A round-up of today's other world news stories in brief
Major powers in new initiative to ban Middle East nuclear weapons
The world’s major powers are drafting a new initiative to ban all weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East, according to officials from several countries.
The proposal, involving exploratory talks with Israel, Iran and Arab states, will be a central issue at a major conference beginning today in New York aimed at preventing the further spread of nuclear weapons around the world.
Washington has been preparing the diplomatic initiative in consultation with Britain, Russia, France and China.
However, it is unclear whether the proposal will go far enough for Egypt, which has long promoted the idea as a means of exerting pressure on Israel, the only state with nuclear weapons in the region.
The New York conference brings more than 150 countries together in a month-long effort to repair and update the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, at a time when it is threatening to unravel.
“This will be the most important conference in our lifetime on disarmament and non-proliferation,” said Des Browne, the British former defence minister who now leads a multi-party group of veteran politicians and generals pushing for the elimination of nuclear weapons. – (Guardian service)
15 killed in hailstorm in Bangladesh
DHAKA – At least 15 people were killed and 50 others were injured by lightning during hailstorms in Bangladesh yesterday, police and disaster management officials said.
Several thousand people were also made homeless as hundreds of houses were hit by the hailstorms sweeping through four districts in the northern Mymensingh region.
Vast swathes of crops were also damaged in the hailstorms and trees and electric poles uprooted in the seasonal tropical storms.
Storms – peaking in April and lasting until the monsoon begins in the middle of June – kill dozens, sometimes hundreds, of people in Bangladesh every year.
Bangladesh’s meteorological department has raised further storm alerts across the country for the next 24 hours. – (Reuters)
Explosion rocks Somali mosque
MOGADISHU – An explosion in a mosque in the southern Somali port city of Kismayu has killed at least one person and wounded about 10 worshippers, witnesses have said.
“We were in the middle of prayer when something, we are guessing a hand grenade, hit the mosque,” Ahmed Yusuf, who was inside at the time, said yesterday. It was the third attack on a mosque in Somalia in a week. The bomb was thrown in a window.
A landmine killed one person outside a mosque in the capital last Tuesday and two blasts at another mosque in Mogadishu on Saturday killed nearly 40 people and wounded scores.
The mosque attacks are a new phenomenon in the Muslim Horn of Africa nation that has been plagued by violence and anarchy since dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted in 1991. – (Reuters)
Five trampled to death in concert stampede
MEXICO – At least five people were trampled to death yesterday when concert fans were panicked by the sound of gunfire and caused a stampede in Monterrey.
Hundreds of fans of the Norteno group Intocable at the show rushed for the exits after some people yelled that they had heard shooting, senior government official Ivonne Alvarez said.
Television images showed people giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to unconscious and half-naked men and women scattered around one of the venue’s exits.
Police later recovered one spent bullet shell.
Monterrey has been engulfed by violent crime as battles between rival drug gangs spill into once tranquil parts of Mexico. – (Reuters)