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.
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
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
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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