Global Pulse

作者： admin

  • World’s oldest leader to get a deputy for first time in 43-year rule

    World’s oldest leader to get a deputy for first time in 43-year rule

    After 41 years of uninterrupted rule by 91-year-old President Paul Biya — the world’s oldest serving head of state — Cameroon’s parliament has passed a landmark constitutional amendment to reinstate the office of vice-president, a post abolished nearly 50 years ago, triggering fierce backlash from the country’s opposition and raising new questions about the nation’s political future.

    The reform, approved Saturday during a joint sitting of Cameroon’s upper and lower legislative chambers, passed by a wide margin: 200 lawmakers supported the bill, 18 voted against it, and four abstained. It will take effect once signed by President Biya, who has led the central African nation since November 1982. Under the new rules, if Biya is incapacitated or passes away while in office, the appointed vice-president will automatically assume the presidency and complete the remaining seven-year term, rather than triggering an immediate snap election. Prior to this change, the constitution designated the Senate president to serve as interim president only until a new election could be organized.

    The vice-presidency has not existed in Cameroon since 1972, when a national referendum replaced the country’s original federal system — which granted autonomy to its French-speaking and English-speaking regions — with a unitary state. The abolition of the post came alongside the end of a longstanding convention that split the presidency and vice-presidency between the two linguistic communities. For years, persistent private speculation has swirled around Biya’s health, though public discussion of the topic remains a taboo in Cameroon. The president has repeatedly refuted rumors of his death by appearing in public following extended periods out of the public eye.

    Government supporters frame the reform as a practical adjustment to streamline governance and succession planning. Proponents argue the change boosts administrative efficiency by creating a clear, permanent line of succession when a stand-in for the president is required, while also removing succession-related burdens from the Senate to allow the body to focus on its core legislative work. The new framework specifies that the vice-president will be directly appointed by the sitting president, rather than elected via popular vote alongside the head of state.

    Opposition groups have decried the amendment as a power grab rushed through parliament without inclusive national consultation. The Social Democratic Front (SDF), Cameroon’s main opposition party which holds six parliamentary seats, boycotted the vote entirely. The party had pushed for two key changes that were not adopted: it called for the vice-president to be jointly elected on a ticket with the president, and for a return to the pre-1972 convention that splits the country’s top two offices between the anglophone and francophone communities, to reflect Cameroon’s linguistic divide. SDF chairman Joshua Osih called the reform a “missed historic opportunity,” noting that what could have been a moment of transformative political courage ended as a wasted chance to address longstanding national divides.

    Other senior opposition figures have gone even further in their criticism. Maurice Kamto, leader of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement, labeled the amendment a “constitutional and institutional coup” carried out by Biya’s ruling party. Kamto accused the incumbent administration of working to establish a “republican monarchy” and announced plans to launch a nationwide online campaign to oppose the change. Even one senator from Biya’s own ruling party has publicly described the legislative process behind the amendment as “suspicious.”

    Biya’s extended tenure has already been marked by controversy: he won an eighth term in office last October with 53.7% of the vote, a result the opposition rejected as fraudulent. Now that the constitutional change has been approved, public and political discourse across Cameroon is dominated by one pressing question: who will Biya appoint as the country’s first vice-president in more than half a century? Even with the new succession framework in place, the long-term political trajectory of Cameroon beyond Biya’s rule remains deeply uncertain.

  • Lens crushed by Lille as discriminatory chants halt play and Ligue 1 title hopes fade

    Lens crushed by Lille as discriminatory chants halt play and Ligue 1 title hopes fade

    The Ligue 1 title race took a dramatic shift over the weekend, as northern rival Lille handed second-placed Lens a lopsided 3-0 defeat in the Derby du Nord – a match that was temporarily halted due to offensive, discriminatory chanting from the home crowd. The result leaves Lens adrift of league leader Paris Saint-Germain, who stretched their advantage at the top to four points just 24 hours earlier with a 3-1 victory over Toulouse. With PSG holding a game in hand over Lens heading into the final stretch of the season, the capital club is now perfectly positioned to secure back-to-back Ligue 1 titles.

