Category: 2. World

Hong Kong
Reuters
 — 

Rains from Typhoon Wipha pounded Hong Kong on Sunday as the storm skirted southwards before making landfall on the coast of China’s Guangdong province, leaving fallen trees and scaffolding and sending over 200 people to seek refuge at temporary shelters.

Hong Kong’s weather authorities downgraded the typhoon warning to a No. 3 strong wind signal at 7:45 p.m.

Just after 4 p.m., they had lowered the typhoon signal in the Asian financial hub to 8 from the maximum of 10, which had been hoisted for nearly seven hours.

“Compared to previous typhoons like Mangkhut and Hato, which caused much more astonishing destruction, the impact this time was primarily limited to fallen trees and collapsed scaffolding,” Eastern District councilor Kenny Yuen told Reuters.

He was speaking in front of collapsed bamboo scaffolding that had fallen from a residential compound under renovation in North Point near the city’s harbor and been swept onto the road.

As the storm passed Hong Kong, more than 110 mm (4 inches) of rain fell within three hours and maximum wind gusts had exceeded 167 kph (103 mph) at some points.

Much of the rain concentrated on the northern region neighboring the mainland, the city’s observatory said.

In a statement, the government said 26 people sought treatment in public hospitals during the typhoon, while 253 flocked to its shelters, and 471 fallen trees were reported.

Wipha moved westward and made landfall on the coast of Taishan city in Guangdong at around 5:50 p.m., and then weakened to a severe tropical storm, China’s state-run CCTV reported.

Authorities in neighboring Macau, the world’s biggest gambling hub, also downgraded the typhoon signal to 8 from 10, warning of flooding in its inner harbor area and urging residents to stay safe, public broadcaster TDM said.

Hong Kong’s airport authority said 80,000 travelers were hit by the rescheduling of 400 flights forced by the typhoon.

Cathay Pacific Airways canceled all flights with Hong Kong airport between 5 a.m. and 6 p.m. on Sunday. It waived ticket-change fees and arranged for rebooking.

Most public transport in Hong Kong was suspended, including ferries amid high sea swells.

This satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows damage after Israeli airstrikes destroyed buildings at an Iranian missile base near Tabriz, Iran, on June 17, 2025.
| Photo Credit: AP

Exit polls from an election in Japan project the ruling coalition is set to lose its majority, putting the country’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba under immense political pressure.

Voters headed to the polls earlier on Sunday for the tightly-contested upper house election, being held amid public frustration over rising prices and the threat of US tariffs.

Having already lost its majority in Japan’s more powerful lower house, defeat for the coalition in the upper house would critically undermine its influence over policymaking and could prompt Ishiba to quit less than a year after he was elected.

The coalition needs 50 seats to retain control of the 248-seat upper chamber – with an exit poll from public broadcaster NHK projecting them to win between 32 and 51.

Earlier polls had indicated that Ishiba’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner Komeito were at risk of losing their majority, having already lost their majority in Japan’s more powerful lower house.

On Sunday, NHK projected it “may be difficult for the ruling coalition to maintain their majority”.

Despite the projection his coalition would lose the upper house, Ishiba told a news conference at his party’s headquarters in Tokyo that he intended to remain as prime minister.

“We are engaged in extremely critical tariff negotiations with the United States…we must never ruin these negotiations,” he said.

Half of the seats in the upper chamber were being voted on in Sunday’s election, with members elected for six-year terms.

If the coalition takes home fewer than 46 seats, it would mark its worst performance since it was formed in 1999.

Ishiba’s centre-right party has governed Japan almost continuously since 1955, albeit with frequent changes of leader.

The expected result underscores voters’ frustration with Ishiba, who has struggled to inspire confidence as Japan struggles against economic headwinds, a cost-of-living crisis and trade negotiations with the United States.

Many are also unhappy about inflation – particularly the price of rice – and a string of political scandals that have beleaguered the LDP in recent years.

The last three LDP premiers who lost a majority in the upper house stepped down within two months, and analysts had predicted that a significant loss in this election would yield a similar outcome.

This would open the field for a potential run at the leadership by other notable LDP members, including Sanae Takaichi, who finished second to Ishiba in last year’s leadership election; Takayuki Kobayashi, a former economic security minister; and Shinjiro Koizumi, the son of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

In any case, a change of leadership within the ruling party would almost certainly unleash political drama and destabilise Japan’s government at a pivotal moment in US-Japan trade negotiations.

