At least 44 people have died in two violent fires raging in the Peloponnese peninsula of southern Greece, officials said on Saturday, warning that the death toll could climb. Among the latest victims were a mother and her four children, aged five to 15, who were engulfed by the fire on the road near the village of Mahista, along with seven other victims, police said.
An indefinite vehicle curfew was imposed on Baghdad from 6pm local time on Saturday to maintain security for an upcoming Shi’ite religious event, an Iraqi military spokesperson said. Brigadier General Qassim al-Moussawi said the curfew was put in place to protect citizens ahead of a pilgrimage to mark the birth of Imam Muhammad al-Mahdi, which falls early next week.
Gauteng police raided a counterfeit DVD syndicate and found approximately R10-million-worth of DVDs and equipment in a flat in Winchester Hills, south of Johannesburg, on Saturday. Three South African women and a man from Pakistan were arrested in the flat after an anonymous tip-off was sent to a media company’s crime line.
Sudan said on Saturday it has invited back a European Commission envoy who was expelled a day earlier for "interfering" in domestic affairs, following an apology. "Sudan has accepted the apology of Louis Michel, the European development commissioner, to Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ali al-Sadek said.
North Korea said on Saturday that at least 600 people are dead or missing following devastating floods, twice the previous official toll. Torrential rain, strong winds and landslides left at least 600 people dead or missing and thousands of people injured, the official Korean Central News Agency said, citing figures from the Central Statistics Bureau.
The Lebanese army resumed its air raids and shelling of militants holed up at Nahr al-Bared on Saturday after evacuating the last remaining civilians from the battered refugee camp. Helicopters carried out repeated raids dropping 250kg and 400kg bombs on the small area still controlled by the al-Qaeda-inspired Fatah al-Islam militants.
Somalia’s top Islamist leader vowed on Saturday to wage a stronger insurgency in the capital, Mogadishu, until all Ethiopian troops withdraw from the war-shattered Horn of Africa nation. Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed said Somalis must defend their nation against Ethiopian forces deployed in Mogadishu to bolster the feeble government.
The number of Somalis in need of humanitarian aid in the conflict-riddled nation has catapulted by 50% to 1,5-million, famine monitors said on Friday. As insecurity continues to choke the delivery of aid, the donor-funded Food Security Analysis Unit said the country’s breadbasket regions suffered from multiple shocks spurred by poor harvest, rains and instability.
Former French Prime Minister Raymond Barre, an economist who also served as a European commissioner, died on August 25, his family said. He was 83. Barre was plucked from the obscurity of being a backroom technocrat and thrust into frontline politics when then president Valery Giscard d’Estaing made him prime minister in August 1976, dubbing him ”France’s best economist”.
United States President George Bush signalled on Saturday his unwillingness to consider early US troop reductions in Iraq, saying new offensive operations were just in their ”early stages”. The statement followed a fervent plea by John Warner, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, who publicly asked the president to initiate at least a symbolic withdrawal.