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RIO DE JANEIR: Severe flooding and land sliding killed 30 people and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless, authorities said. The states most affected by the flooding are Maranhao, Piaui, Ceara, Alagoas and Bahia. Six people were killed and six major highways were inundated in Maranho, drenched by the heaviest rains since 1985, civil defense authorities said. Sao Luis, the state capital, and 40 other towns have been battered by rains that have lasted nearly a month.An estimated 400,000 people were forced to leave their homes, and of those 22,000 lost their homes, a civil defense spokesman said. In the small state of Alagoas, four people were killed in mudslides and flooding. Deaths also were reported in Ceara, Bahia and Piaui.

SEOUL: Reclusive North Korea, which rattled regional security with a threat to hold a second nuclear test, said on Saturday it would not hold talks with its wealthy South Korean neighbour because it "defiled" Pyongyang's dignity. The North a day earlier dismissed an overture from the United States for discussions, saying it was useless to talk to the Obama administration because its "hostile policy" left it no choice but to bolster its nuclear deterrent. The United States sent Stephen Bosworth, its envoy for North Korea, to Asia this week to rein in the secretive communist state after it raised tension with a defiant rocket launch a month ago and then threatened to step up its nuclear weapons programme."There is no room for talks with the South Korea government group who publicly defiles the name of our republic and denies our entity," the North's KCNA news agency quoted a spokesman with its reunification committee as saying.

NEW DELHI: BJP leader L K Advani said that the failure of UPA government's foreign policy was responsible for the present situation in Nepal and Sri Lanka, saying the two neighbouring nations were now out of India's "foreign policy ambit." Addressing an election meeting, he said: "Nepal and Sri Lanka were influenced by Indian foreign policy before but now they are out of the country's foreign policy ambit."Our neighbours are the victims of wrong policies of the UPA government," the BJP prime ministerial candidate claimed.The situation in Sri Lanka was "very disgusting and disturbing" and the people of Tamil Nadu were anguished, he said. "Why should the Tamils in Sri Lanka suffer like this?" On the current political crisis in Nepal following the standoff over the issue of sacking of the Army chief, Advani said the UPA government "outsourced" handling of Nepal affairs to Communists, who saw a Maoist government in place, ...

NEW DELHI: The President of Orissa’s Biju Janata Dal (BJD) Naveen Patnaik came down strongly on erstwhile ally Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and said in the same breath that it was not possible for his Biju Janata Dal (BJD) to form an alliance with the Congress either. “The BJD would find it impossible to ally with BJP and certainly not with the Congress,” Patnaik told a media after meeting with secretary general of Communist Party of India.Asked about the possibility of an alliance with the BJP in Orissa if his party falls short of majority in the assembly elections, Patnaik said: “We are quite confident that we will secure majority on our own.” He added that after the communal violence in Kandhamal last year, “it became virtually impossible to carry on with BJP” and he decided to sever ties with it.

WASHINGTON: U.S. President Barack Obama is set to revive the system of military commissions for prosecuting Guantanamo detainees, but with more legal protections for the accused, the Washington Post reported on Saturday. The new rules would block the use of evidence obtained from coercive interrogations, the Post said, quoting unnamed U.S. government officials. The proposed rules would also tighten the admissibility of hearsay testimony, and allow detainees at the camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- which Obama plans to close – greater freedom to choose their attorneys, the paper said. But it quoted a White House official as saying that no final decision had been made. One source told the paper the plan awaits Obama's approval.

SANTA BARBARA: As many as 23,000 more people faced possible evacuation Saturday as firefighters struggled to get a grip on an out-of-control wildfire raging in southern California.California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared a state of emergency to help release resources to fight the blaze. At least 75 homes have been destroyed and 30,500 people evacuated from the up market town of Santa Barbara following a wind-whipped blaze that has forced firefighters onto the defensive.Authorities widened the scope of possible evacuation areas to include an additional 23,000 people, despite a lull in winds and increased humidity that gave a boost to the firefighting effort later Friday. The rapidly spreading wildfire left vast clouds of smoke across the region following a dramatic escalation overnight that had sent the flames roaring toward the center of the city.

KABUL: An end to air strikes in Afghanistan, demanded by President Hamid Karzai after scores of civilians were allegedly killed this week, would deprive Afghan troops of vital protection, a US official said Friday."Airstrikes are not acceptable," Karzai told U.S. TV on Friday during a visit to Washington, adding that his government's information was that nearly 125 to 130 civilians were killed, including women and children, in this week's strikes.The US military in Kabul was expected on Saturday to release the results of its investigation with the Afghan defence and interior ministries into the incident in the western province of Farah overnight Monday into Tuesday. The official told however they believed a figure of more than 100 people killed was "exaggerated". The air strikes in Farah were called in at the request of Afghan officials who were under attack from Taliban fighters, he said."This was not a night raid, this was not a scheduled operation, w...

WASHINGTON: US President Obama will make his promised speech to the Muslim world from Egypt, a White House official said.Obama pledged during the campaign to address the Muslim world from a Muslim capital within the first few months of taking office.Having settled on Egypt, the White House announced that he is adding a stop there to his early June overseas trip. That trip will also take him to Normandy, France, for the anniversary of D-Day, and to the Buchenwald concentration camp and Dresden, Germany.

COLOMBO: Sri Lankan military forces have repeatedly shelled hospitals in the northern Vanni region during fighting with rebels, Human Rights Watch said.The organization said the military commanders responsible for ordering the aerial and artillery attacks could be prosecuted for war crimes.In a statement, Human Rights Watch said it has knowledge of at least 30 attacks on permanent and makeshift hospitals in the combat area since December 2008. One of the deadliest took place May 2, HRW said, when artillery shells struck Mullaivaikal hospital in the government-declared "no-fire zone," killing 68 people and wounding 87."Hospitals are supposed to be sanctuaries from shelling, not targets," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "While doctors and nurses struggle to save lives in overcrowded and under equipped facilities, Sri Lankan army attacks have hit one hospital after another."Human Rights Watch has criticized both the Sri Lankan armed forc...

TOKYO: The world's largest nuclear power plant resumed part of its operations on Saturday, two years after it was shut down following a strong earthquake off the Japanese coast, the operator said.One of seven reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, located 300 kilometres (185 miles) northwest of Tokyo, started test operations, said operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO). The company earlier said it would shift to full power generation at the reactor after up to 50 days of test runs."But it is still uncertain when we can resume operations at the remaining six reactors," Akemi Otsuki, a TEPCO spokeswoman, told. TEPCO decided on the move after the municipal governments gave the formal go-ahead, company officials said. The sprawling 8,200-megawatt plant has been dormant since July 2007 when a quake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale struck in the Sea of Japan (East Sea), killing 15 people and injuring thousands. Public concern mounted when television footage showed white...

KABUL: Separate bombs claimed by Taliban insurgents struck Afghan security force vehicles killing four men, officials said Saturday, as the NATO-led force said 16 Taliban were killed overnight.A roadside bomb struck an Afghan National Army (ANA) vehicle early Saturday in the southern province of Zabul, the defence ministry told. "Two ANA were martyred and four were wounded," it said. Another bomb hit an Afghan police vehicle in the same district on Friday, killing two policemen and wounding four, the interior ministry said in a statement.A spokesman for the Taliban, Yousuf Ahmadi, said his group was responsible for both attacks. A military operation that included air strikes by international warplanes was meanwhile launched in the eastern province of Paktia after the Taliban attacked a government district headquarters early Saturday, a government spokesman said. Police fought back in the Ahmad Khel district and four were wounded, provincial government spokesman Rohullah Samoo...