PHILIPPINES: Heavy rains due to a storm and the seasonal monsoon have caused widespread flooding in the capital Manila and nearby provinces yesterday, shutting down schools and government offices.

Local officials reported that hundreds had been evacuated from severely inundated communities and rapid-flowing flood waters more than neck deep.

Presidential spokeswoman Abigal Valte said that work in government offices in the capital and 15 other provinces had been suspended.

SPAIN: A day after Scotland rejected breaking away from Britain, the regional parliament in Catalonia granted its leader Artur Mas the power to call a secession referendum that the Madrid government insists would be illegal.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has vowed to prevent the November 9 vote that separatist Catalans want to hold in the wealthy Mediterranean region of 7.5 million people.

GUINEA: Prime Minister Mohamed Saïd Fofana said on Thursday that seven bodies had been found in a rural area after a group of local residents attacked health workers carrying out ebola awareness efforts.

Mr Fofana said authorities had located the bodies a day after the group was abducted by assailants armed with rocks and knives in the village of Wome.

Among the dead were three Guinean radio journalists who had been covering the education efforts.

BELGIUM: Police have arrested a high-ranking member of the rebel movement that plunged Liberia into conflict more than two decades ago and charged her with war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The charges against Martina Johnson, former head of the heavy artillery unit for the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, are believed to be the first against a Liberian for international crimes committed during the country’s first civil war.

JAPAN: An international whaling conference voted Thursday against Japan’s widely criticised plans to resume whaling in the Antarctic next year, but Japan vowed to go ahead anyway.

A resolution adopted at the International Whaling Commission meeting in Portoroz said Japan should abide by the International Court of Justice’s ruling that its whaling programme is illegal.

Immediately after the resolution was adopted by a 35-20 vote, Japan announced it would launch a new “research” programme that will resume hunting in the Antarctic in 2015.

SLOVENIA: Parliament has voted into office a new centre-left government.

Prime Minister Miro Cerar’s government was approved on Thursday in a 54-25 vote in the 90-member assembly.

Mr Cerar’s party won the July 13 election, which was called when previous premier Alenka Bratusek resigned after losing the leadership of her party.

The new government is made up of three left-leaning parties. It has promised restrictive fiscal policies, including reduced spending.

US: Hundreds of thousands of Native Americans across the nation have started receiving the final cash payments this week from one of the largest government settlements in US history.

The settlement is from a class-action lawsuit filed in 1996 by Elouise Cobell, who sued after finding the government squandered billions of dollars in royalties for land it held in trust for individual Native Americans.

Cheques ranging from $869 (£532) to nearly $10 million (£6m) were sent to more than 493,000 people by the administrators of the $3.4 billion (£2bn) settlement.

MALI: A roadside bomb has killed five UN peacekeepers and wounded several others, a spokesman said yesterday.

A car carrying Chadian troops hit the explosives on Thursday north of Aguel’hoc, which is near the embattled city of Kidal.

UN secretary-general Ban Ki Moon expressed outrage at the attack and called on armed groups meeting in Algiers to take immediate action to collaborate with the UN mission to prevent “these cowardly attacks.”