Nairobi: At least 25 people died in western Kenya when a speeding lorry rammed into a passenger van, Xinhua reported Saturday.

The accident occurred at 9.00 p.m. Friday on the Kisumu-Kakamega highway, spokesperson for Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) Nelly Muluka said.

Passengers from both the vehicles were among those who lost their lives. It was not immediately clear how many people were travelling in the vehicles nor the cause of the crash.

London: British Energy Minister Chris Huhne resigned Friday, Xinhua reported.

Police said they would prosecute him for allegedly perverting the course of justice in relation to driving a car above the speed limit in 2003.

Director of public prosecution Keir Starmer told journalists the charges alleged that Huhne had falsely told police between March and May 2003 that he was not the driver of a car involved in a speeding offense, and that his wife at the time was the driver.

Huhne’s then wife, leading economist Vicki Pryce, admitted the driving offense, which is a minor one, and received a small fine and penalty points on her driving license.

Pryce also faces the same charge as Huhne, 57, and both have been summonsed to appear before Westminster magistrates court, where the legal process will begin.

The charge is serious and can only be dealt with by a jury trial in a Crown Court, and if found guilty carries a prison sentence.

The resignation will not affect the stability of Prime Minister David Cameron’s coalition government.

Cameron’s government is a coalition of his Conservative party and the smaller Liberal Democrat party which came together after the inconclusive general election of May, 2010.

Huhne played a leading role in talks establishing the coalition and became one of only four members of Liberal Democrat party in the Cabinet.

He has been replaced by another Liberal Democrat, Ed Davey, who has been promoted from under-secretary at the Department for Business Innovation and Skills.

Davey, aged 46, was his party’s defence spokesman before the 2010 general election.

Kiev: As many as 43 people have fallen victim to freezing temperatures that hit Ukraine in the last few days, the country’s Emergencies Ministry has stated.

According to the ministry, 28 people were found dead in the streets, eight died in hospitals, and seven at home, said an official statement Wednesday.

The mercury fell to less than -20 degrees Celsius (-4 Fahrenheit) in Ukraine at the weekend and the temperature is expected to fall further to at least -30 degrees Celsius (-22 Fahrenheit) over the next few days.

As more than 720 Ukrainians have been hospitalised due to hypothermia; a condition in which core temperature drops below the required temperature for normal metabolism, the government moved to arrange special points for citizens to warm themselves. Some 1,700 such points have been opened across the country.

Moscow: Russia would make another attempt to send a Phobos-Grunt probe to Mars’ satellite in 2018, a leading space expert has said.

According to Lev Zeleny, director of the academy’s Institute of Space Research, the probe would be named Phobos-Grunt-2. The plan was initiated by the Russian Academy of Sciences, Xinhua reported.

Speaking at a press conference, Zeleny said 2018 was chosen because it would be the shortest distance between the Earth and Mars that year and that Russia’s domestic space industry would also see a dramatic improvement by then.

The second Phobos-Grunt would cost “a little more than 50 percent of previous costs,” as the infrastructure was already in place from when they built the first probe, said Zeleny.

As per specialists’ estimate the crashed Phobos-Grunt interplanetary station, which failed to reach orbit after a computer malfunction and crashed back to Earth last month, cost five billion rubles ($164 million).

The probe, carrying China’s Yinghuo-1 satellite, had been launched Nov 9, 2011. It crashed Jan 15, 2012.

On Tuesday, Vladimir Popovkin, the head of Russia’s space agency said Russia would send another sample mission to the Martian moon Phobos if the European Space Agency (ESA) decides not to include Russia in its ExoMars programme.

Washington: President Barack Obama Wednesday presented a plan to revitalize the US real estate market that would allow millions of homeowners to refinance their mortgages and take advantage of the current historically low interest rates.

Due to the precipitous decline in housing prices in recent years, more than 10 million homeowners now owe the bank more money than their houses are worth, the president emphasized.

