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KYIV: President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday he was canceling a part of his program in South Africa and returning to Ukraine after intense Russian missile and drone attacks on Kyiv.
Zelensky said on the Telegram app that Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha would conduct all necessary meetings in South Africa to inform leaders about the situation in Ukraine.
ABUJA: Search-and-rescue operations continued in Nigeria Saturday after flash flooding in the central west killed at least 115 people, President Bola Tinubu said, as officials warned the toll was expected to rise.
Torrential rains late Wednesday through early Thursday washed away and submerged dozens of homes in and around the town of Mokwa, located near the Niger River.
Bodies were swept into the river and carried downstream, complicating efforts to compile a death toll, Ibrahim Audu Husseini, a spokesman for the Niger State Emergency Management Agency, said.
Tinubu, in an overnight post on social media, said that security forces were being sent to help first responders, while “relief materials and temporary shelter assistance are being deployed without delay.”
Buildings collapsed and roads were inundated in the town, located more than 350 kilometers (215 miles) by road from the capital Abuja, an AFP journalist in Mokwa observed Friday.
Emergency services and residents searched through the rubble as floodwaters flowed alongside.
“Some bodies were recovered from the debris of collapsed homes,” Husseini said, adding that his teams would need excavators to retrieve corpses.
He said many were still missing, citing a family of 12 where only four members had been accounted for as of Friday.
Mohammed Tanko, 29, a civil servant, pointed to a house he grew up in, telling reporters: “We lost at least 15 from this house. The property (is) gone. We lost everything.”
The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said that the Nigerian Red Cross, local volunteers, the military and police were all aiding in the response.
Nigeria’s rainy season, which usually lasts six months, is just getting started for the year.
Flooding, usually caused by heavy rains and poor infrastructure, wreaks havoc every year, killing hundreds of people across the west African country.
Scientists have also warned that climate change is fueling more extreme weather patterns.
In Nigeria, the floods are exacerbated by inadequate drainage, the construction of homes on waterways and the dumping of waste in drains and water channels.
“This tragic incident serves as a timely reminder of the dangers associated with building on waterways and the critical importance of keeping drainage channels and river paths clear,” NEMA said in a statement.
At least 78 people have been hospitalized with injuries, the Red Cross chief for the state, Gideon Adamu, said.
According to the Daily Trust newspaper, thousands of people have been displaced and more than 50 children in an Islamic school were reported missing.
The Nigerian Meteorological Agency had warned of possible flash floods in 15 of Nigeria’s 36 states, including Niger state, between Wednesday and Friday.
In 2024, more than 1,200 people were killed and 1.2 million displaced in at least 31 out of Nigeria’s 36 states, making it one of the country’s worst flood seasons in decades, according to NEMA.
Local media reported that more than 5,000 people have been left homeless, while the Red Cross said two major bridges in the town were torn apart.
Displaced children played in the flood waters Friday, heightening the possibility of exposure to water-borne diseases, with at least two bodies lying there, covered in banana leaves and printed ankara cloth.
Describing how she escaped the raging waters, Sabuwar Bala, 50, a yam vendor, told reporters: “I was only wearing my underwear, someone loaned me all I’m wearing now. I couldn’t even save my flip-flops.”
“I can’t locate where my home stood because of the destruction,” she said.
SINGAPORE: US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth warned Saturday that China was “credibly preparing” to use military force to upend the balance of power in Asia, vowing the United States was “here to stay” in the Indo-Pacific region.
The Pentagon chief made the remarks at an annual security forum in Singapore as the administration of US President Donald Trump spars with Beijing on trade, technology, and influence over strategic corners of the globe.
Since taking office in January, Trump has launched a trade war with China, sought to curb its access to key AI technologies and deepened security ties with allies such as the Philippines, which is engaged in escalating territorial disputes with Beijing.
“The threat China poses is real and it could be imminent,” Hegseth said at the Shangri-La Dialogue attended by defense officials from around the world.
Beijing is “credibly preparing to potentially use military force to alter the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific,” he added.