Support for the ruling coalition appears to have been eroded by candidates from the small, right-leaning Sanseito party, which drew conservative votes with its “Japanese First”, anti-immigration rhetoric.

Sanseito first gained prominence on YouTube during the Covid-19 pandemic, spreading conspiracy theories about vaccinations and a cabal of global elites.

The fringe party’s nativist rhetoric widened its appeal ahead of Sunday’s vote, as policies regarding foreign residents and immigration became a focal point of many parties’ campaigns.

Going off the NHK exit polls, it is on course to win seven seats.

Famous for its isolationist culture and strict immigration policies, the island nation has experienced a record surge in both tourists and foreign residents in recent years.

The influx has further driven up prices for Japanese people and fuelled a sentiment among some that foreigners are taking advantage of the country, aggravating discontent.

Against that same backdrop, Ishiba last week launched a task force aimed at tackling “crimes or nuisance behaviours committed by some foreign nationals”, including those relating to immigration, land acquisitions and unpaid social insurance.

KAFR MALIK, Palestinian Territories: From his monitoring station on a remote hill in the occupied West Bank, water operator Subhil Olayan keeps watch over a lifeline for Palestinians, the Ein Samiyah spring.

So when Israeli settlers recently attacked the system of wells, pumps and pipelines he oversees, he knew the stakes.

“There is no life without water, of course,” he said, following the attack which temporarily cut off the water supply to nearby villages.

The spring, which feeds the pumping station, is the main or backup water source for some 110,000 people, according to the Palestinian company that manages it – making it one of the most vital in the West Bank, where water is in chronic short supply.

The attack is one of several recent incidents in which settlers have been accused of damaging, diverting or seizing control of Palestinian water sources.

“The settlers came and the first thing they did was break the pipeline. And when the pipeline is broken, we automatically have to stop pumping” water to nearby villages, some of which exclusively rely on the Ein Samiyah spring.

“The water just goes into the dirt, into the ground,” Olayan said, adding that workers immediately fixed the damage to resume water supply.

Just two days after the latest attack, Israeli settlers – some of them armed – splashed in pools just below the spring, while Olayan monitored water pressure and cameras from a distance.

His software showed normal pressure in the pipes pulling water from the wells and the large pipe carrying water up the hill to his village of Kafr Malik.

But he said maintenance teams dared not venture down to the pumping station out of fear for their safety.

Since the start of the war in Gaza, deadly settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank have become commonplace.

Last week, settlers beat a 20-year-old dual US citizen to death in the nearby village of Sinjil, prompting US ambassador Mike Huckabee to urge Israel to “aggressively investigate” the killing.

Issa Qassis, chairman on the board of the Jerusalem Water Undertaking, which manages the Ein Samiyah spring, said he viewed the attacks as a tool for Israeli land grabs and annexation.

“When you restrict water supply in certain areas, people simply move where water is available,” he said at a press conference.

“So in a plan to move people to other lands, water is the best and fastest way,” he said.

Since the start of the war in Gaza, several Israeli politicians and officials have become increasingly vocal in support of annexing the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.

Most prominent among them is Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, himself a settler, who said in November that 2025 would be the year Israel applies its sovereignty over the Palestinian territory.

Qassis accused Israel’s government of supporting settler attacks such as the one on Ein Samiyah.

The Israeli army said that soldiers were not aware of the incident in which pipes were damaged, “and therefore were unable to prevent it.”

The damage to Ein Samiyah’s water facilities was not an isolated incident.

In recent months, settlers in the nearby Jordan Valley took control of the Al-Auja spring by diverting its water from upstream, said Farhan Ghawanmeh, a representative of the Ras Ein Al Auja community.

He said two other springs in the area had also recently been taken over.

In Dura Al-Qaraa, another West Bank village that uses the Ein Samiyah spring as a back-up water source, residents are also concerned about increasingly long droughts and the way Israel regulates their water rights.

“For years now, no one has been planting because the water levels have decreased,” said Rafeaa Qasim, a member of the village council, citing lower rainfall causing the land to be “basically abandoned.”

Qasim said that though water shortages in the village have existed for 30 years, residents’ hands are tied in the face of this challenge.

“We have no options; digging a well is not allowed,” despite the presence of local water springs, he said, pointing to a well project that the UN and World Bank rejected due to Israeli law prohibiting drilling in the area.

The lands chosen for drilling sit in the West Bank’s Area C, which covers more than 60 percent of the territory and is under full Israeli control.

