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.
Women’s accessories sold by some of the world’s most popular online shopping firms contained toxic substances sometimes hundreds of times above acceptable levels, authorities in Seoul said yesterday. Chinese giants including Shein, Temu and AliExpress have skyrocketed in popularity around the world in the past few years, offering a vast selection of trendy clothes and accessories at low prices. The explosive growth has led to increased scrutiny of their business practices and safety standards, including in the EU and South Korea, where Seoul officials have been conducting weekly inspections of items sold by online platforms. In the most recent inspection, 144 products from
The US on Monday confirmed that it would resume sales of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia, as concerns over human rights in the kingdom’s Yemen war give way to US hopes for it to play a role in resolving the conflict in Gaza. More than three years after imposing limits on human rights grounds over Saudi Arabian strikes in Yemen, the US Department of State said that it would return to weapons sales “in regular order, with appropriate congressional notification and consultation.” “Saudi Arabia has remained a close strategic partner of the United States, and we look forward to enhancing that partnership,”
Russia yesterday ordered more evacuations in a region bordering Ukraine as it battled to contain an unprecedented push onto its territory by Kyiv’s forces. Ukraine last week sent troops into Russia’s border region of Kursk, in the largest cross-border operation by Kyiv since Moscow launched its offensive more than two years ago. The assault, which has sent tens of thousands of people fleeing, marked the most significant attack by a foreign army on Russian territory since World War II. A top Ukrainian official said that the operation was aimed at stretching Moscow troops and destabilizing the nation after months of slow Russian advances
DEMOCRACY: The Brazilian president’s shifting attitude toward leftist authoritarians is because he does not want to be seen as supporting dictatorships, analysts said Brazil and Nicaragua have expelled each other’s ambassadors in a tit-for-tat diplomatic row, as Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva appears to recalibrate his approach to authoritarian leftist rulers who were once seen as allies. The dual expulsions this week came amid growing tensions between Lula and another supposedly progressive leader, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whose claim of re-election the Brazilian president has yet to acknowledge. Lula and his counterparts in Colombia and Mexico have called on Maduro to release voting tallies from all polling stations to support his win. On Thursday, Brazil announced the expulsion of the Nicaraguan ambassador as