Powerful typhoon kills 9 in S. China
Compiled from news services
BEIJING — The death toll from Typhoon Hato has risen to at least nine as the most powerful storm to hit the southern China region around Hong Kong in more than half a century barreled west Thursday and was losing strength.
Macau said five people were killed in the gambling enclave, including two men found overnight in a parking garage. Another 153 were listed as injured amid extensive flooding, power outages, and the smashing of doors and windows by the high winds and driving rain.
China’s official Xinhua News Agency said four more people were killed in the neighboring province of Guangdong and one person remains missing. Hato roared into the area on Wednesday with winds of up to 99 miles per hour.
Journalist confirmed dead
COPENHAGEN,Denmark — Copenhagen police announced on Wednesday that a torso found this week in local waters was that of Kim Wall, a Swedish freelance journalist who disappeared after boarding a Danish inventor’s submarine.
The announcement, which followed DNA tests of samples from the torso, turned what had started as a missing-persons case into what Christian Jensen, editor-in-chief of Politiken, Denmark’s largest daily, called “the most spectacular murder case in Danish history.”
The inventor, Peter Madsen, 46, has been held on preliminary charges of involuntary manslaughter. It is not yet known how Ms. Wall, 30, died, nor how or why her body was dismembered.
Her torso — missing its arms, legs and head — was found by a cyclist on the edge of Amager Island on Monday afternoon, near where the submarine sank on Aug. 11.
Syria war worries Israel
As world powers seek an endgame to Syria’s six-year war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants a seat at the table.
Israel says Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah are working to entrench themselves militarily in neighboring Syria, where they’re backing Syrian government troops, and it’s rattled that a recent truce deal brokered by Russia and the U.S. doesn’t block that. Israel’s fear that Tehran is establishing launchpads in Syria for future attacks against the Jewish state dominated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s talks Wednesday with President Vladimir Putin in Russia.
Netherlands terror threat
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Police in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam detained the driver of a van with Spanish license plates and a number of gas tanks inside after a concert by an American rock band, AllahLas, was cancelled Wednesday night following a threat, the city’s mayor said.
A Spanish counterterrorism official said the van is not connected to the attacks that killed 15 people in Spain last week.
TheDutch terror threat level, which is at level four of afive-step scale, remained unchanged,Lodewijk Hekking,a spokesman for the country’scounterterror chief toldthe AP in a text message.
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The Gupta family is selling its assets in South Africa to little-known companies as their access to banking facilities dries up and allegations intensify that they used their friendship with President Jacob Zuma to wield undue influence over his administration. ... The European Union’s highest court could still carry weight in Britain after Brexit even though the country will leave its “direct jurisdiction,” the U.K. government said Wednesday.