MANILA, Philippines
Air force chopper crash kills at least 8
An air force helicopter crashed on a busy street in a central Philippine city on Saturday, pinning a motorcycle taxi and hitting another with its spinning rotors. At least seven people on the ground and one airman were killed.
The Vietnam War-era UH-1H Huey was preparing to land after a training flight when it crashed about a mile from the Mactan air base, said Lt. Col. Epifanio Panzo, an air force spokesman.
LONDON
Site to post names of 3 million slaves
A genealogy website said Friday that it will post 3 million names of slaves held across the British Empire in the early 19th century, putting hundreds of thousands of pages of searchable information online to help slaves’ descendants research their past.
Information from about 700 registers from 23 British territories and dependencies will be made available online, for free, within the next year, said Simon Ziviani, a spokesman for Ancestry.co.uk.
The database will be searchable by first and last name, island, plantation, age and sex.
TALLINN, Estonia
Exhumations spark outrage, rioting
Estonian officials exhumed remains believed to be those of Soviet soldiers from a Red Army memorial in the heart of the capital Saturday, pushing ahead with an operation that sparked widespread rioting by infuriated ethnic Russians.
The streets were largely quiet after two nights of unrest but tensions were still high among the country’s majority Estonians and minority Russians. Local media reported that several graves of famous Estonians had been desecrated, as well as some belonging to Soviet soldiers and the Nazi troops they fought during World War II.
Protesters gathered Saturday night in the largely ethnic Russian towns of Johvi and Narva, leading to dozens of arrests.
LONDON
British town banning plastic grocery bags
A small town in southwest Britain is banning plastic bags in a bid to help the environment and cut waste – a move environmentalists believe is a first for Europe.
Shopkeepers in Modbury, population 1,500, agreed Saturday to stop giving out disposable plastic bags to customers. They said paper sacks and cloth bags would be offered instead.
Last month, San Francisco became the first U.S. city to ban plastic grocery bags.
Modbury, about 225 miles southwest of London, has also declared a bag amnesty, letting residents hand in plastic bags that have piled up at home. They will be sent for recycling.