The housing crisis “struck right at the heart of what it means to be middle class in America: our homes”, Obama said at a community center in Falls Church, Virginia.

Many families have had to resort to getting help from public programmes to avoid losing their homes, but up to now those initiatives have been unable to handle the enormous scope of the problem.

The plan presented Wednesday seeks to benefit more than a third of the 10 million homeowners whose mortgages are underwater, the White House says.

“Responsible” owners who are current on the payment of their mortgages will be able to refinance them at lower interest rates, meaning that they can save an average of about $3,000 per year, the president said.

In addition to refinancing the mortgages, Obama’s new plan also includes more protection to avoid inappropriate evictions, the sale of foreclosed properties by government agencies so that private investors who pledge to rent them out can do so and greater indulgence for homeowners who lose their jobs.

Obama urged Congress to approve the plan, the cost of which is estimated to be between $5 billion and $10 billion.

Washington: Amid credible reports that the Pakistan’s spy agency ISI was secretly supporting Taliban insurgents to recover lost ground in Afghanistan, the United States has asked Islamabad to snap those ties and act against terrorist safe havens.

Secretary of State Hillary “raised many of these issues when she was in Pakistan last fall,” State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland told reporters Wednesday when asked about a leaked NATO report published in the British media about ISI’s “manipulation” of Afghan Taliban’s senior leadership.

“So from that perspective, obviously this is not new-our concerns about safe havens, our concerns about whether together we are doing enough to go after these groups, our interest in cooperating with the Pakistanis to do more,” she said.

However, Nuland sought to play down the import of the report saying, “The context, as described by NATO, is that this is basically a summary of the views of those Taliban that we have in detention. So it’s a summary of what they think, what they believe to be true.”

The classified report shouldn’t have come out into the open, she said suggesting, “It was not designed for any purpose other than to help those in the field understand what Taliban detainees were saying.

“So it was in no way designed to impact on our ongoing efforts to get back on track with Pakistan, which continue,” Nuland said.

At the Pentagon, spokesperson Navy Capt John Kirby said US had “long standing concerns” about links between the elements of the ISI and the Taliban and wants Pakistan to “cut-off” those ties.

The facts brought out by the report were “not a new notion” and “the (Defence) Secretary (Leon Panetta) has been very clear about the ongoing problem of safe havens inside Pakistan for these groups,” Kirby said.

“We have made it clear already that Pakistan needs to act against safe heavens. We would like ties between some elements of ISI and Taliban to be cut-off,” he said.

Cairo: At least 73 people were killed and up to a 1,000 injured following clashes and a stampede at a football stadium in the Egyptian city of Port Said Wednesday night.

Numerous fans rushed to the field after their home team from Port Said, Al-Masry, defeated Al-Ahly, one of Egypt’s top clubs from Cairo, 3-1, reported RIA Novosti.

They first clashed with rival fans of the Cairo-based club and then attacked the players and coaching staff from Al-Ahly. The attack resulted in a stampede at the stadium, which was attended by some 40,000 people that night.

A spokesperson for the country’s health ministry said most of the deaths were caused by injuries sustained in the stampede, concussions and deep cuts to the heads.

Another football game between Al-Ismaili and Zamalek teams in Cairo was called off after the news about the melee in Port Said broke out. Cairo fans angered by the violence in Port Said set the stadium on fire. National television reported that firefighters extinguished the blaze and no one was hurt.

The Egyptian Football Association has ordered to postpone indefinitely all matches of the country’s championship and the parliament has called for an emergency session Thursday.

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which currently holds power in the country, dismissed the governor of the Port Said province and the head of the province’s security department.

Egypt’s state television appealed to all Egyptians to help in donating blood for the injured people in Port Said and the military allocated two aircraft for transporting those with serious injuries to hospitals in Cairo.

FIFA President Joseph Blatter called the tragedy in Port Said “a black day for football” saying that “such a catastrophic situation is unimaginable and should not happen”.

