NEW YORK, Mar 29:  The Empire State Building dimmed its lights and the Eiffel Tower went dark as iconic landmarks across the world observed Earth Hour, the global climate change awareness campaign.
The usually glittering nighttime majesty of the Empire State Building was set to “faint sparkle” in New York, while theaters on Broadway also toned down the neon.
Millions of people around the world were taking part in the annual Earth Hour yesterday organised by conservation group WWF, with a string of well-known sights plunging into darkness globally.
The famous Las Vegas strip went dim, with the replica Eiffel Tower at Paris Hotel turning its lights off, along with several hotels and casinos that normally illuminate the main drag in Sin City.
Other US west coast cities marked the occasion by switching off, with the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco going dim and the normally bright gateway pylons at Los Angeles LAX airport turned off after being lit in green in honor of the occasion.
Further south in the Americas, landmarks in Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro were also lights out for the hour, shrouding parts of the cities in darkness.
Earlier in Paris, the Eiffel Tower went black for only five minutes — due to security reasons — while nearly 300 other monuments in the City of Light also switched off their lights.
This year’s Earth Hour comes as the French capital prepares to host a crucial UN climate conference in December that will bring together the international community to discuss efforts to limit global warming.
In Berlin, activists at the unlit Brandenburg Gate placed candles in paper bags that were lined up to spell out “Save our Climate! Now!”, while the Kremlin in Moscow also shed its evening diamonds.
“It’s almost like the thing vanished,” said Tony Jennings from Earth Hour after standing under the Sydney Harbour Bridge as the lights went off at 8:30 pm local time.
In Australia, the initiative this year is focusing on farming, with fears that rising temperatures could ultimately damage the country’s ability to produce food.
“In Australia, agriculture is the most vulnerable industry to the impacts of climate change,” said national Earth Hour manager for Australia, Anna Rose.
Hong Kong’s signature high-rise skyline along the Victoria Harbour was a shadow of itself, with its towering skyscrapers standing dark — among them the city’s tallest building, the 118-story International Commerce Centre.
In Taiwan, the lights went off on the Taipei 101 tower, the world’s tallest building before it was overtaken by Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, while in Kuala Lumpur the usually dazzling Petronas Twin Towers were dark.
In neighboring Singapore, all Earth Hour events were cancelled because of the mourning mood following the death of the city-state’s founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew. (AGENCIES)

SANAA, Mar 29:  The United Nations evacuated staff from war-torn Yemen as Russia warned Saudi-led air strikes on Iranian-backed rebels were affecting crunch nuclear talks between world powers and Tehran.
Yemen’s President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi urged his Arab allies to keep up the bombing raids in his country until the Huthi Shiite rebels surrender, branding them Iran’s “puppet”.
The impoverished and deeply tribal Arabian Peninsula state, on the front line of the US battle against Al-Qaeda, is the scene of the latest emerging proxy struggle between Middle East powers.
A Sunni Arab coalition, led by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies, is battling to avoid having a pro-Iran regime on its doorstep, as the Huthi rebels tighten the noose around Hadi’s southern stronghold of Aden.
“I call for this operation to continue until this gang surrenders and withdraws from all locations it has occupied in every province,” Hadi told an Arab League summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
“I say to Iran’s puppet and whoever is with him, you are the one who destroyed Yemen with your political immaturity,” Hadi said.
He later flew to Saudi Arabia with King Salman and does not plan to return to Yemen until “the situation settles”, Foreign Minister Riyad Yassin said.
“The Huthis are trying to take it (Aden) by any means to impose a new reality on the ground before the summit ends,” Yassin added.
Late Saturday, anti-Huthi popular committees fighters were reported to have taken full control of Aden airport with the loss of five men, and nine killed on the rebel side.
Russia’s chief negotiator in the Iranian nuclear talks said Moscow hoped that the Yemen fighting would not jeopardise the negotiations between Tehran and world powers under way in Switzerland.
“Unfortunately, we are seeing that the tragedy that is happening in this country (Yemen) is having an impact on the atmosphere of the negotiations,” Moscow’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti news agency.
“We hope that the situation in Yemen will not bring about a change in the position of certain participants.”
As night fell, coalition air strikes resumed for a fourth night, residents of the capital said.
More than 200 staff from the UN, foreign embassies and other organisations were evacuated by air earlier in the day, aid workers said.
According to Saudi Arabia, more than 10 countries have joined the coalition defending Hadi. (AGENCIES)