    Saturday’s derby at Lille’s Stade Pierre-Mauroy was paused in the 35th minute after the crowd’s discriminatory chants crossed a line. Stadium officials issued an immediate on-pa announcement urging home fans to end the abuse directed at Lens, while referee even threatened to escort both squads back to the locker rooms if the behavior did not cease. Play resumed after the intervention, allowing Lille to press their advantage and take control of the match.

    Lille broke the deadlock just before halftime, courtesy of a sharp team move sparked by a pinpoint long pass from captain Aïssa Mandi. Winger Matias Fernandez-Pardo surged down the left flank, split two Lens defenders with a perfectly weighted pass, and found an unmarked Hákon Haraldsson at the far post, who slotted the ball home to put the hosts in front. The second Lille goal came just five minutes after the break, born from an unforced Lens error: a sloppy backpass from Matthieu Udol was misjudged by defender Nidal Celik, who let the ball run into the path of Lille’s Felix Correia. The Portuguese winger outpaced Lens goalkeeper Robin Risser to the ball and tapped into an empty net to double Lille’s lead.

    Lens had a chance to claw their way back into the match when Lille substitute Ismaëlo Ganiou was called for a handball in the penalty area, but Fernandez-Pardo put the result beyond doubt from the spot. The young playmaker wrongfooted Risser to seal the 3-0 win, capping a standout performance that saw him grab one goal and one assist for the hosts. The result lifts Lille into third place in the league table, nine points back of second-place Lens.

    Across other Ligue 1 action this weekend, eighth-placed Strasbourg extended their unbeaten run across all competitions to 10 matches with a confident 3-1 win over Nice, overcoming the major loss of top striker Joaquín Panichelli. The league’s leading goal scorer, who has 16 strikes this season, tore his right ACL during a training camp with Argentina last week and underwent surgery on Thursday; the injury will rule him out of the upcoming World Cup and potentially the start of next season.

    In spite of Panichelli’s absence, Strasbourg dominated from the opening whistle. Winger Martial Godo hit the crossbar in the 24th minute, then broke the deadlock minutes later with a well-placed header into the far corner. Midfielder Julio Enciso dribbled past Nice’s goalkeeper to double the lead, and celebrated the goal by pulling on a replica jersey bearing Panichelli’s name in a touching tribute to the injured striker. Samir El-Mourabet rounded out the first-half scoring with a stunning half-volley from outside the 18-yard box, sending Strasbourg into halftime with a 3-0 lead. Nice pulled one back in the 82nd minute through defender Antoine Mendy, but the result was already out of reach, marking Nice’s 15th defeat of the season. The match also offered a positive milestone for Strasbourg: captain Emanuel Emegha, who is set to join Chelsea at the end of the campaign, made his return from a four-month injury layoff as a second-half substitute. The two sides will meet again in a much-anticipated French Cup semifinal on April 22.

    In a high-scoring thriller in Brittany, Rennes edged hosts Brest 4-3, with striker Esteban Lepaul scoring two penalties – including the match-winning spot kick in the 74th minute. Brest’s Junior Dina Ebimbe notched a brace to keep the hosts in front for large stretches of the match, but Rennes fought back from behind multiple times. Lepaul’s late winner beat Brest goalkeeper Grégoire Coudert, who dove the correct direction but could not stop the powerful strike. The win lifts Rennes to sixth place in the table, just three points behind third-place Lille.

  • Underwater robots battle real-sea blues to boost marine ranching in China

    Underwater robots battle real-sea blues to boost marine ranching in China

    Off the rugged coast of Zhuhai, Guangdong, choppy grey-green South China Sea waters have become an unexpected testing ground for a technological revolution that could reshape China’s rapidly growing marine aquaculture industry. In late March, 16 teams of engineers and researchers gathered here for the final round of the first-ever Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Marine Underwater Robot Application Challenge – a competition unlike any before, held not in controlled laboratory tanks or calm shallow coastal bays, but in a fully operational working marine ranch.

