Canada: Floating foot a hoax
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — British Columbia's coroner's office is calling the discovery of a sixth floating human foot a hoax, saying it was really an animal paw stuffed inside a shoe.
At first, Wednesday's discovery deepened the mystery surrounding the feet, all found floating along island shorelines in the Strait of Georgia near Vancouver.
But the coroner's office Thursday called the latest find a hoax, saying an animal's foot had been inserted inside the running shoe.
China: Evacuations completed
BEIJING — China completed the evacuation of 110,000 people from an area near the epicenter of last month's earthquake that killed almost 70,000 people over fears of possible landslides triggered by annual heavy rains, state media reported Thursday.
Calling the remote area in Sichuan province a "high danger zone," officials in Aba prefecture have been relocating residents since Sunday, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
The evacuation ended Wednesday night, just hours before heavy rains hit the area, Xinhua said.
Iran: U.S. accused of plot
TEHRAN — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday accused the United States of plotting to kidnap and assassinate him during a visit to Iraq, state media reported.
The president told a meeting of clerics in the central city of Qom that Iran's "enemies" planned to kill him when he went to Baghdad in March, according to the president's Web site. Iranian leaders usually use the term "enemies" to refer to Western nations and the United States in particular.
The report on the presidential Web site did not specify the United States as the source of the plot. But state television reported that Ahmadinejad had "unveiled a shocking story" — that "Americans had intended to kidnap him during his trip to Iraq."
Nigeria: Oil facility raided
LAGOS — Militants in speedboats raided an oil installation off Nigeria's southern coastline on Thursday, forcing Royal Dutch Shell to slash production and exposing Africa's biggest oil industry as vulnerable even on the high seas.
The attack by fighters of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, about 85 miles into the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea, was the militant group's farthest-ever attack in the open ocean.
The group's campaign of bombing pipelines and attacks on export facilities, launched in 2006, had already slashed Nigeria's daily oil output by about 20 percent, helping send global oil prices to all-time highs.
Venezuela: Europe threatened
CARACAS — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatened on Thursday to punish European countries that apply strict new rules for deporting illegal immigrants by denying them oil and blocking their investments.
The EU Parliament passed new guidelines Wednesday under which illegal migrants can be held in special detention centers — not jails — for up to 18 months before being expelled.
Chavez said in a televised speech that the measure shows "signs of fascism," and that countries would have to "build concentration camps" to hold millions of immigrants.