THAILAND
Bangkok floods spread
Floodwaters are moving closer to the heart of the capital, with officials warning that no major barriers are standing in the way to prevent the water from reaching downtown Bangkok. City spokesman Jate Sopitpongstorn said yesterday that workers have finished building a massive flood wall in hopes of diverting some of the mass of water still piled up in northern Bangkok. However, he said the city would have to rely on its existing drainage system to fight water that was already less than 10km from the central business district.
IRAQ
Bombs target Sahwa leader
Four bombs targeting the home of an Iraqi anti-al-Qaeda militia leader killed at least three people and wounded several north of Baghdad yesterday, security officials said. The bomb blasts struck the home of Yassin Issa Daud, a leader of Sahwa militia in Taji at about 6:30am, Taji police Captain Ahmed Fahad said. The explosions killed three people, including Daud’s brother and wife, and wounded six other people, Fahad said, adding Daud was not in his home at the time of the attack. Officials from the interior and defence ministries put the toll at four killed and 11 wounded. “Four people were killed and 11 others wounded by the explosion of four roadside bombs that targeted the house of a Sahwa leader in Taji,” the interior ministry official said.
SOUTH AFRICA
Lions shot after attacks
Wildlife workers drove through the night across sand and dunes, desperate to save two lions who had strayed from a vast park and killed a farmer’s cow. The farmer had already killed a third lion. South African National Parks spokeswoman Henriette Engelbrecht on Wednesday said that instead of saving the big cats, a park researcher ended up rescuing a ranger, pulling him free and leaving the ranger’s boot in the lion’s jaws. The two lions were then shot. Engelbrecht says Tuesday’s events near the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park left two rangers and a researcher “very disappointed and very shocked.” She says the men had never before met with lions bold enough to attack people in a vehicle.
KENYA
Murder probe restarted
British police say a team of detectives has traveled to Kenya to further investigate the murder of a British woman more than 20 years ago. Julie Ward, 28, was murdered in September 1988 while visiting the Masai Mara game reserve to photograph animals. Two game rangers were charged and acquitted in 1992 in relation to the murder. Britain’s Metropolitan Police said on Friday that six detectives and a crime scene manager will work alongside Kenyan police for 11 days, interviewing witnesses. The team also will pursue DNA and fingerprint evidence. The force has made at least three previous trips to Kenya in relation to the case.
NIGERIA
Bombings rock cities
A triple suicide bombing of military headquarters in Maiduguri and three roadside bombs in different areas shook northeast Nigeria’s biggest city on Friday, while militants launched multiple gun and bomb attacks two other cities west of it, witnesses and the military said. It was one of the most violent days in radical Islamist sect Boko Haram’s growing campaign of violence against local authorities in Borno state. Earlier, three roadside bombs exploded in quick succession in an apparently coordinated strike, hitting the wards of Meduguri and Jajeri and the El-Kanemi College of Islamic Theology.
BRAZIL
Jilted fiancee compensated
A court has ordered a man to pay US$6,500 for saying: “I don’t” to his former fiancee. Rio de Janeiro State Judge Benedicto Abicair said that Marcelo de Azevedo Fernandes must pay for “moral and material” damages to Cristiane Costa de Andrade. The ruling was posted on Friday on the court’s Web site. The couple was to have been married in September 2007, but Fernandes called it off. The judge said in his ruling that Andrade’s “suffering, anguish and humiliation cannot be ignored.” The fine is supposed to pay for the jilted woman’s wedding costs and visits to a psychologist.
CANADA
‘Super visa’ unveiled
Officials on Friday announced a new two-year, multi-entry “super visa” for parents and grandparents of immigrants settled in Canada. The move came after wait times for sponsorship of “family class” applications had grown to an unwieldy seven years or longer. The multiple-entry “Parent and Grandparent Super Visa” will be valid for up to 10 years, officials said, and allow applicants to remain in Canada for 24 months before needing seek visa renewal. The new visas will begin on Dec. 1 and the will be issued, “on average, within eight weeks of the application,” officials said.
BRITAIN
Come clean on duchy: ruling
A tribunal said Prince Charles must end a culture of secrecy covering his 700-year-old Duchy of Cornwall estate and answer some public requests for environmental information. The First-Tier Tribunal on information rights said on Friday that it had ruled on Thursday on a tussle between an environmental campaigner and the heir to the throne. Judge John Angel said the Duchy of Cornwall — the 55,000 hectare estate established in the 14th century — must abide by environmental information regulations. It means the estate must answer requests made under the regulations, which are similar to freedom of information laws, but relate to environmental issues. The duchy earned Prince Charles almost ￡18 million (US$29 million) last year.
UNITED STATES
Central Park cleared for race
The thousands of runners in the New York City Marathon this weekend will have a clear path through Central Park after workers removed branches and trees snapped by a snowstorm late last month. Central Park Conservancy spokeswoman Dena Libner said on Thursday that the cleanup would continue for a couple more weeks, but that the park would be ready for today’s race. Thousands of trees were damaged over about 160 hectares of the park. The National Weather Service said about 7.6cm of wet snow weighed down branches until they snapped. The marathon runs through all five city boroughs and ends in Central Park.
ITALY
Bombing spared Roman sites
An archeologist is thanking NATO for the precision of its bombing raids over Libya, saying they spared many of the country’s ancient Roman sites. Hafed Walda, a Libya-born research fellow at King’s College, London, told a conference in Rome on Friday that inspections had not revealed any damage to the ancient ruins of Leptis Magna and Sabratha. He says he wants to “say thank you to NATO for achieving precision strikes” during the campaign to protect civilians from slain Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s regime during this year’s revolt. Walda said he would be heading soon to Benghazi, but reports indicate there has been no damage to sites there either.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
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