Hegseth warned the Chinese military was building the capabilities to invade Taiwan and “rehearsing for the real deal.”
Beijing has ramped up military pressure on Taiwan and held multiple large-scale exercises around the island, often described as preparations for a blockade or invasion.
The United States was “reorienting toward deterring aggression by communist China,” Hegseth said, calling on US allies and partners in Asia to swiftly upgrade their defenses in the face of mounting threats.
Hegseth described China’s conduct as a “wake-up call,” accusing Beijing of endangering lives with cyberattacks, harassing its neighbors, and “illegally seizing and militarizing lands” in the South China Sea.
Beijing claims almost the entire disputed waterway, through which more than 60 percent of global maritime trade passes, despite an international ruling that its assertion has no merit.
It has clashed repeatedly with the Philippines in the strategic waters in recent months, with the flashpoint set to dominate discussions at the Singapore defense forum, according to US officials.
As Hegseth spoke in Singapore, China’s military announced that its navy and air force were carrying out routine “combat readiness patrols” around the Scarborough Shoal, a chain of reefs and rocks Beijing disputes with the Philippines.
“China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea has only increased in recent years,” Casey Mace, charge d’affaires at the US embassy in Singapore, told journalists ahead of the meeting.
“I think that this type of forum is exactly the type of forum where we need to have an exchange on that.”
Beijing has not sent any top defense ministry officials to the summit, dispatching a delegation from the People’s Liberation Army National Defense University instead.
Hegseth’s hard-hitting address drew a critical reaction from Chinese analysts at the conference.
Da Wei, director of the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University told reporters the speech was “very unfriendly” and “very confrontational,” accusing Washington of double standards in demanding Beijing respect its neighbors while bullying its own – including Canada and Greenland.
Former Senior Col. Zhou Bo, from the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University said that training drills did not mean China would invade Taiwan, saying the government wanted “peaceful reunification.”
Hegseth’s comments came after Trump stoked new trade tensions with China, arguing that Beijing had “violated” a deal to de-escalate tariffs as the two sides appeared deadlocked in negotiations.
The world’s two biggest economies had agreed to temporarily lower eye-watering tariffs they had imposed on each other, pausing them for 90 days.
Reassuring US allies on Saturday, Hegseth said the Indo-Pacific was “America’s priority theater,” pledging to ensure “China cannot dominate us – or our allies and partners.”
He said the United States had stepped up cooperation with allies including the Philippines and Japan, and reiterated Trump’s vow that “China will not invade (Taiwan) on his watch.”
But he called on US partners in the region to ramp up spending on their militaries and “quickly upgrade their own defenses.”
“Asian allies should look to countries in Europe for a newfound example,” Hegseth said, citing pledges by NATO members including Germany to move toward Trump’s spending target of five percent of GDP.
“Deterrence doesn’t come on the cheap.”
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, also in Singapore, said the Trump administration’s “tough love” had helped push the continent to beef up its defenses.
“It’s love nonetheless, so it’s better than no love,” Kallas quipped when asked about Hegseth’s speech.
GUWAHATI: Torrential monsoon rains in India’s northeast triggered landslides and floods that swept away and killed at least five people in Assam, disaster officials said Saturday.
India’s annual monsoon season from June to September offers respite from intense summer heat and is crucial for replenishing water supplies, but also brings widespread death and destruction.
The deaths recorded are among the first of this season, with scores often killed over the course of the rains across India, a country of 1.4 billion people.
The monsoon is a colossal sea breeze that brings South Asia 70-80 percent of its annual rainfall.
Rivers swollen by the lashing rain — including the mighty Brahmaputra and its tributaries — broke their banks across the region.
But the intensity of rain and floods has increased in recent years, with experts saying climate change is exacerbating the problem.
Assam State Disaster Management Authority officials on Saturday confirmed five deaths in the last 24 hours.
A red alert warning had been issued for 12 districts of Assam after non-stop rains over the last three days led to flooding in many urban areas.
