LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY “It is not possible to cover over a thing like this.Whatever is necessary will no doubt be done.”
Turkish President Abdullah Gul,
in response to the downing of a Turkish military jet by Syria Article 1A
8 Czech tourists die in Croatia crash
ZAGREB, Croatia - At least eight Czech tourists were killed and 44 injured when a bus crashed and overturned on a major highway in Croatia on Saturday, police said.
The accident happened about 4 a.m. Croatian time about 125 miles south of Zagreb, on a highway connecting the Croatian capital with the central Adriatic coastal city of Split, according to a police statement.
Croatia’s state TV said the bus crashed through metal barriers in the middle of the highway and overturned in the opposite lane near a tunnel.
State TV quoted eyewitnesses as saying the bus started “swaying” moments before the crash.
Photos from the scene showed the bus’s twisted metal remains on its side, with seven dead passengers - covered with white sheets - lying on the pavement. State TV said a child was among the dead and the eighth fatality was discovered in the wreckage.
Most of the injured passengers were hospitalized in the nearby town of Gospic, while three of the most seriously hurt, including two children, were flown to Zagreb by a helicopter.
Al-Qaida militants flee Yemen town
SANA, Yemen - Yemen’s army recaptured a new al-Qaida stronghold in the south on Saturday, officials said, the latest success in a two-month government offensive aimed at uprooting the militant group from large swaths of lands captured during last year’s political turmoil.
Three days of shelling of al-Qaida positions and warnings to local tribal leaders of further escalation drove the militants out of Azzan town, said Ali al-Ahmadi, governor of the province of Shabwa. He said the militants fled into the mountains and to camps in the deserts of two nearby provinces, taking captured armored vehicles with them. He had no word on casualties.
Azzan had been used by the militant group as a media headquarters, producing audiovisual material for distribution on militant websites.
The army’s offensive against what is seen as the international network’s most dangerous branch - which is known as Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula - has seen the recapture of several towns that the militants seized in the security vacuum that accompanied 2011’s mass uprisings against longtime authoritarian leader Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Afghan flash-flood toll rises to 37
KABUL - Flash floods have swept northern Afghanistan, killing at least 37 people, Afghan and U.N. authorities said Saturday.
More than 100 homes, hundreds of acres of farmland and many farm animals were destroyed by the floods that followed four or five days of heavy rain in the region.
Abdul Hai Khateby, who is the spokesman in Ghor province, said Saturday that 24 people were killed in four districts, including the provincial capital of Chaghcharan.
“Many, many houses have been destroyed, and there are reports of lots of cattle and other animals being killed,” Khateby said. “It is cloudy, and we expect more rain.”
The provincial spokesman of Badakhshan, Abdul Marouf Rasekh, said 13 people were killed Friday night in Yaftal district and four other districts have been affected.
The Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authority said an estimated 135 houses in Badakhshan had been destroyed, forcing residents to flee.
Mexico: Got wrong man in drug raid
MEXICO CITY - After working months with U.S. intelligence, the Mexican navy said it believed it had nabbed a big prize in a known Guadalajara drug haven: the son of Mexico’s top fugitive drug lord.
But it turned out they got the wrong man.
The man arrested Thursday as the presumed son of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is really Felix Beltran Leon, 23, and not Alfredo Guzman Salazar, as the Mexican navy had presented him, the attorney general’s office said Friday.
The attorney general’s office said “necessary tests” had proved he wasn’t the drug lord’s son, but said he would remain under investigation for the guns and money found during his arrest.
The attorney general’s office issued a statement earlier Friday saying the original information on his identity came from the United States.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said the information came from Mexico.
Front Section, Pages 8 on 06/24/2012