The world - July 29, 2010

THURSDAY

Republican Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming pulled a $17 million earmark from a bill that would have made the Billy Carter Service Station Museum in Georgia a national historic site.

A Chase bank branch east of New York City was robbed by a man dressed in full Darth Vader costume. The “Star Wars” robbery was part of a mini-outbreak of unusual bank robbers in the New York area. Earlier a man was arrested after robbing two banks with a bunch of flowers and a potted plant.

Two prisoners are still on the lam after escaping an Argentina jail which was using a soccer ball in an officer’s cap to staff one of its guard towers.

FRIDAY

Robert Rizzo, chief administrative officer of Bell, California, resigned along with an assistant and Bell’s police chief after the Los Angeles Times reported their exorbitant salaries. Rizzo was taking a $787,637 annual salary for the city of 37,000, which has a poverty rate of nearly one-fourth its population. Several council members were also taking six-figure paychecks for their service.

A federal roundup of wild horses in Nevada resumed through the weekend despite nearly two dozen animal deaths since it began. The Bureau of Land Management says three of the deaths were due to injury and 18 due to severe dehydration following a drought.

One passenger died and 42 were injured when one of Switzerland’s best-known tourist trains, the Glacier Express, derailed on the Alpine train.

WEEKEND

Police unearthed at least 51 bodies in a mass grave outside Mexico’s business capital Monterrey, a grisly sign of the escalating drug violence in the northern city, authorities said.

India’s Human Resource Development Ministry unveiled the world’s cheapest “laptop,” a computer that costs $35. The touchscreen gadget was packed with Internet browsers, PDF reader and video conferencing facilities.

Major Russian banks relaxed their strict staff dress codes as Moscow enters its fourth week of a heatwave that has broken 29-year records. Men have been allowed to ditch their jackets and ties, while female employees can now show bare arms. Temperatures in Moscow hit 95 degrees Friday for the first time since 1981.

MONDAY

Some 91,000 classified documents about the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan were released after they were made public by the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks. The documents detail allegations that U.S. forces sought to cover up civilian deaths as well as U.S. concern that Pakistan secretly aided Taliban militants even as it took billions of dollars in U.S. aid.

At least 45 civilians were killed in a rocket attack by the NATO-led foreign force in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province. The incident happened in the Sangin district when civilians crammed into a mud-built house to flee fighting between NATO troops and Taliban insurgents.

A giant black bear stole and crashed the car of a Larkspur, California, family into a grove of trees. The car’s owner, Ben Story, said a peanut butter sandwich most likely lured the bear into the car, after which he knocked the gear stick into neutral and sent the car rolling down a slope.

TUESDAY

BP confirmed chief executive Tony Hayward will quit and be reassigned to the company’s Russia branch. This as the company announced cleanup costs resulting from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill have amounted to $32.2 billion.

A set of 65 glass negatives purchased for $45 at a Fresno garage sale by Rick Norsigian, a school district painter and collector, turn out to be rare Ansel Adams works, valued at $200 million.

Barcelona’s last bullring, La Monumental, will close after the Catalonia government outawed the 1,300-year tradition of bullfighting. According to the Humane Society International, approximately 250,000 bulls per year are killed in bullfights.

WEDNESDAY

A Pakistani passenger plane crashed in heavy rain near Islamabad, killing all 152 people on board in the worst aviation accident in Pakistan. Two Americans were among the victims, a U.S. embassy spokesman announced.

A Japanese oil tanker was damaged by a freak wave in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important shipping lanes, on its way to a port in the United Arab Emirates. The wave caused an explosion onboard, prompting crew to first think the damage came from an attack. A seismologist in nearby Iran said he recorded an earthquake with a magnitude of about 3.4 around the site.

At least 12 people died and 15 were seriously injured after an explosion at a plastics and chemicals factory in the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing.

Compiled by the Gazette from a variety of sources.