The 1st Thread/The Read International For 8/10/10: Pakistan Isn't The Only Country Engulfed In Massive Flood Disaster

Image from BBC.com

Pakistan isn't the only nation enduring a natural disaster of violent flooding. China has been ravaged in its northwest region by a tidal wave of flooding, leading to the perishing of thousands:

More than 700 people are now known to have died in a massive landslide in north-west China - making it one of the deadliest incidents so far in the country's worst flooding in a decade.

A frantic search is continuing for the more than 1,000 people still missing.

Buildings were hit by a wall of mud so mighty that buildings seven storeys high crumpled like paper, says the BBC's Chris Hogg, in Gansu province.

China has had shaky infrastructure with its buildings, and this is yet another painful reminder of how that drastically needs to change:

The landslides came as China was struggling with its worst flooding in a decade, with more than 2,100 people reported dead or missing and millions more displaced nationwide.

President Hu Jintao led a meeting of senior ministers on Tuesday on plans to handle the crisis, Xinhua news agency said.

More than 7,000 soldiers, firefighters and medical staff are now at the scene of the landslide.

The Chinese premier has visited Zhouqu, urging rescue workers on in their efforts and comforting those affected.

Back to Pakistan, where it's shame of a President has fully returned to a chorus of deserved criticism :

Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan's president, returned to the country after foreign fundraising trips to a chorus of criticism that he should have stayed at home to manage the crisis.

A government official said Zardari was expected to visit flood-hit areas within days, although for some Pakistanis, his efforts were too little, too late.

"All that I can say about Zardari is that our houses are collapsing and his government is not even bothered," Daraz Gul, a salesman in a hardware market in the town of Nowshera in northwest Pakistan, told the Reuters news agency.

And get this powerful quote from that same salesman, something that should reverberate around the world for every nation, especially here in America:

"A government is supposed to be like a parent. If a parent leaves his children in trouble and goes on jaunts abroad, it is scandalous."

So powerful.

What a capricious character this guy is :

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has extended a hand of friendship to the European Union and the United States during the celebration of the southern African country's National Heroes' Day. His conciliatory speech follows a week after he told the US and EU to "go to hell" at his sister's funeral.

Photo from AP's Renato Chalu

A British man became the first person ever to walk the entire length of the Amazon River. It took him 2.5 loud years to do just so.

And what a mess this latest episode at The Hague is:

Naomi Campbell's former agent's testimony to the Charles Taylor war crimes tribunal was branded "a complete pack of lies" as she admitted that parts of her evidence linking Taylor to a mysterious gift of diamonds were either mistaken or based on her own assumptions.

Speaking on the second day of testimony to a court trying the former Liberian president for crimes allegedly committed in Sierra Leone, Carole White appeared shaken during cross-examination by Courtenay Griffiths QC.

Asked whether, as she had previously told prosecutors in May, she had heard the former warlord tell the British supermodel over dinner at Nelson Mandela's house that he was going to "send her diamonds", she eventually admitted that she had not.

"I can't recall those words," she said. She had interpreted a nod from Taylor to Campbell as a sign of "acquiescence" from the warlord to the model, she said.

Your International news thread, which will have a name changed in the coming from days.