95 dead as storms lash India, Bangladesh

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — The death toll in Bangladesh and India rose to at least 95 and nearly 1,000 remained missing Thursday after storms capsized boats, toppled houses and washed away roads, news reports and officials said.
Rescuers recovered 30 more bodies overnight, pushing the death toll in Bangladesh to 49 after sudden storms hit the tropical nation's southern coast.

Nearly 1,000 people, including a naval commander, were missing in both countries, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to media.

In India, the storms that started late Tuesday killed at least 46 people and injured hundreds of others, Indian officials and media reports said.

In the southeastern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, torrential rains and floods killed at least 31 people over two days, G.T. Priyadarshini, a relief official, said Wednesday. Most people died when their houses collapsed or when they were swept away by flood waters.

Around 5,000 people have been evacuated to safer areas and many villages were cut off after roads and railway tracks were submerged when rivers in the state overflowed their banks.

At least 15 others were killed and 300 injured in India's West Bengal state, Press Trust of India news agency reported.

The storm left a trail of destruction in two districts in West Bengal state, toppling thousands of mud huts, trees, and electricity and telephone poles, the agency reported, quoting State Finance Minister Asim Dasgupta.

The death toll was expected to rise as reports from interior areas had yet to come in, the report said.

The E. coli outbreak has sickened people in 23 states

WASHINGTON - The E. coli outbreak spread to two more states Wednesday, and investigators reported finding contaminated spinach in the refrigerator of one victim.

The outbreak has sickened at least 146 people in 23 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One person has died and 76 others have been hospitalized, some with kidney failure.

In a break that could help isolate the source of the outbreak, New Mexico’s public health laboratory isolated E. coli from an opened package of spinach, the CDC said. Spinach had only been the suspected source of the bacteria, based on interviews with victims.

French arrests over Ivorian waste

Two senior French officials of the company whose toxic waste has been dumped in Ivory Coast have been charged with poisoning, an official says.
Dutch-based company Trafigura Beheer BV says it is "shocked" and says the two had gone to help those affected by the waste, which has left seven dead.

On Sunday the massive job of cleaning up the polluted sites around the main Ivory Coast city, Abidjan, began.

It will take several weeks for the 400 metric tonnes of waste contained a mixture of gasoline, water and caustic washings to be removed from all the 11 areas.

Ivorians are still heading to the hospitals in large numbers, complaining of headaches, diarrhoea and breathing problems.

The BBC's James Copnall in Abidjan says that until all the toxic waste has been neutralised, the city's residents will continue to be angry and scared.

World poll favours Iran diplomacy

World opinion opposes aggressive steps as a way of stopping a possible Iranian nuclear arms programme, according to a 25-nation poll for BBC World Service.

United States condemns Thai coup

The United States has condemned Tuesday's coup in Thailand and called for the restoration of democracy in its close ally as quickly as possible.
Expressing "disappointment", the White House urged the coup leaders to keep their promise to hold elections.

Bush would send troops inside Pakistan to catch bin Laden

NEW YORK (CNN) -- President Bush said Wednesday he would order U.S. forces to go after Osama bin Laden inside Pakistan if he received good intelligence on the fugitive al Qaeda leader's location.

"Absolutely," Bush said.

The president made the comments Wednesday in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

Although Pakistan has said it won't allow U.S. troops to operate within its territory, "we would take the action necessary to bring him to justice."

But Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, told reporters Wednesday at the United Nations that his government would oppose any U.S. action in its territory.

"We wouldn't like to allow that at all. We will do it ourselves," he said.

FACTBOX-Military and civilian deaths in Iraq

Sept 21 (Reuters) - The U.S. military said a U.S. soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in northern Baghdad on Wednesday.

Another U.S. soldier was shot dead by insurgents on Wednesday in northeastern Baghdad.

Following are the latest figures for military deaths in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003:

U.S.-LED COALITION FORCES:

United States 2,690

Britain 118

Other nations 115

IRAQIS:

Military Between 4,900 and 6,375#

Civilians Between 43,269 and 48,046*

# = Think-tank estimates for military under Saddam Hussein killed during the 2003 war. No reliable official figures have been issued since new security forces were set up in late 2003.

* = From www.iraqbodycount.net, run by academics and peace activists, based on reports from at least two media sources. The IBC says on its Web site the figure underestimates the true number of casualties.

U.N. envoy calls for Ramadan calm in Darfur

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - The U.N. envoy to Sudan on Thursday urged warring groups in Darfur to stop fighting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan to let relief workers operate in the region where conflict has displaced more than 2 million.

"I am sending letters to the president and to all the seven movements ... asking them to respect a month of tranquility during Ramadan," Jan Pronk said in reference to Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and Darfur rebel groups.

"Get off the collision course ... Don't fight, don't bomb, don't change your positions," Pronk told reporters in Khartoum. The Islamic month of Ramadan begins with the new moon in the coming days.

An estimated 200,000 people have been killed since violence erupted in Darfur in 2003. Underfinanced African Union (AU) troops are struggling to enforce a much-violated 2004 ceasefire between government forces and rebel groups in the region.

Bill Clinton warns against wide torture approval

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Bill Clinton joined a chorus of critics of Bush administration proposals for treating suspected terrorists, saying it would be unnecessary and wrong to give broad approval to torture.

