Typhoon slams into Vietnam

Hanoi, Vietnam

Typhoon Lekima slammed into Vietnam's central coast Wednesday night, killing two people, destroying hundreds of houses and unleashing floods in one of the country's poorest regions.

The storm made landfall in Quang Binh and Ha Tinh provinces around 7 p.m., accompanied by winds of more than 80 mph, disaster officials said. They had evacuated about 400,000 people from the region.

Lekima, named after a Vietnamese fruit, was downgraded to a tropical storm as it arrived in neighboring Laos early today.

Mogadishu, Somalia

Fire rips through open-air market

Shopkeepers sifted through the ashes of tin-roofed shops and kiosks in Mogadishu on Wednesday after a fire tore through one of the world's biggest open-air weapons markets, killing one and sparking widespread looting.

Crowds of business owners, anxious to assess their losses, stormed the sprawling Bakara market, where everything from toothpaste to AK-47 rifles and counterfeit passports can be bought for a price.

Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi told local radio the government would do whatever it could to rebuild the market — the site of frequent attacks on government soldiers by suspected Islamist insurgents.

Nouakchott, Mauritania

Government frees ex-Gitmo prisoner

A Mauritanian who had been held in the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay for more than four years has been freed by his government a week after U.S. authorities released him.

Mohamed Lemine Ould Sidi Mohamed was returned to his family home late Tuesday.

He was returned to Mauritania on Sept. 26 after a U.S. military review panel cleared him for release.

Ould Sidi Mohamed told The Associated Press he was attending an Islamic school in Pakistan when he was arrested by Pakistani police in 2002 and then handed over to U.S. authorities.

He said he had never had any connection to al-Qaida.

Also

Rain thwarts plan: Wet weather has thwarted a Canadian plan to stem the spread of tree-killing pine beetles eastward through the Rocky Mountains by burning an Alberta forest near Banff National Park, an official said Wednesday.

Bears found dead: Three bears from an endangered species — including a male known as Bernardo, notorious for raiding chicken coops — have been found dead of suspected poisoning in central Italy, authorities said Wednesday, calling it foul play. The animals were among the world's 30 to 50 surviving Marsican bears — a brown-bear subspecies that lives almost exclusively in the mountains of Abruzzo in central Italy.

Seattle Times news services