News in Brief

Over 20,000 Syrians cross into Iraq: UN
Reuters, Geneva

 
More than 20,000 Syrian refugees have entered northern Iraq since Thursday in one of the largest crossings in the more than two-year-old conflict and the influx is continuing, the United Nations said yesterday.
Syrians began pouring into the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq last Thursday, taking advantage of a new bridge along the largely closed border, the UN says.
"It looks like the total from last Thursday to now is somewhere in the region of 20,000 or more coming across," Adrian Edwards of the UN refugee agency UNHCR said. "If not the biggest influx across the border at a single time then it is among the largest in the whole Syria crisis."
Hundreds of Syrians fleeing fighting in Aleppo and other parts of northern Syria were massed along the Tigris River on Monday near the pontoon crossing, UNHCR staff said.

Iran to teach drone hunting to students
Ap, Tehran, Iran

 
Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards paramilitary units plan to teach drone-hunting to school students, an Iranian newspaper reported yesterday.
The report by pro-reform Etemad daily quoted Gen. Ali Fazli, acting commander of the Guard's Basij militia, as saying the new program will be taught as part of a "Defensive Readiness" lesson in high schools from late September.
He did not elaborate but the plan suggests students would be taught how to track and bring down drone aircraft by hacking their computer systems.
Iranian hardliners have long sought a larger role for the military in the country's education system. Students at both junior and senior high schools currently take courses focusing on "civil defense."
Iran captured a US RQ-170 Sentinel drone in 2011 after it entered Iranian airspace. Since then, Tehran says it has seized more US drones, including a Boeing-designed ScanEagle.

Flood evacuates 20,000 Russians
Ap, Moscow

 
The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry says around 20,000 people have been forced to leave their homes since July in the wake of floods in Russia's Far East.
Ministry spokeswoman Irina Rossius said on Monday that the evacuation is underway in three Far East regions, some 5,000 kilometres east of Moscow. Some of the evacuees have moved into emergency shelters.
Authorities estimate that another 14,000 people were also affected.
Alexander Frolov, chief of the Russian Meteorological Service, told news agencies on Monday that floods have reached their peak in the Amur region. But the situation is expected to get worse in two other areas.
Authorities say that the floods have caused an estimated 2 billion rubles ($61 million) in damages.

Pak violence brings armoured car boom
Afp, Karachi

 
As an unprecedented wave of killings and kidnappings hits Karachi, the Pakistani city's elite are splashing out to have their luxury cars made bomb and bulletproof.
The sprawling metropolis of 18 million people on the Arabian Sea is Pakistan's economic heart, with ranks of factories, import-export wheeler-dealers and slick bankers.
But it is also the crucible of the country's worst excesses of violence, criminality and inequality.
Bloody gang wars fed by ethnic and political bitterness, drugs and the Taliban, and a steady drum beat of gangsterism have created a culture of impunity under the stunned gaze of police.

Lawyers summing up in Manning sentencing hearing
Ap, Fort Meade, Maryland

 
A US military judge is hearing closing arguments in Bradley Manning's sentencing hearing in the WikiLeaks case.
Col Denise Lind says she'll hear the summations yesterday at Maryland's Fort Meade before deliberating on the soldier's sentence for giving a mountain of classified information to the anti-secrecy group.
Manning faces up to 90 years in prison for his convictions on 20 counts.
Prosecutors presented evidence that the leaked information put an undisclosed number of people overseas at risk of harm. The State Department helped some of them move, even to other countries, for their safety.
Manning says he's sorry his actions caused harm. His attorneys presented witnesses who said he was under great stress, due largely to his gender identity confusion in the “don't ask, don't tell” era.