Daily News Channel
A wind-whipped fire expanded to 450 acres early Wednesday in the hills above Santa Barbara, California, causing residents of 1,000 homes to flee and putting 2,000 other homes in peril, emergency officials said The flames were burning within a mile of several homes, said Pat Wheatley with the Santa Barbara County Emergency Operations Center.
About 80 boys and 20 staffers in an orphanage were trapped during intense fighting between the Pakistani military and the Taliban Wednesday, the orphanage director said. The children trapped in the four-story building in the town of Mingora in Pakistan’s Swat Valley felt as if they were under siege because the fighting was so close, said Muhammad Ali, director of the orphanage. Staff members said they only had enough food to last two more days.
Three U.S. troops were killed in Iraq on Thursday, making April the deadliest month for U.S
Pakistan’s military continued its assault Thursday on militants in Taliban-held areas, its chief spokesman told reporters. So far, 14 militants have been killed in the past 24 hours, Maj
Doctors Without Borders has embarked on a massive vaccination campaign in three African countries to combat an outbreak of meningitis that has killed hundreds of people, the organization said Wednesday.
Six car bombings in four hours killed 48 people and wounded 81 in various Baghdad neighborhoods Wednesday, according to Iraq’s Interior Ministry. In a separate incident, five people were killed and three wounded by a roadside bomb south of Baghdad, a ministry official said. Most of the deaths came when three car bombs parked at separate but nearby marketplaces exploded in quick succession in the eastern Baghdad Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, killing at least 45 people and injuring at least 68, the ministry official said.
At least 74 elementary, junior high and high schools have closed across the country because of confirmed or probable cases of swine flu, the Department of Education said Wednesday. Another 30 schools have closed as a precautionary measure because of the H1N1 virus, Department of Education spokesman Massie Ritsch said. The closures — of both public and private schools across eight states — affect about 56,000 students out of the estimated 55 million students attending the nation’s 100,000 kindergarten-through-12th grade schools, Ritsch said.
Australia will boost its troop commitment in Afghanistan by 450 soldiers to help in the international fight against a resurgent Taliban, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said Wednesday.
A train driven by "unauthorized people" crashed into another at a station near the southern Indian city of Chennai on Wednesday, killing four and injuring 11, officials said.
The outbreak of swine flu, that has killed more than 150 people in Mexico, has also affected the football world with the semfinals and final of the CONCACAF section of the under-17 World Cup, scheduled for Wednesday and Saturday, having been cancelled — world governing body FIFA has confirmed on their official Web site. CONCACAF, the confederation that governs football in central and north America, has decided to follow the lead of the Mexican government in order to safeguard the health of players, fans and those involved in the staging of the competition