NEWS OF THE DAY
From Around the World
_1 Ailing dissident: German doctors treating Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny for a suspected poisoning said Friday the dissident is still in an induced coma but his condition is stable and his symptoms are improving. Navalny, who is one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics, fell ill on a flight back to Moscow from Siberia a week ago and was taken to a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk after the plane made an emergency landing. Last weekend, he was transferred to a hospital in Berlin, where doctors found indications of poison. Navalny, 44, is being treated with the antidote atropine. Navalny’s allies insist he was deliberately poisoned and say the Kremlin was behind it, accusations that Russian officials reject.
_2 Brazil probe: A court has temporarily removed Rio de Janeiro’s governor from office due to corruption charges. Brazil’s main prosecutor’s office said Friday that Wilson Witzel, a former federal judge, was removed from office for 180 days while being investigated. Investigators accuse Witzel of participating in a scheme involving fraud in public contracts to benefit companies linked to him and others under investigation. Witzel held a news conference to declare his innocence.
_3 Deadly flooding: Heavy rains hit parts of Pakistan including the financial capital Karachi for a fifth straight night, bringing more flooding to towns and villages and leaving at least 63 people dead, officials said Friday. Rescuers evacuated people from flooded neighborhoods. Around 30 inches of rain have fallen in Karachi since Sunday, when monsoon rains began lashing the city, forcing authorities to use boats to evacuate people. Fortyseven were killed this week in Karachi in rainrelated incidents and 16 others died in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa because of flash flooding overnight, according to government officials. Downed power lines caused widespread electrical outages. The monsoon season runs from July through September.
_4 Migrant deaths: A truck driver from Northern Ireland on Friday pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the deaths of 39 people found in the back of a container truck last year in one of Britain’s worst incidents of human smuggling. Ronan Hughes, 40, entered the plea at Central London Criminal Court. The victims, all of whom were Vietnamese, were found Oct. 23 in the back of a truck in an industrial park in the town of Grays, England. Two of the dead were only 15, while the oldest was 44. About 20 of the victims came from one province, Nghe An, in north central Vietnam. Hughes appeared alongside Eamonn Harrison, 23, also of Northern Ireland, who is alleged to have driven the truck’s trailer to the Belgian port of Zeebrugge before it sailed to Purfleet in England. Harrison pleaded innocent to 39 counts of manslaughter. _5 Polar bear attack: A polar bear attacked a campsite Friday in Norway’s remote Svalbard Islands, killing a Dutch man before being shot and killed by onlookers, authorities on the Arctic island said. Johan Jacobus Kootte was in his tent when it was attacked by the bear, Deputy Governor Soelvi Elvedah said. He was an employee of the Longyearbyen Camping site, where the attack occurred, the newspaper Svalbardposten said. Longyearbyen is the main settlement in the Svalbard archipelago, which sits more than 500 miles north of the Norwegian mainland. Svalbard is dotted with warnings about polar bears. Visitors who choose to sleep outdoors are told to carry firearms. Norwegian broadcaster NRK said the victim was the fifth person on Svalbard to have been killed by polar bears since 1971.