    This shift from controlled testing environments to unforgiving open-sea conditions is no trivial change. Organizers designed the competition to directly tackle the most persistent operational challenges that have long held back marine ranching operators, turning industry pain points into a catalyst for building more cost-effective, reliable, commercially viable robotic solutions that can power a smarter, more resilient ocean economy.

    Over two days of competition, participating teams put their custom-built machines through real-world tasks that mirror the daily work of marine ranch crews: recovering misplaced submerged mooring anchors, harvesting shellfish from the seabed, and removing accumulated biofouling from aquaculture netting. Unpredictable offshore currents, choppy swells, and high water turbidity – conditions that often disrupt sensitive underwater electronics – put every robot’s capabilities to a rigorous, unforgiving test.

    Judges emphasized that the open-sea setting pushes developers to prioritize practical, industry-ready performance over flashy lab prototypes. Teams are forced to optimize their designs for three critical industry requirements: cost-effectiveness, long-term reliability, and user-friendliness for on-site ranch workers, clearing key barriers to rapid commercial rollout.

    The need for these solutions is far from hypothetical. In 2025, Typhoon Ragasa devastated local marine ranch operations, leaving Yuehe Fisheries, a major local producer, with more than 700 lost iron anchors scattered across the seabed. Hiring human divers to recover the anchors is prohibitively expensive, leaving most of the valuable equipment unrecovered to date.

    “That’s nearly 1 million yuan (around $145,000) in direct losses,” explained Lin Jincheng, general manager of Yuehe Fisheries. Lin noted that multiple competing teams already demonstrated the exact capabilities the industry desperately needs: strong autonomous operation and reliable anti-interference performance in messy, real-sea conditions.

    For winning competitors like Shenzhen Hanhai Huafan Cleaning Robotics, a specialized underwater cleaning robot developer based in nearby Shenzhen, the event has made the massive market opportunity for practical underwater robotics crystal clear.

    Cai Qianxia, the company’s marketing manager, explained that its proprietary cleaning robots can operate around the clock, delivering efficiency more than 10 times higher than traditional manual cleaning methods. “Before, if you wanted to clean even a small sailboat hull, you either had to hire expensive divers or wait weeks for a dry dock slot,” Cai said. “That takes your vessel out of service, costs you money, and there are countless other limitations that robots eliminate.”

    In the competition’s inspection and monitoring category, a team from Westlake University took home first prize by integrating underwater embodied AI with large language models and advanced multimodal perception technology. Team member Wang Zhangyuan noted that the competition broke down the long-standing barrier between lab research and industrial demand, bringing algorithms out of controlled lab environments and into the real-world scenarios where they are needed most.

    The Zhuhai challenge was intentionally built from the ground up to respond directly to unmet industry needs. Before the competition opened, organizers published a 150-million-yuan “opportunity list” of real operational requirements from marine ranch operators, covering everything from aquaculture net inspection to lost debris retrieval and ecological monitoring. That request for solutions has already translated to more than 100 million yuan in potential orders from 17 marine ranch developers across Guangdong province. Four of the competition’s top award-winning teams have already signed preliminary agreements to establish local operations in Zhuhai’s Xiangzhou District.

    This event fits into a much broader national push to develop China’s blue economy and deep-sea technology sector. China’s domestic underwater robotics market surpassed 10 billion yuan in 2024, and industry forecasts project it will grow to 40 billion yuan by 2027. For the first time, the Chinese government identified “deep-sea technology” as a strategic emerging industry in its 2025 Government Work Report, unlocking new investment and policy support for the sector.

    Zhuhai, a coastal city with 9,348 square kilometers of maritime territory under its jurisdiction, has emerged as a leading hub for this development. By the end of 2025, the city had built 10 large truss-type marine ranch platforms and 452 gravity net cages, and is home to 40 oceanographic innovation platforms and 140 high-tech marine enterprises.

    A senior official from the Zhuhai Municipal Marine Development Bureau explained that the competition will accelerate the translation of underwater robotic research into real-world commercial applications, while strengthening connections across the entire “industry-academia-research-application-finance” innovation chain. The end goal is to upgrade China’s marine ranching sector and cement Zhuhai’s position as a leading regional marine economy hub.

