JAPAN: Record-breaking rainfall that pounded cities east of Tokyo today flooded roads and dozens of homes, stranded thousands of people, caused power outages and left at least four people dead and one missing.

Thousands more people were stuck overnight at the Narita airport serving the Tokyo region, with trains out of the area stopped.

AFGHANISTAN: The mayor for Afghanistan’s north-east Badakhshan province has been killed in an explosion, officials said, the second high-ranking official of the Taliban administration to be the target of deadly attacks in the region in the past two weeks.

Habib Ur Rahman Mansoor was killed in the blast in the provincial capital of Faizabad late on Thursday while he was in his vehicle, the Interior Ministry said, without providing further details on the attack.

NIGER: An American missionary who was kidnapped in Niger in October has been released, his organisation said today.

Kevin Rideout “is in good health in the care of US officials,” SIM International said in a statement.

Mr Rideout was kidnapped in Niger’s capital, Niamey, on October 21 by three armed individuals.

No armed group claimed responsibility for the abduction.

BANGLADESH: A suspected gas leak at a shipbreaking yard in south-east Bangladesh killed at least eight people today during the dismantling of a decommissioned ship, police said.

Several others were injured at the Ferdous Steel Ship Breaking Yard in the Sitakunda area, police inspector Mohammed Alamgir said.

Senior government factory inspection official Mahbubul Hasan said the workers died due to toxic gas emissions from the ship, according to the Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha agency.