Kazan, Russia
Cruise boat disaster: More than 100 people drowned, including some 50 children, when a decrepit Russian cruise ship sank in the Volga River this week. The Bulgaria, built in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s, was carrying 208 people, nearly twice its legal capacity, when it hit bad weather and capsized in deep water more than a mile from either shore. Nearly all the children on board were lost, as they had just entered a playroom below deck for a party. Sailors from other vessels said the Bulgaria was notoriously unseaworthy and hadn’t been repaired since the 1980s. Russian officials have arrested the head of the company that operates the ship, which they said had no license to carry passengers, as well as the riverboat inspector in charge of the region.
Mumbai, India
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Terrorist attack: Three near-simultaneous bombs exploded during rush hour in Mumbai this week, killing at least 17 people and injuring more than 100. It was the biggest attack on India’s financial capital since the 2008 siege of hotels and other buildings by the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, in which 166 were killed. Two of the explosions hit the south of the city, near the popular Opera House and famous jewelry market Zaveri Bazaar. The other struck a crowded neighborhood in the center. Mumbai police blamed the Indian Mujahideen, which is believed to be a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba. “The entire city of Mumbai has been put on high alert,” said Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram, who asked residents to “remain calm and maintain the peace.”
Kandahar, Afghanistan
Karzai brother killed: Ahmed Wali Karzai, the younger half brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, was shot dead at point-blank range in his home in Kandahar this week. The killer, a close associate, was immediately shot and killed by bodyguards; the motive for the assassination was unclear. The most powerful figure in Kandahar, the younger Karzai was variously accused of corruption, drug trafficking, and being a CIA informant, allegations he denied. The death is a serious blow to President Karzai’s power in the southern part of the country. “We expect now the security of Kandahar will get worse,” said Mir Wali Khan, a former parliament member who was at the house at the time of the shooting, “and the fighting among the tribes will grow stronger and stronger.”
Damascus, Syria
U.S. Embassy stormed: A pro-regime mob attacked the U.S. and French embassies this week, prompting the strongest U.S. condemnation yet of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as his brutal crackdown on demonstrators entered its fourth month. The mob breached the U.S. Embassy’s outer security perimeter, smashing windows and climbing onto the roof. The protest was the regime’s response to criticism by U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford, who visited the besieged anti-regime city of Hama and then wrote on his Facebook page that Assad’s “thugs” were beating and shooting peaceful demonstrators. “President Assad is not indispensable, and we have absolutely nothing invested in him remaining in power,” said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “From our perspective, he has lost legitimacy.”
Cairo
Tahrir Square full again: In an echo of the protest that toppled President Hosni Mubarak in February, hundreds of demonstrators have set up camp in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, demanding reforms from the new, military-backed government. The January 25 Coalition, named for the day the anti-Mubarak protests began, says its members will stay in the square with their tents and sleeping bags until the government boots out the despised interior minister, puts officers who fired on civilians on trial, and implements economic reform. “A cabinet reshuffle will be made within a week,” interim Prime Minister Essam Sharaf said. “This change will achieve the goals of the revolution and reflect the real will of the people.” So far, though, the people aren’t buying it.
Juba, South Sudan
Happy birthday: Thousands of revelers cheered and sang in the streets last week as South Sudan became the world’s newest nation. The mostly black, Christian and animist country officially declared independence from North Sudan, dominated by Arab Muslims, as negotiated in a 2005 peace deal that ended some 50 years of intermittent civil war. The fight was particularly brutal in the 1980s and ’90s, when Arab militias massacred southern Sudanese villagers and enslaved their children. Now the new country faces internal ethnic tensions and several armed rebellions, and it has yet to agree with North Sudan on how to allocate revenue from the oil fields, mostly located in South Sudan.
Mogadishu, Somalia
Famine stalks land: Somalia is facing a famine as bad as that of the 1980s, U.N. officials said this week. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled fighting and severe drought to crowd into overwhelmed refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia. Unknown thousands, many of them children, died of starvation and exposure while making the long journey across the desert on foot. “I believe Somalia represents the worst humanitarian disaster in the world,” said U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres. “We need to do everything we can to make it possible to deliver massive humanitarian assistance.”
The news at a glance...International