World Digest: May 25, 2015
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Version 0 of 1. Soaring temperatures have gripped parts of southern and northern India in an extreme heat wave that has killed more than 500 people and looks set to continue this week, officials said Monday. The hottest place in India was Allahabad, a city in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, which saw the mercury rise to 117.8 degrees Sunday, while the capital, Delhi, recorded a high of 110.3 degrees. Most of the 539 recorded deaths have been of construction workers, the elderly or the homeless in the southern states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, officials said, but some have also occurred in Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and West Bengal. The Indian Meteorological Department has issued a red warning to affected regions saying that heat wave conditions are likely to continue over coming days. The director of Andhra Pradesh’s Disaster Management Department, K. Dhananjaya Reddy, said 325 people had died of sunstroke or dehydration in the state in the past three days. “We are advising people not to go to work between 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.,” Reddy said. —Reuters Taliban gunmen surrounded a police compound in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province after killing 19 police officers and seven soldiers in an ongoing siege, the senior police officer said Monday. Napas Khan, the police chief in the Naw Zad district, said by telephone from inside the compound that the insurgents had advanced to within 65 feet of the compound. They had seized police vehicles and weapons and blocked all roads out of Naw Zad. “We need an immediate response from the government,” Khan said. Helmand has long been a heartland for the Taliban, which profits heavily from opium produced in its fertile river valley. Government forces launched an operation against the insurgents in March, in the hope of reducing the impact of the Taliban’s annual warm weather offensive. Since that offensive was launched in late April, however, attacks across the country have intensified, spreading government forces thin. Also on Monday, a suicide truck bomb attack and a separate roadside bombing in southern Afghanistan killed 11 people and wounded dozens, as the Taliban clashed with Islamic State supporters in the western province of Farah, officials said. — Associated Press Yemen peace conference postponed: A U.N.-sponsored Yemeni peace conference that was to start Thursday in Geneva has been postponed, officials said. The exiled government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi had demanded that the Houthi rebels recognize its authority and withdraw from Yemen’s main cities — two points set out last month in a U.N. Security Council resolution. The conference “has been indefinitely postponed because the Houthis did not indicate their commitment to implement the . . . resolution,” Sultan al-Atwani, a Hadi aide, said from the Saudi capital, Riyadh. He also cited fighting on the ground. The Houthis had planned to attend the talks. Russia, NATO launch military exercises: Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered four days of air combat readiness testing Monday, the third major military exercise staged by the Kremlin in the past three months. The surprise test of the Russian Central Military District’s ability to defend against an air invasion coincides with NATO-led military exercises over the Arctic region that are part of the Western alliance’s response to Russia’s stepped-up maneuvers over the Baltic and Northern European regions. Philippines seeks U.S. help in South China Sea dispute: The Philippines is seeking a “stronger commitment” from the United States to help its ally, its defense minister said, as China asserts its sovereignty over disputed areas of the South China Sea. China claims most of the South China Sea, and the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei have overlapping claims. China said it had lodged a complaint with the United States over a U.S. surveillance plane that flew over parts of the area last week. Rest home fire kills 38 in China: A rest home fire in central China killed 38 people and injured six, Chinese state media reported. The official Xinhua News Agency said the Monday night fire swept through an apartment building being used as a privately run rest home in the city of Pingdingshan in Henan province. The cause of the fire was unclear. — From news services |