A Zimbabwe-registered cargo plane crashed shortly after taking off Saturday from a Shanghai airport with seven crew members aboard, state media and witnesses said. The official Xinhua News Agency reported that four crew members, all foreigners, were injured. The status of the other three was not immediately clear. China Central Television showed billowing thick black smoke at the scene, with police officers blocking closer access. A reporter from Shanghai's Oriental Satellite Television told... Read Full Story
Saudi Arabia says nine of its soldiers fighting Yemeni rebels on the border are missing and the kingdom's monarch is vowing to defend the country. A defense ministry statement said the fate of the soldiers remains unknown. The statement was a reaction to reports that the soldiers were captured by Yemeni rebels. Saudi Arabia has unleashed an offensive against Yemeni Shiite rebels who crossed into the kingdom and killed a Saudi soldier earlier this month. The rebels have been fighting Yemen's... Read Full Story
A suburban Phoenix family is suing after their father's body slipped from a shattered casket when it was dropped into a grave during a burial ceremony. Lawsuits filed by the children, wife and two dozen family members of 50-year-old Robert Gowdy Sr. claim a strap on a casket-lowering device snapped as family was gathered around a grave last year, dropping Gowdy's coffin and breaking it open. Cemetery workers ran away, the family said. Two family members tried to lift the casket but the... Read Full Story
An approaching global climate summit has raised the temperature at a typically low-key meeting of leaders from Britain's former colonial empire. The Commonwealth heads of government, meeting in the Caribbean this week, are discussing climate change just before a major summit on the issue in Copenhagen. Leaders of the 53-nation group, whose profile has waned in recent years, say they now have a chance to influence the global debate. "What we can do is to raise our voices politically," said... Read Full Story
The White House says a vote by the U.N. nuclear watchdog's board to censure Iran over its disputed nuclear program shows the "growing international deficit of confidence" in Iran's intentions. Iran has refused to immediately halt construction of a newly revealed nuclear facility. It also has ignored U.N. Security Council resolutions urging it to stop enriching uranium that could be used to build a nuclear weapon. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the vote Friday by 25 countries... Read Full Story
The young invincibles. That's what the insurance industry calls them. They're the 13.7 million Americans under 30 who don't have health insurance because, they firmly believe, they just don't need it. Why waste money on something they're too healthy to ever use? In the debate over health care, lawmakers and industry agree that persuading this statistically healthy demographic to jump into the insurance pool would bring down costs for the broader population. But for young adults to make the... Read Full Story
President Barack Obama will meet with the Australian prime minister at the White House on Monday. The White House said in a statement Friday that Obama and Kevin Rudd will discuss a range of issues, including the war in Afghanistan and the upcoming climate change conference in Copenhagen. Obama ended speculation about his attendance at the conference earlier this week, announcing that he would stop in Copenhagen on Dec. 9 before traveling to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. Rudd is... Read Full Story
The governor of the volatile southern Afghan province of Kandahar survived an assassination attempt when a bomb targeting his convoy exploded as he headed for Friday prayers to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha. The remote-controlled roadside bomb damaged Turyalai Wesa's car and blew out one of the vehicle's windows, but the governor was unhurt, said spokesman Zelmai Ayubi. He said one policeman was wounded in the blast. Kandahar, a city of an estimated 800,000, is an important piece in... Read Full Story
China has executed two men for abducting and selling 15 children, many of whom were taken as babies or toddlers and have not yet been reunited with their parents, state media said Friday. The official Xinhua News Agency said Hu Minghua, 55, and Su Binde, 27, were executed Thursday morning, according to a statement from the Supreme People's Court. Hu was convicted of kidnapping and selling nine children from April 1999 to Oct. 2005. He was detained in January 2006. Five of the children, all... Read Full Story
Americans' day-to-day lives won't change noticeably if President Barack Obama achieves his newly announced goal of slashing carbon dioxide pollution by one-sixth in the next decade, experts say. Except for rising energy bills. And how much they'll go up depends on who's doing the calculating. The White House said will commit the U.S. to a goal of cutting carbon dioxide emissions in 2010 to about 17 percent below 2005 levels at a U.N.-sponsored climate change summit in Copenhagen early next... Read Full Story
