A roundup of today's other world news in brief:
At least 19 die as tornadoes rip through US
OKLAHOMA CITY- At least 19 people were killed in Missouri and Oklahoma when tornadoes and violent storms ripped through the central and southeastern United States, devastating neighbourhoods and injuring hundreds, officials said yesterday.
The National Weather Service reported six deaths in Oklahoma and 13 in Missouri, but those tolls may rise. The severe weather, which developed between Kansas and Oklahoma on Saturday, moved to Georgia on Sunday.
In Missouri's Newton County on the border with Oklahoma, 10 people were killed. Hardest hit was Racine, a community about 270km south of Kansas City.
Initial reports from storm survey crews showed a path of destruction 1.6km wide in some places, said Jason Schaumann, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Missouri. "We've got indications of cars that were thrown a quarter to a half mile, and frame homes that were swept off their foundations," he said.
- (Reuters)
11 Indian rail workers slain
GUWAHATI- Tribal insurgents killed 11 railway workers in India's remote northeast yesterday, police said, a day after security forces shot 11 rebels.
Police said militants attacked a remote railway station in the state of Assam, killing three workers. They later raided a railway construction site and killed eight workers.
"All 11 were killed on the spot," said a senior police officer, who did not want to be named. He said the suspects were from a breakaway group of the Dima Halam Daogah (DHD), fighting for regional autonomy.
- (Reuters)
Senegal cuts tax for food growers
DAKAR- Senegal, one of the world's top food importers per capita, has offered foreign entrepreneurs tax breaks to grow food in the West African country as its poor struggle to cope with high world prices.
Senegal is one of several African countries hit by unrest in recent months over high food prices driven by unpredictable weather, market speculation and demand for land and crops from the biofuels industry and Asian states.
Last month President Abdoulaye Wade launched a "Great Agricultural Offensive for Food and Abundance", known by its French acronym GOANA, to increase food production.
"A decree has been signed exempting every investor in the framework of GOANA from customs duties and tax. VAT (value added tax) is also exempted," Information Minister Abdul Aziz Sow said.
- (Reuters)
Amnesty appeal on Saudi lecturer
RIYADH- Amnesty International has urged the Saudi authorities to release a Saudi university professor facing flogging and time in jail for having coffee with a woman to whom he is not related in the conservative Islamic kingdom.
Muhammad Ali Abu Raziza, a psychology lecturer at the university of Mecca, has been sentenced to 150 lashes and eight months in jail after the religious police caught him with a woman in a coffee shop, the rights group said in a statement.
Boy dies after throat slashed
LONDON- Police appealed yesterday for witnesses to help find the killer of a teenage boy "of immaculate character" who died the day after his 16th birthday.
Jimmy Mizen bled to death following a frenzied attack after going to a bakery in southeast London on Saturday. He died after his throat was slashed in an unprovoked fight with a male youth who smashed his way into The Three Cooks Bakery in Lee.
- (Reuters)