Saturday, October 25, 2008 SANAA: At least 14 people have drowned and around 35 are missing in Yemen after torrential rain left swathes of the impoverished country underwater, officials said on Saturday.At least 500 homes have been damaged and hundreds of families displaced by the floods that swept the south-eastern provinces of Hadramout and Mahra following 30 hours of heavy rainfall, they said.Yemeni authorities have declared the eastern provinces to be a disaster area and President Ali Abdullah Saleh visited some of the worst hit areas on Friday.
BEIRUT: Thousands of people converged Saturday on central Beirut to mark the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Lebanese former premier Rafiq Hariri.Waving Lebanese flags and carrying pictures of the slain leader, men, women and children gathered under sunny skies in Martyr's Square where members of the parliamentary majority were to address the crowd. The rally comes as final preparations are underway in The Hague for the launch of the international tribunal set up to bring Hariri's killers to justice. It also comes as the country prepares for legislative elections in June that will pit Western-backed political parties against a Hezbollah-led alliance backed by Syria and Iran.Hariri died in a massive car bombing on February 14, 2005 that also killed 22 others. The assassination was widely blamed on then Lebanese power-broker Syria, which has denied any involvement. The attack on the Beirut seafront was one of the worst acts of political violence to rock Lebanon since t...
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