BOSNIA
Massive floods kill 30
The heaviest rains in more than a century have sparked floods across the country, Serbia and Croatia, claiming at least 30 lives and leading to the evacuation so far of more than 16,000 from flooded villages, officials said on Saturday. “More than 20 corpses have so far been brought to the city’s morgue,” Doboj Mayor Obren Petrovic told FTV public broadcaster. Another victim drowned in the town of Samac, police chief Gojko Vasic was quoted by Fena news agency as saying. And the bodies of two elderly women were found in the town of Maglaj after the waters withdrew, the civil protection chief there told reporters. Four flood victims had been found in Bosnia and three in Serbia on Friday. And the death toll could rise.
GUINEA-BISSAU
Country goes to polls
Long lines formed yesterday outside polling stations for a presidential run-off in a key test for a fragile state plagued by powerful cocaine cartels and upended in a military coup two years ago. Already mired in poverty, the west African nation has been stagnating since 2012 under the rule of a transitional government backed by its all-powerful military, with the economy anemic and drug trafficking fueling corruption. “I would like every Bissau-Guinean to get up very early to go vote massively to show that Guinea-Bissau is capable of turning the page definitively on instability,” election commission chairman Augusto Mendes said on Saturday. Former finance minister Jose Mario Vaz won the first round on April 13 — but failed to get an outright majority and faces runner-up Nuno Gomes Nabiam in the run-off.
FRANCE
Strauss-Kahn film premieres
It was the talk of the town. Abel Ferrara’s highly-anticipated movie inspired by the sordid sex scandal that brought down former IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn got its world premiere on Saturday in Cannes. Far from being shown in one of the big, plush theaters in the festival hall, Weclome to New York, starring Gerard Depardieu as a man with striking similarities to Strauss-Kahn, whose alleged 2011 sexual assault on a New York hotel maid shook the world, was screened in a small, local cinema. The premiere of the film by US director Ferrara during the Cannes Film Festival had caused a scrum among film buffs and journalists alike, all keen to get hold of one of the 500 seats available.
NORWAY
Human zoo challenges image
Displaying 80 people in a human zoo in Oslo’s most elegant park, two artists hope their “Congo Village” display will help erase what they say is the public’s collective amnesia about racism. Re-enacting a similar display from 1914, Lars Cuznor and Mohamed Ali Fadlabi say the country, one of the richest nations in the world, with a reputation for tolerance, has only suppressed its intolerance, especially around the time of Saturday’s national day. The Congo Village — which 100 years ago displayed African tribes, attracting 1.4 million visitors over four months — will this time exhibit volunteers taking turns living on show in makeshift huts, resembling a traditional sub-Saharan village. “Norwegians have been propagating this self-image of a post-racial society and it’s been internalized that it’s a good, tolerant society,” Swedish-Canadian Cuznor said on Friday. “It’s great branding and it’s self perpetuating, but it’s a false image.”
BRAZIL
Prisoners take hostages
Inmates in a prison in the northeastern state of Sergipe took 122 hostages on Saturday — nearly all of them visiting inmate relatives, a prison official said. Prison spokeswoman Sandra Melo said that there were four prison guards among the hostages at the Advogado Jacinto Filho prison in the city of Aracaju, the state capital. “The riot is only in one wing of the prison,” said Melo, a spokesperson for Reviver, the private company that comanages the prison along with the state of Sergipe. She said that police had been called in, the situation had calmed down, and that negotiations for the release of the hostages would resume early yesterday.
MEXICO
Drug baron captured
The government on Saturday said it had captured the leader of a drug gang allied with a dangerous cartel in the violent southwestern state of Guerrero. Police arrested Leonor Nava, boss of Los Rojos (The Reds) in Tecpan de Galeana, northwest of the beach resort of Acapulco, the biggest city in Guerrero, National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido told a news conference. Known as “El Tigre” (the tiger), Nava is suspected of trafficking drugs to the US, extortion and kidnapping. He is also being investigated in connection with the murder of eight army soldiers in December 2008, Rubido said. Los Rojos are allies of the Beltran Leyva drug cartel, which fractured into several groups after its leader, Arturo Beltran Leyva, was killed by marines in 2009.
UNITED STATES
Cat gets baseball invite
Tara, the California cat that became a YouTube sensation after being caught on video saving the son of its owners from a dog attack, has been invited to “throw” the first pitch at a minor league baseball game, Bakersfield Blaze officials said on Friday. Video footage showed a dog dragging four-year-old Jeremy Triantafilo from his tricycle in a driveway in Bakersfield. Tara ran to the rescue, broadsided the dog, and chased it away from the child. She then returned to the boy. The local minor league baseball team has invited the cat, assisted by the Triantafilo family, to throw the first pitch at a May 20 game. “We will be attempting to have her throw out the first pitch. Now, how that goes off, we’ll see, but the idea is to have her pitch the ball,” Blaze assistant general manager Philip Guiry said. Jeremy will also pitch a ball.
HAITI
Help needed over killing
Members of a church said on Saturday that a US missionary slain in his home last week was well liked and called on police to find his killer. George Knoop, 77, was stabbed multiple times on Tuesday last week in the Delmas section of the capital. The missionary from Chicago was alone at the time and apparently knew his assailant, according to friends and police. Detectives have taken two statements, but no arrests have been made in the case and the motive for Knoop’s murder is still not known, said John Munsell, chairman of the board for the Quisqueya Chapel where Knoop worked. After he was stabbed, Knoop called a security guard who worked at the church and cried for help. Munsell said Knoop may have called the guard because it was the first number he could reach in his cellphone. Church members then went to Knoop’s home and he was found on the floor. Police later recovered the knife.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the