At Jinja pier the rusty red hull of a Lake Victoria freighter sat barely afloat in water just six feet deep and dropping. "The scientists have to explain this," said ship's engineer Gabriel Maziku. Across the bay, at a fish packing plant, fishermen had to wade ashore with their Nile perch in flat-bottomed boats, and heave the silvery catch up to a jetty that soon may be on dry land and out of reach entirely. Looking on, plant manager Ravee Ramanujam wondered about what's to come. "Such a large body of water, dropping so fast," he said. At 27,000 square miles, the size of Ireland, Victoria is the greatest of Africa's Great Lakes the biggest freshwater body after Lake Superior. And it has dropped fast, at least six feet in the past three years, and by as much as a half-inch a day this year before November rains stabilized things. ...
http://abcnews.go.com
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Editor - 11:06:00 12-09-06
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 Shooting May Be Over 'Truck Toilet' Patent |
Chicago police say the gunman in yesterday's fatal downtown office shooting, in which three people were killed before the gunman himself was fatally shot by police, felt he had been cheated over an invention. Police Superintendent Phil Cline says 59-year-old Joe Jackson of Chicago had invented a truck toilet. Cline says Jackson told a security guard just before the shooting that he had been cheated over his invention. He says Jackson forced the guard to bring him up to the 38th floor, to the firm of Wood, Phillips, Katz, Clark & Mortimer, which specialized in patents. Cline said the gunman, who was armed with a revolver, a knife and hammer, didn't work in the office but demanded to see one of the victims who was killed. The gunman was carrying a manila envelope where he apparently hid the weapons, Cline said. ...
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/12/08/national/main2243640.shtml?source=RSSattr=U.S._2243640
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Editor - 11:03:00 12-09-06
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| Car bomb blast in holy Iraqi city |
A suicide car bomb has killed at least five people and injured more than 40 in the holy city of Karbala, near one of Shia Islam's most important sites. It exploded near the Imam al-Abbas shrine, the final resting place of the son of the founder of Shia Islam. Reports say police and passers-by tried to stop the bomber parking his car before he detonated the bomb. The BBC's Jim Muir in Baghdad says attacks aimed at sacred targets clearly aim to stir up sectarian tension. Witnesses said this blast turned the bustling central street of Karbala, within sight of the holy shrine, into an inferno of blazing cars and burnt out shop-fronts. As emergency services rushed the wounded to hospitals, police sealed the city off. Karbala, 80km (50 miles) south of Baghdad, is Iraq's second holiest Shia city after Najaf....
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6164091.stm
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Editor - 10:48:00 12-09-06
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| Japan asks China leaders to visit |
Japan has formally invited China's top leaders to visit the country next spring, Tokyo's foreign minister says. Taro Aso said Chinese President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao were welcome to visit the country. Beijing has not given an official response to the invitation, which came after talks between both countries' foreign ministers in the Philippines. Japan's new Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, has tried to mend ties strained by a row over wartime history. His predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, angered China and South Korea with his regular visits to the Yasukuni shrine honouring Japan's wartime dead. Both countries were occupied by Japan during the war and felt the shrine visits were a tacit tribute to Japan's imperial ambitions. ...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6164007.stm
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Editor - 10:39:00 12-09-06
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| Aid drops target Somali refugees |
Air drops are under way to deliver relief supplies to more than 100,000 Somali refugees in three camps cut off by flooding in north-eastern Kenya. A US Air Force Hercules transport plane has delivered tonnes of plastic sheeting, mosquito nets and blankets. The UN refugee agency says the rains have ceased for the time being, but if they start again, even air drops will become difficult. One million people have been displaced by floods. With escalating fighting in Somalia, the UN is worried about a possible influx of refugees into Kenya at a time when the camps are struggling to cope. It says the three camps at Dadaab, close to the Somali border, have been badly affected by the heavy rains of recent weeks. Roads in the area are impassable and the air drops are being used as a last resort to reach refugees left without shelter. ...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6164009.stm
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Editor - 09:53:00 12-09-06
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| US Congress backs Vietnam trade |
The United States Congress has passed landmark legislation normalising trade ties with Vietnam. The legislation sweeps aside trade curbs in place since the Vietnam War. The bill had suffered a defeat last month in the House of Representatives ahead of President George W Bush's first visit to Vietnam. The vote was one of several which the outgoing Republican-controlled Congress has been trying to pass before the Democratic Party takes over in January. The trade vote package also expanded trade relations with Haiti, and tweaked Washington's trade preferences with several states in Latin America and beyond. The failure of Congress to pass the bill normalising trade relations with Hanoi was seen as an embarrassment for Mr Bush before he visited Vietnam for an economic summit in November....
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6163889.stm
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Editor - 09:51:00 12-09-06
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