UGANDA
Landslide kills at least 30
Six more bodies, including those of two children, were recovered on Wednesday from the site of a massive garbage landslide in Kampala, bringing the death toll so far to 30, police said. Several dozen people are also still missing, police said, after the collapse at the landfill in the northern district of Kiteezi on Saturday that buried people, homes and livestock in mountains of fetid waste. “Today, the team retrieved six dead bodies by 5:30pm. This makes a total of 30 bodies so far recovered,” police said on X. Earlier, Kampala metropolitan police spokesman Patrick Onyango gave a death toll of 26 and said 39 people were still missing.
JAPAN
Typhoon disrupts traffic
Typhoon Ampil bore down on Tokyo yesterday, prompting airlines to cancel hundreds of flights and railways to suspend part of their operations in the peak summer travel season. The typhoon, categorized as “strong” by the Japan Meteorological Agency, was about 690km off Japan’s Pacific coast at 9am, heading toward Tokyo and surrounding regions. The agency has two higher categories: “very strong” and “violent.” Ampil was blowing winds of 56kph, with maximum gust of 80kph, the agency said. “With this typhoon approaching, we urge the public to be highly vigilant against storms, high waves and heavy rains,” an agency official told a news conference. Japan Airlines said it planned to cancel 191 domestic and 26 international flights, many of them leaving or arriving at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport today. Another major airline, ANA, announced it would cancel 280 domestic flights that were slated for today, affecting more than 60,000 passengers. Central Japan Railway said it would cancel all the Shinkansen bullet train services between Tokyo and Japan’s industrial heartland of Nagoya today.
FRANCE
Jets collide midair
Two pilots died on Wednesday after their Rafale jets collided in midair in eastern France, President Emmanuel Macron said, in a rare accident involving the cutting-edge military aircraft. One pilot ejected following the crash over northeastern France, but authorities had launched a desperate search for a missing instructor and a student pilot on the second jet. “We learn with sadness the death of Captain Sebastien Mabire and Lieutenant Matthis Laurens in an air accident in a Rafale training mission,” Macron posted on X. “The nation shares the grief of their families and brothers in arms at Air Base 113 in Saint-Dizier” in eastern France, he added. “One of the pilots was found safe and sound,” Minister of the Armed Forces Sebastien Lecornu said earlier on X. It was not immediately clear what caused the collision that authorities said occurred over Colombey-les-Belles, a town in northeastern France. “The military authorities will report on the causes of the accident,” the local prefecture said. Accidents involving Rafale jets are rare.
PUERTO RICO
Storm causes blackout
More than 700,000 homes and businesses are without electricity in the wake of storm Ernesto, which strengthened into a hurricane after thrashing the island’s fragile power grid. Authorities are not able to say when service would be restored to the more than 50 percent of customers without power. Governor Pedro Pierluisi said he directed grid manager Luma Energy to move quickly to lower the number of outages. Ernesto was about 1,230km southwest of Bermuda at 5pm on Wednesday, the US National Hurricane Center said in an advisory.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
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