xNews® World News: Pakistan floods threaten to bring food crisis

Pakistan floods threaten to bring food crisis

Pakistan floods threaten to bring food crisis
Wyclef Jean to seek Haitian presidency - TIME
Moscow smoke pollution worst in eight years
Al Qaeda group claims attack on Japanese tanker
Where's granny? Japan searches for missing 'centenarians'
Thick smog from wildfires blankets Moscow
Philippine police use Twitter, Facebook to nail gang
BP begins ‘static kill’ operation on blown-out well
Dutch teenage girl heads to Portugal for solo world voyage
5 US states to get foreclosure prevention aid
It’s just a communication break-down
Cathay expands fleet as demand returns
Desperate Pakistan flood survivors clamour for aid
Adidas raises 2010 earnings per share forecast
Thick smog from wildfires blankets Moscow
Half of MACC cases involve bribe givers
Philippine police use Twitter, Facebook to nail gang
Kenyans vote on new constitution
Burnt out
Row breaks out over Poland's cross

Pakistan floods threaten to bring food crisis

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 12:50 AM PDT

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Parts of northwest Pakistan inundated by the worst floods in 80 years face life-threatening food shortages, a United Nations aid agency said on Wednesday.

Wyclef Jean to seek Haitian presidency - TIME

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 12:50 AM PDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Haitian-American music star Wyclef Jean will announce his bid for president of earthquake-ravaged Haiti this week, Time magazine reported on Tuesday.

Moscow smoke pollution worst in eight years

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 12:50 AM PDT

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Air quality levels in Moscow tumbled to an eight-year low on Wednesday as the Russian capital was blanketed in thick smoke from forest and peat fires, said Moscow's state agency for monitoring air pollution.

Al Qaeda group claims attack on Japanese tanker

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 12:50 AM PDT

DUBAI (Reuters) - A group linked to al Qaeda claimed on Wednesday that a suicide bomber from its organisation was responsible for an attack on a Japanese supertanker last week in the Strait of Hormuz.

Where's granny? Japan searches for missing 'centenarians'

Posted: 03 Aug 2010 04:10 PM PDT

By Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura

TOKYO: The discovery of the mummified remains of a man supposedly aged 111 has kicked off a frantic search in Japan for other listed centenarians, with media reporting today that at least a dozen more are missing.

Local government officials have fanned out for face-to-face meetings with people registered as aged over 100 -- of whom fast-greying Japan, with its world-beating life expectancies, had more than 40,000 at last count.

The latest missing-elderly case to shock the nation was that of 113-year-old Fusa Furuya, who was believed to be Tokyo's oldest woman until her estranged children told authorities this week they hadn't seen her in decades.

Newspapers have started their own national headcounts, with the Asahi Shimbun identifying 12 people over 100 who are unaccounted for, the Yomiuri naming 15, and the Mainichi daily reporting 18 missing across Japan.

Just in Tokyo, where some 2,500 centenarians are registered, the whereabouts of nine people aged 102 or older are unknown, reports said.

The media frenzy started last week after a visit by ward officials to the house of a Tokyo man believed to be 111 led to a police search that found his three-decade-old skeleton in his bed, in a room where the latest newspaper was from 1978.

Police are investigating the late Sogen Kato's relatives -- who claimed he had retreated to his room to become "a living Buddha" -- for fraud because the government had kept paying a pension into the man's bank account.

A total of 9.5 million yen in widower's pension payments had been deposited since his wife died six years ago, and some of the money had recently been withdrawn, reports said.

Japanese are asking how the system can allow people to vanish, apparently without anyone noticing.

Birthday gifts

The Japanese government leaves it up to local communities and independent healthcare bodies to check up on centenarians, and methods differ from one municipality to another, said a health ministry official.

"In a small town, it's easier to check up on the safety of centenarians by visiting them. But in a larger city, officials may just give a quick telephone call to family members who will confirm that the centenarians are alive," the official said.

In Tokyo, ward offices said it can be difficult to check on the elderly because relatives sometimes refuse to cooperate and prevent welfare workers from entering homes, according to a survey by the Yomiuri daily.

The capital's Itabashi ward said that a social worker had made repeat visits to a female centenarian but was turned away every time by relatives, who said she "had difficulty coming out", the daily said.

Japan has a tradition of giving birthday gifts to centenarians, but often the presents are handed to family members, and workers are unable to confirm whether or not the elderly person has received them.

The cases also highlight a growing trend in which many children hole up in their parents' homes well into adulthood and often without working, a cohort unkindly dubbed "parasaito" in Japan.

"There is a growing number of households in Japan where jobless children live with their parents and therefore depend on their pensions," said Shukutoku University's professor Yasuhiro Yuuki, an expert on social welfare.

"Depending on their parents' pension plan, the children can get quite a lot of money, or enough to survive on. Children say they are taking care of their parents, but actually they are just using their pensions."

- AFP

Thick smog from wildfires blankets Moscow

Posted: 03 Aug 2010 04:01 PM PDT

MOSCOW: A heavy smog from the wildfires burning in the countryside around Moscow was blanketing the Russian capital today as the emergency services struggled to extinguish the blazes.

Visibility in the city centre was only 300 metres in the early morning, with the tops of the wedding-cake Stalin-era skyscrapers and the golden onion domes of churches invisible from a distance.

The situation in the outlying suburbs was even worse with visibility no better than 20 metres in some areas in the eastern region, the RIA Novosti news agency reported. However the capital's airports were working normally.

The smell of smoke could even be detected inside the metro and office buildings, AFP correspondents said.

