Daily News Channel
Though the United States has not issued any travel warnings related to the swine flu outbreak in Mexico, major U.S. airlines are waiving fees for passengers who want to change their tickets to Mexico. Three marines were wounded in the operation conducted by Yemeni forces, according to the SABA news agency
U.S. President Barack Obama will visit France in June for the 65th anniversary of D-Day, French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s chief of staff said Thursday
The Israeli Military said Thursday that the "vast majority" of Palestinians killed in the recent Gaza conflict were "terror operatives" and the number of people killed was less than Palestinian sources reported. In an e-mailed statement the Israel Defense Forces spokesman’s office claimed their figures contained the names of 1,166 Palestinians killed in the conflict, called “Operation Cast Lead.” The Israeli military said 709 of them were “identified as Hamas terror operatives, among them several from various other terror organizations.” The remaining, the statement claims, were comprised of 162 names who “have not yet been attributed to any organization.” “Furthermore, it has come to our understanding that 295 uninvolved Palestinians were killed during the operation, 89 of them under the age of 16, and 49 of them were women.” The Israeli military said it was releasing the findings to counter “false information originating from various Palestinian sources, and in order to remove any doubt regarding the number of Palestinians killed in Operation Cast Lead.” The numbers presented by the Israeli military differ sharply from those reported by Palestinian sources. At the conclusion of the fighting, the Hamas controlled Ministry of Health in Gaza had put the death toll at over 1,300, with the majority made up of non-combatants
The Israeli military’s firing of white phosphorus shells over densely populated areas during the Gaza offensive "was indiscriminate and is evidence of war crimes," Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report on Wednesday. “In Gaza, the Israeli military didn’t just use white phosphorus in open areas as a screen for its troops,” said Fred Abrahams, a HRW senior emergencies researcher
Seven-year-old Heather McNamara was heading home Tuesday, a month after surgery that temporarily removed organs from her digestive tract to allow removal of a tennis ball-size tumor. According to her surgical team at New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, the operation — referred to as an “auto-transplantation” because the patient’s own organs (instead of those from a donor) were reimplanted within four hours after being extracted — is the first of its kind to be performed on a child. “If this doesn’t work, there’s nothing left,” Dr
The surgeon who performed heart surgery Wednesday on former first lady Barbara Bush said Thursday that she is recovering well from the 2 1/2-hour surgery in which her aortic valve was replaced with a pig valve. “From our perspective, this was a very routine procedure, and we expect her to make an excellent recovery,” Dr
The Bank of England Thursday cut a key interest rate from 1 percent to 0.5 percent, a new record low. The reduction in the official bank rate was expected.
Conjoined Egyptian twin boys Hassan and Mahmoud, who were successfully separated in Saudi Arabia Saturday, are recovering and are expected to lead normal lives, officials said. “The twins’ vital signs are good; they’re doing excellent,” said Sami Al-Shalan, spokesman for the King Abdulaziz Medical City facility in Riyadh where the surgery took place
A new Defense Department review of detainee operations at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, concludes that the operation does not torture detainees but rather treats them humanely and in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. The report, released to the public Monday, was prepared for President Obama, who has ordered the closing of the facility within a year.
Norway’s navy announced on Monday that it will help search for the missing plane of 20th century explorer Roald Amundsen, more than 80 years after his death. The search — scheduled for later this year — will focus on a 40 square-mile (104 square-kilometer) area of the Arctic Ocean where researchers believe Amundsen’s plane crashed in 1928.