QUOTE OF THE DAY “All my friends were talking on Facebook
about how she said nothing that satisfied them. I think the protests are going to continue for a long time and the crowds will still be huge.” Victoria Villela, a 21-year-old university student who joined antigovernment demonstrators in Brazil, after President Dilma Rousseff made a televised appearance to condemn the protests Article, this pageReceding rivers leave ruin in Alberta
CALGARY, Alberta - The two rivers that converge on the western Canadian city of Calgary, the Elbow and Bow rivers, were receding Saturday after floods devastated much of southern Alberta province, causing at least three deaths and forcing thousands to evacuate.
The flooding forced authorities to evacuate Calgary’s entire downtown and hit some of the city’s iconic structures hard.
The Saddledome, home to the National Hockey League’s Calgary Flames, was flooded up to the 10th row of seats.
Water lapped at the roofs of the chuck wagon barns at the grounds of the Calgary Stampede, which is scheduled to start in two weeks. Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi has said the city will do everything it can to make sure that the world-renowned party goes ahead.
High River, southwest of Calgary, was one of the hardest-hit areas and remained under a mandatory evacuation order. Police said they have recovered three bodies in the town.
U.K. hacking not limited to journalists
LONDON - The phone hacking scandal rocking Britain extends well beyond the media industry to include law firms, debt collectors and other companies, a newspaper said Saturday.
The scandal has already sent shock waves across the United Kingdom with revelations that journalists routinely intercepted voice mails, bribed public officials, and hacked into computers in their search for scoops.
The Independent, citing a leaked report from Britain’s Serious and Organized Crime Agency and an unnamed person familiar with its content, said that many others were in on the shady practices - including businessmen, attorneys and debt collectors.
An unclassified summary of the report was published five years ago, but The Independent provided new details about its content, including the allegation that celebrities, businessmen and “major telecommunications company” had hired corrupt private investigators specializing in such practices.
The crime agency said it would not comment on The Independent’s report.
British police investigating the phone hacking scandal have made scores of arrests, many of them outside the world of journalism.
Egypt’s opposition open to Mubarak party
CAIRO - Egypt’s largest opposition bloc Saturday reached out to former members of the deposed president’s party, ahead of mass protests June 30 demanding the ouster of his successor.
The opposition’s move came a day after some 100,000 supporters of current President Mohammed Morsi, an Islamist and the country’s first elected leader, packed a main square in Cairo to back him and challenge the largely liberal opposition that demands he step down.
Morsi won a four-year term as president with some 52 percent of the vote in a runoff last June against Ahmed Shafiq, the last prime minister of now-ousted Hosni Mubarak. Shafiq is now contesting the election results.
“I can’t isolate millions of Egyptian people because they were part of the National Democratic Party,” said Mohamed ElBaradei, a top leader of the opposition National Salvation Front, referring to Mubarak’s now-dissolved party. He said the invitation to Mubarak supporters did not extend to those who had been convicted of crimes under the old regime.
Hamdeen Sabahi, leader of the leftist Popular Current opposition group, said a six-month transitional period would start the day Morsi steps down, during which a new constitution would be drafted and a new president elected.
Man accused of killing 6 in Shanghai
BEIJING - Police in China say a man has shot dead five people and also killed a sixth, including some of his colleagues, in a rare case of gun violence in the country.
The Shanghai Public Security Bureau said Sunday that a 62-year-old surnamed Fan beat a colleague to death using tools over an economic dispute Saturday afternoon at a chemical factory in Shanghai’s Baoshan district.
The bureau said on its microblog that Fan then took a hunting rifle that was hidden in his dormitory and killed a driver whom he asked to take him to another district and a soldier who was guarding the entrance to a barracks.
He then returned to the factory and fatally shot three more people including a manager, the bureau said. Police said they captured him there.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 06/23/2013