  • Syrian government understating kidnappings of Alawite women: report

    Syrian government understating kidnappings of Alawite women: report

    In the months after Syria’s transitional government ousted former President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, a bombshell new investigation by *The New York Times* has confirmed that authorities in Damascus are drastically underreporting widespread kidnapping, violent assault, and sexual abuse targeting women and girls from Assad’s native Alawite community.

    Since taking power, the administration led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa has publicly acknowledged only one confirmed case of an Alawite woman being abducted. But the Times’ on-the-ground investigation, which relied on anonymous victim testimony to protect survivors from further harm, has verified at least 13 separate kidnappings of Alawite women and girls. Of those confirmed cases, five survivors reported being gang-raped during their captivity, and two of those victims returned to their families after being released with unplanned pregnancies resulting from the abuse.

    The Times’ findings reinforce earlier independent documentation of the crisis. Human rights watchdog Amnesty International warned in July 2025 that it had corroborated credible reports of at least 36 comparable kidnappings, while the Syrian Feminist Lobby has recorded 80 Alawite women and girls as missing since the start of 2025.

    Survivors and observers have offered differing accounts of the motive behind the attacks. Multiple kidnapped women told investigators they experienced explicitly sectarian abuse, with their captors framing the attacks as revenge for the Alawite community’s historical alignment with the Assad regime. Other analysts have characterized many of the incidents as criminal enterprises driven by ransom demands. In one documented case, a family paid kidnappers $17,000 to secure their relative’s release, only for the abductors to keep the money and refuse to free her. Another 24-year-old survivor described being held for three weeks in a squalid, unkempt room, where she was repeatedly raped, beaten, had her head and eyebrows shaved as a humiliation, and cut multiple times with razor blades. She was ultimately freed only after her parents paid a large ransom.

    Tensions between Syria’s new ruling leadership and the Alawite community have remained at a fever pitch ever since Assad’s ouster and subsequent exile to Moscow. Just last year, small-scale armed attacks on transitional government security forces by suspected Assad loyalists in the coastal Alawite stronghold of Latakia escalated into large-scale brutal sectarian violence. A separate investigation by Reuters later traced the bulk of the resulting civilian deaths back to Damascus-based security officials, with at least 1,500 Alawite civilians killed in the crackdown.

    When contacted by *The New York Times* for comment on its latest findings, Interior Ministry spokesman Nour al-Din Baba claimed the government could not respond to the investigation unless the outlet turned over the full names of all interviewed victims. The newspaper declined this request, having granted formal anonymity to all survivors to protect them from retaliation. Baba reaffirmed the government’s stance, standing by an official November 2025 inquiry that examined 42 reported kidnappings and concluded only one of the cases was “authentic.”

    The roots of Syria’s ongoing sectarian tension stretch back to the start of the country’s 13-year civil conflict, which began in 2011 when Assad regime forces opened fire on peaceful pro-democracy protestors. The war ultimately left hundreds of thousands of Syrians dead and millions more displaced internally across the country and as refugees abroad. While a portion of the Alawite community initially backed the pro-democracy movement, widespread government persecution of dissent and growing fears over sectarian extremist groups within the opposition pushed most Alawites to align with Assad over the course of the war.

    Following Assad’s overthrow, Alawite community leaders have repeatedly called for international protection from targeted sectarian revenge attacks. The issue flared into public view this week during al-Sharaa’s official visit to London, where he was met by large protests organized by Alawite and Alevi (a related sect primarily found among Turkey’s Kurdish and Turkish communities) activists. Protesters accused al-Sharaa’s transitional government of enabling what they describe as systematic violence amounting to genocide against Alawite civilians.

    Maher Hamadouch, director of the UK-based Alawite advocacy group Syrian Coastal Society, argued that hosting al-Sharaa in the United Kingdom sends a dangerous message to the international community that accountability for human rights abuses can be ignored. “At a time when Syrians continue to endure displacement, insecurity, and marginalisation, allowing such a figure to enter the UK risks sending the wrong message: that accountability can be overlooked, and that those associated with violence can be normalised on the international stage,” Hamadouch said. His organization has called on the UK government to refuse to grant any public platform or political legitimacy to individuals linked to extremist activity or human rights violations. Hamadouch, who has previously defended Assad’s decades-long rule over Syria, added that al-Sharaa’s public record is “inseparable from violence, sectarianism and the repression of civilian populations in Syria.”

  • Guardians of the South China Sea

    Guardians of the South China Sea

    The official website operated by China Daily Information Co (CDIC) has laid out clear intellectual property guidelines for users and third-party platforms looking to reuse its content. All materials published across the site — including but not limited to written articles, photographic assets, and multimedia products — have been protected under a copyright regime first established in 1994, with all intellectual property rights retained exclusively by CDIC.

    Under the site’s terms of use, no content hosted on CDIC’s platforms may be republished or repurposed in any format without the explicit, written approval of the organization. Beyond copyright regulations, the site also includes a technical recommendation for end users: to ensure optimal browsing performance and layout rendering, visitors are encouraged to use displays with a minimum resolution of 1024*768 or higher.

    Additionally, the site lists its official regulatory credentials: it holds an online multimedia publishing license numbered 0108263 and a official registration number 130349. For audiences and stakeholders, the platform also outlines key navigation points for public engagement, including dedicated sections for learning more about China Daily’s operations, placing advertising inquiries, contacting the editorial and administrative teams, exploring open career opportunities, and checking open roles for expatriate workers, alongside links to follow CDIC’s social media channels.

  • People embrace spring across China

    People embrace spring across China

    Established with formal regulatory registration, China Daily’s official digital platform operates under clear intellectual property guidelines that structure how its content may be used across the internet. All material hosted on the site – including written articles, photographic assets, multimedia segments and other forms of digital content – has been held under exclusive copyright by China Daily Information Co (CDIC) since 1994, with all legal rights reserved.

    The company enforces a strict rule that no part of the site’s content may be republished, redistributed or repurposed in any format without explicit, prior written authorization granted by CDIC’s official management. Alongside its copyright policies, the platform also includes a technical recommendation for visitors: users will get the optimal browsing experience when accessing the site through a display configured to a resolution of 1024*768 or higher.

    Formal regulatory documentation for the site includes an online multimedia publishing license numbered 0108263 and an official registration number 130349. To help visitors engage more deeply with the organization, China Daily’s website also hosts a range of dedicated navigation sections covering key information: an introductory overview of the China Daily organization, details for brands interested in purchasing advertising space on the platform, official contact information for general inquiries, current open job vacancies, and specific employment resources for expatriate workers seeking opportunities with the outlet. Visitors are also invited to follow China Daily’s official content across multiple social media platforms to stay updated on the latest news and updates.

  • Russian strike on Ukraine market kills five, wounds 25

    Russian strike on Ukraine market kills five, wounds 25

    Amid a sharp escalation of daytime strikes across Ukraine, a Russian drone attack on a crowded covered market in the central Ukrainian city of Nikopol has left five civilians dead and 25 others injured, local officials confirmed Saturday. The assault, which occurred at 9:50 a.m. local time in the Dnipropetrovsk region, marked the latest shift in Russia’s long-running invasion tactics, after years of mostly nighttime bombardments that have given way to increasingly frequent daytime attacks in recent weeks.

    Regional governor Oleksandr Ganja announced via Telegram that the fatalities included three women and two men. Among the wounded, a 14-year-old girl was listed in critical condition, adding a devastating new layer of tragedy to the attack on the civilian commercial site. Ukraine’s State Emergency Service published on-the-scene images showing firefighters battling blazes and clearing rubble at the devastated market, illustrating the scale of destruction from the strike.

    The Nikopol attack was part of a broad wave of bombardment that stretched across multiple Ukrainian regions over a 24-hour period Saturday. In the northeastern frontline city of Kharkiv, six additional civilians were wounded in ongoing morning strikes. Overnight prior to the attack, the Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russia launched 286 drones across the country, with 260 successfully intercepted by Ukrainian air defenses. In the northern Sumy region, overnight strikes targeting residential neighborhoods and civilian infrastructure left 11 people injured, with emergency service images showing upper floors of a residential building fully engulfed in flames. Closer to the frontline in the southeastern city of Kherson, one additional woman was killed and two others wounded in a separate strike.

