POLAND
Walesa in hospital with heart ailment
WARSAW — Former Polish president Lech Walesa, a democracy hero, has been hospitalized with heart problems in his Baltic coast home city of Gdansk, his son Jaroslaw said Saturday. It was not immediately known when he could be discharged from the cardiac ward of the Gdansk University Clinic. The 73-year-old Walesa attended a speech by President Trump in Warsaw on Thursday. Walesa was booed by many in a crowd that supported the leaders of the current government in Poland. (AP)
SOUTH AFRICA
US donates $630m to African nations
JOHANNESBURG — The United States on Saturday announced more than $630 million in aid for Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan, and Nigeria, where conflict has helped to cause what the United Nations calls the world’s largest humanitarian crisis in more than 70 years. ‘‘This is truly a life-saving gift,’’ said David Beasley, head of the UN’s World Food Program. The United States is the world’s largest humanitarian donor, but President Trump has proposed deep cuts to foreign aid. (AP)
VENEZUELA
Opposition leader freed from prison
CARACAS — Opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez was released from prison and placed under house arrest Saturday after more than three years in military lockup, a stunning reversal that fueled hopes for a broader amnesty for dozens of jailed activists as the country slides ever deeper into political turmoil. Venezuela’s Supreme Court said it had granted Lopez the release for health reasons and “serious signs of irregularities’’ in the handling of his case. (AP)
ITALY
8th body recovered from collapse site
MILAN — Firefighters and police in Italy on Saturday pulled the eighth and final body from the rubble of a five-story apartment building that partly collapsed in Torre Annunziata, a seaside town south of Naples. The digging through the debris for victims ended more than 24 hours after the building collapsed in the early morning. About 80 firefighters worked alongside police and other crews through the night. (AP)
KENYA
Al-Shabab beheads 9 village residents
NAIROBI — Al-Shabab extremists from neighboring Somalia beheaded nine civilians in an early-morning attack on a village in the southeast, Kenyan officials said Saturday, as concerns grew that the group had taken up a bloody new strategy. The attack occurred in Jima village in Lamu County, according to security agencies combating al-Shabab. The Al Qaeda-linked group has vowed retribution on Kenya for sending troops to Somalia in 2011 to fight insurgents. (AP)
ENGLAND
Lack of equipment hobbled firefighters
LONDON — More lives could have been saved in the Grenfell Tower blaze in London that killed at least 80 people, firefighters say, but a lack of equipment, particularly fire engines with ladders high enough to reach the top floors of the 24-story building, impeded the rescue effort. The London Fire Brigade 100-foot ladder reached only to the building’s 10th floor, and was not called to the scene until nearly half an hour after other units when the blaze broke out in June, said Lucy Masoud, a firefighter and an official with the Fire Brigades Union. (New York Times)
JAPAN
Death toll hits 15 after flash flooding
TOKYO — The death toll from heavy rain and flooding in southern Japan this week has risen to 15, officials said Saturday, as rescue workers reached isolated villages where at least 14 others are missing and feared dead. Heavy rain warnings were still in place for parts of the southern island of Kyushu, days after Typhoon Nanmadol struck, triggering floods and mudslides. (AP)
