At least five people, including three children, drowned and thousands were forced to flee their homes early on Tuesday after heavy rains flooded vast swathes of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, residents said. The deaths were reported in neighbourhoods in northern and southern Mogadishu inundated by the downpours, they said.
Pro-Russian forces have allegedly kidnapped a young woman who secretly married Shamil Basayev, the Chechen warlord who was killed last month. Elina Ersenoyeva (26) was seized in Chechnya’s capital, Grozny, on August 17 by masked gunmen in an apparent attempt to extract information about her husband’s accomplices.
More rioting rocked Baluchistan province on Monday in a second day of furious protests over the killing of a prominent tribal leader by Pakistan’s military. Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti (79) the spearhead of a Baluch nationalist revolt, died on Saturday when jets and artillery pounded his hideout in a remote cave.
California farmers are on a high after the liberal state moved to overturn part of a 70-year-old United States ban on growing and harvesting cannabis plants. But those hoping that the so-called Golden State is about to become a marijuana smokers’ paradise will be disappointed.
The late-night bars and jazz clubs are open in the French Quarter, as are the cafes in the elegant Garden District. One year after the worst natural disaster in United States history, New Orleans is gamely giving the impression that the good times are rolling again.
The pilot of an aeroplane that crashed after taking off from the wrong runway in Kentucky, killing 49, may have been confused by newly configured lights and paint markings, officials believe. The longer runway at Blue Grass airport, Lexington, was repaved last week and investigators are looking to see if that played a part in Sunday’s accident.
South Africa doesn’t have any plans "at the moment" to ease the continued burden of fuel increases on the South African public and any subsidy through the use of the country’s equalisation fund will quickly dry up, Minister of Minerals and Energy Buyelwa Sonjica told an MP on Tuesday.
Sheltering from the sun under a ragged awning in one of dozens of cramped refugee camps in Sri Lanka’s war-ravaged east, 18-year-old Sharmila Rahim dreams of being a teacher. But her village was wrecked, her house damaged and her school books burnt as the military and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rebels began a new chapter of a two-decade civil war earlier this month.
John Mark Karr, the schoolteacher who made worldwide headlines by confessing to one of the United States’s most notorious unsolved crimes, the murder of six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey, was abruptly cleared on Monday after the case against him collapsed.
Former South Africa captain Lucas Radebe plans to leave his homeland and return to England after failing to secure a job with the 2010 World Cup hosts. The defender, who captained his country at the 1998 and 2002 World Cup finals, said he was going back to the city of Leeds where he spent most of his playing career.