World Briefs

The death toll from a blaze that destroyed a Kenyan supermarket has risen to 24, the Red Cross said yesterday.

Rescuers found three more charred bodies during another day of painstaking recovery operations at the smouldering ruins of the downtown Nairobi store belonging to Nakumatt, Kenya's leading supermarket chain.

"They removed one body, and those of a mother and a baby," said Titus Mung'ou, spokesman for the Kenya Red Cross. Twenty-three bodies have now been found in the gutted building, and another man died from injuries after leaping from an upper floor to escape the flames during Wednesday's fire.

Recovery operations have been slowed by the risk of structural collapse, officials said, as distraught relatives of missing people held vigil in tents set up nearby.

The cause of the fire is still unknown.

Australia heatwave eases a little

A heatwave blamed for raging bushfires and a spate of deaths eased a little in Australia's densely populated southeast yesterday, but a ban on lighting fires in the open remained in force.

Temperatures slipped below 40˚C in most major centres for the first time in several days, but parts of Melbourne and Adelaide still recorded temperatures above that mark.

Although the bushfires had subsided somewhat, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd warned Australians against complacency, describing the southern part of the country as a "tinder box".

Authorities fear several elderly people may have died due to the heatwave, after 22 "sudden deaths" in Adelaide on Friday.

Sudden deaths are those caused by medical conditions such as heart attacks and strokes, said an ambulance official, adding autopsies would determine whether the deaths were heat-related.

In Melbourne, power was largely restored after blackouts left hundreds of thousands of homes in the dark on Friday, but a major bushfire was still burning in the east of Victoria state.

Romania nabs 1.2 tonnes of cocaine

Romanian authorities have seized 1.2 tonnes of cocaine worth at least €100 million found in containers at a Black Sea port, one of the biggest hauls in a decade, police said yesterday.

Police said the drugs, which belonged to an international crime ring comprised of three Romanians and a Spanish man, were hidden in two containers loaded with cedar timber in the port of Constanta. The containers had arrived from Brazil in late 2008.

The purity of the cocaine exceeded 90 per cent and the consignment had a minimum street value of €100 million, police said.

CIA Algeria case may 'hurt' Obama

Allegations that the CIA station chief in Algiers drugged and raped Muslim women may hurt efforts by President Barack Obama to improve US relations with the Muslim world, Algerian dailies said yesterday.

'Sex, rape and video at the US embassy in Algiers', wrote Algeria's most influential French-language newspaper El Watan in a front page headline.

The US government has said the CIA chief in Algiers had returned to Washington and the Justice Department was probing the officer's alleged misconduct.

ABC news was the first to report that two Algerian women had complained they had been separately drugged and sexually abused by the CIA officer at his official residence in September 2007 and February 2008.

Algerian newspapers yesterday printed the officer's picture and gave details about his work in Algiers and his previous postings in Egypt and Afghanistan.

Thai police deploy ahead of protest

About 5,000 Thai police took up positions around Government House in Bangkok yesterday ahead of a rally by anti-government protesters trying to force Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva from power.

Metropolitan police chief Lieutenant-General Suchart Muenkaew said the protesters would not be allowed to storm the compound, as happened with an opposing protest group in August, but police would not use force.

"We will negotiate with them and won't use weapons," he told reporters, adding that army officers would be on hand to monitor the rally of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship, which said it expected to attract 20,000 supporters.