JAPAN
Four missing in floods
Heavy rain in the past week has triggered floods and landslides, with four people missing as of yesterday, including two police officers. The rain had subsided in Yamagata and Akita prefectures, but the area was still at risk of flooding and landslides. One person was missing in Yuzawa city in Akita Prefecture after being hit by a landslide at a road construction site, while in Akita city, rescuers were searching for an 86-year-old man whose bicycle and helmet were found floating by a river, media reports and rescue agencies said. In Shinjo city in Yamagata Prefecture, two police officers were missing after reporting from a patrol vehicle that they were being swept away by floodwaters.
INDIA
Chinese border deal inked
New Delhi and Beijing have agreed to work to withdraw tens of thousands of troops stationed along their disputed border, the government said in a statement late on Thursday. Minister of Foreign Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar met Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) on the sidelines of ASEAN meetings in Laos, where they stressed the need for an early resolution of outstanding issues along the disputed Line of Actual Control, the Himalayan border shared by the two nations. The two “agreed on the need to work with purpose and urgency to achieve complete disengagement at the earliest,” the statement said.
SRI LANKA
Presidential vote scheduled
The first presidential elections since an economic crisis spurred widespread unrest are to be held on Sept. 21, the election commission said yesterday. The election would be the first test of the public mood since the height of the 2022 downturn, which caused months of food, fuel and medicine shortages across the nation. President Ranil Wickremesinghe has hinted that he plans to run. He would face at least two rivals — opposition leader Sajith Premadasa and former minister of agriculture Anura Kumara Dissanayake.
VENEZUELA
Election campaigning ends
The government and the opposition on Thursday closed the official presidential campaign season with demonstrations that drew thousands of people to the streets of Caracas, three days before Sunday’s presidential election. President Nicolas Maduro, who is seeking a third term, spoke from a stage on one of the city’s main roads. He told the crowd that his opponents are promoters of violence and described himself as a man of peace. “Who of the 10 candidates guarantees peace and stability?” Maduro asked. He faces a challenge from former diplomat Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who is representing the Unitary Platform coalition.
UNITED STATES
Cartel members arrested
Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, a leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, and Joaquin Guzman Lopez, a son of another cartel leader, were arrested in Texas on Thursday, the Department of Justice said. A leader of the Sinaloa cartel for decades alongside Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, Zambada is one of the most notorious drug traffickers in the world. A Mexican federal official told reporters that Zambada and Guzman Lopez arrived in the US on a private plane and turned themselves in to authorities. Zambada in February in the Eastern District of New York with conspiring to manufacture and distribute fentanyl, one of several charges he faces.
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant