TheTimeKnife

HOPKINSVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Another round of torrential rain and flash flooding was expected to hit Saturday in parts of the South and Midwest already heavily waterlogged by days of severe storms that in some cases spawned deadly tornadoes.

Round after round of heavy rains have pounded the central U.S., leading to rapidly rising waterways and prompting a series of flash flood emergencies Friday night in Missouri, Texas and Arkansas. Meanwhile, many communities were still reeling from tornadoes that destroyed entire neighborhoods and killed at least seven people earlier this week.

In Frankfort, Kentucky, floodwaters swept a 9-year-old boy away while he was walking to a school bus stop Friday morning, Gov. Andy Beshear said on social media. Officials said Gabriel Andrews’ body was found about a half-mile from where he went missing.

Myanmar's state media said the death toll from the earthquake had reached 3,354 on Saturday.

UN aid chief Tom Fletcher arrived in Mandalay city near the epicenter of the earthquake, and lauded humanitarian and community organizations who have been doing relief work. "The UN is here to help - the world must rally behind the people of Myanmar," he posted on X on Saturday.

On Friday, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said the junta was restricting aid to regions where people were against its rule.

Rescue missions from China, Russia, India and other Asian and Western nations have been working to help Myanmar deal with the aftermath of the quake. The US, which usually leads aid efforts in such situations belatedly sent a team on Friday.

Share prices fell sharply for a second day on Friday in Asia, and futures market trading indicated that American share prices might soon tumble further as well, as worries spread about the economic effect of President Trump’s broad tariffs.

The Nikkei 225 Index in Japan was down 3.8 percent. That followed a 2.8 percent drop on Thursday after Mr. Trump announced a far-reaching revision of American tariffs that included an extra 24 percent on goods from Japan.

In South Korea, the Kospi Index fell 1.7 percent on Friday after dipping 0.8 percent the prior day. President Trump this week put a 26 percent tariff on imports from South Korea.

American share prices have fallen faster than those in other markets since Mr. Trump’s inauguration, and their underperformance appeared set to continue on Friday. Futures on the S&P 500 were down 2.2 percent on Friday.

The S&P 500 suffered its worst single-day loss since 2020 on Thursday, plummeting 4.8 percent.

The administration of President Donald Trump has declared South African Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool a persona non grata in the United States.

In a social media post on Friday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Rasool was “no longer welcome in our great country”.

“Ebrahim Rasool is a race-baiting politician who hates America and hates POTUS,” Rubio wrote, using the acronym for President of the United States.

“We have nothing to discuss with him and so he is considered PERSONA NON GRATA.”

Rubio linked his remarks to an article by the right-wing media outlet Breitbart, wherein Rasool is quoted as saying Trump mobilised a “supremacist instinct” and “white victimhood” as a “dog whistle” during the 2024 elections.

Chinese stocks jumped on Friday after Beijing promised new measures to help consumers, defying a Wall Street sell-off and pushing the country’s main stock index into positive territory for the year.

Chinese authorities announced late on Thursday that they would hold a press conference on “boosting consumption” on Monday. This helped push the country’s CSI 300 benchmark 2.4 per cent higher. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index climbed 2.2 per cent.

The CSI 300 is up 1.8 per cent year to date and the Hang Seng has gained 19.4 per cent since the start of the year, while Wall Street’s S&P 500 is down 6.1 per cent.

An arcane budgetary sleight of hand is poised to take central stage in the US debate over tax and spending cuts. Magic tricks can at least entertain, and sometimes even inspire awe. But the budget trick is, in the words of Congressman David Schweikert, oversight chief for the tax-writing House ways and means committee, just “a fraud”.

Most of the tax cuts passed by Republicans during President Donald Trump’s first term, in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA), which raised deficits by $1.7tn, are set to expire at the end of 2025. Republicans placed the time bomb in their own legislation to reduce the reported cost of the package — and how much they could be accused of adding to the national debt. The expiry was also necessary to clear the procedural hurdle for “reconciliation”, which allows new budget-related laws to avoid a filibuster in the Senate only if they would do nothing to increase deficits after the first 10 years.