    Cross-border violence extended into Russian territory over the same period, as Russian officials reported multiple fatalities and injuries from incoming attacks. In Taganrog, a city in Russia’s southern Rostov region bordering Ukraine, a combined missile and drone strike killed one civilian and left four others with serious injuries, according to regional governor Yuri Slyussar. Slyussar also added that a foreign-flagged cargo ship anchored in the Sea of Azov caught fire after being struck by falling drone debris. In Russian-occupied Lugansk, the Moscow-backed local administration claimed a nighttime Ukrainian drone strike on railway infrastructure killed a family of three, including an eight-year-old child, in their private home.

    The latest wave of violence comes as peace negotiations between the two countries remain deadlocked, with diplomatic efforts hampered by ongoing conflict in the Middle East. On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made an unannounced visit to Istanbul for security talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a long-time mediator between Kyiv and Moscow. Earlier this week, Zelensky signaled Ukraine’s openness to a temporary truce during the Orthodox Easter holiday, but the Kremlin rejected the overture, stating it had not received any clearly formulated peace proposals.

    Kyiv has repeatedly accused Moscow of dragging out the conflict to seize additional Ukrainian territory, arguing the Kremlin has no genuine interest in a negotiated peace. For its part, Russia has said it prefers a long-term permanent settlement over a short-term ceasefire that would only pause hostilities. Negotiations mediated by the United States have been on hold since the outbreak of war in the Middle East diverted global diplomatic attention.

    In comments published Friday, Zelensky told reporters he had invited a U.S. negotiation delegation to travel to Kyiv to restart talks with Moscow, with a plan for the delegation to travel to the Russian capital after holding initial discussions in Ukraine. “If a three-party meeting doesn’t work out, we can proceed this way,” he explained. Amid the Middle East crisis, Ukraine has moved to position itself as a key partner for regional nations facing drone threats similar to those Russia has launched against Ukraine, pointing to shared experience countering Iranian-designed unmanned aerial vehicles. Just last week, Zelensky completed a tour of Gulf nations, signing new defense cooperation agreements with Qatar and Saudi Arabia. He also floated the idea that Ukraine could help re-open the Strait of Hormuz, whose frequent disruptions from Iranian retaliatory actions have shaken global energy markets, drawing on Kyiv’s experience clearing safe passage through the Black Sea after Russia’s initial blockade at the start of the invasion in 2022.

  • A fire at a gas lighter factory near Bangladesh’s capital kills 5 people

    A fire at a gas lighter factory near Bangladesh’s capital kills 5 people

    A deadly fire that erupted at a gas lighter production facility on the outskirts of Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka has claimed at least five lives, local authorities confirmed Saturday. The inferno ignited in the Kadamtali neighborhood of Keraniganj, a suburban area located just outside Dhaka’s city limits, according to Bangladesh’s Fire Service and Civil Defence department.

    In response to the emergency, seven fully-equipped firefighting teams were immediately dispatched to the site to battle the blaze. Fire department officials reported that the intense fire burned for multiple hours before crews were able to fully bring it under control by late Saturday.

    By the time the fire was contained, search and recovery teams had retrieved five bodies from the charred facility. None of the deceased had been immediately identified as of Saturday evening, as authorities work to notify next of kin and confirm identities through forensic processes.

    Officials added that the exact origin and cause of the fire remains unknown, and a full formal investigation has been launched to determine what sparked the blaze and whether any safety violations contributed to the fatal incident.

