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.”
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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