Wikinews:Briefs/September 21, 2008

= Wikinews News in Brief for September 21, 2008 21:00 UTC =

Transcript
The time is 21:00 UTC, this is the Audio Wikinews Brief for Sunday, September 21, 2008. I'm Kevin Fields, and here are this evening's current stories

Fresh floods in India claims sixteen lives
In India, floods in the eastern state of Orissa have left 16 dead. Over 180,000 people have been evacuated to safer places, while hundreds of others have taken shelter on national highway and cyclone shelters. The flood, described as the worst since 1982 by officials, has marooned 191 villages. The rising Mahanadi River overflowed at along 28 breaches to inundate and cut off several villages. A total of 1.5 million people have been affected. Crop areas of over 2,470 square kilometers have been inundated. The new flooding comes just weeks after Kosi river that flows from Nepal to India, burst its embankment and submerged nearly 1,000 villages in the neighboring state of Bihar in the north, killing at least 48 people and driving more than a million others from their homes. A local official said that the worst is yet to come.

Rumors of Oprah Winfrey's death a hoax
The Internet was abuzz over the weekend after rumors surfaced that talk show host Oprah Winfrey was been found dead in her Chicago, Illinois home. The rumors have been confirmed by Wikinews to be connected with the online group known as Anonymous and the website 4chan.org. The rumors started after a statement Winfrey made on a recent show, defending a United States Senate bill against pedophiles and child rapists saying a pedophile group has "over 9,000 penises" harming children. She was referring to a comment left on her website by an anonymous person claiming to be a pedophile. Allegedly a member of Anonymous left the comment on the website, and members of the 4chan.org started work on spreading the rumors via Wikipedia, Wikinews and social bookmarking sites such as Reddit.com and Digg.com.

CCTV footage shows bombing of Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan
The Pakistani Interior Ministry released closed circuit television footage on Sunday showing the truck bomb explosion outside of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on Saturday. Four minutes into the footage a large truck pulls up in front of the hotel and stops at a guarded gate. The guards and the driver of the truck exchange gunfire, before the guards scatter as the cab of the truck explodes. Guards and other individuals are then seen rushing towards the cab to try to put out the fire, but the fire spreads to the rest of the truck and explodes, causing extensive damage and taking out the security cameras. Pakistani officials believe that the truck carried over one ton of explosives. Officials also believe that al-Quaeda is responsible for the attacks, which injured over 300 civilians and killed 53, 21 of whom were foreign citizens.

Violence erupts in Germany between left and right wing protesters
The streets of Cologne, Germany erupted in violence Saturday as left wing demonstrators began attempting to halt a right wing rally. Leftist protesters began setting fire to barricades, throwing rocks, stealing weapons, and blocking passage to the "Stop Islam" rally. A force of 3,000 police responded with batons and water cannons, and reported that the violence had begun happening in "large formations" instead of small groups. German police had canceled the protest earlier, fearing violence would break out, and later attempted to halt the violence between the left and right wing groups. Over 5,000 nonviolent objectors to the rally conducted a sit-down, blocking every entrance to the rally and preventing all but fifty supporters out of 1,500 expected from attending.

Conclusion
This has been an Audio Wikinews Brief and is freely available for copy under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license at http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/. Catch the latest breaking news at Wikinews at en.wikinews.org.