Western Russia welcomes cold front as wildfires, smog curbed
A COLD front hit western Russia yesterday, ending the exhausting two-month spell of of heat and clearing skies over Moscow from suffocating smog.
Colder temperatures and rains are expected to help firefighters put out the wildfires that have bedevilled Russia through the summer.
Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry said the amount of land on fire has been halved in the last 24 hours.
The heat wave h as triggered thousands of wildfires and drought has cost Russia a third of its wheat crop . — Sapa-AP
Israeli police arrest rabbi
ISRAELI police yester day arrested a settler rabbi who co-authored a book outlining cases in which it is permissible to kill non-Jews, including babies, army radio reported.
Yosef Elitzur, a resident of the hardline Yitzhar settlement in the northern West Bank, was arrested on suspicion of incitement to violence.
The book, The King’s Torah, written by Elitzur and another rabbi, claims that babies and children of Israel’s enemy may be killed since “it is clear that they will grow to harm us”, the Haaretz newspapers said. — Sapa-AFP
Ex-PM Brown ready to speak
BRITAIN’S former prime minister Gordon Brown is offering himself for speaking engagements at a cost of 100000 (R728000) an hour, a magazine reported yesterday.
Brown, whose book on the global financial crisis is due out in November, has asked a London agency to look for possible engagements for him in the Middle East and Asia, the Spectator said.
His wife Sarah is reportedly available to present prizes at events where he speaks for a further 20000 (R144000). — Sapa-AFP
Bull injures 40 in grandstand
FORTY people were injured when a bull leapt into the packed grandstand of a Spanish bullring and ran amok, charging and trampling on spectators, regional officials said yester day.
Video on Spanish media outlets showed the bull jumping several metres high out of the ring, clearing two barriers before landing in the stands.
The animal was brought under control after several minutes and was later killed. — Sapa-AP
Judge says woman must unveil
AN AUSTRALIAN Muslim woman who sought permission to keep her face and head covered while she gives evidence at an upcoming trial was told by a judge yester day she would have to remove her veil.
Western Australia state district court judge Shauna Deane ruled it would be inappropriate for the woman, identified in court only as Tasneem, to be completely veiled while giving evidence because the jury should not be impeded in its ability to assess her demeanour. — Sapa-AP
South blocks N Korean tweets
SOUTH Korea has blocked North Korea’s new Twitter account from being accessed in the South, saying the tweets contain “illegal information” under the country’s security laws, officials said yesterday.
North Korea announced last week that it has a Twitter account and a YouTube channel in an apparent effort to boost its propaganda war against South Korea and the United States. — Sapa-AP
Obama’s faith misidentified
NEARLY two years after Barack Obama’s election as US president, a growing number of Americans misidentify his faith as Muslim, according to a new poll released yester day.
Despite Obama’s attendance in church and his repeated public statements about his Christian faith, nearly one in five respondents in the survey said they believed he was a practitioner of Islam, while only 34 percent of Americans correctly identified him as a Christian, down sharply from a year earlier. — Sapa-AFP
Passengers safe as train falls
TWO carriages of a passenger train fell into a river yesterday after floods knocked out a bridge in southwestern China, but all passengers were able to escape safely, State media reported.
The accident happened in Guanghan when floods loosened piers on the Shitingjiang bridge, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
The train began shaking and then stopped moving, dining car supervisor Wang Baoning told China Central Television.
Two carriages of the train were dangling over the muddy, rushing waters of the river in a “V” shape, he said.
It took more than 10 minutes to evacuate passengers from the cars, which were still connected to adjacent carriages, Wang said. — Sapa-AP
Poles get air crash data
RUSSIA yester day handed Poland new documents on the investigation into the death of President Lech Kaczynski in an air crash, after criticism from Warsaw over Russia’s handling of the probe.
Russia’s deputy general prosecutor, Alexander Zvyagintsev, handed 11 volumes of documents containing evidence from witnesses of the crash, protocols from inspections of the crash scene and other data to Polish chief military prosecutor Krzysztof Parulski. —Sapa-AFP
Somali chaos moves north
A POWERFUL Somali warlord and a series of recent clashes are threatening to open a new zone of lawlessness in what was once the peaceful northern region of chaotic Somalia.
Militants loyal to warlord Mohamed Said Atom have repeatedly clashed with government forces in the Puntland region in recent weeks.
Atom was singled out by the UN in March for supplying arms to al-Shebaab, Somalia’s dominant insurgent group based in southern Somalia. The US has declared al-Shebaab a terrorist organisation. — Sapa-AP
Lebanese Islamist killed
HUNDREDS of mourners yesterday laid to rest Abdel Rahman Awad, the head of an al-Qaeda- inspired group, who was killed by the army at the weekend in a southern Lebanese refugee camp.
Awad, a Palestinian, was the presumed chief of the shadowy Fatah al-Islam, an Islamist group which fought a deadly battle in 2007 against the Lebanese army at Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in the country’s north.
The conflict raged for more than three months and cost 400 lives, with 168 soldiers among the dead. Awad was said to have fled to the notorious southern camp of Ain al-Hilweh.
The open-casket funeral of Awad, dubbed the “prince” of Fatah al-Islam and formerly one of Lebanon’s most wanted Islamists, was held at Ain al-Hilweh and attended by his family and members of the group.
