JAPAN
Record rain recorded
Several prefectures have been deluged by their heaviest daily rains since records began, officials said yesterday, with reports of more than 100 landslides after a tropical storm. Mobara in Chiba Prefecture, which borders the capital, Tokyo, recorded 392mm of rain overnight into yesterday — the largest amount to hit the city in a 24-hour span since the Japan Meteorological Agency began the survey in 1976. On Friday, Tropical Storm Yun-yeung disrupted some railway services and left thousands of households without power in Chiba, Ibaraki and Fukushima prefectures. In Mobara, “a river near the city hall flooded on Friday and a car that was running nearby had to be rescued,” a city spokesman said, adding that levels had mostly receded.
UNITED STATES
Fewer missing in Maui
The number of missing persons following a massive wildfire that leveled a town on Maui last month has fallen from 385 to 66, Hawaii Governor Josh Green said on Friday. Green made the announcement one month after the fire that destroyed the town of Lahaina, the deadliest in the US in more than a century. The death toll from the blaze remains at 115 people, but could rise as a police investigation unfolds, Green said. The Maui Police Department is investigating the cases of missing persons, he said, adding that “the numbers are getting sorted out,” causing the reduction. The high initial numbers of missing stirred fears that the death toll could rise sharply from the blaze.
CANADA
China warns Ottawa
China is warning of “consequences” for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s administration unless it stops spreading “lies and false information” about alleged interference in domestic affairs. The Chinese embassy in Ottawa issued a stern statement on Friday, a day after the government announced a public inquiry into meddling by China, Russia and other actors in national elections in 2019 and 2021. “China urges the Canadian side to abandon its ideological bias, stop hyping up China-related lies and false information, stop misleading the public and stop undermining China-Canada relations. Otherwise, Canada will have to bear the consequences,” an embassy spokesman said in the statement. In an interview with Bloomberg News on Thursday, Trudeau said that there was no room for political “rapprochement” with China, as Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) muscular foreign policy has made it impossible for the two countries to have a normal relationship.
UNITED STATES
Musk refused Kyiv request
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk late on Thursday said that he refused a Ukrainian request to activate the company’s Starlink satellite network in Crimea’s port city of Sevastopol last year to aid an attack on Russia’s fleet there, saying he feared complicity in a “major” act of war. His comment on his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, came after CNN cited an excerpt from a new biography of Musk that says he ordered the Starlink network turned off near the Crimean coast last year to disrupt a Ukrainian sneak attack. Musk said that he had no choice but to reject an emergency request from Ukraine “to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol.” He did not give the date of the request and the excerpt did not specify it. “The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor,” Musk wrote. “If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
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