A magnitude 5.1 earthquake has struck the South Sandwich Islands Region at a depth of 57.7 km (35.9 miles), the quake hit at 01:08:01 UTC Thursday 25th August 2011.
A magnitude 6.2 earthquake has struck Vanuatu at a depth of 10.1 km (6.3 miles), the quake hit at 23:06:16 UTC Wednesday 24th August 2011.
A magnitude 5.1 earthquake has struck Tonga at a depth of 112.6 km (70 miles), the quake hit at 19:41:14 UTC Wednesday 24th August 2011.
Special forces troops from Britain, France, Jordan and Qatar on the ground in Libya have stepped up operations in Tripoli and other cities in recent days to help rebel forces as they conducted their final advance on the Gadhafi regime, a NATO official confirmed to CNN Wednesday.
Libya's rebel council has offered a £1m reward for the capture, dead or alive, of deposed ruler Colonel Gaddafi.
Desperate members of the collapsing Gaddafi regime could try to unleash Libya’s stocks of chemical weapons, William Hague has warned.
Philip Hulmes, 53, was hit with electric probes from the stun gun after barricading himself in his house in Over Hulton, near Bolton.
Travellers to Greece have been warned to take precautions against mosquito bites following six reported cases of malaria since June.
A naked madman went on a stabbing spree in a Manhattan apartment building Tuesday, wounding four people and killing one, cops and neighbors said.
Thug Chokes And Robs Elderly Men: MyFoxNY.com
A jobless man accused of robbing a dozen banks across the Phoenix valley told investigators he did it to survive and that "desperation was a great motivator," authorities said on Tuesday. Police arrested Cristian Alfredo Urquijo, 39, in July. He was charged with robbing 12 banks in the metro Phoenix area from September 2010 through July, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Arizona said in a news release.
The criminal complaint released on Tuesday noted that Urquijo told arresting officers he had been laid off from work, was unable to find a job, and robbed the Phoenix area banks to survive.
"It's pretty simple. It's black and white. I don't have a job, I had to work, and I rob to survive," he said, adding "desperation is a great motivator." more
When a Greenfield family reported that their 24-foot diameter, above ground swimming pool had been stolen, police knew exactly where to look for it.
Police in Tennessee were called to a funeral home where workers found two intruders sleeping inside caskets.
Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helu has increased his stake in the New York Times Company just weeks after the US newspaper group repaid the emergency $250m loan it took from Mr Slim in 2009.
The city of Camden will be paying almost 70 high school students $100 each to go to school in the first three weeks of the year.
Cracking was found in the stones at the top of the Washington Monument Tuesday evening, the National Park Service reported.
No one can be sure who controls the Libyan government's weapons stockpiles, a stew of deadly chemicals, raw nuclear material and some 30,000 shoulder-fired rockets that officials fear could fall into terrorists' hands in the chaos of Moammar Gadhafi's downfall or afterward.
The 5.8-magnitude earthquake that surprised the U.S. East Coast with the biggest shake since 1988 may be followed by aftershocks for weeks, scientists said.
Mayor Bloomberg wants to blanket the city with red light cameras - and maybe even publish the names of scofflaws who blow through intersections.
Household budgets are deteriorating at a faster rate than during the height of the recession in early 2009, according to an analysis of consumers' finances.
Now is the time for China to use its "financial weapon" to teach the United States a lesson if it moves forward with a plan to sale arms to Taiwan. In fact, China has never wanted to use its holdings of US debt as a weapon. It is the United States that is forcing it to do so.
The number of people who bought new homes fell for the third straight month in July, putting sales on track to finish this year as the worst on records dating back half a century.
Among the most pressing concerns about a post-Gaddafi Libya is the risk of the country's many loose weapons falling into the wrong hands.
Television pictures of rebels swarming out of Gaddafi's Tripoli bunkers heaving with newly-acquired weaponry have not reassured nervous security officials on both sides of the Atlantic.
"Weapons proliferation has been a matter of concern for many months for us and the TNC (Transitional National Council)," US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters in Washington.
Most worrying is the amount of surface-to-air missile (SAMs) launchers washing around Libya.
In April, US Africa Command commander General Carter Ham told America's Congress as many as 20,000 SAMs were in the country when the operation began.
