Wildfire in Georgia forces evacuations

Wildfire in Georgia forces evacuations

folkston, ga.

Seventy-nine people in St. George in Georgia’s southernmost county have been evacuated after a wildfire in the Okefenokee Swamp began encroaching onto private property. The unincorporated community has about 2,000 people.

The wildfire started by lightning April 6 and has since burned more than 150 square miles of public lands.

Thousands of women march in Venezuela

CARACAS, Venezuela

Women banged on pans and some stripped off their white shirts Saturday as they protested Venezuela’s socialist government in an event the opposition billed as a “women’s march against repression.” As they marched, local media carried a video showing people toppling a statue of the late President Hugo Chavez on Friday in the western state of Zulia. Some sported makeshift gear to protect against tear gas and rubber bullets. Others marched topless.

As they have near-daily for five weeks, police in riot gear again took control of major roads in the capital city. Clashes between police and protesters have left three dozen dead in the past month.

Hamas: Haniyeh is Islamic group leader

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip

The Hamas Islamic militant movement that controls the Gaza Strip announced Saturday it had chosen its former Gaza prime minister Ismail Haniyeh as the group’s new political chief.

Haniyeh succeeds Hamas’ longtime exiled leader Khaled Mashaal, and the move comes shortly after Gaza’s rulers unveiled a new, seemingly more pragmatic political program aimed at ending the group’s international isolation.

Hamas is trying to rebrand itself as an Islamic national liberation movement, rather than a branch of the pan-Arab Muslim Brotherhood, which has been outlawed by Egypt. It has also dropped explicit language calling for Israel’s destruction, though it retains the goal of eventually “liberating” all of historic Palestine, which includes what is now Israel.

Bus crashes, killing 35 in Tanzania

DODOMA, Tanzania

At least 35 people were killed, most of them young children, after a bus carrying students lost control and crashed in northern Tanzania, police said Saturday.

The bus had been carrying the students from a primary school in Arusha for an examination, Arusha Region Police Commander Charles Mkumbo said. It skidded off the road near the Mlera river in Meatu district and plunged into a gully.

Officials said the dead included 32 young students, two teachers and a bus driver. They said all of those bodies had been recovered.

Africa has the world’s highest per capita rate of road deaths though it has roughly just 2 percent of the world’s vehicles, the World Bank has reported.

Syria violence kills 4

beirut

Violence left at least four opposition fighters dead and a child wounded in central and southern Syria Saturday despite relative calm prevailing across the war-ravaged country after a deal to set up “de-escalation zones” in mostly opposition-held areas went into effect, opposition activists and government media outlets said.

The casualties were the first after the implementation of the agreement hammered out by Russia, Turkey and Iran – the latest attempt to bring calm to the country – commenced at midnight Friday.

The establishment of safe zones is the latest international attempt to reduce violence amid a six-year civil war that has left more than 400,000 dead, and is the first to envisage armed foreign monitors on the ground in Syria. The U.S. is not party to the agreement, and the Syrian rivals have not signed on to the deal.

Associated Press