Bangladesh landslide kills 14, several missing

DHAKA (Reuters) - At least 14 people were killed and several missing after a landslide triggered by heavy rains buried hillside homes in Bangladesh's Chittagong port city on Monday, police and witnesses said.

Some bodies were still trapped under tonnes of rubble and police and volunteers were struggling to retrieve them. Police said several people were injured and taken to hospitals.

The rains flooded most of the city's roads, leaving residents stranded in up to waist-high water in some areas.

Weather officials said heavy rains at the onset of the annual monsoon season have paralysed much of Bangladesh since Sunday morning, and raised fears of flash floods in low-lying areas.

They expect showers to continue for several days more.

Asia body praises Bahrain

ASIAN Volleyball Confederation (AVC) president Jizhong Wei praised Bahrain for successfully organising the Asian Clubs Volleyball Championship which concluded on Friday at the Juffair Youth Centre.

At his meeting with the General Organisation for Youth and Sports president Shaikh Fawaz bin Mohammed Al Khalifa, Wei also congratulated Al Najma for their performance in the tournament and become the first Bahraini team to reach the semi-finals.

Wei added that two other teams from the GCC - Saudi Arabia's Al Hilal and Al Arabi of Qatar - qualified for the semi-finals which underlines the major improvement of volleyball in the Arab region.

Shaikh Fawaz thanked the AVC for giving Bahrain the opportunity to host this event and stressed on the efforts of the confederation to support the game on the island.

The Goys chief also hailed the number of participants in this year's tournament.

A total of 12 teams took part in the event which was the highest in many years. The tournament was won by Iran's Paykan who retained the title they took last year in Hanoi, Vietnam, following a straight-sets victory over Al Hilal.

The meeting was also attended by president of the Bahrain Volleyball Association (BVA) and Arab Volleyball Organisation Shaikh Ali bin Mohammed Al Khalifa, BVA and organising committee officials.

Three killed, one hurt in bus robbery in Philippines

Manila - Three people were killed Friday, while a five-year-old girl was wounded in a pre-dawn robbery inside a passenger bus in the Philippines, police said.

The four robbers pretended to be passengers before declaring a hold-up in San Miguel town in Bulacan province, 60 kilometres north of Manila, after one of the passengers alighted.

The suspects divested the passengers of their valuables and fired indiscriminately inside the bus, resulting in the death of three men and the wounding of the girl.

The robbers fled after the robbery which lasted only for a few minutes, according to bus driver Armel Sanchez.

Sanchez told a local radio station that when the robbers declared a hold-up, he immediately jumped out of the bus and ran as fast as he could.

'I just ran out of the bus,' he said. 'When I was crossing the road, a jeepney (passenger mini-bus) almost hit me. I heard shots from inside the bus.'

Last week, robbers also killed a bus driver and a passenger in a daring highway robbery in Manila. Three of the suspects were later killed in a shootout with police.

Cambodia to get cheap electricity

 

The World Bank has granted Laos $15 million to help finance the construction of a power grid to facilitate exports of hydro-electricity to neighbouring Cambodia, the bank said Thursday.

"Under the World Bank's Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) Power Trade Program, a grant of $15 million to Lao People's Democratic Republic will support the construction of lines to export power to Cambodia and help improve the supply of electricity to Saravan Province in the south of the country," said a World Bank statement made available in Bangkok.

Bank sources said the grant would be used to connect Cambodia to medium sized hydro-electric plants in Saravan Champasak province in southern Laos.

Hydro-electricity is Laos' main export and foreign exchange earner and will become even more important to the land-locked country in the near future upon the completion of the Nam Theun 2, a $1.45 billion, 1,070-megawatt hydropower project in eastern Laos, received World Bank and Asian Development Bank guarantees in March, 2005.

When completed, the project will export electricity primarily to Thailand, generating revenues of about $30 million per annum during the first ten years and about 110 million from 2020 to 2030.

The project was strongly opposed by environmentalists and human rights activists who noted the huge reservoir on the Nakai Plateau would open up virgin forests to encroachment, displace thousands of villagers and have unknown impact on downstream rivers and homesteads.

A recent study of the Nam Thuen 2 conducted by the International Rivers Network (IRN) concluded that the project was behind scheduled in several areas, including the resettlement of 6,200 indigenous people on the Nakai Plateau, the program to mitigate NT2's impact on tens of thousands of downstream villagers and compensation for villagers who have lost land and resources as a result of project construction.

The WB in a statement released Wednesday out of Washington DC acknowleged that some work still needed to be done in these areas.
"In the Nakai Plateau, 742 of the 1,216 affected households have already moved to their permanent resettlement sites and are benefiting from improved basic infrastructure," said the WB.
"Delays in completing the building of permanent houses are being addressed," it added.

The reservoir is scheduled to be flooded in June, 2008.