“I am very shocked and saddened to learn this evening that a large number of football supporters have died or been injured following a match in Port Said, Egypt,” he said in a statement.

The violence in Port Said is the deadliest in football after 1996 events in Guatemala City, when some 80 people were killed and 180 injured in a stampede at a stadium before a World Cup qualifier between Guatemala and Costa Rica.

Barcelona: Thirty eight people suspected of organizing fraudulent marriages in Spain as a way of legalizing the immigration status of Dominican women working as prostitutes in the northeastern region of Catalonia have been arrested.

Further arrests are not ruled out, police officials said.

The investigation began in September 2010 after payments were discovered of up to 3,500 euros ($4,579) made to Spaniards for their agreement to marry undocumented foreigners.

Over the past two years police have documented 29 weddings arranged by the fraud ring in four Catholic churches in the city of Sabadell.

Investigations revealed that some of the men involved in the marriages were already wed to other women and that in other marriages the bride and groom were blood relatives.

Investigators discovered that there were brothers and sisters and witnesses who interchanged their roles in different weddings.

According to police, most Spaniards who accepted the marriage of convenience or acted as a witness in return for money were either very poor, drug addicts or compulsive gamblers.

Santiago: Chilean police nabbed a man who was transporting in a refrigerated truck 5,200 kg of ice that had been removed from a glacier, the cargo apparently destined for bars and restaurants here in the capital.

“It’s the first time that a situation with these characteristics has been reported,” the chief prosecutor in the southern region of Aysen, Jose Moris, told EFE Tuesday.

Last Friday, rangers noticed the man transporting the ice from Jorge Montt glacier located in Bernardo O’Higgins National Park, said the provincial chief of the forest service, Piero Caviglio.

The glacier can only be accessed by water after a four-hour trip from Caleta Tortel, a village linked to the town of Cochrane by 128 km of dirt road.

Upon being informed that the ice had been loaded into a truck in Caleta Tortel, police set up a roadblock to enable them to stop and examine the vehicle, where they found the stolen ice.

A police spokesperson said that the cargo was in large plastic sacks.

Apparently, a Santiago company had hired the driver to transport the ice on the long journey to the capital.

Moris said that given the normal price of ice, the cargo of glacier ice had a value of 3.5 million pesos ($7,000), although it is presumed that the going rate for 1,000-year-old ice from a glacier could be double the normal price.

While authorities are investigating the matter, the glacier ice, rather than cooling drinks in the capital, will now be dumped into the pools of a farmers association in Cochrane, which will use it to irrigate local crops that are being affected by the drought that prevails in parts of Chile.

Washington: Occupy protesters in Washington defied a police deadline and erected a “tent of dreams” around a statue as part of their protest against eviction.

The camps at McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza, a couple of blocks from either end of the White House, are the group’s most visible sites after the one in New York — where the Occupy Wall Street movement against corporate greed began in September — was cleared out in November.

Things began to heat up last week when National Park Service officials were called before Congress to explain why Occupy protesters have been allowed to illegally camp on park land. In response, the Park Service ordered protesters to cease camping by Monday.

On the day the US Park Police planned to enforce a no-camping rule, the mood was festive in McPherson Square. Some chanted Occupy slogans. Others milled around waiting for a noon deadline.

As the deadline neared, hundreds of people gathered around the statue of James McPherson, an American Civil War general. Then, protesters pulled a massive tarp over the statue symbolizing what they say is their right to camp here.

Last week, the police notified the two Occupy camps in Washington that they would enforce the camping ban. Protesters must clear out camping materials, but they may keep some structures as long as one side is open.

Police in Oakland, California made more than 400 arrests over the weekend when factions loosely affiliated with the Occupy movement clashed with police.

Stressing that the Occupy movement, which seeks better economic equality, is non-violent, protesters in Washington say they don’t want that to happen here.