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Over 100 feared dead, 300 missing in Lanka landslide
US supply rocket for space station explodes on liftoff
Zambia’s Scott becomes Africa’s first white leader in 20 years
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Fighting Ebola: US officials attend meeting in Cuba
Burkina Faso protests on, US joins outcry
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Over 100 feared dead, 300 missing in Lanka landslide
Colombo, October 29 "More than 100 persons are believed to have died," Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Amaraweera told Reuters from the disaster site in the village of Haldummulla, 190 km (120 miles) inland from the capital, Colombo. "We have suspended the rescue operations because of darkness and inclement weather. There is also a threat of further landslides." Children who left for school in the morning returned to find their clay and cement houses had been buried. Nearly 300 children were gathered at a nearby school as night fell amid further landslide threats. The Disaster Management Centre said 10 bodies had been found so far, at least 300 people were missing and 150 houses buried in the village, which lies south of a popular national park. Amaraweera said the landslide was at least 3-km long. Villagers had been advised in 2005 and 2012 to move away because of the threat of landslides, but many did not heed the warning, he said. "I was under the rubble and some people took me out ... my mother and aunt have died," a woman who was being treated for injuries told media. There have been a number of landslides since the start of heavy rains in mid-September resulting in damage to roads, but there had been no casualties until Wednesday. Some roads in the central districts of Kandy, Nuwara Eliya, and Badulla were blocked on Wednesday due to landslides, limiting public transport. President Mahinda Rajapaksa tweeted that military heavy machinery had been deployed to speed up search and rescue operations. The people living in the affected hilly area are mostly of Indian Tamil origin, descendants of workers brought to Sri Lanka from South India under British rule as cheap labour to work on tea, rubber and coffee plantations.
— Reuters |
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US supply rocket for space station explodes on liftoff
Cape Canaveral, October 29 The 14-story Antares rocket, built and launched by Orbital Sciences Corp, blasted off from the Wallops Flight Facility at 2222 GMT on Tuesday but burst into flames moments later and plunged back to the ground in a massive ball of fire and smoke. No one was hurt in the crash, authorities said. The craft was carrying a Cygnus cargo ship bound for the station, a $100 billion research laboratory owned and operated by 15 nations that orbits about 260 miles (418 km) above Earth. Another resupply vehicle, the unmanned Russian Progress spacecraft, successfully launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan just hours later with nearly three tonnes of food, fuel and supplies. That craft was due to reach the station later on Wednesday. The loss of the Cygnus supply vessel posed no immediate problem for the orbiting team of six crew members — two NASA astronauts, one from the European Space Agency and three Russian cosmonauts — officials said. The cause of the mishap was under investigation. Russia's Roskomos space agency said it was ready to help ferry extra U.S. cargo to the International Space Station if NASA requested such assistance. — Reuters
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Zambia’s Scott becomes Africa’s first white leader in 20 years
Lusaka, October 29
Scott, 70, is ineligible to run for the presidency in the election because of citizenship restrictions, leaving defence minister Edgar Lungu and finance minister Alexander Chikwanda the most likely contenders for the ruling Patriotic Front party's ticket, analysts say. "Elections for the office of President will take place within 90 days. In the interim, I am acting President," Scott said in a brief televised address. Many Zambians welcomed Scott's interim appointment. Scott is a lively character who has caused diplomatic controversy in the past, describing South Africans as "backward" in an interview with Britain's Guardian newspaper last year. "I like a lot of South Africans but they really think they're the bees' knees and actually they've been the cause of so much trouble in this part of the world," he said. "He is a black man in a white man's skin," said Nathan Phiri, a bus driver. "The very fact we accepted him as vice-president shows that we consider him as one of us." Sata, who was nicknamed "King Cobra" because of his sharp tongue, died on Tuesday, the government said earlier. He had been president of Zambia, Africa's second-largest copper producer, since 2011. The cause of death was not immediately disclosed, but Sata had been ill for some time. He was at London's King Edward VII hospital when he died, the website Zambian Watchdog reported. — Reuters
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Fighting Ebola: US officials attend meeting in Cuba
Havana, October 29 The meeting organised by ALBA, a bloc of Leftist-governed countries, aims to coordinate a regional strategy on the prevention and control of Ebola, which has killed about 5,000 people in West Africa but in the Americas has only reached the United States. A Liberian man died October 8 while visiting Dallas, Texas, the first Ebola case diagnosed in the country, and two nurses who treated him were infected but later cleared of the virus. US military personnel and Cuban medical specialists are already posted in West Africa and prepared to work side by side if needed, officials have said, and Washington has expressed appreciation to Cuba for committing hundreds of doctors and nurses to the region to treat Ebola patients. "This is a world emergency and we all should work together and cooperate in this effort," said Nelson Arboleda, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) director for Central America, one of two U.S. officials at the Havana meeting. ALBA, a nine-nation bloc led by socialist allies Venezuela and Cuba, held a summit in Havana last week in which presidents and prime ministers pledged to coordinate measures to prevent the spread of Ebola. — Reuters
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Burkina Faso protests on, US joins outcry
Ouagadougou, October 29 Mainly organised by the labour unions, Wednesday's marchers again took aim at Compaore's move to rejig the constitution so he can stay in power and were also protesting about the high cost of living. Chrysogone Zougmore, spokesman for the protest organisers, said, "Any project that has as its aim to allow Compaore to rule for life poses a serious threat to the peace and democratic freedoms of our country. Compaore's mandate comes to an end in November 2015 and he will have to leave." Burkina Faso is a key US ally in West Africa in the fight against Al-Qaida-linked fighters.
— Reuters |
Bangladesh
Jamaat chief gets death for war crimes Indian-origin taxi driver jailed for sex attack in UK
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A landslide in hilly south-central Sri Lanka is believed to have killed more than 100 persons on Wednesday as it buried scores of houses, a
government minister said, and the toll is likely to rise.
Zambian President Michael Sata rose from cleaning railway platforms in London to his country's highest office, where he vowed to sweep away corruption
Vice-President Guy Scott was named acting leader following the death of Sata, making him Africa's first white head of state since South Africa's FW de Klerk
