AFGHANISTAN
Fifty killed in flash flooding
Flash flooding has killed at least 50 people in Ghor Province, police said yesterday, a week after hundreds were washed away in the north. The floods on Friday also destroyed about 2,000 houses, and damaged thousands more homes and businesses, Ghor police spokesman Abdul Rahman Badri said in a statement. The fresh flooding comes as survivors of the flash floods on Friday last week in northern Baghlan Province continue to search for missing relatives. “Fifty residents of Ghor Province were killed by the floods on Friday and a number of others are missing,” Badri said. “These terrible floods have also killed thousands of cattle... They have destroyed hundreds of hectares of agricultural land, hundreds of bridges and culverts, and destroyed thousands of trees,” he added.
UNITED STATES
Actor Dabney Coleman dies
Dabney Coleman, a character actor who brought a glorious touch of smarm to the screen in playing comedic villains, mean-spirited bosses and outright jerks in films such as 9 to 5 and Tootsie, has died at age 92. Coleman “took his last earthly breath peacefully and exquisitely” in his Santa Monica, California, home on Thursday, his daughter Quincy Coleman said in a statement on Friday on behalf of the family. While best remembered for his arrogant, unctuous and uncaring characters, Coleman said it was all an act. “It’s me kidding around,” Coleman once told the New York Times. Not all of Coleman’s characters were cads. He won an Emmy playing a lawyer in the 1987 television movie Sworn to Silence and a federal security official in 1983’s WarGames.
UNITED STATES
Xi-Putin hug ‘nice’: official
The White House on Friday said that it had not seen any surprising advance in relations between China and Russia despite Russian President Vladimir Putin exchanging a hug with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on a visit to Beijing. “Exchanging hugs? Well, that’s nice for them,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told a briefing when asked about the significance of photographs showing the two US adversaries locked in an embrace. “I’m not good at talking about personal human bodily affection one way or the other. I think I’ll leave it to these two gents to talk about why they thought it was good to hug one another,” Kirby said.
UNITED KINGDOM
McCartney is a billionaire
Paul McCartney is a billionaire Beatle, figures released on Friday showed. The annual Sunday Times Rich List calculated the wealth of the 81-year-old musician and his wife, Nancy Shevell, had grown by ￡50 million (US$63.32 million) since last year to ￡1 billion thanks to McCartney’s Got Back tour last year, the rising value of his back catalogue and Beyonce’s cover of The Beatles’ Blackbird on her Cowboy Carter album.
FRANCE
Stamp celebrates baguette
La Post on Friday rolled out a scratch-and-sniff postage stamp to celebrate the world-famous baguette, once described by President Emmanuel Macron as “250g of magic and perfection.” It was unveiled on Thursday, the day of Saint-Honore, the patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs. “The baguette, the bread of our daily lives, the symbol of our gastronomy, the jewel of our culture,” La Poste says on its Web site. The stamp, which costs 1.96 euros (US$2.14), depicts a baguette decorated with a blue-white-red ribbon, and has a “bakery scent.”
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
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
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
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
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