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Car bomb in Kabul kills 6 Italians, 10 Afghans
KABUL - A suicide car bomber killed six Italian soldiers and 10 Afghan civilians Thursday in the heavily guarded capital of Kabul - a grim reminder of the Taliban's reach amid political uncertainty in Afghanistan.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the deadliest attack for the Italian contingent in the country.
Violence has increased since the U.S. sent thousands more troops to push back the resurgent Taliban and bolster security for last month's still-unresolved presidential election. The Taliban made good on threats to disturb the vote, and militant attacks have risen not just in the group's southern heartland but also in the north and in Kabul and surrounding areas.
The bomber rammed his explosives-filled car into two Italian military vehicles in a convoy about midday. Four Italian soldiers were also wounded, said Italian Defense Minister Ignazio La Russa. The Afghan Interior Ministry said an additional 55 civilians were injured.
The explosion shattered windows in buildings about half a mile (a kilometer) away and shook offices and homes throughout the central Afghan neighborhood that houses embassies and military bases.
6 Hong Kong workers die in elevator shaft fall
Baghdad Green Zone attacked during Joe Biden visit
BAGHDAD - Four mortar shells landed in the Green Zone as Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Iraq Tuesday on a previously unannounced mission to help the country resolve its differences ahead of America's military withdrawal.
The shells were heard as they were fired from across the river on the east bank of the Tigris and at least one explosion was audible. There was no immediate word on any casualties or damage in the Green Zone or in any other areas of the capital.
The U.S. military said they had initial reports that "one round of indirect fire impacted near the International Zone, not in it." The International Zone is the official name for the Green Zone, the walled off area in the heart of Baghdad that is home to government offices, the U.S. and British embassies and parliament.
It was unclear where Joe Biden was at the time of the attack.
6 Hong Kong workers die in elevator shaft fall
HONG KONG - A construction platform inside an elevator shaft collapsed Sunday, sending six workers falling about 20 stories to their deaths inside a Hong Kong skyscraper, officials said.
The accident occurred at the International Commerce Center, which will be 118 stories high when completed next year, making it one of the world's tallest buildings and the highest in Hong Kong.
Speaking at the scene in the Kowloon district, Hong Kong leader Donald Tsang told reporters the men fell after the platform they were working on collapsed in the elevator shaft.
All six workers died, police spokesman Michael Kwan said. The workers were believed to have fallen from around the 30th floor to the 10th floor, he said.
The building's developer, major Hong Kong property company Sun Hung Kai, has agreed to pay each of the victims' families 1 million Hong Kong dollars ($128,000) on top of normal compensation payments, Hong Kong Labor Secretary Matthew Cheung told local media.
Afghan body throws out ballots from 83 vote sites
KABUL - A U.N.-backed fraud commission threw out votes Thursday from 83 polling stations and ordered recounts at hundreds of others in three provinces that form Afghan President Hamid Karzai's political base, reducing his chances of avoiding a runoff.
It was the first time the commission has flexed its muscles in the aftermath of an Aug. 20 presidential election marred by allegations of ballot stuffing, phantom polling stations and turnout at some polls that exceeded 100 percent of registered voters.
Karzai's chief challenger, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, charged that the massive scale of what he called "state-engineered" fraud has become clear only as the numbers have trickled out over the past three weeks.
With results in from 92 percent of the country's polling stations, Karzai has 54 percent of the vote, according to the latest official count. That's enough to avoid a runoff election with Abdullah.
But if the U.N.-backed Electoral Complaints Commission invalidates enough votes, Karzai's margin could drop below 50 percent, forcing him to face Abdullah one-on-one in a second round of voting.
Giant statues reveal red hat secrets: study
LONDON (AFP) - British archaeologists said Monday they believe they have solved the ancient mystery of how the giant stone statues on Easter Island acquired distinctive red hats.
The researchers said the key to the mystery lies in their discovery of a road on the tiny Pacific island. The hats were built in a quarry hidden inside the crater of an ancient volcano, and then rolled by hand or on tree logs to the site of the statues, said the team from the University of Manchester and University College, London.
The archaeologists examined the way the hats, each weighing several tons and made of red scoria, a pumice-like volcanic rock, were moved by Polynesians between 500 and 750 years ago.
They were placed on the heads of carved stone human figures known as moai standing on ceremonial platforms which encircle the island's coastline. But the riddle of how they were raised and attached remains unsolved.
2,000 students at U.S. university report swine flu symptoms
SAN FRANCISCO, California (AFP) - Some 2,000 students at Washington State University have reported symptoms of swine flu, university officials said, in one of the largest reported outbreaks of the virus on a US college campus.
Washington state's Whitman County, where the school is located said that tests at a state laboratory late last week "confirmed that the influenza outbreak at Washington State University (WSU)... is indeed caused by the novel 2010 H1N1 Influenza A."
The west-coast school last week instituted a blog to help provide information to students about the sudden and dramatic spread of the A(H1N1) virus on campus just days into the new school term.
