World Briefly: Darfur peacekeeping operation

Published 10:46 pm Tuesday, July 31, 2007

The Security Council on Tuesday authorized a massive U.N. peacekeeping operation to deploy to Darfur in an effort to protect civilians and aid workers in Sudan’s conflict-wracked region. The council voted 15-0 to begin sending a joint U.N.- African Union force of as many as 26,000 troops and police to Darfur before the end of the year to quell violence that has killed more than 200,000 people and displaced more than 2 million in four years. The United States did not co-sponsor the resolution, because it was weaker than the one the Bush administration had wanted, diplomats said.

Trinidad: Volcano forms island

A mud-spewing fissure in the ocean floor has given birth to a tiny Caribbean island and is posing a threat to small boats. The island, breaching a few inches above the ocean’s surface and stretching 500 feet long, was discovered recently roughly five miles northeast of Trinidad, a seismologist at the University of the West Indies in St. Augustine said. An advisory has been issued for small boats, which could lose buoyancy because of gas bubbling up from the underwater fissure or run aground in the mud.

Germany: Huge bomb defused

Construction workers unearthed a 2,200-pound Soviet bomb from World War II in a Berlin suburb Tuesday, forcing authorities to evacuate more than 4,000 people before defusing it. The bomb, which was buried 13 feet underground, was found Tuesday morning on the capital’s southern edge. About eight hours later, specialists defused it, removing two detonators. Unexploded bombs, relics of Allied bombardments before Nazi Germany’s surrender in May 1945, are still found regularly in the country.

From Herald news services