LONDON (Dispatches) -- Vladimir Putin will visit two small former Soviet states in central Asia this week, Russian state television reported, in what would be the Russian leader’s first known trip abroad since ordering the military operation in Ukraine.

The war has led to severe financial sanctions from the West, which Putin says are a reason to build stronger trade ties with other powers such as China, India and Iran. Pavel Zarubin, the Kremlin correspondent of the Rossiya 1 state television station, said Putin would visit Tajikistan and Turkmenistan and then meet Indonesian President Joko Widodo for talks in Moscow. In Dushanbe, Putin will meet Tajik President Imomali Rakhmon, a close Russian ally and the longest-serving ruler of a former Soviet state. In Ashgabat, he will attend a summit of Caspian nations including the leaders of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Iran and Turkmenistan, Zarubin said.

 

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TOKYO (AP) — People in Tokyo are sweating it out as the government warns of possible power shortages and urges greater efforts to conserve energy while Japan endures unseasonably hot temperatures. Weather officials announced the earliest end to the annual summer rainy season since the Japan Meteorological Agency began keeping records in 1951. The rains usually temper the summer heat, often well into July. The sultry temperatures are adding to worries over power shortages over the summer. Some coal-fired plants serving the region were taken offline for repairs after a strong earthquake in mid-March. The government warned of potential problems in late March, though no actual outages occurred. The economy and industry ministry urged people living in the region serviced by the Tokyo Electric Power Co. to conserve power in the afternoons, especially when demand peaks at 4-5 p.m.

 

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QUITO (AFP) -- At least 21 teenagers died over the weekend after a night out at a township tavern in South Africa, officials said. Although the cause of the deaths is still unclear, local officials and politicians said they feared this might have been a case of under-age drinking that went tragically wrong. The provincial government of Eastern Cape said eight girls and 13 boys had died at the tavern, in a residential area called Scenery Park. Seventeen were found dead at the scene, while the rest died in hospital. Empty bottles of alcohol, wigs and even a pastel purple “Happy Birthday” sash were found strewn on the dusty street outside the double-storey Enyobeni Tavern, said Unathi Binqose, a safety government official who arrived at the scene at dawn. Many of the victims are thought to have been students celebrating the end of their high-school exams on Saturday night, officials said.

 

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KARACHI (Reuters) -- Pakistan’s aviation regulator has made masks mandatory on domestic flights given a gradual rise in the number of COVID-19 cases across the country, it said a statement. The order comes a day after Pakistan’s biggest city, Karachi, reported that its COVID-19 positivity ratio, or the rate of positive cases out of all tests conducted, rose to 21 percent compared with a national rate of 2.8 percent. “With immediate effect, mask wearing will be mandatory onboard domestic flights,” the Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority (PCAA) said in the statement late on Sunday. Pakistan has had very few COVID cases over recent months and had done away with almost all precautions. But over the past 24 hours, the national COVID positivity ratio had risen to 2.85 percent with 382 positive cases and two deaths, according to data released on Monday by the National Institute of Health, Islamabad (NIH).

 

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BERLIN (AP) — A knife-wielding attacker stabbed several people in a shelter for asylum-seekers in southern Germany, killing one man and wounding at least five people, German news agency dpa reported Monday. The attacker, reportedly a resident of the shelter, is said to have knocked on the doors of the rooms of the building in Kressbronn, on Lake Constance, on Sunday evening. When residents opened, he stabbed them, dpa reported. One man died of his injuries right away, one seriously injured man was flown to a hospital, and four other injured people were taken to the hospital by ambulance. It was not immediately clear whether other people were also wounded. Police officers detained a 31-year-old man, whose name was not given in line with German privacy policy, in front of the asylum-seekers’ shelter. Forensic specialists were investigating the scene on Monday morning. 

 

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PRAGUE (AP) — A bullet train collided with an engine in a train station in northeastern Czech Republic Monday, killing one person and injuring five. Czech Railways said the accident took place early in the morning in the town of Bohumin, shortly after the departure of the Pendolino train for Prague. The driver of the bullet train was killed, while four Czech Railways employees on the engine and one on the train were injured. It was unclear whether the engine was moving at the time of the head-on crash. Rescuers said no passengers were injured. The Rail Safety Inspection Office, an agency that investigates train crashes, said the high-speed train was on the wrong line at the time of the crash, and the accident might have been caused by human error.