In an interview with National Public Radio aired on Thursday, Clinton said any decision to use harsh treatment in interrogating suspects should be subject to court review.

"The president says he's just trying to get the rules clear about how far the CIA can go when they're when they whacking these people around in these secret prisons," Clinton said in NPR's "Morning Edition" interview, recorded on Wednesday.

"If you go around passing laws that legitimize a violation of the Geneva Convention and institutionalize what happened at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo, we're going to be in real trouble," he said.

Like other critics, he said information obtained with harsh treatment may be unreliable and adopting abusive practices could lead to captured U.S. troops being subjected to the same.

Even if there were circumstances where such treatment is necessary to prevent an imminent attacks, Clinton said: "You don't make laws based on that. You don't sit there and say in general torture's fine if you're a terrorist suspect. For one thing, we know we have erred in who was a real suspect."

UN rights envoys condemn Bush plan on interrogation

GENEVA (Reuters) - United Nations human rights investigators said on Thursday that legislation proposed by President Bush for tough interrogations of foreign terrorism suspects would breach the Geneva Conventions.

In a statement to the U.N. Human Rights Council, the five independent envoys also said Washington's admission of secret detention centres abroad pointed to "very serious human rights violations in relation to the hunt for alleged terrorists."

Pakistani clerics, scholars demand pope's removal, warn West of consequences

LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) — About 1,000 Muslim clerics and religious scholars meeting Thursday in eastern Pakistan demanded the removal of Pope Benedict XVI for making what they called "insulting remarks" against Islam.
Benedict "should be removed from his position immediately for encouraging war and fanning hostility between various faiths" and "making insulting remarks" against Islam, said a joint statement issued by the clerics and scholars at the end of their one-day convention.

The "pope, and all infidels, should know that no Muslim, under any circumstances, can tolerate an insult to the Prophet (Muhammad). ... If the West does not change its stance regarding Islam, it will face severe consequences," it said.

Arizona Storms Make History

TUCSON (AP) — Damage caused by a summer storm that battered scenic Sabino Canyon is causing scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Weather Service to reconsider some long-held beliefs.
The storm unleashed dirt and boulders from the canyon walls of the Santa Catalina Mountains' front range in a magnitude not seen for thousands of years.

Meteorologist Erik Pytlak said scientists had assumed that debris flows — where dirt and boulders are carried along by storm runoff — weren't a concern in the area.

He said the National Weather Service is participating in a multiagency study of the phenomenon because it needs to know whether to add rock slides to its list of warnings and alerts.

Pytlak also said the July 31 rain that caused mountain creeks and urban rivers to overflow their banks in the storm was a rare occurrence, "more than a 100-year event."

Pakistan leader says U.S. made threats

WASHINGTON - President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan says the United States threatened to bomb his country back to the Stone Age after the 9-11 attacks if he did not help America's war on terror.

Musharraf says the threat was delivered by Richard Armitage, then the deputy secretary of state, to Musharraf's intelligence director, the Pakistani leader told CBS-TV's 60 Minutes.

"The intelligence director told me that (Armitage) said, 'Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age,'" Musharraf said in the interview to be shown Sunday on the CBS television network.

It was insulting, Musharraf said. "I think it was a very rude remark," he told reporter Steve Kroft.

But, Musharraf said he reacted responsibly. "One has to think and take actions in the interests of the nation and that is what I did," he said.

According to 60 Minutes, Armitage disputed the language attributed to him but did not deny the message was a strong one. The former deputy secretary of state could not be reached immediately by the Associated Press Friday at his home or his office.

Crews try to corral three SoCal wildfires before return of hot, dry winds

OJAI, Calif.. — Fire crews made an all-out effort Thursday to surround a two-week-old wildfire before hot, dry Santa Ana winds arrived to renew its ferocity.
At the same time, they made progress against two smaller blazes also burning in national forests.

The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning of critical fire conditions from Friday afternoon through Sunday for Southern California mountains and valleys. Officials said there could be 45-mph winds, gusting to 65 mph at times on Saturday.

Nigeria clamps curfew on town after churches burnt

LAGOS, Sept 21 (Reuters) - Nigerian authorities have imposed a night curfew on the northern town of Dutse after Muslim mobs burned 11 churches over what they said was blasphemy against the Prophet Mohammad by a Christian woman, police said on Thursday.

Scores of houses and shops owned by Christians were also torched in the capital of remote Jigawa state during a riot on Wednesday sparked by a disagreement between a Muslim man and a Christian woman, police spokesman Haz Iwendi said.

No one was killed in the riot but up to seven people were injured, Iwendi said.

"Eleven churches and so many houses and shops were burned. The house of the Anglican bishop was also ransacked," he said, adding that hundreds of Christians fled their homes to military and police barracks fearing further attacks.

"There is now a night curfew in the town and police units from (neighbouring) Kano and Katsina states have been sent there to beef up security," Iwendi said.

Religious violence has plagued Nigeria, whose 140 million people are thought to be evenly split between Muslims in the north and Christians in the south, for many years. There are sizeable religious minorities in all areas of the country.

Thousands of people have died in religious violence since the restoration of democracy in the world's eighth largest oil exporter in 1999.

At least 50 Christians were killed in the northwestern town of Maiduguri in February, according to CAN. News of the killings sparked reprisals in the southeastern market city of Onitsha, where Christian mobs killed about 100 Muslims.