A road-grader accidentally tore open a fuel pipeline Thursday and sent an inferno raging over houses and a school, setting off a stampede of terrified children and killing about 100 people and injuring 20, a Red Cross official said.
By Dion Nissenbaum and David Lightman President Bush took the occasion of Israel's 60th anniversary on Thursday to compare his American political opponents to Nazi appeasers and brand them as too willing to negotiate with terrorists, remarks that Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama reacted to instantly as an attack upon him.
Interpol said Thursday it found no evidence of tampering in computers seized from a slain leftist rebel, discrediting Venezuela's assertions that the files are bogus and giving Colombia the international backing it sought.
Fluorescent lights cast a yellow-green pall on the posted student artwork. Children's voices recite lessons behind closed doors. A group of seventh-grade girls giggle and whisper as they wander back to class.
On the home turf of Mexico's deadliest drug cartels, they hang banners that mock Mexican authorities trying to maintain order. "Little tin soldiers, federal officers made of straw," read one banner in the state of Sinaloa.
President Bush put an optimistic face on fading hopes for Mideast peace Wednesday, declaring that Israel's 60-year triumph over war and tragedy shows democracy can succeed everywhere. But Bush's upbeat message was marred by rocket fire from Gaza and threats of heavy retaliation by Israel.
Ahead of a visit to the Middle East, President Bush expressed some optimism that an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement would be struck before his term ends while holding out little hope for a major breakthrough when he arrives in Israel on Wednesday.
Soldiers hiking over landslide-blocked roads reached the epicenter of China's devastating earthquake Tuesday, pulling bodies and a few survivors from collapsed buildings. The death toll of more than 12,000 was certain to rise as the buried were found.
Colombia extradited 14 paramilitary warlords to the United States on Tuesday to stand trial on drug trafficking charges in a surprise move applauded by the Bush administration as evidence that Colombia deserves a trade deal.
A powerful earthquake toppled buildings, schools and chemical plants Monday in central China, killing more than 8,700 people and trapping untold numbers in mounds of concrete, steel and earth in the country's worst quake in three decades.
Fighting between pro- and anti-government factions jumped to Lebanon's north Monday, but a grim calm hung over the nearly empty streets of Beirut -- a capital crippled by roadblocks, suspicion and fear.
A U.S. plane ferried relief to Myanmar for the first time Monday to help nearly 2 million cyclone victims facing disease and starvation, but the U.N. chief criticized the military junta for its "unacceptably slow response."
Irena Sendler -- credited with saving some 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazi Holocaust by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto, some of them in baskets -- died Monday, her family said. She was 98.
Lebanon hung between fears of all-out war and hopes of political compromise Sunday as government supporters and opponents battled with rockets and machine guns in the mountains overlooking the capital.
Myanmar's monumental task of feeding and sheltering 1.5 million cyclone survivors suffered yet another blow Sunday when a boat laden with relief supplies -- one of the first international shipments -- sank on its way to the disaster zone.
Hundreds of rebels from war-ravaged Darfur clashed with Sudanese security forces on the doorstep of the capital Saturday in a dramatic widening of the 5-year-old conflict.
Apart from the sound of children crying, the town of Labutta is strangely silent.
Myanmar's military rulers held a referendum Saturday aimed at solidifying their hold on power while brazenly turning cyclone relief efforts into a propaganda campaign. In some cases, generals' names were scribbled onto boxes of foreign aid before being distributed.
Hezbollah gunmen melted off the streets of Beirut on Saturday, heeding an army call to pull the fighters out after the Shiite militants demonstrated their military might in a power struggle with the U.S.-backed government.
Unchallenged by Lebanon's army, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah routed Sunnis loyal to the U.S.-allied government and seized control of large swaths of Beirut's Muslim sector Friday in a telling demonstration of its military prowess.