ABUJA, Mar 29: Boko Haram extremists killed 41 people, including a legislator, and scared hundreds of people from polling stations in the northeast, but millions voted across Nigeria in the most closely contested presidential race in the nation’s history.
In electoral violence elsewhere, three people including a soldier were shot and killed in political thuggery in southern Rivers state, and two car bombs exploded at polling stations in the southeast but no one was injured, according to police.
All the Boko Haram attacks took place in northeastern Nigeria, where the military Friday announced it had cleared the Islamic extremists from all major centers, including the headquarters of their so-called Islamic caliphate.
Nearly 60 million people have cards to vote, and for the first time there is a possibility that a challenger can defeat a sitting president in the high-stakes contest to govern Africa’s richest and most populous nation.
The front-runners among 14 candidates are President Goodluck Jonathan, a 57-year-old Christian from the south, and former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari, 72, from the predominantly Muslim north.
Voters also are electing 360 legislators to the House of Assembly, where the opposition currently has a slight edge over Jonathan’s party. Voting for 13 constituencies was postponed until April because of shortages of ballot papers, electoral officials said.
Nigeria’s political landscape was transformed two years ago when the main opposition parties formed a coalition and for the first time united behind one candidate, Buhari. Dozens of legislators defected from Jonathan’s party.
Polling will continue today in some areas where new machines largely failed to read voters’ biometric cards, said Kayode Idowu, spokesman of the Independent National Electoral Commission. That includes some areas of Lagos, a megacity of 20 million and Nigeria’s commercial capital on the Atlantic coast.
Even the president was affected. Three newly imported card readers failed to recognize the fingerprints of Jonathan and his wife. Biometric cards and readers are being used for the first time to discourage the kind of fraud that has marred previous votes. (AGENCIES)

TUNIS, Mar 29:  Thousands of Tunisians, led by their president and joined by several foreign dignitaries, are to march in the capital today to denounce terrorism after the museum massacre of 22 tourists.
On March 18, two gunmen targeted the National Bardo Museum in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group, dealing a severe blow to a country that was the cradle of the Arab Spring and is highly dependent on tourism.
The dead tourists were from Italy, Japan, France, Spain, Colombia, Australia, Britain, Belgium, Poland and Russia.
A Tunisian policeman was also gunned down. Yesterday, the death toll rose to 22 after a Frenchwoman succumbed to injuries sustained in the attack.
The march is set to begin in Tunis at 1000 GMT (1530 IST), going from Bab Saadoun Square to the museum where a stone tablet will be dedicated to the memory of the victims.
The attack was “a big blow, but this blow did not kill us, it made us stronger”, Tourism Minister Salma Elloumi Rekik said on television yesterday.
President Beji Caid Essebsi will host the foreign dignitaries including his counterparts from France, Francois Hollande, and Poland, Bronislaw Komorowski, as well as the Palestinians’ Mahmud Abbas.
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and Algeria’s premier, Abdelmalek Sellal, as well as the foreign ministers of Spain, Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo, and the Netherlands, Bert Koenders, are also expected.
Essebsi called earlier in the week for a huge turnout for the march to the museum, which is due to reopen to the public tomorrow.
The Bardo’s doors were open on Friday to schoolchildren and students only, and an AFP journalist said bullet holes could still be seen on some of the walls inside.
“I was a little (scared) but now that we are here I can see that things are safe,” Lena Bottlender, a 17-year-old German student, told AFP.
Tunisia has seen an upsurge in Islamist extremism since overthrowing longtime strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011, but has taken pride in forming a democratic government since the Arab Spring – in marked contrast to countries such as Libya, Syria and Yemen. (AGENCIES)

INDIANAPOLIS, Mar 29:   Thousands of people marched in Indiana’s largest city  to protest a state law that supporters contend promotes religious freedom but detractors see as a covert move to support discrimination against gay people.    Waving signs reading ‘No hate in our state’ and carrying rainbow flags, a crowd of at least 2,000 people including Democratic elected officials rallied the same day that business-rating website Angie’s List Inc put on hold its plans to expand its Indianapolis operation with new offices, citing the new law.
The Religious Freedom Restoration Act was passed overwhelmingly by the Republican led-state legislature and signed into law on Thursday by Indiana Governor Mike Pence.    Supporters say the legislation will keep the government from forcing business owners to act against strongly held religious beliefs. Opponents say it is discriminatory against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people and broader than other states’ religious freedom laws.
‘This bill is not about discrimination and does not in any way legalize discrimination in Indiana,’ said Pence’s spokeswoman, Kara Brooks.
That statement did little to assuage the concerns of Rick Sutton, one of the marchers.
‘It’s a great sound bite but it’s not the truth. I’m not protected. LGBT citizens are not protected,’ Sutton said. ‘If we were protected, we would not be there right now.’    Indiana’s also drew criticism from business leaders.    ‘Angie’s List is open to all and discriminates against none and we are hugely disappointed in what this bill represents,’ company chief executive Bill Oesterle said.    Seattle’s openly gay mayor, Ed Murray, said yesterday he will ban city employees from traveling to Indiana on official business.
‘None of our taxpayer dollars should go toward supporting this discriminatory law,’ Murray said.
The National Basketball Association and Women’s National Basketball Association said in a joint statement the basketball leagues would ensure all fans, players and employees feel welcome at events in Indiana and elsewhere.
‘The game of basketball is grounded in long established principles of inclusion and mutual respect,’ they said.     On Friday, Apple Inc’s Tim Cook, one of the most prominent openly gay American CEOs, joined other executives, including Salesforce.com Inc’s Marc Benioff, in blasting the law.     A day after Indiana’s move, the Arkansas Senate overwhelmingly approved a similar bill, which Governor Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, has said he would sign into law.     Wal-Mart Stores Inc, which has its home office in Bentonville, Arkansas, criticized that measure.  (AGENCIES)

