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World in brief
Compiled from Times wires 33 killed when bus goes down ravine in PhilippinesMANILA, Philippines -- A bus lost control and plunged into a ravine in a province southeast of Manila early Sunday while most of its passengers were asleep, killing at least 33, police said. Army and police troops pulled the dead, including the driver, and six injured passengers from the wreckage in a night rescue in the remote mountainous town of Tagkawayan in Quezon province, said police superintendent Efren Castro. The driver apparently lost control of the steering wheel, Castro said, citing initial statements from survivors. One of the passengers told police investigators that he saw the driver struggle with the gear stick, then apply the brakes, which apparently failed because the bus instead gathered speed. Public transportation in Philippine rural areas is prone to accidents because of old, poorly maintained jeeps and buses and dangerously narrow roads often lacking safety signs and guardrails. 30 die in Indian bus crashNEW DELHI, India -- A passenger bus plunged from a bridge in central India on Sunday, killing at least 30 people and injuring 30 others, officials said. The bus crashed off the bridge over the Son River in the Madhya Pradesh state, slamming into the dry riverbed after a tire blew out, said Keshav Kumar, an aide to the local administrator. Most of the dead and injured were farm laborers and owners of small businesses traveling in the private bus to a nearby town for work. The crash occurred in the Kaimur Hills, 400 miles southeast of New Delhi, the capital. Buses are the most popular means of transport in rural India. However, many are in poor condition, driven recklessly and overcrowded. Blame goes around in oil spillMADRID, Spain -- Spain's environment minister dismissed accusations that the country could have done more to salvage a stricken oil tanker that spilled nearly 3-million gallons of oil and sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Environment Minister Jaume Matas instead blamed the Dutch salvage company SMIT for the spill from the Prestige, the newspaper La Razon reported Sunday. The oil washed up on the shores of northwestern Spain, causing grave environmental damage and crippling the region's fishing industry. "It's a disgrace that we should have to provide explanations for these people," Matas said. "They are the ones who provoked the spill. The government has done everything possible to avert greater damage and to solve the problem." Haitian business sector irkedPORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Days after partisans of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide set up flaming tire barricades in the capital, Haiti's business community on Sunday accused police and government officials of tolerating a "climate of terror." Unimpeded by police, Aristide supporters shut down the capital Friday by setting up hundreds of barricades to protest a growing number of antigovernment demonstrations across the country. In a statement Sunday, 18 business associations said the private sector refused "to accept that groups of individuals . . . who act under the high protection of state authorities and the police take the initiative to block the country and national life by the establishment of a climate of terror." Businesses said they lost millions of dollars with the city's shutdown. The government rejected the accusations. Vatican may expand U.N. roleVATICAN CITY -- The Holy See will explore stepping up its presence at the United Nations and does not rule out a bid for membership, according to media reports Sunday. The Vatican, a city-state, is a permanent observer at the United Nations, a status that lets it participate in U.N. conferences and deliver speeches in the General Assembly but gives it no voting power. In an interview with Corriere della Sera newspaper, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican's No. 2 official, was asked if the United Nations was up to its peace tasks. "It must be up to the task, and everyone must do their part to help it assume an ever-more active and efficient role on the world scene," replied Sodano, the Vatican's secretary of state. He added, "The Holy See intends to study the possible forms of its own stepped-up presence in that connection." Asked if that meant the Vatican might become a U.N. member, Sodano was quoted as replying: "If that were useful, I wouldn't rule it out." Inquiry into U.N. worker's deathJERUSALEM -- A U.N. investigator arrived Sunday to investigate the fatal shooting of a British U.N. worker by an Israeli soldier on Friday, as a dispute over the incident deepened. The Israeli Army said its soldiers had been responding to gunfire coming from a U.N. compound in the Jenin refugee camp, in the West Bank. But after an initial inquiry, the U.N. agency that administers the camp rejected that account as "incredibly incorrect." Paul McCann, a spokesman for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, said the compound, a fenced cluster of three trailers, was clearly marked as belonging to the United Nations. "We know that we had control of it, there were no militants inside it, and there was absolutely no firing coming from inside it," said McCann, who visited the site Sunday. The U.N. worker who was killed, Iain John Hook, 54, was shot in the back, McCann said. Hook's two sons claimed his body Sunday, he said. The army said that while in pursuit of a wanted Palestinian, its troops had come under fire, and McCann was holding something -- perhaps a cell phone -- that soldiers mistook for a pistol. Scotsman dies from bat rabiesLONDON -- A Scottish man, who was the first person in a century to contract rabies in Britain, died Sunday from the effects of his bat bite, officials said. David McRae had contracted European bat lyssavirus, a type of rabies found in several northern European countries, said a spokesman for the Tayside health authority. He was the first confirmed case of someone contracting the disease in Britain since 1902. McRae, a 56-year-old conservationist who had a permit to handle bats from the wildlife agency Scottish Natural Heritage, was bitten some weeks ago by a species known as Daubenton's bat, officials said. McRae was being treated in an isolation unit at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee, eastern Scotland.
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