flood death toll rises to 56
Rescuers yesterday used bulldozers and rubber boats to move residents out of flooded neighborhoods in central China after torrential rains killed at least 56 people. In Zhengzhou government crews armed with industrial pumps finished draining water from a major traffic tunnel, a news report said. Yesterday, skies were mostly clear but parts of Zhengzhou and other cities including Xinxiang, Hebi and Anyang still were under water.
SOUTH KOREA
Olympic images cause furor
A major broadcaster yesterday apologized for using offensive images and captions to describe participating countries during the Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony on Friday night. Munhwa Broadcasting Corp used images of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster for Ukraine, a riot for Haiti and a promotional bitcoin poster for El Salvador when each nation entered the stadium. The broadcaster issued an apology following the opening ceremony, saying “inappropriate images and captions were used to introduce some countries.” “We apologize to those countries including Ukraine and our viewers,” it said. In the captions, the network described the Marshall Islands as “a former nuclear test site for the United States” and Haiti as a country “with an unstable political situation due to the assassination of its president.” The images and captions triggered outrage online. “They used whatever popped up first on Google,” one person said online.
THE NETHERLANDS
Teen stuns Bezos on flight
The Dutch teenager who became the world’s youngest space traveler this week surprised Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on the flight by telling him he had never ordered anything on Amazon.com. Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old physics student, accompanied Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos and 82-year-old female aviator Wally Funk — the oldest person to go to space — on a 10-minute trip beyond Earth’s atmosphere. “I told Jeff, like, I’ve actually never bought something from Amazon, and he was like: ‘Oh, wow, it’s a long time ago I heard someone say that,’” Daemen said on Friday.
UNITED STATES
Condo collapse search over
Miami-Dade County Fire Rescue on Friday declared an end to its search for human remains in the rubble of a Florida condominium tower that collapsed on June 24, killing at least 97 people. Authorities said one victim was still believed to be unaccounted for. The Miami-Dade Police Department would continue to sift through what is left of the debris for additional remains and personal effects, officials said in a statement. The fire department’s round-the-clock operation at the beachfront site of the Champlain Towers South condo, in the Miami suburb of Surfside, was demobilized four weeks and a day after the 12-story structure gave way at about 1:30am.
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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