LOS ANGELES, Mar 29: A commuter train slammed into a car at a crossing in front of the University of Southern California, seriously injuring the driver and the train’s operator. Nineteen passengers on the train suffered lesser injuries.
The train was heading east toward downtown shortly before 11 AM yesterday when authorities said it appeared the car’s driver didn’t see it and tried to make a left turn across the tracks from a major thoroughfare.
The car, a silver Hyundai, was all but demolished. The first two of the train’s four cars slightly derailed, but they remained upright.
“We had to use the Jaws of Life to extricate the driver, and we transported him to a local hospital. He was in extremely critical condition,” fire Capt. Daniel Curry said at the scene.
The train’s operator was also badly hurt. Nineteen passengers on the train suffered lesser injuries, mainly cuts and bruises. “They were all able to walk off the train,” Curry said.
Eight were taken to hospitals, and the others were released.
The cause of the crash was under investigation. But Metro supervisor Diljiat Sandhu said it appeared that the car’s driver was attempting to turn left at a grade crossing and didn’t see the approaching train.
The crash occurred in an area where Metro trains travel down the middle of Los Angeles’ Exposition Boulevard, with cars traveling east or west on either side. On the north side of the boulevard is the USC campus, and on the south side is an entrance to Los Angeles’ Museum of Natural History.
Police shut down several blocks of Exposition Boulevard while Metro worked to remove the train. Service through the immediate area was suspended, and Sandhu said the transit agency was providing shuttle buses to get riders around the wreck.
Metro spokesman Jose Ubaldo said the agency hoped to have service restored by yesterday evening.
An estimated 90,000 people were expected to attend a sold-out soccer game at the nearby Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum yesterday night. Ubaldo said that if service wasn’t restored in time to get riders there, shuttle buses would transport them from stations on either side of the venue. (AGENCIES)

MEXICO CITY, Mar 29: An attempt to take gasoline from a crashed tanker truck led to four deaths and 26 injuries when the vehicle exploded, Mexican officials have said.
Tabasco state Civil Defense official Jorge Mendez Landeros said two of the victims died yesterday and two others at the moment of the fire. State health officials said two of the dead are children.
The Civil Defense agency said in a statement that the 15,800-gallon (60,000-liter) tanker crashed on the road between Villahermosa and Coatzacoalcos in southeastern Mexico on Thursday.
“Local residents using aggression and ignoring the directions of authorities began to collect the fuel without measuring the risks they were taking,” the agency said.
When the truck exploded, many suffered serious burns. (AGENCIES)

CONAKRY, Mar 29:  Guinean President Alpha Conde has declared a 45-day “health emergency” in five regions in the west and southwest of the Ebola-hit nation in a bid to stem the spread of the deadly disease.
The focus of the virus “has shifted to our country’s coastal areas”, the president said yesterday in a statement published in national media. “That is why I am declaring a reinforced health emergency for a period of 45 days in the prefectures of Forecariah, Coyah, Dubreka, Boffa and Kindia,” he said.
Since the Ebola outbreak began in Guinea in December 2013, more than 24,000 people in nine countries have been infected with the virus, and over 10,000 of them have died.
All but a handful of those deaths have occurred in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
The World Health Organization declared in January that the epidemic was finally declining in west Africa after the three countries at the epicentre recorded a steady drop in cases.
But renewed concern has been triggered by fresh setbacks in the worst-hit nations.
Liberia yesterday announced the death of a woman who last week became the country’s first new Ebola patient in more than a month. Health officials also said two new suspected cases had been identified.
And Sierra Leone on Friday began a new three-day nationwide lockdown sparked by fears that the virus was making a comeback in certain parts of the country. (AGENCIES)