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.”
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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