London: Stranded British explorer rescued from North Pole

A plane made a dangerous ice-landing near the North Pole on Tuesday to rescue a stranded British explorer who had spent a week camped on a drifting ice floe with his rations running low.

Pen Hadow, 41, was picked up after the plane landed on a makeshift runway he had marked on the ice using plastic bags.

Hadow began his 480-mile trek on March 17 from Ward Hunt Island and on May 19 became the first person to reach the North Pole alone and unaided from Canada.

Steve Penikett, a spokesman for Kenn Borek Airlines, said the ice was moving rapidly and continually breaking up, making the rescue mission difficult for everyone involved. “I wish it hadn’t taken place at this time of year. This is the latest we have ever done a pickup,” he told Sky News.

“It’s not the issue of him running out of food, it’s the issue of going to the pole at this time of that is a bit stupid and you are risking a lot of people’s lives by doing it,” Penikett said.

Rwanda: New constitution endorsed by voters

Rwandans overwhelmingly endorsed a new constitution intended to usher in democracy and security nine years after hundreds of thousands perished in a genocide, an electoral official said Tuesday.

Electoral commission chief Chrysologue Karangwa told reporters in Kigali that 93 percent of those casting ballots approved the new charter; he put turnout at 87 percent of the nearly 4 million registered voters.

The blanket approval could fuel criticism that the constitution will serve to reinforce the power of the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front, or RPF, a former rebel movement of minority Tutsis who ousted an extremist government of the Hutu majority in July 1994, putting an end to the 100-day slaughter of at least half a million people, most of them Tutsis.

The referendum marked the first time ordinary Rwandans have had a say in creating a constitution; a 12-member commission spent two years canvassing opinions throughout the tiny central African nation before writing what will be Rwanda’s fifth constitution since independence from Belgium in 1962.

Thailand: U.N. envoy slams human rights record

Respect for human rights in Thailand has diminished in recent years and activists are working in a climate of fear because of state-sponsored harassment, a U.N. envoy said Tuesday in Bangkok.

At the end of a nine-day visit to the country, Hina Jilani presented a scathing indictment of Thailand’s human rights record, gleaned from interviews with officials, private advocacy groups, human rights activists and others.

“I have sensed a level of insecurity among human rights defenders which ranges from general unease to actual fear,” Jilani, the U.N. special representative on human rights defenders, told a news conference.

This “climate of fear” has been created by public statements against private advocacy groups “made at the highest level of government,” by state attempts to cut off their foreign funding, and by using state security agencies and the judicial process “to harass human rights defenders through false or unjust prosecution,” she said.

India: Heat toll passes 430

A deadly heat wave in southern India has killed at least 430 people in the past two weeks, a relief official said Tuesday.

The death toll from dehydration and sunstroke, caused by high temperatures and shortages of drinking water, may increase further, said D.C. Roshaiah, chief of relief operations in Andhra Pradesh state.

Roshaiah said hundreds of people were bring treated at hospitals in several parts of state, which has experienced temperatures as high as 116.5 degrees.

Seven out of the state’s 23 districts accounted for most of the deaths. The highest death toll, 85, came from the coastal district of East Godavari, where temperatures hit 117.5 degrees last week.