SURINAME
Seven killed in mine
Seven men were killed and two seriously injured when the sand walls of a gold mine collapsed at Money Hill, about 150km southeast of the capital, Paramaribo, police said on Sunday. Police inspector Bertrand Riedewald said the accident occurred late on Saturday when a mudslide eroded the open pit’s 20m walls and buried the miners, who were mainly from the indigenous Maroon community. “Three miners were able to escape during the collapsing, while two survivors got severely injured and were taken for medical treatment to the hospital,” Riedewald said. The mine belongs to the Surgold concession, a joint venture between US-based multinationals Alcoa and Newmont. The seven bodies were recovered early on Sunday, after the removal of dirt and debris.
IRAQ
TV reporter shot to death
Police say gunmen stormed the home of a TV reporter and shot him to death in front of his parents in Mosul. Eighteen-year-old Mazin Mardan was the third employee of the al-Mousiliyah satellite channel to be killed by insurgents. A hospital official in the city confirmed the slaying. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media. Reporters Without Borders says at least 230 media workers have been killed in the country since 2003.
UNITED STATES
Mrs Bush not high on Palin
Former first lady Barbara Bush doesn’t appear to think much of Sarah Palin’s White House aspirations, saying the former Alaska governor should stick to her home state. In an interview with CNN’s Larry King that was to air yesterday, Bush said she sat next to Palin once and “thought she was beautiful.” The outspoken wife of former president George H.W. Bush said Palin, who is considering a presidential run in 2012, seems “very happy in Alaska” but then added, “I hope she’ll stay there.”
UNITED STATES
St Louis heads wrong list
A national study found that St Louis overtook Camden, New Jersey, as the nation’s most dangerous city last year. The study released on Sunday by CQ Press found St Louis had 2,070.1 violent crimes per 100,000 residents, compared with a national average of 429.4. That helped St Louis beat out Camden, which topped last year’s list and was the most dangerous city for 2003 and 2004. Detroit, Flint, Michigan, and Oakland, California, rounded out the top five. For the second straight year, the safest city with more than 75,000 residents was Colonie, New York. The annual rankings are based on population figures and crime data compiled by the FBI.
MEXICO
Former governor killed
A group of gunmen opened fire on former Colima state governor Silverio Cavazos outside his home on Sunday, killing him in an attack that also wounded his wife, state authorities said. Rescue workers rushed to the scene after the gunmen shot at the couple as they left their home, the state prosecutor’s office said. They were taken to hospital where Cavazos died and his wife was in serious condition, it added. Cavazos finished his gubernatorial term in the Pacific coast state a year ago. President Felipe Calderon voiced a “strong condemnation” of the murder, in a statement from his office. Politicians current and former increasingly have been targeted. A candidate for governor of Tamaulipas state also was slain in June while campaigning. And at least 14 mayors have been murdered this year.
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees