UK taxi driver crushed to death in windstorm
LONDON – Strong winds pummeling Britain killed a taxi driver, whose car was crushed by falling chunks of masonry from a building, as well as an elderly man who died after a “freak wave” struck a cruise ship in the English Channel, officials said Saturday. Another 15 cruise ship passengers were injured.
The taxi driver was killed late Friday in central London near Holborn subway station when part of a building collapsed during a windstorm, police said. She was identified as Julie Sillitoe, a 49-year-old with three sons.
Her passengers, a man and woman, were hospitalized with injuries not believed to be life-threatening, police said. The car wasn’t moving at the time of the building collapse, and the female passenger managed to free herself from the rear of the vehicle.
A fourth person, believed to be a male pedestrian, also was injured and taken to a hospital, ambulance officials said. About 10 people were evacuated from nearby buildings as a precaution.
The 85-year-old cruise ship passenger died after 80 mph wind gusts kicked up giant waves in the English Channel on Friday afternoon, endangering safety in the crowded shipping lanes used by commercial vessels, cruise ships and pleasure craft. Cruise and Maritime Voyages said a “freak wave” broke five windows on its Marco Polo cruise ship, inundating the ship’s Waldorf Restaurant.
Opposition ready to vacate Kiev building
KIEV, Ukraine – A top Ukrainian opposition leader said Saturday protesters are ready to vacate the Kiev City Hall they have occupied for nearly three months – if the government drops all charges against the demonstrators.
This week, the last of the 234 protesters were released from jail as part of an amnesty. The amnesty law also calls for the opposition to vacate seized government buildings in Kiev and elsewhere in Ukraine.
Oleh Tyahnybok, head of the nationalist Svoboda party, said Saturday the opposition is ready to vacate the Kiev City Hall, used by protesters as a dormitory, if criminal cases against protesters are dropped. He added a final decision will have to be approved by demonstrators on Kiev’s Independence Square, known as the Maidan.
The protests erupted in November after President Viktor Yanukovych abandoned a long-anticipated political and economic treaty with the European Union and sought a bailout loan from Russia. After police violently dispersed several rallies, the protests turned into a broader movement for human rights and against corruption. Yanukovych still remains popular in the Russian-speaking east and south of the country, where cultural and economic ties with Russia are strong.
Bahrainis protest, police officer dies
MANAMA, Bahrain – Bahraini anti-government activists clashed with security forces as thousands of demonstrators took to the streets on Saturday, sending tear gas into a major shopping mall and bringing the capital’s streets to a standstill on the same day authorities said a police officer died of injuries suffered from an earlier bombing.
The Interior Ministry said the officer was one of two injured in what it called a “terrorist blast” on Friday in the village of Dair, near the country’s main airport. It did not identify the officer. In a second statement, the ministry characterized recent attacks against security forces as “urban guerrilla warfare.”
Chaos in the small Gulf-island nation highlights deeper regional sectarian tensions continuing to roil Bahrain three years after the country’s majority Shiites began an Arab Spring-inspired uprising to demand greater political rights from the Sunni-led monarchy.
Neighboring Sunni-ruled Gulf countries with smaller Shiite populations, led by Saudi Arabia, sent troops to Bahrain in an effort to stem the uprising in 2011. More than 65 people have died in the unrest, but rights groups and others put the death toll higher.
Mob attacks alleged gays in Nigerian capital
ABUJA, Nigeria – A mob armed with wooden clubs and iron bars, screaming they were going to “cleanse” their neighborhood of gay people, dragged 14 young men from their beds and assaulted them, human rights activists said Saturday.
Four of the victims were marched to a police station, where they allegedly were kicked and punched by police officers who yelled pejoratives at them, said Ifeanyi Orazulike of the International Center on Advocacy for the Right to Health.
Police threatened the men would be incarcerated for 14 years, he said, the maximum prison sentence under Nigeria’s new Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act, dubbed the “Jail the Gays” law. Activists have warned the law could trigger attacks such as the one perpetrated in the early hours of Thursday morning in Abuja, the capital of Africa’s most populous nation.
Mob justice is common in Nigeria and civil rights organizations have been warning for years of an increase in community violence and the government’s failure to curb acts in which people have been beaten to death for perceived crimes such as theft.
Associated Press