"We estimate that we have been in contact with about 2,000 students with influenza-like illness in the first 10 days of our fall semester," the latest online posting said.
"At this time of year, we would typically only see a handful of patients with influenza-like illness. Health care providers in the local community have also seen WSU students with influenza-like illness, but we have no way of knowing how many.
Deadly Calif. wildfire's western end under control
LOS ANGELES (AP) - The ferocious wildfire burning north of Los Angeles has turned into a creeping giant, steadily chewing through thick and dry chaparral on its eastern flank. While crews report good progress, the blaze that claimed the lives of two firefighters was far from being fully contained.
Investigators, meanwhile, were working to find the arsonist responsible for the huge wildfire that has burned through 241 square miles, or 154,655 acres, of the Angeles National Forest. It was 42 percent contained Friday. More than 76 homes and dozens of other structures have been destroyed.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger offered a $100,000 reward Friday for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the culprit.
In the rugged terrain of the San Gabriel Wilderness, fire officials relied on aerial water drops to slow the flames and the backbreaking work of hand crews to build fire lines. While flames inched down steep canyons, crews defended a cluster of church camps and a bar along the Angeles Crest Highway. The fire was about five miles north of the foothill communities of Monrovia and Sierra Madre late Friday.
LOS CABOS, Mexico - Los Cabos resorts mopped up after an overnight lashing from the once-mighty Hurricane Jimena, which weakened Wednesday as it doused the southern end of Mexico's sparsely populated Baja California Peninsula.
Winds had fallen from Tuesday's roaring 150 mph (240 kph) blasts to 100 mph (160 kph) by Wednesday morning and the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said it was expected to weaken further as it runs up the Baja peninsula, home to about 3.5 million people, including more than 150,000 U.S. citizens, according to the State Department.
Despite a pummeling by the fringes of the then-Category 3 hurricane, the Mexican peninsula's biggest resort, the picturesque beach towns of Los Cabos, appeared to escape major damage beyond power outages, mud-choked roads and downed signs.
"A transformer blew out near our hotel ... like a bomb went off," said Robert Hudak, a sports fisherman from Rochester, New York, as he walked through the storm-soaked marina at Cabo San Lucas. "Three of them went off in our neighborhood; the whole neighborhood is out." His hotel handled the emergency the old-fashioned way: "They gave us a candle," Hudak said.
Schwarzenegger declares emergencies in 4 counties
LOS ANGELES - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared a state of emergency for four California counties as wildfires burn throughout the state.
Schwarzenegger said Monday in Los Angeles that residents should heed evacuation orders near several large fires in Placer, Monterey, Los Angeles and Mariposa counties.
He says eight fires are burning in California, the largest one in the foothills north of Los Angeles. That blaze has scorched 134 square miles and destroyed at least 18 homes, threatening 12,000 more.
A massive fire in the Angeles National Forest nearly doubled in size overnight, threatening 12,000 homes Monday in a 20-mile-long swath of flame and smoke and surging toward a mountaintop broadcasting complex and historic observatory.
Kennedy remembered for 'the dream he kept alive'
BOSTON - Sen. Edward M. Kennedy was celebrated Saturday for "the good he did, the dream he kept alive," his funeral inside a soaring Catholic church a memorial to one man's life and a remarkable political era now ended.
Row upon row of mourners sat facing the casket bearing Kennedy's mortal remains, President Barack Obama as well as previous occupants of the White House, enough senators to make up a quorum and dozens of members of the most famous political family in the land.
One son, Patrick, wept quietly as another son, Teddy Jr., spoke from the pulpit of the day years ago, shortly after losing a leg to cancer, that he slipped walking up an icy driveway as he headed out to go sledding. "I started to cry and I said, `I'll never be able to climb up that hill,'" said Teddy Jr.
"And he lifted me up in his strong, gentle arms and said something I will never forget, he said, `I know you can do it. There is nothing that you can't do.'"readmore
Kennedy called 'singular figure' in America's life
Myanmar fighting forces up to 30,000 to flee to China
BEIJING, - Fresh fighting has erupted between Myanmar forces and an armed ethnic group in the remote northeast, forcing tens of thousands to flee across the border into China, activists and state media said on Friday.
China called on Myanmar to maintain stability in the border region, even as the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees estimated that between 10,000 and 30,000 civilians had fled the conflict.
"We also urge Myanmar to protect the security and legal rights of Chinese citizens in Myanmar," said the statement by spokeswoman Jiang Yu, on the ministry's website (www.fmprc.gov.cn)
The fighting could raise tension between China and Myanmar, whose military junta looks to Beijing as one of its few diplomatic backers and a crucial source of investment.
Thousands have fled this month from Kokang in Myanmar's Shan State after clashes there, which, according to a U.S.-based rights group, followed the deployment of troops in the area, home to a large number of ethnic Chinese.readmore