Israeli NGO B’Tselem reported in 2023 that the legal system led to sharp disparities in water access within the West Bank between Palestinians and Israelis.

Whereas nearly all residents of Israel and Israeli settlements have running water every day, only 36 percent of West Bank Palestinians do, the report said.

In Dura Al-Qaraa, Qasim fears for the future.

“Each year, the water decreases and the crisis grows – it’s not getting better, it’s getting worse.”

An uneasy calm returned to southern Syria’s Sweida province on Sunday, after fighters withdrew following a week of violence estimated to have killed more than 1,000 people.

Local people told news agencies the area was calm after Syria’s Islamist-led government said Bedouin fighters had left the predominantly Druze city.

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said Sweida had been experiencing “a cautious calm since the early hours of Sunday morning”, but warned of “the deterioration of the humanitarian situation” including a severe shortage of basic medical supplies.

The SOHR reported on Sunday that more than 1,000 people had been killed in armed clashes, bombardment, extrajudicial executions and Israeli airstrikes since the violence in Sweida province began a week ago. The United Nations migration agency said the number of people displaced by the violence had risen to more than 128,000.

One local resident, dentist Kenan Azzam, told Reuters on Sunday morning the situation was one of “a tense calm” but people were still struggling with a lack of water and electricity. “The hospitals are a disaster and out of service, and there are still so many dead and wounded,” he said.

Agence France-Presse correspondents on the outskirts of Sweida city reported there were no sounds of fighting, adding humanitarian convoys were preparing to enter the Druze-majority town.

The Syrian Arab Red Crescent humanitarian organisation announced it was sending 32 trucks to Sweida loaded with food, medicine, water, fuel and other aid, after the fighting left the province with power cuts and shortages. The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency said the health ministry was also sending a convoy of trucks.

The violence was triggered by a dispute between a Bedouin tribesman and a member of the Druze, who are a minority in wider Syria, which prompted government forces to intervene. Druze fighters resisted their entry into the province and violence escalated, turning into days of terror for local people. In response, Israel, which has vowed to protect the Druze community, launched airstrikes on Syria’s defence ministry in Damascus and dozens of military targets in the south of the country.

A ceasefire agreement between Syria and Israel had been announced by the US early on Saturday to prevent further Israeli military intervention.

Early on Sunday, the US stepped up calls for an end to the fighting. “All factions must immediately lay down their arms, cease hostilities, and abandon cycles of tribal vengeance,” the US special envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, wrote on X. “Syria stands at a critical juncture – peace and dialogue must prevail – and prevail now.”

A few hours earlier, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, issued a warning to Syria’s new government, whose forces have been accused by Druze factions of committing abuses, including summary executions, when they entered Sweida earlier in the week.

Rubio wrote on X: “If authorities in Damascus want to preserve any chance of achieving a unified, inclusive and peaceful Syria free of Isis [Islamic State] and of Iranian control they must help end this calamity by using their security forces to prevent Isis and any other violent jihadists from entering the area and carrying out massacres. And they must hold accountable and bring to justice anyone guilty of atrocities including those in their own ranks.”

Two members of the government forces posted sectarian hate speech against Druze, according to private social media seen by the Guardian’s correspondent in Beirut.

One posted a video of him and two other soldiers driving through Sweida laughing as he said: “We are on our way to distribute aid,” while brandishing a machete to the camera. He filmed himself inside a house in Sweida ripping a picture of Druze spiritual leaders off a wall and trampling it with his boots.

The last week has been the worst outbreak of violence since March, when 1,500 mostly Alawite citizens were massacred in revenge for a failed attack by supporters of the ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad, who came from the sect.

The second round of sectarian violence has tempered international hopes for the new Syrian government, which came to power last December after the sudden fall of the Assad regime. Western governments, the US, the UK and the EU, lifted sanctions in an effort to aid Syria’s battered economy and economic reconstruction, after 13 years of civil war and repression by the Assad regime, which killed more than half a million people, leaving 90% of the population in poverty.

The EU said on Saturday it was “appalled by the hundreds of victims” of the recent violence, including that “reportedly perpetrated by several armed groups against unarmed civilians”. In a statement, the EU foreign service urged “all parties to immediately stop all acts of violence, to protect all civilians without distinction, and to take immediate steps to prevent incitement and sectarian discourse”.

The EU also called on “Israel and all other foreign actors to fully respect Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, on Saturday announced a ceasefire in Sweida and renewed his promise to protect Syria’s ethnic and religious minorities.

