JAPAN: Soldiers and emergency workers combed through a badly damaged shopping mall and collapsed houses looking for trapped survivors today after a powerful earthquake that killed at least 18 people in south-west Japan.

The magnitude 7.1 earthquake that hit a day earlier in the Kumamoto area on the southern main island of Kyushu, also left at least 62 people injured, six of them seriously, the prefectural government said.

The tally has been steadily growing, fanning fears it may continue to rise.

UNITED STATES: The United States Federal Communications Commission is banning imports of new foreign-made humanoid robots and power inverters, citing national security risks, in a move that targets China.

The measures are likely to sour relations with Beijing ahead of a planned US visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to meet with his US counterpart Donald Trump in September.

China leads the global market for humanoid robots with an estimated market share of roughly 85 per cent.

RUSSIA: Russia’s main domestic security agency said today that Pavel Durov, founder and owner of the messaging app Telegram, has been charged with aiding terrorism and put on an international wanted list.

The agency accused Ukrainian security services of using a dating chatbot on Telegram to recruit Russians for “sabotage and terrorist activities.”

GHANA: A major fault on Ghana’s national power grid has left the capital Accra, the commercial hub of Kumasi and much of the country’s north without electricity today.

Several power plants across Ghana were forced to shut down in the early hours of Wednesday morning, the state-run power distribution company said.