TUNIS, Tunisia — Tunisia’s top security official says 1,000 extra police are being deployed at tourist sites and beaches in the North African nation.
Interior Minister Mohamed Najem Gharsalli made the announcement late Saturday. He said “we don’t want to make tourist establishments into barracks, that’s not our goal. But we must act to guarantee the security of the tourist sector.”
Thousands of tourists fled Tunisia on Saturday after the country’s worst terrorist attack killed 38 people. Hundreds more were to leave Sunday.
The Friday attack on tourists at a beach is expected to be a huge blow to Tunisia’s tourism sector, which made up nearly 15 percent of the country’s gross domestic product in 2014. It also comes after 22 people were killed in March at the National Bardo Museum in Tunis.
Debt, questions emerge after Paraguayan bishop ousted
CIUDAD DEL ESTE, Paraguay — Children awaiting surgery and women fleeing domestic violence never saw the $350,000 donated for their benefit. Then, there were the questionable property sales and the money for a cleaning business partially owned by a relative.
In the months since Pope Francis ousted the bishop of Paraguay’s second-largest diocese, questions keep surfacing about the Rev. Rogelio Livieres Plano’s management of church money.
As Paraguayan Catholics prepare to welcome Francis during his South American tour that starts July 5, new leaders of the diocese in this eastern border city are trying to erase the debt left by the controversial bishop, raising money through raffles and bingo games. Many parishioners are demanding answers.
“The former bishop ran things like a mafia,” said Carlos Pereira, a humanities professor at the Catholic University in Ciudad del Este. “How did we end up in debt? What happened to the diocese’s properties, to all its assets?“
The diocese is $800,000 in debt, a considerable sum in one of South America’s poorest countries. The arrears have come to light since Livieres Plano, a member of the conservative Opus Dei movement, was pushed out in September.
National Park Service says teenage boy bitten by shark
WAVES, N.C. — Officials say a 17-year-old boy is the latest victim of a shark attack off North Carolina’s coast, the second attack in as many days and the sixth attack in the past two weeks.
Rescue personnel and park rangers responded to the boy, who received what they described as injuries to his right calf, buttocks and both hands while swimming in the Outer Banks on Saturday, according to a post on the National Park Service’s Facebook page. The boy was swimming with others when he was bitten, but no one else was hurt, officials said.
The unidentified teenager was treated at the scene before being airlifted to a Norfolk, Virginia, hospital, the park service said.
On Friday, a North Carolina man was bitten on his back and leg in Avon while playing in the surf with his children. A 43-year-old man was also attacked by a shark near Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, on Friday. Both men were treated for non-life threatening injuries.
Sharks have attacked several children along North Carolina’s coast this month, including a 13-year old girl who lost her left arm below the elbow and a 16-year old boy who lost his left arm above the elbow, about 90 minutes apart, at Oak Island.
Tama mourned as savior of local railway
TOKYO — Tama the stationmaster, Japan’s feline star of a struggling local railway, was mourned by company officials and fans and elevated into a goddess at a funeral Sunday.
The calico cat was appointed stationmaster at the Kishi station in western Japan in 2007. In her custom-made stationmaster’s cap and a jacket, Tama quietly sat at the ticket gate welcoming and seeing off passengers. The cat quickly attracted tourists and became world-famous, contributing to the railway company and local economy.
Tama died of a heart failure on June 22. During Sunday’s Shinto-style funeral at the station where she served, Tama became a goddess. The Shinto religion has a variety of gods, including animals.
Wakayama Electric Railway President Mitsunobu Kojima thanked the cat for her achievement, and said Tama will be enshrined at a nearby cat shrine next month.
Before Tama’s arrival, the local Kishigawa Line was near-bankrupt; and the station was unmanned as it had lost its last staff.
