Tag: InternationalNews

{{At least 60 African migrants and two Yemeni crew perished in the treacherous waters off Yemen’s coast last weekend, in a boat sinking that has just come to light and is believed to be the deadliest there this year, the United Nations said on Friday.}}

In the first four months of this year, 16,500 migrants and refugees, mainly Somalis, Ethiopians and Eritreans, have crossed the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea to land in Yemen, seen as a gateway to a better life in the Middle East, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said.

About twice as many crossed in the same period last year.

“We are still seeking information, but it is now confirmed that a boat carrying 60 people from Somalia and Ethiopia and two Yemeni crew sank last Saturday in the Red Sea,” UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards told a news briefing in Geneva.

Local residents buried their bodies which washed ashore near the Bab El Mandeb area off Yemen’s coast, he said.

“The tragedy is the largest single loss of life this year of migrants and refugees attempting to reach Yemen via the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden,” Edwards said.

It brought the known total of deaths at sea of people trying to reach Yemen to at least 121 so far this year, he said.

agencies

{{Brazil President Dilma Rousseff has lost ground among voters on worries about Brazil’s faltering economy ahead of the Oct. 5 election, which will likely go to a tighter second-round vote, according to a poll published on Friday.}}

Rousseff is still the favorite to win re-election, but support for the left-leaning president has dropped to 34%, from 37% in a poll last month, and 10% points since February, polling firm Datafolha said.

The poll helped propel Brazil’s benchmark Bovespa stock index to its biggest gain in over a month, of over 2.6%, as shares of state-run firms rallied.

Investors in those companies, which include oil producer Petroleo Brasileiro SA, known as Petrobras, hope a new administration will enact policies more favorable to business interests.

Rousseff still has a large – though shrinking – lead over her closest rival, Aécio Neves of the centrist Brazilian Social Democracy Party. In the poll, Neves slipped one percentage point to 19%.

Behind him was Eduardo Campos, the Brazilian Socialist Party candidate, whose share of voting preferences fell to 7% from 11 percent in May.

Rousseff must win at least 50% plus one of the valid votes cast on Oct. 5 or the election will go to a run-off.

Her lead over Neves in a second-round vote has shrunk to 8% points from 11 points in May.

Pessimism about the economy is focused on concern inflation will rise and employment will fall, the poll showed.

Thirty-five percent of voters say they will never vote for Rousseff (up from 31% a month ago), while Neves’ negatives have come down.

wirestory

{{A California man who found a bag containing $125,000 (£74,564) said he returned the cash to the armoured truck company that accidentally dropped it because it was the “right thing to do.”}}

Joe Cornell, 52, told the Fresno Bee newspaper he saw the bag of cash fall out of the back of a Brinks armoured cash transport car as it drove over railroad tracks in downtown Fresno on Thursday afternoon.

Cornell, who was working in the lot of a Salvation Army location as part of a substance abuse rehabilitation program, told the newspaper he recovered the bag and found it stuffed with hundred dollar bills.

“I started crying and shaking,” Cornell said. “Everything was going through my mind, the good devil/bad devil thing,” he said.

Cornell made up his mind to alert his boss at the Salvation Army and the pair called Fresno law enforcement authorities who helped facilitate the bag’s return to Brinks.

The Virginia-based company could not be reached for comment Friday, but a spokesman told the Fresno Bee it had thanked Cornell for his honesty with a $5,000 reward and another $5,000 donation to the Salvation Army.

For Cornell, deciding to give back the cash became a simple decision.

“They’re going to back-track,” he said of Brinks officials when they realized the money was lost. “There are cameras everywhere now. You’d be doing federal time. And it’s the right thing to do.”

Leaders of the G7 industrial nations meeting in Brussels say they are prepared to impose further sanctions on Russia over its actions in Ukraine.

A joint statement condemned Moscow for its “continuing violation” of Ukraine’s sovereignty.

The G7 summit is the first since Russia was expelled from the group following its annexation of Crimea in March.

On Thursday, leaders are discussing the global economic outlook, climate change and development issues.

Although Russian President Vladimir Putin is not at the Brussels summit, he will hold face-to-face talks with some G7 leaders – not including US President Barack Obama – in Paris afterwards.

However, both Mr Putin and Mr Obama will attend a ceremony commemorating the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings in France on Friday.

While in Poland on Wednesday, President Obama warned Moscow against what he called its “dark tactics” in Ukraine.

Diplomacy has intensified to try to resolve the biggest crisis in years between Russia and the West, says the BBC’s Chris Morris in Brussels.

BBC