1. Tornadoes kill 45

    U.S. authorities on Monday rushed aid to southern U.S. states after powerful tornadoes* killed at least 45 people.

    “It’s the most significant damage by a tornado since the early 1980s,” Governor Beverly Perdue told reporters in Raleigh, capital of worst-hit North Carolina, where 23 people died.

    2. Robot detects radiation

    Readings on Monday from a robot that entered two damaged buildings at Japan’s tsunami-flooded nuclear plant for the first time in more than a month displayed a harsh environment still too radioactive for workers to enter.

    3. Emergency law

    President Bashar al-Assad said on Saturday emergency law in place for almost 50 years in Syria would be lifted by next week but ignored popular demands to curb the security apparatus* and dismantle* its authoritarian* system.

    Assad, facing unprecedented pressure for democratic* reform, had earlier pledged to replace the repressive* emergency law with anti-terrorism legislation, but opposition figures said this was likely to preserve tough restrictions on freedom of speech and assembly* in Syria.

    4. Castro backs term limits

    Cuban President Raul Castro said on Saturday he backed political term limits of 10 years at most for top leadership spots in a country he and his brother Fidel Castro have led for more than five decades.

    “We have reached the conclusion that it is in our interest to limit to a maximum of two consecutive five-year terms service in top state and political roles,” Castro, 79, told the 1,000 delegates as he opened the Communist Party Congress.

    5. Corruption charges

    Egypt’s ex-prime minister and two other former Cabinet members were charged with corruption* on Sunday in the latest step in a campaign to bring officials of Hosni Mubarak’s toppled* regime* to justice for years of corruption, rights abuses and other crimes.

    Egypt’s attorney-general for public funds charged former Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif, ex-Finance Minister Yousef Boutros Ghali and former Interior Minister Habib el-Adly with wasting more than US$15 million in public money and profiteering*.

    6. Mubarak, sons detained

    Egypt’s prosecutor general announced last Wednesday the 15-day detention of the country’s former president pending* inquiries into accusations of corruption, abuse of authority and the killings of protesters, in an unprecedented investigation of a former ruler in the Arab world.

    The announcement was the latest in a dramatic series of events surrounding the probes against top former regime officials, and came just hours after former President Hosni Mubarak, 82, was hospitalized with heart problems in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

    7. Mexico mass graves

    At least 11 more bodies have been found in unmarked graves in north Mexico, taking the total to 127 corpses* uncovered near the U.S. border, with officials earlier accusing the Zetas drug gang of most of the killings.

    The latest finds in Sinaloa state on the Pacific coast came only hours after authorities said last Tuesday 116 bodies had been uncovered in mass graves in Tamaulipas state in the northeast.

    (SD-Agencies)