The world in brief

— QUOTE OF THE DAY “I can’t believe God punished us this way. My 15-year-old son got injured. I wish police were more responsive.”

Santos Singh, a Hindu pilgrim at the scene of a fatal train-station stampede in India Article, 1A

Lifeboat plunges in Spanish drill; 5 die

LA PALMA, Canary Islands - A lifeboat being used on a safety drill aboard a cruise ship in Spain’s Canary Islands fell about 65 feet into a port on Sunday when a cable snapped, trapping crew members beneath it and killing five of them, officials said.

None of the hundreds of passengers aboard the British-operated vessel were involved in the accident, which also injured three crew members, said the Canary Islands port authority.

Divers raced to the lifeboat, which had hit the water upside down, recovering four bodies and trying without success to revive a fifth crewman who had stopped breathing, the port authority said.

Thomson Cruises confirmed the accident and the casualties aboard its Thomson Majesty ship on the island of La Palma, saying the three injured crewmen were not badly hurt.

Burma journalists: Warned by Google

BANGKOK - Several journalists who cover Burma said Sunday that they had received warnings from Google that their e-mail accounts might have been hacked by “state-sponsored attackers.”

The warnings began appearing last week, said the journalists, who included employees of Eleven Media, one of Burma’s leading news organizations; Bertil Lintner, a Thailand-based author and expert on Burma’s ethnic groups; and a Burmese correspondent for The Associated Press.

Taj Meadows, a Google spokesman in Tokyo, said that he could not immediately provide specifics about the warnings, but said that Google had begun the policy of notifying users of suspicious activity in June.

Google has not said how it determines whether an attack is “state-sponsored” and does not identify which government may be leading the attacks.

Ye Htut, a Burma government spokesman, and Zaw Htay, a director in the president’s office, could not be reached for comment Sunday.

The news media in Burma were highly censored and restricted during five decades of military rule, but the government has lifted many of those restrictions since President Thein Sein came to power nearly two years ago.

Attack on S. Sudan herders kills 103

JUBA, South Sudan - More than 100 people were killed in a violence-prone region of South Sudan when one tribe attacked another while cattle were being moved across land, officials said Sunday.

Kuol Manyang Juuk, the governor of Jonglei state, said 103 people died in the Friday clash in Akobo County. Juuk said 17 of the attackers were killed and that 14 soldiers from South Sudan’s military, the SPLA, who were accompanying the cattle-moving tribe also died.

Jonglei County has been wracked by bouts of tribal violence for years. The United Nations says more than 2,600 violence-related deaths were reported in Jonglei from January 2011 to September 2012, and account for more than half of the reported deaths in South Sudan, a country that is emerging from the shambles of a decades-long war. Jonglei state covers northeastern South Sudan.

Akobo County Commissioner Goi Joyul said the attack took place during a yearly migration in which members of the Lou Nuer ethnic group were driving cattle across the Sobat River.

Tunisia hit with Cabinet resignations

Ministers from the Tunisian president’s secularist party have pulled out of the Cabinet on Sunday as the North African country grapples with political tensions.

“The ministers of the Congress have resigned because the party’s demands that the justice and foreign ministers be changed haven’t been met,” Samir Ben Omar, a member of the Congress for the Republic Party’s executive committee, said by phone.

Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali had said he would form a new technocrat government after the assassination of a leading opposition figure. Jebali’s push drew condemnation from the moderate Islamist Ennahda Party, from which he hails.

The Feb. 6 killing of Democratic Patriots party leader Chukri Beleid, which his wife blamed on Ennahda, sparked clashes between thousands of protesters and security.

Jebali said in an interview with Al-Jazeera television aired Saturday that he would step down if his attempt to form a technocratic government fails.

Front Section, Pages 4 on 02/11/2013

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