Month: January 2010

Amazon, January 02: Mudslides and flooding in Brazil have killed at least 29 people, with fears that the death toll could rise.

Torrential rain in Rio de Janeiro state led to a hillside to collapse on Friday, falling on three homes and a hotel on an island off the city of Angra dos Ries, authorities said.

At least 15 people died in the upmarket beach lodge after tourists had returned from New Year’s celebrations, Pedro Machado, a firefighter, said.

Other people are believed to have died in the three homes.

London, January 02: Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, has invited important international partners to a meeting in London to discuss how to counter radicalisation in Yemen after last week’s failed attack on a US-bound jet.

The meeting on January 28 will be held in parallel with an international conference on Afghanistan on the same day in the UK capital.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian who is reported to have told US investigators he was trained by al-Qaeda in Yemen, is accused of trying to blow up a US passenger jet as it approached Detroit on Christmas Day.

Tel Aviv, January 01: An Israeli illusionist gave an icy reception to the New Year, emerging at midnight from 66 hours in an 8-tonne block of ice, breaking the record of American magician David Blaine.

Hezi Dean, 29, had himself sealed into a specially constructed transparent ice cube in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square, where he apparently stayed for nearly three days wearing just jeans and a thin T-shirt.

At the stroke of midnight, assistants cut open the ice block and removed a weak-looking Dean, taking him straight to a waiting ambulance.

His condition was not immediately clear.

Washington, January 01: An off-duty police officer’s three-year-old son has reportedly shot and killed a three-year-old cousin with his father’s gun in the US.

Police were called to a house in Rayville, Louisiana at 2.30 p.m. local time yesterday, the News-Star reported.

Sheriff Charles McDonald said the children – a boy and a girl – were playing out the front of the house when the off-duty officer went to get something out of his car.

While he was turned, the boy walked up and picked up the officer’s firearm, which was in the driver’s side door.

London, January 01: Supermarkets have begun filling shelves with chocolate eggs more than three months before Easter.

Tesco and Somerfield in the UK are accused of pressuring hard-up parents into spending more cash just days after splashing out for Christmas.

Customers furious at seeing egg promotions so far ahead of Easter Sunday on April 4 have launched a series of online attacks.

One raged: “We celebrated Jesus being born on December 25 and just days later we’re being sold chocolate to celebrate Easter.”

Tibet, January 01: Thousands of democracy campaigners took to the streets on the first day of the new year to call for universal suffrage and the release of jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.

Chanting slogans and holding placards, protesters marched through the city centre to the Central Government Liaison Office, responsible for ties with Beijing.

The march was watched over by hundreds of police officers and attracted the attention of big crowds of pedestrians.

Police estimated there were about 4,600 protesters but organisers put the number higher.

Afghanistan, January 01: The suicide bomber who killed seven CIA employees at a remote outpost in Afghanistan on Wednesday was invited onto the base, a former senior CIA official confirmed to Fox News.

The agency unit, at Forward Operating Base Chapman in the south eastern province of Khost was attempting to collect intelligence from the informant, who was wearing an explosive-laden vest, when he blew himself up.

The base chief, a mother of three, was among the seven agency employees confirmed dead by CIA Director Leon E. Panetta Thursday. Six more were injured.

Washington, January 01: Australians are being urged to reconsider travel to Bali after the Government’s “very high threat” warning over the New Year period.

However, there was confusion yesterday about the origin of a New Year’s Eve warning to tourists on the holiday island, which was circulated by the US Embassy in Bali.

It quoted the Governor of Bali, Mangku Pastika, warning there was an indication an attack was planned for New Year’s Eve.

Rome, January 01: Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has turned to writing love songs as he recovers from an attack that left him with a broken nose and two broken teeth.

“In 2010, there will be a new record, the fourth, of the musical duo Berlusconi and (guitarist Mariano) Apicelli…,” the daily Corriere della Serra reported.

Mr Berlusconi, who worked as a cruise ship singer in his youth, first collaborated with his friend Apicelli in 2003.

The recordings would include songs entitled There is love, But if I lose you, and Stay with me.

Pennsylvaia, January 01: A Graveyard of nearly 500 dead animals, ranging from white-tailed deer to cobra to monkeys, were found strewn inside and outside of a Philadelphia-area home in what investigators believe is evidence of religious ritual killings.

Chicken feathers covered the scene, and among the remains were satanic books, buckets of blood and approximately 100 knives, MyFox Philadelphia reported.

It was not a one-time act.