AFP, Kuala Lumpur
Malaysian authorities today ordered most of the country’s schools shut for two days because of possible health risks posed by the thick haze from Indonesian forest fires.
The education ministry said all schools, except a handful in outlying areas, must close their doors on Monday and Tuesday.
“The haze that is happening is beyond our control,” said Education Minister Mahdzir Khalid.
Car bombs kill 18 in Baghdad
Reuters, Baghdad
Suicide car bomb attacks targeting two mainly Shi’ite Muslim districts of Baghdad killed at least 18 people on Saturday, police and medical sources said.
The attacks targeted Kadhimiya and Hurriya in the north of the capital. Police said at least 60 people were wounded.
Islamic State, which controls large parts of northern and western Iraq, claimed responsibility and said the target was “rejectionists”, its derogatory word for Shi’ites.
16 feared dead in French flood
AFP, Nice
Violent storms and flooding struck the glitzy French Riviera early today, killing 10 people and leaving six missing, according to an official toll.
President Francois Hollande was expected to visit the site of the disaster, which occurred when the Cote d’Azur received up to 180 millimetres (seven inches) of rain in just three hours.
Three people died when water engulfed a retirement home at Biot near Antibes, and three drowned when their car was trapped by rising waters in a small tunnel at Vallauris-Golfe-Juan.
MSF staff leaves Afghan city after airstrike
AP, Kabul
International medical charity Doctors Without Borders said on Sunday it has withdrawn from the northern Afghan city of Kunduz after a deadly airstrike destroyed its hospital, killing 19 people. The humanitarian crisis in the city, which briefly fell to the Taliban last week before the government launched a counteroffensive, has grown increasingly dire, with shops shuttered because of ongoing fighting and roads made impassable by mines planted by insurgents.
Myanmar radical monk endorses ruling party
Reuters, Yangon
Myanmar’s firebrand Buddhist monk Wirathu has openly endorsed President Thein Sein’s ruling party in the Nov. 8 general election, saying Aung San Suu Kyi’s opposition party was “full of themselves” and unlikely to win the vote.
Hardline monks will push for laws banning Muslim dress and other Muslim customs, Wirathu told Reuters on Sunday before a rally held by thousands of members of the radical Buddhist group Ma Ba Tha.
The remarks could stoke religious tension, already high in Myanmar after Ma Ba Tha played a big role in securing passage of four so-called Protection of Race and Religion Laws seen as targeting women and the country’s Muslim minority.
