World in brief: Hurricane Dean kills eight more
Hurricane Dean saved some of its worst for last, killing eight people after shrinking to a rainy tropical depression over central Mexico, authorities reported Thursday.
In the state of Puebla, a family of four, including two children, died when a mudslide hit a highway overpass Thursday and crushed their car, state civil-protection authorities said.
Wednesday, a government official died in a car wreck while checking for damage during the storm, and a 76-year-old man was killed when part of his house fell on him. A 35-year-old woman and a 14-year-old girl died after a roof collapsed Wednesday in the state of Hidalgo, state authorities said.
The storm toll in Mexico brought the total number of fatalities associated with Dean to 28, most in the Caribbean. The hurricane had reached its full strength, Category 5, when it struck a relatively isolated stretch of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on Tuesday. So far no deaths have been reported there, although property damage was extensive.
Tehran, Iran
Iran claims it has new ‘smart bomb’
Iran has developed a new 2,000-pound “smart” bomb, state-run television reported Thursday, the latest in a recent series of announcements heralding new weapons systems.
The guided bomb, named Qased or Messenger, can be deployed by Iran’s aging U.S.-made F-4 and F-5 fighter jets and will be officially unveiled next week, said the broadcast, quoting a Defense Ministry statement. It did not elaborate.
Iran often announces new weapons for its arsenal, but the United States maintains that while the Islamic Republic has made some strides, many of these statements are exaggerations.
Emanuel Winston, a Middle East analyst at the U.S.-based Freeman Center for Strategic Studies, said Iran’s smart bomb claim sounded “plausible” but cautioned that missile development would be more dangerous given the limited range of the country’s aircraft.
Khartoum, Sudan
Canadian, EU envoys expelled
Sudan expelled the top Canadian and European Union diplomats from the country Thursday for what was described as “meddling in its affairs,” state media reported.
It was not immediately clear why the two were expelled, but many Western countries have been critical of the Sudanese government’s role in atrocities committed in its Darfur region.
The two were summoned separately to the Foreign Ministry and were handed their expulsion notes, the official SUNA news agency reported, citing Foreign Ministry spokesman Ali Al Sadeq.
They were “involved in activities that constitute an intervention into the internal affairs of the Sudan, a matter that contradict their diplomatic duties and mission,” the spokesman said.