Sharaa, who was more sympathetic to the Bedouins, had tried to appeal to the Druze community while remaining critical of the militias. He later urged the Bedouins to leave the city, saying they “cannot replace the role of the state in handling the country’s affairs and restoring security”.

The interior ministry said overnight that Sweida city was “evacuated of all tribal fighters, and clashes within the city’s neighbourhoods were halted”.

A spokesperson for Syria’s tribal and clan council told Al Jazeera late on Saturday that fighters had left the city “in response to the call of the presidency and the terms of the agreement”.

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s ruling coalition is likely to lose its majority in the upper house, exit polls showed after Sunday’s election, potentially heralding political turmoil as a tariff deadline with the United States looms.

While the ballot does not directly determine whether Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s shaky minority government falls, it heaps pressure on the embattled leader who also lost control of the more powerful lower house in October.

Ishiba’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and coalition partner Komeito needed 50 seats to retain control of the 248-seat upper chamber in an election where half the seats were up for grabs. They are forecast to secure 32 to 51 seats, the exit poll by public broadcaster NHK showed.

Other broadcasters forecast the ruling coalition would hold 41-43 seats. If the coalition holds less than 46 seats, it would mark its worst result since the coalition was formed in 1999.

That comes on top of its worst showing in 15 years in October’s lower house election.

That has left Ishiba vulnerable to no-confidence motions that could topple his administration and trigger a fresh general election.

Opposition parties advocating for tax cuts and increased welfare spending look set to make gains, the exit polls show, with rising consumer prices – particularly a jump in the cost of the staple rice – a key issue for voters.

“The LDP was largely playing defence in this election, being on the wrong side of a key voter issue,” said David Boling, a director at consulting firm Eurasia Group.

“Polls show that most households want a cut to the consumption tax to address inflation, something that the LDP opposes. Opposition parties seized on it and hammered that message home.”

The LDP have been urging for fiscal restraint, with one eye on a very jittery government bond market, as investors worry about Japan’s ability to refinance the world’s largest debt pile.

Adding to the anxiety around the world’s fourth largest economy, Japan faces a deadline of August 1 to strike a trade deal with the United States or face punishing tariffs in its largest export market.

A “cautious calm” has returned to the Syrian city of Suweida after a week of deadly tribal clashes between Druze fighters, Bedouin gunmen and government forces, a UK-based monitoring group has said.

Residents reported that fighting stopped on Sunday as Syria’s Islamist-led government declared the Bedouins had withdrawn from the predominantly Druze city “after days of bloody battles and chaos”, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said.

It followed a ceasefire announced by Syria’s president on Saturday, which did not quell fighting straight away.

More than 1,000 people have been killed in the clashes and there is now a severe shortage of medical supplies in the city, the SOHR added.

At least 128,000 people have been displaced by the violence, the United Nations migration agency said on Sunday.

“Activists have reported that Suweida has been experiencing a cautious calm since the early hours of Sunday morning,” the SOHR said.

“Meanwhile, the Syrian government security forces closed roads leading to Suweida to tribes, using soil barriers to prevent vehicles from crossing, except for ambulances, in a move to contain tensions.”

The SOHR added that the city remains under the control of local Druze fighters, while tribal gunmen have withdrawn from several areas within the province.

Long-running tensions between Druze and Bedouin tribes erupted into deadly sectarian clashes a week ago, after the abduction of a Druze merchant on the road to the capital Damascus.

Interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government responded by deploying forces to the city.

Both Druze and Bedouin fighters have been accused of atrocities over the past seven days, as well as members of the security forces and individuals affiliated with the interim government.

On Saturday, al-Sharaa announced a ceasefire and sent security forces to Suweida to end the fighting.

It has been reported that Druze fighters pushed Bedouin gunmen out of the city on Saturday evening – but violence continued in other parts of the province. This has not been verified by the BBC.

On Sunday morning, fighting could not be heard, AFP correspondents near Suweida reported.

Meanwhile, the SOHR warned that the humanitarian situation in the city was worsening, pointing to a “severe shortage” of basic medical supplies.

An unnamed resident said that aid was needed immediately, telling the Reuters news agency: “The smell of corpses is spread throughout the national hospital.”

Kenan Azzam, a local dentist speaking as the city was gripped by what he called a “tense calm”, said the hospitals were “a disaster and out of service”.

A Suweida medic told AFP that “no relief or medical assistance” had entered the city before Sunday.