Daily News Channel
The World Health Organization scheduled an emergency meeting for Thursday to decide whether to declare a global swine flu pandemic as confirmed cases of H1N1 virus continue to soar worldwide. By early Thursday morning, the U.N. health agency had recorded more than 27,700 cases in 74 countries, with 141 deaths.
Thirteen-year-old Kavya Shivashankar of Olathe, Kansas, spelled "laodicean," Thursday night to take top honors in the 82nd annual Scripps National Spelling Bee. The eighth-grader won $40,000 in cash and prizes for nailing the final word. Pronounced lay-odd-uh-see-an, the word means lukewarm or indifferent, particularly in matters of politics or religion
Singer Rihanna cleared her schedule to testify next month in the case against singer Chris Brown, who is charged with brutally beating her earlier this year, her lawyer said. While Brown’s lawyer previously indicated he hoped to resolve the case without public testimony, Los Angeles Criminal Court Judge Patricia Schnegg set on Thursday a preliminary hearing for June 22. Schnegg also ruled Thursday that a leak of police photos showing Rihanna’s bruised and bloodied face would not affect the prosecution of Brown.
An explosion rocked a mosque in southeastern Iran on Thursday, killing at least 15 people and wounding more than 50, Iranian news outlets reported.
Israeli anti-terror forces killed a suspected West Bank Hamas military leader Thursday, the country’s military announced.
A powerful earthquake, with a magnitude of 7.1, was reported off the coast of Honduras early Thursday, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
At least 16 police officers, including five women, died in a shootout that erupted after suspected Maoists ambushed them Thursday in central India, a state official said.
Police arrested an American Airlines pilot who failed a breathalyzer test at London’s Heathrow Airport on Wednesday, the airline and police said Thursday.
A wind-whipped wildfire raged on Thursday evening, scorching more than 2,700 acres in California, forcing more than 12,000 Santa Barbara County residents to evacuate, and damaged or destroyed at least 75 homes. The fire, which started Tuesday, had engulfed mansions in the coastal community’s foothills.
Both people who died of swine flu in the United States had pre-existing health problems, federal health authorities said Thursday in a report. The 22-month-old child who died April 27 of the flu, also called H1N1, had neonatal myasthenia gravis, an autoimmune disease, said the report, which was written by a virus investigation team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and published online in the New England Journal of Medicine. The child — who was from Mexico and who fell ill while visiting relatives in Texas — also had a heart defect, problems swallowing and chronic hypoxia, the report said