LES CAYES, HAITI — Thousands of Haitians sought shelter in schoolhouses Saturday as the death toll from Tropical Storm Noel rose to 143 across the Caribbean.
Heavy rains continued to pound Haiti, leaving U.N. and Haitian officials temporarily stranded as they toured the flooded southern peninsula.
Noel, which was lashing the northeastern United States with high winds and rough surf Saturday, is the deadliest storm of the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season, with the greatest devastation on the waterlogged island of Hispaniola, shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
Mexican rescuers struggle to reach flood victims
VILLAHERMOSA, MEXICO — The death toll in the widespread flooding in southern Mexico rose to eight on Saturday as rescuers struggled to evacuate people from rooftops and bring supplies to those protecting their homes from would-be looters.
The department of civil defense in Chiapas state reported finding seven bodies Friday and Saturday. The dead included five adults swept away by swollen rivers, a 25-year- old undocumented Honduran immigrant who drowned while trying to cross a river and an 8-year-old girl who fell from a bridge.
Thousands demand that president resigns
TBILISI, GEORGIA — Thousands of opposition activists jammed the streets of the Georgian capital on Saturday for a second day of protests, demanding President Mikhail Saakashvili’s resignation and earlier parliamentary elections.
The crowd chanted, “Go! Go! Go!” as opposition leaders called on Saakashvili to step down. It was a far smaller demonstration than a protest by tens of thousands of people on Friday.
The turmoil is the worst political crisis Saakashvili has faced since he took power in the 2003 mass protests of the Rose Revolution, which ousted Eduard Shevardnadze.
Rock concert at death camp canceled
BELGRADE, SERBIA — A rock concert planned for Saturday at the site of a World War II Nazi death camp in Belgrade was canceled after protests by Jewish groups.
The Serbian organizers of the concert by the British band Kosheen said the event was canceled after “pressure from foreign and domestic media.” About 48,000 Jews, Serbs and Gypsies perished at the Sajmiste camp in the 1940s.
A statement Friday from Efraim Zuroff, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s chief Nazi hunter, called the concert “a heartless insult to the memory of the victims of the Nazis.”
Charity targeted in alleged kidnapping of African kids
N’DJAMENA, CHAD — The French prime minister ordered an investigation Saturday into a French charity accused of kidnapping 103 African children from Chad. Seven suspects in the case appeared at a pretrial hearing in Chad’s capital.
The charity was stopped last week from flying children from Chad to Europe, where the group said it intended to place what it said were orphans with host families.
France’s Foreign Ministry and others have cast doubt on claims that the children were orphans from Sudan’s western Darfur region.
