JAKARTA: Rescuers and volunteers
on Sunday struggled to reach nearly 190,000 Indonesians left
homeless by devastating floods sparked by heavy rains in and around
Jakarta, as the death toll rose to seven.
Authorities
put the capital on high alert, with more rain forecast for Sunday,
as police deployed 7,000 extra personnel to assist with evacuation
efforts across the city, where water levels reached rooftops in some
areas.
PARIS: French
President Jacques Chirac led calls on Saturday for a powerful new UN
environment agency and for a safe and protected environment to be
enshrined as a fundamental human right.
LANGKAWI,
Malaysia: The alert crackles over walkie-talkies—a cargo ship has
been attacked by pirates, crewmembers have been taken hostage and
two others are drifting at sea in a lifeboat.
GENEVA: Tests
have confirmed that a 22-year-old woman in Nigeria died from the
virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu last month, the World Health
Organization reported. The WHO said samples from all contacts of the
woman, who died in the Nigerian city of Lagos on January 17, had
tested negative and did not show any sign of transmission of bird
flu among humans. Sporadic cases of human infection with avian
influenza are “not unexpected” in countries like Nigeria,
Africa’s most populous nation, where H5N1 outbreaks have been
prevalent in poultry for about a year.--AFP
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