The situation was particularly bad in the state capital Guwahati.
City authorities have disconnected the electricity in several districts to cut the risk of electrocution.
Several low-lying areas of Guwahati were flooded, with hundreds of families forced to abandon homes to seek shelter elsewhere.
Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said his government had deployed rescue teams.
“We have been reviewing the impending situation for the last three days,” he said in a statement, saying that supplies of rice had been dispatched as food aid.
South Asia is getting hotter and in recent years has seen shifting weather patterns, but scientists are unclear on how exactly a warming planet is affecting the highly complex monsoon.
On Monday, lashing rains swamped India’s financial capital Mumbai, where the monsoon rains arrived some two weeks earlier than usual, the earliest for nearly a quarter century, according to weather forecasters.
DUSHANBE, Tajikistan: The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts say.
Footage of the May 28 collapse showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside, into the hamlet of Blatten.
Ali Neumann, disaster risk reduction adviser to the Swiss Development Cooperation, noted that while the role of climate change in the specific case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water.
“Climate change and its impact on the cryosphere will have growing repercussions on human societies that live near glaciers, near the cryosphere, and depend on glaciers somehow and live with them,” he said.
The barrage largely destroyed Blatten, but the evacuation of its 300 residents last week averted mass casualties, although one person remains missing.
“It also showed that with the right skills and observation and management of an emergency, you can significantly reduce the magnitude of this type of disaster,” Neumann said at an international UN-backed glacier conference in Tajikistan.
Stefan Uhlenbrook, Director for Hydrology, Water and Cryosphere at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), said it showed the need for vulnerable regions like the Himalayas and other parts of Asia to prepare.
“From monitoring, to data sharing, to numerical simulation models, to hazard assessment and to communicating that, the whole chain needs to be strengthened,” Uhlenbrook said.
“But in many Asian countries, this is weak, the data is not sufficiently connected.”
Swiss geologists use various methods, including sensors and satellite images, to monitor their glaciers.
Asia was the world’s most disaster-hit region from climate and weather hazards in 2023, the United Nations said last year, with floods and storms the chief cause of casualties and economic losses.
But many Asian nations, particularly in the Himalayas, lack the resources to monitor their vast glaciers to the same degree as the Swiss.
According to a 2024 UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction report, two-thirds of countries in the Asia and Pacific region have early warning systems.
But the least developed countries, many of whom are in the frontlines of climate change, have the worst coverage.
“Monitoring is not absent, but it is not enough,” said geologist Sudan Bikash Maharjan of the Nepal-based International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).
“Our terrains and climatic conditions are challenging, but also we lack that level of resources for intensive data generation.”
That gap is reflected in the number of disaster-related fatalities for each event.
While the average number of fatalities per disaster was 189 globally, in Asia and the Pacific it was much higher at 338, according to the Belgium-based Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters’ Emergency Events Database.
Geoscientist Jakob Steiner, who works in climate adaptation in Nepal and Bhutan, said it is not as simple as just exporting the Swiss technological solutions.
“These are complex disasters, working together with the communities is actually just as, if not much more, important,” he said.
Himalayan glaciers, providing critical water to nearly two billion people, are melting faster than ever before due to climate change, exposing communities to unpredictable and costly disasters, scientists warn.
Hundreds of lakes formed from glacial meltwater have appeared in recent decades. They can be deadly when they burst and rush down the valley.
The softening of permafrost increases the chances of landslides.
Declan Magee, from the Asian Development Bank’s Climate Change and Sustainable Development Department, said that monitoring and early warnings alone are not enough.
“We have to think... about where we build, where people build infrastructure and homes, and how we can decrease their vulnerability if it is exposed,” he said.
Nepali climate activist and filmmaker Tashi Lhazom described how the village of Til, near to her home, was devastated by a landslide earlier in May.
The 21 families escaped — but only just.
“In Switzerland they were evacuated days before, here we did not even get seconds,” said Lhazom.
“The disparity makes me sad but also angry. This has to change.”
