PANAMA
Colombia slammed over gap
The national migration service on Friday said that Colombia has failed to help control the flow of mostly US-bound migrants passing through the Darien Gap. Agency director Samira Gozaine said that there had been a failure to reach any agreement with Colombia to promote legal transit of the up to 2,800 migrants a day who unlawfully cross their shared border. “For Panama, this is a crisis, but unfortunately with Colombia we have not been able to reach any kind of understanding,” Gozaine said in a statement.
BANGLADESH
Dengue outbreak spreads
Bangladesh is grappling with a record deadly outbreak of dengue fever, with hospitals struggling to make space for patients as the disease spreads rapidly. At least 293 people have died so far this year and nearly 61,500 have been infected, official figures showed, making this the deadliest year since the first recorded epidemic in 2000. Hospitals, especially in the capital, Dhaka, are struggling to find space for the large number of patients, health officials said.
SWITZERLAND
Dog makes epic journey
An escaped border terrier named Lucky made an epic 160km journey across Switzerland on the eve of the country’s national holiday, media reported on Friday. Her owners had left her in kennels in Bern canton, but the 14-year-old dog broke out on Monday evening. The following morning she turned up in Geneva, 160km away, RTS reported. “There was a hole in the fence” at the kennel, Lucky’s owner Jennifer Wagner told RTS. The dog was found near Lake Geneva, on the morning of Aug. 1, as fireworks began sounding for the national holiday. A Geneva resident spotted the animal on the side of a road and alerted authorities, RTS said. As Lucky was microchipped, police swiftly tracked down her owners, who were in Berlin frantically awaiting news of their pet. “I feel lucky that she is healthy, and did not die, and was not injured,” Wagner told RTS. “It was a big fright for us.” However, Wagner thinks her dog had a little help for her epic journey. She believes someone must have picked up the very friendly dog and driven her to Geneva. “I don’t think it is possible she ran [the whole way]. It is 160 kilometers,” she said. “That is impossible for a dog in such a short time.”
EL SALVADOR
Barbie coffins offered
A funeral home has taken Barbie mania to an extreme, offering pink coffins with Barbie linings. The pink metal coffins are on sale at the Alpha and Omega Funeral Home in the city of Ahuachapan, near the border with Guatemala. Owner Isaac Villegas on Friday said that he had already offered the option of pink coffins before the premiere last month of the Barbie movie, but the craze that swept Latin America convinced him to decorate the cloth linings of the coffins with pictures of the doll. The coffins are also decorated with little white stars. “I said: ‘We have to jump on this trend,’” Villegas said of the coffins, adding that “it has been a success.” He said the funeral home has already launched a promotional campaign around the Barbie boxes. Many people in El Salvador buy a pre-paid package for future burial. Villegas said that families had preferred traditional coffins in colors like black, white or gray, but a year ago, he sold his first pink coffin to family who wanted their relative buried in a happier-colored coffin. Now he has no plans to turn back. “We are going to have more pink coffins, because people are asking for it,” he said.
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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