But now the bomb has exploded. Without new legislation, current law requires tax rates to return to their pre-TCJA levels. Maintaining the current policy would cost nearly $5tn in lost revenue over the next 10 years.

The Trump administration is slashing long-standing areas of research funded by the National Institutes of Health, claiming they no longer align with the agency's priorities.

The latest target?

Millions of dollars in NIH grants for studying vaccine hesitancy and how to improve immunization levels. It's work that's particularly relevant as a measles outbreak grips the Southwest amidst diminishing vaccination rates.

In recent weeks, scientists around the country have begun receiving letters stating their existing grants — money already awarded to them in a competitive process — were being cut.

Myanmar's junta chief, Min Aung Hlaing, visited Moscow for high-level talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week.

It was Min Aung Hlaing's fourth visit to Russia since he took power in a 2021 coup, but last week's visit was the first official visit at the invitation of Putin, who hailed his ties with the junta, and lauded a 40% increase in bilateral trade last year.

Both Myanmar's junta and Russia are subject to international sanctions over human rights violations committed during both countries' respective ongoing wars.

Zachary Abuza, a professor at the National War College in Washington who focuses on Southeast Asian politics, called the talks a "diplomatic win" for the junta leader, but downplayed the significance of the nuclear energy agreement.

"There have been four such agreements before, and none have been implemented, not even close. Yes, the junta is facing acute energy shortages, but the regime has neither the security over its territory, the skilled manpower, or finances for even a small modular reactor," he told DW.

As part of the exchange in Moscow, Myanmar agreed to open two new consulates in St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk. Myanmar and Russia also signed an agreement for the construction of a small-scale nuclear plant in Myanmar.

The Bosnian Prosecutor’s Office has ordered police to arrest Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik and two of his aides for what it called an attack on the constitutional order.

The decision taken on Wednesday comes after Dodik, along with Prime Minister Radovan Viskovic and Parliament Speaker Nenad Stevandic, failed to answer two summons for questioning.

A federal appeals court has tossed an Amarillo woman's death sentence after it found that local prosecutors had failed to reveal that their primary trial witness was a paid informant.

With a 2-1 decision, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals last week sent Brittany Marlowe Holberg's 1998 murder conviction back down to the trial court to decide how to proceed.

Holberg has been on death row for 27 years. In securing her conviction in 1998, Randall County prosecutors heavily relied on testimony from a jail inmate who was working as a confidential informant for the City of Amarillo police. That informant recanted her testimony in 2011, but neither a Texas Court of Criminal Appeals or a federal district court found that prosecutors had violated Holberg's constitutional right to a fair trial.

Portugal could be heading to its third general election in three years after the centre-right government of Prime Minister Luis Montenegro lost a vote of confidence on Tuesday evening, March 11. The vote was called over conflict-of-interest accusations against Montenegro involving a family business. A last-minute attempt to avoid the vote failed when terms could not be agreed for setting up a mooted parliamentary inquiry.

The government "tried everything right up to the last minute to avoid snap elections," Montenegro said when leaving parliament.

The Socialist Party (PS), the main opposition party, and the far-right Chega party both voted to bring down the government, and the country's president Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa must now decide whether to dissolve the assembly and call new elections.

Armed militants in Pakistan's Balochistan region have attacked a train carrying more than 400 passengers and taken a number of them hostage, military sources told the BBC on Tuesday.

The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) fired at the Jaffar Express Train as it travelled from Quetta to Peshawar.

The separatist group said it had bombed the track before storming the train in the remote Sibi district, claiming the train was under its control.

At least 16 militants have been killed and 100 passengers were freed as of Wednesday morning, local media reported. The BBC has not been able to independently verify those figures.

Among those released are 17 injured passengers, who have been admitted to hospital for treatment.

The militants had threatened to kill hostages if authorities did not release Baloch political prisoners within 48 hours, according to local reports.

The rescue operation is ongoing.