Aid workers struggling to help cyclone survivors

Aid workers struggling
to help cyclone survivors

DHAKA, Bangladesh — Aid workers struggled Friday to help hundreds of thousands of survivors of a cyclone that blasted Bangladesh with 150 mph winds, killing a reported 1,100 people, savaging coastal towns, and leaving millions without power in the deadliest such storm in more than a decade. Rescuers — some even employing the brute force of elephants — contended with roads that were washed out or blocked by wind-blown debris to try to get water and food to people stranded by flooding from Tropical Cyclone Sidr. The damage to livelihood, housing and crops from Sidr will be “extremely severe,” said John Holmes, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, adding that the world body was making millions of dollars in aid available to Bangladesh.

Russians try to coax
cult members out

MOSCOW — Doctors and rescuers were trying Friday to coax more than two dozen doomsday cult members into leaving their forest hide-out near the Volga River, where they were awaiting the end of the world with the coming of spring. The cult members have threatened to blow themselves up with about 100 gallons of stockpiled gasoline if authorities forced them out of what officials described as a cave or bunker near the village of Nikolskoye, about 400 miles southeast of Moscow, said regional spokesman Yevgeny Guseynov.

Guseynov said he added that doctors and rescuers were nearby and trying to persuade the cult members to leave. Pyotr Kuznetsov, a self-declared prophet who established his True Russian Orthodox Church after he split with the official church, has not joined his followers. He was undergoing psychiatric evaluation Friday, a day after he was charged with setting up a religious organization associated with violence, Guseynov said.

Balloon crash kills 2 men

HAMPTON, Iowa — A helium-powered balloon hit a power line and crashed onto a north-central Iowa farm field Friday, killing two men and injuring a third, a sheriff said. The balloon was descending when it hit the line around 9:15 a.m. The balloon and the basket separated and the basket fell 60 feet to the ground, Franklin County Sheriff Larry Richtsmeier said. Residents who had come out of their house to wave at the balloonists saw it hit the power line, called 911 and rushed to the scene, he said. They found the basket on its side in a grassy field. Richtsmeier said paperwork found in one of the men’s pockets indicated they had spent Thursday night in the Omaha, Neb., area. They were flying beneath a helium balloon, rather than a more common hot air balloon powered by propane burners, Richtsmeier said.

Filibuster kills farm bill

WASHINGTON — A wide-ranging rewrite of the farm bill fell victim Friday to a Republican filibuster in the Senate, threatening enactment of new and expanded subsidies promised to farmers by lawmakers seeking re-election next year. Immediately after supporters fell five votes short of breaking a Republican filibuster, key lawmakers huddled on how to revive it. Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, Democratic chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, backed off a threat Thursday to postpone action on the bill until 2009. The five-year bill would extend and expand crop and dairy subsidies along with popular nutrition aid programs, including food stamps. Most of those programs have been operating under a temporary extension since the last five-year farm law expired Sept. 30.

Japan’s prime minister,
Bush vow cooperation

WASHINGTON — President Bush on Friday claimed “measurable results” from six-nation talks to persuade North Korea to dismantle its nuclear-weapons operations, but said more must be done to reach the goal of a nuclear-free Korean peninsula. He praised Japan’s role in the process and said the U.S. was sensitive to the importance Tokyo places on also resolving the issue of Japanese kidnapped in North Korea. Japan’s new prime minister, Yasuo Fukuda, standing besides Bush in the Grand Foyer of the White House, pledged to do his “level best” to get the Japanese parliament to restore naval refueling operations in the Indian Ocean that have been suspended. Bush isaid they were vital to the war in Afghanistan. The two leaders vowed to cooperate on these and other issues that have strained relations in the past months between the world’s two largest economies. It was Fukuda’s first visit to Washington since he became prime minister in September.

Associated Press