Dozens of new wildfires hit the Moscow region in the past day as firefighters struggled to come to grips with the situation amid a relentless heatwave.

Forecasters warned that record temperatures were going to continue in the coming days, with no rain forecast and the mercury expected to hit 38 degrees Celsius (over 100 degrees Fahrenheit) in Moscow this week.

- AFP

Philippine police use Twitter, Facebook to nail gang

Posted: 03 Aug 2010 03:54 PM PDT

MANILA: Philippine police said today they used Twitter and Facebook to track down a flamboyant gang of young men and women who robbed the rich to feed their drug habits.

Police killed their leader Ivan Padilla, 23, and arrested three others over the past week following a rash of vehicle thefts targeting Manila's high society, city police spokesman Superintendent Rommel Miranda said.

Miranda said police tracked the suspects by looking at their accounts in microblogging site Twitter and social networking site Facebook.

"We are very much into technology," he said.

"These are young people and a lot of young people nowadays are engaged in social networking."

Miranda said he did not want to give further details about what intelligence police obtained from the suspects' Internet posts because a hunt was continuing for six other gang members.

He said the suspects, most of whom lived in wealthy Manila neighbourhoods, included a number of young, beautiful and smartly dressed women who prowled bars and parties hosted by the rich to scout for potential victims.

The gang is accused of being behind a string of robberies of homes located inside gated housing enclaves of Manila's rich and of high-rise luxury condominiums.

Affluent families

Among the expensive cars the gang members are accused of stealing are those of a former Filipino foreign minister and a local movie actor's parents.

While the gang's core came from affluent families, Miranda said Padilla often recruited young men from other social classes to do the dirty work of robbing people.

"Ivan Padilla has many rich associates, but when they (intended to) commit a crime they would recruit equally young thrill-seekers who they could influence," Miranda said.

Illegal drug use was their common bond, the police spokesman added.

In another Internet twist, two Facebook fan pages dedicated to Padilla have quickly gathered hundreds of supporters, with some netizens questioning the police's assertion that he was killed in a shoot-out.

Padilla's group was the second high-profile case in a week that police said they had solved with the help of the Internet.

Police in the northern city of Angeles said they last week used Facebook to help track down a computer technician accused of murdering nine people, three of them foreigners.

- AFP

BP begins ‘static kill’ operation on blown-out well

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 12:35 AM PDT

HOUSTON, Aug 4 — BP pumped heavy drilling mud into its blown-out Gulf of Mexico well yesterday in a "static kill" operation it hopes will help permanently plug the world's worst accidental marine oil spill. The operation, aimed at subduing the still unstable deepwater gusher that was provisionally capped in mid-July, is part of a two-pronged ...

Dutch teenage girl heads to Portugal for solo world voyage

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 12:09 AM PDT

AMSTERDAM, Aug 4 — Dutch teenage sailor Laura Dekker sets sail for Portugal today, after winning a year-long battle with child welfare authorities worried over her ambition to become the youngest person to sail the globe solo. Laura will depart from the southwestern Netherlands on her 11.5-metre ketch Guppy, sailing initially with her father to ...

5 US states to get foreclosure prevention aid

Posted: 03 Aug 2010 11:59 PM PDT

WASHINGTON, Aug 4 — As many as 50,000 struggling homeowners in five states with high unemployment may receive help from a special US$600 million (RM1.90 billion) federal fund intended to head off some foreclosures. State housing agencies in Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina, Oregon and Rhode Island can use money from a so-called "Hardest Hit ...

It’s just a communication break-down

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 12:30 AM PDT

The dispute in the DAP is merely a storm in a tea cup, a meaningless misunderstanding between some leaders, who are unable to communicate, instead of the question of whose arguments are more valid.

Cathay expands fleet as demand returns

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 12:24 AM PDT

HONG KONG, Wednesday 4 August 2010 (AFP) - Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific said Wednesday it had signed a letter of intent to buy 30 Airbus A350-900 planes, underlining the airline's expansion as it reported strong first-half profit.

Desperate Pakistan flood survivors clamour for aid

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 12:24 AM PDT

CHARSADDA, Wednesday 4 August 2010 (AFP) - Desperate survivors crushed into relief centres Wednesday after Pakistan's worst floods in living memory as the country braced for more storms that threaten to deepen the humanitarian crisis.

Adidas raises 2010 earnings per share forecast

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 12:19 AM PDT

FRANKFURT, Wednesday 4 August 2010 (AFP) - The world's second biggest sports equipment and clothing maker, Adidas, raised its earnings per share outlook on Wednesday after a stong second quarter thanks to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

Thick smog from wildfires blankets Moscow

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 12:18 AM PDT

MOSCOW, Wednesday 4 August 2010 (AFP) - A heavy smog from the wildfires burning in the countryside around Moscow was blanketing the Russian capital on Wednesday as the emergency services struggled to extinguish the blazes.

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Half of MACC cases involve bribe givers

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 12:15 AM PDT

Half of the 519 individuals arrested by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) in the first seven months of the year involve bribe givers.

Philippine police use Twitter, Facebook to nail gang

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 12:13 AM PDT

MANILA, Wednesday 4 August 2010 (AFP) - Philippine police said Wednesday they used Twitter and Facebook to track down a flamboyant gang of young men and women who robbed the rich to feed their drug habits.

Kenyans vote on new constitution

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 12:12 AM PDT

NAIROBI, Wednesday 4 August 2010 (AFP) - Kenyans began voting Wednesday on a proposed constitution that would make their institutions more democratic amid tight security aimed at preventing a repeat of deadly 2007-2008 post-election chaos.