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.
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
‘VERY DIRE’: This year’s drought, exacerbated by El Nino, is affecting 44 percent of Malawi’s crop area and up to 40 percent of its population of 20.4 million In the worst drought in southern Africa in a century, villagers in Malawi are digging for potentially poisonous wild yams to eat as their crops lie scorched in the fields. “Our situation is very dire, we are starving,” 76-year-old grandmother Manesi Levison said as she watched over a pot of bitter, orange wild yams that she says must cook for eight hours to remove the toxins. “Sometimes the kids go for two days without any food,” she said. Levison has 30 grandchildren under her care. Ten are huddled under the thatched roof of her home at Salima, near Lake Malawi, while she boils
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