Eleven die in second day of suicide attacks

Bouïra Algeria was rocked by two further suicide bombings, which killed at least 11 people and injured 31 as terrorists pressed on with a brutal return to the violence that devastated the North African country in the 1990s.

The attacks at Bouïra, 90km (56 miles) southeast of Algiers, came less than 24 hours after 43 people were killed and 45 injured when a car packed with explosives rammed into a police academy where graduates were lining up to take an entrance exam. Although no one has claimed responsibility for the latest bombings, Algerian media blamed the radical Islamic groups that plunged the country into a decade-long civil war in 1991.

Monsoon flooding

Gauhati Monsoon floods left nearly 80,000 people stranded and dependent on aid for food and water in India’s remote northeast. Authorities used boats to bring aid to scores of villages by the Brahmaputra river. No deaths have been reported. (AP)

Mao successor dies

Beijing Hua Guofeng, who was handpicked by the dying Mao Zedong to succeed him as the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party but later was toppled by the reformist leader Deng Xiaoping, has died aged 87. (Reuters)

Toddler TV ban

Paris The French broadcast authority has banned channels from airing television shows aimed at children under the age of 3. The ruling cites health experts who say that interaction with other people is crucial to a child’s development. (AP)

New leader appointed

Lusaka Rupiah Banda, 72, the Vice-President of Zambia, has taken over as the acting head of government after Levy Mwanawasa, 59, died in a Paris hospital on Tuesday. Mr Banda said that he intends to call an early election. (Reuters)

Hunt for rebels

Kauswagan Police special forces with orders to kill headed into the hinterlands of the southern Philippines seeking the Moro Islamic Liberation Front rebels who killed 37 people in a brutal rampage on Monday that left peace prospects in tatters. (AP)

Convicts electrocuted

Yaounde Nine prisoners in Cameroon were killed trying to cross an electrified fence at a prison in the commercial capital of Douala, officials said. The electrocution started a fire and about twenty prisoners suffered second-degree burns. (AP)

Short shrift

London Bao Xi Shun, a Chinese man who is 2.36m (7ft 81920in) tall, has been reinstated as the world’s tallest living male because Leonid Stadnyk, a 2.53m Ukrainian, refuses to be officially measured, Guinness World Records said. (AFP)

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