  • Floods, landslides triggered by heavy rain in Afghanistan leave 77 dead in 10 days, authorities say

    Floods, landslides triggered by heavy rain in Afghanistan leave 77 dead in 10 days, authorities say

    Over the past 10 days, extreme weather driven by heavy seasonal rainfall and intense storms has unleashed catastrophic damage across Afghanistan, leaving at least 77 people dead and 137 others injured, the country’s National Disaster Management Authority confirmed in an official statement Saturday. Of that fatal toll, 26 deaths have occurred in just the past 48 hours as floodwaters and landslides continued to sweep through vulnerable communities. The disaster has also left a wide trail of infrastructure and property destruction: 793 residential homes have been completely leveled, an additional 2,673 structures have sustained partial damage, and roughly 210 miles of public roadways have been ruined by mudslides and rushing water. More than 5,800 families across the country have been displaced or otherwise impacted, with critical local assets including agricultural plots, business properties, drinking water wells, and irrigation canals also suffering significant damage. Afghanistan’s already fragile transportation network has been hit particularly hard. Multiple key highways connecting the capital city of Kabul to outlying provinces have been closed due to damage, forcing travelers to take lengthy, detoured routes to reach their destinations. One of the most critical disruptions is along the Kabul-Jalalabad highway, the primary artery linking the capital to the Pakistani border and Afghanistan’s eastern provinces. The route was fully shut down early Thursday after a combination of flooding, rockslides, and landslides made it impassable, and maintenance crews have been working around the clock to clear debris and reopen the road, according to Ashraf Haqshinas, spokesperson for Afghanistan’s Public Works Ministry. The ministry has issued an urgent advisory warning all travelers to exercise extreme caution when moving through storm-affected regions. Another critical northern transportation route, the Salang Pass — a high-altitude mountain crossing in the Hindu Kush that connects Kabul to major northern cities including Kunduz and Mazar-e-Sharif — has also been closed by floodwaters. Already one of the world’s poorest nations, Afghanistan is ranked among the countries most vulnerable to the growing impacts of climate change and extreme weather events. This year alone, dozens of Afghans have already been killed by extreme weather events, following deadly flash floods and heavy snowfall that hit the country earlier this year. In 2024, spring flash floods claimed the lives of more than 300 people across the nation. Forecasters are warning that the crisis is far from over, with additional heavy rain predicted across all regions of Afghanistan in the coming days. The Disaster Management Authority has issued a public safety order urging residents to avoid riverbanks and low-lying areas known to be at high risk of flooding, as conditions remain unstable. The Associated Press contributor Elena Becatoros provided on-the-ground reporting from Kabul for this story.

  • UK police investigate after officers left guns outside mayor’s home

    UK police investigate after officers left guns outside mayor’s home

    A major security blunder has shaken London’s law enforcement community after armed protection officers assigned to guard Mayor Sadiq Khan accidentally left a cache of loaded weapons unsecured on a public street in the capital’s south end, triggering an urgent internal investigation. As of this week, five serving officers have been reassigned away from frontline protection duties while the probe into the incident moves forward, Metropolitan Police officials confirmed in an official statement released late Friday.

    The stockpile of weapons, which British tabloid newspaper The Sun has reported includes a Heckler & Koch MP5 semiautomatic carbine, a Glock service pistol, a Taser conducted energy weapon and a quantity of live ammunition, was discovered completely unattended by a local civilian couple earlier this Tuesday. The pair stumbled on the unmarked bag left along the curb before alerting police to the dangerous oversight.

    Jordan Griffiths, a scaffolder who was with his girlfriend when the bag was found, told reporters he was utterly stunned when he opened the bag and realized what it held. “I could not believe my eyes,” Griffiths said in an interview with The Sun. “I took some pictures as proof of what we had found, then I called the police right away and told them what I had. They turned up within a few minutes to collect the guns.”

    The Metropolitan Police’s Directorate of Professional Standards, the unit tasked with overseeing officer conduct and investigating procedural errors, is leading the review into how such a critical lapse in security protocol occurred. In the unit’s public statement, leaders acknowledged the public alarm the incident is likely to spark. “We are urgently reviewing the circumstances of this incident and recognize the concern it may cause,” the statement read. “At this stage it is believed the bag was misplaced by on-duty officers a short time before the member of the public located it.”

    A representative for Mayor Sadiq Khan said that while the incident does not pose an ongoing threat to the mayor, law enforcement leadership must take every possible measure to prevent similar dangerous oversights from happening in the future. “The police must now take all steps to ensure an incident like this never occurs again,” the spokesperson said.