"Many of those, we know, are now not accounted for. Each one is capable of bringing down a civilian airliner," he said. Read More
A magnitude 4.0 earthquake has struck the Dodecanese Islands, Greece at a depth of 10 km (6.2 miles), the quake hit at 19:15:44 UTC Wednesday 24th August 2011.
A magnitude 5.3 earthquake has struck Northern Peru at a depth of 128.5 km (79.8 miles), the quake hit at 18:16:51 UTC Wednesday 24th August 2011.
Two companies connected to the mayor here have been making some 40 million yen per year from a local nuclear research facility, it has been learned, sparking speculation that the facility holds undue influence over the leader of this northern town. The Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA)'s Horonobe Underground Research Center began renting two apartment complexes for its workers in fiscal 2001 from the firm Horonobe Shoji, where Mayor Akira Miyamoto's son serves as president and the mayor himself is a board member. The research center has furthermore contracted local security firm Hokusei, run by three of the mayor's family and where Miyamoto also served on the board of directors until just after he was elected mayor in 2002, to do security at the facility. Read More
A magnitude 7.0 earthquake has struck Northern Peru at a depth of 145.1 km (90.2 miles), the quake hit at 17:46:11 UTC Wednesday 24th August 2011.
In case you haven’t heard Barack Obama is now traveling around in the United States in a totally blacked out tour bus. The news media is now joking about Obama being Darth Vader. Why did the Secret Service order these buses? They are the newest protection vehicles for the president. They were designed as a nuclear bomb shelter on wheels. The only effective protection against a nuclear blast is a lead lined suit or a bomb shelter lined with lead. In the event of a nuclear explosion, humans are immediately exposed to four threats: Light, Heat, Blast and Radiation. This armored bus is lined with lead and the windows lead reinforced and blackened out with the latest UV protective coating to protect the president from the intense light, heat, blast and radiation of a nuclear explosion.
An Israeli military airstrike killed a local commander of the Islamic Jihad militant group in Gaza despite a ceasefire announced late Sunday.
Some of the wealthiest people in France have taken a page from Warren Buffett's playbook and asked the French government to tax them more.
An unusually strong earthquake sent shock waves far beyond its Virginia epicentre on Tuesday, rattling residents all over the U.S. Eastern Seaboard and Canada.
The vast majority of Canadians who drive every day have never attempted any other way of getting to work, according to a new survey published Wednesday on the typical commute last year.
The rail car filled with liquid propane that has been burning since Tuesday in northern California is now at a greater risk of exploding, officials and emergency crews reported according to radio station KCRA.
As the regime of Moammar Gadhafi crumbled, the value of South Korean construction firms rose.
Hurricane Irene intensified into a Category 3 storm Wednesday, threatening much of the United States' East Coast in the coming days.
Moody's has cut Japan's credit rating by one notch citing concerns about the government's ability to reduce its mountain of debt and implement long-term fiscal sustainability measures.
A U.S. satellite project said Wednesday it has found evidence of additional mass graves in South Kordofan, a day after the Sudanese president called for a unilateral cease-fire in the state.
Truth was first a casualty in Libya well before this war began, and the war has not improved matters at all, on any side.
The NATO air campaign that was instrumental in helping the rebels advance into Tripoli is hamstrung in many ways now that the fighting has turned into complex house-to-house urban warfare, American military and allied officials said Tuesday.
Libya's rebel leaders claimed Monday they had captured three of Moammar Gadhafi's sons, including Saif al-Islam, who is wanted on war crimes charges by the International Criminal Court. But shortly afterwards, Saif appeared in public in Tripoli, where he spoke to reporters -- raising serious questions about the reliability of the rebels' account of events.
It is hard to think of more awkward country in which to drill for gas than the craggy, creviced hillsides that rise up from the banks of China's turbid Yellow River in the northern province of Shanxi, the heart of China's northern coal belt.
Recent days have witnessed heavy withdrawals from banks, as consumer spending rises before Eid-ul-Fitr.
Residents who lived close to the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant are to be told their homes may be uninhabitable for decades, according to Japanese media reports.
Germany's Angela Merkel faced mounting domestic criticism of her euro zone policies on Monday, with the Bundesbank slamming an anti-crisis package she agreed to in Brussels last month and a senior ally warning he would vote against key parts of it.
Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization Michel Chossudovsky said that what is happening in Syria is an armed insurrection supported secretly by foreign forces including the United States.
Thousands of northern California homes are at risk as firefighters battle to stop a burning rail car loaded with nearly 30,000 gallons of liquid propane from exploding.The fuel tanker caught fire yesterday at about midday at a Northern Propane Energy yard in Lincoln, a city of 40,000 north of Sacramento.
About 4,800 homes have been emptied around a one mile radius of the fire, and the American Red Cross has set up evacuation centres for fleeing residents.
Firefighters have set up four fixed hoses to soak the tanker to in an attempt to keep its temperature down and prevent an explosion as the propane burns off.
At the moment the gas is burning off as it exits the 29,000-gallon tanker through a vent. Any attempt to extinguish the flames directly runs the risk of creating a gas cloud that could ignite into a massive fireball, fire officials warned.
Highways have been shut, businesses closed and the area's schools will miss the first day of term because of the continuing danger, said the Lincoln Fire Department.
The Placer County Sheriff's Department activated reverse 911 calls to residents to evacuate the area under threat, KXTV-TV reported.
Officials told Lincoln resident Roza Calderon that it could be anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks before she could return home.
'They said they would let us know tomorrow,' the 26-year-old accountant said late last night. 'In the meantime I think we're just going to be staying in a hotel.' Read More
An email sent in error by a bungling office worker has revealed that RBS is paying contract banking staff £2,000 a day.
The document heaps fresh humiliation on the bank, which was given a £20billion handout in October, 2008 and is now 84 per cent owned by the taxpayer.
The document was circulated by accident to temporary workers at state-owned Royal Bank of Scotland revealed some eye-watering sums, including the bankers’ pay which is the equivalent of around £500,000 a year.
The email was supposed to remind managers to complete timesheets before the bank holiday weekend, but also contained the day-rate paid to 3,000 different contractors and was circulated to 800 temporary RBS workers. Read More
A 16-year-old boy who tried to incite a riot on Facebook has been told he faces jail after his anonymity was taken away by a judge.Johnny Melfah posted messages on a group online called 'Letz start a riot'.
After a judge lifted his right to keep his identity secret yesterday he admitted the offences today - and was warned he would face jail.
Jordan Blackshaw, 20, and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, were last week jailed for four years after creating Facebook pages that urged rioting in their home towns.
Melfah, from Droitwich, Worcestershire, is thought to be the first child in the country charged in connection with rioting to be publicly identified even though he had not entered a plea.
Today he pleaded guilty to intentionally encouraging or assisting the commission of widespread thefts and criminal damage, in a 20 minute hearing at Worcester Youth Court. Read More
The U.S. east coast is bracing itself for a first major hurricane in seven years.Evacuations began on a tiny barrier island off North Carolina as Hurricane Irene strengthened to a major Category 3 storm over the Bahamas today with the east coast in its sights.
Irene's maximum sustained winds have already increased to near 115mph and it’s likely to grow into a Category 4 monster by the time it hits mainland U.S. this weekend and crawls up the northeast.
The evacuation in North Carolina was a test of whether people in the crosshairs of the first major hurricane along the east coast in years would heed orders to get out of the way.
The first ferry to leave Ocracoke Island arrived at 5:30am in nearby Hatteras with around a dozen cars on board – but it won’t be easy to get thousands of people off as they can only leave by boat. Read More
A man described as a ‘cold sadist’ imprisoned a woman in his home-made torture chamber rigged with eight bombs designed to detonate when he had finished with her.Thomas Fischer, 30, turned his tiny flat into a terrifying lair in which he had installed an old soundproofed telephone box to lock up his victim.
He used an assortment of scalpels, needles and syringes to practise with on a mannequin before snatching the woman off a street in Hamburg.
But while it appeared he had been planning to imprison her for a number of months, she was only in his clutches for two hours – after he forgot to lock the door to the ‘cell’.
The 26-year-old victim, who was handcuffed, managed to flee by lunging through a window of the ground-floor flat.
Fischer tore into the street after her but she outran him and fled to the safety of a friend’s home.
She brought police to the apartment, where Fischer had returned. He has not said a word since he was arrested.
Police searching the flat were said to be left speechless by the macabre set-up. Read More
