KOBANI, Syria — The U.S. military said Friday that two coalition personnel have been killed and five were wounded by a roadside bombing in Syria in a rare such attack since the U.S-led coalition sent troops into the war-torn country.
The military did not say where the incident occurred but it came hours after a local Syrian official said that a roadside bomb has exploded in the tense, mixed Arab-Kurdish town of Manbij that is not far from the border with Turkey.
The U.S. military statement said the incident occurred on Thursday night and that the wounded personnel were being evacuated for further medical treatment. The coalition statement said details pertaining to the incident were being withheld pending further investigation.
It did not identify the casualties as American soldiers, only coalition personnel members.
SAN FRANCISCO — Brake failure, a blown tire and factors such as the weather and road condition are among the factors that will be looked at by investigators trying to determine what caused an SUV carrying a Washington state family to plunge off a California cliff, but authorities might never figure out exactly what happened.
Authorities don’t know exactly when or how the SUV — which was discovered Monday — went over the cliff alongside a spot commonly used by motorists to walk their pets. They say they have no reason so far to believe it was an intentional crash that claimed the lives of two women and at least three of their six adoptive children just days after child welfare authorities tried to contact the family over concerns about the kids’ living conditions.
But they also said there were no skid marks or signs the driver braked as the GMC Yukon crossed a flat dirt pull-off area, about 75 feet wide, and went over the edge of the Pacific Coast Highway.
“There are a lot of unknowns on this,” Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman said. “Several of the questions that have been asked today will never be answered.”
Allman appealed to anyone who might have seen the family of eight to come forward. Three other children are missing and presumed dead.
SAIQI, China — The twin-spired church in this southern Chinese village was packed with more than a thousand Catholics observing Good Friday, but the bishop who tends to the congregation was not among them. Just a day earlier, government agents had taken him away.
Bishop Guo Xijin is at the center of talks between the Vatican and the atheist Communist Party that will likely yield a deal on who appoints bishops in China. The move would be historic, uniting the country’s Catholics for the first time since Beijing and the Holy See severed relations nearly seven decades ago.
At a pre-dawn Mass on Thursday, Guo had urged congregants at the Saiqi church to be brave and keep the faith. “Full of comfort and hope, we are inspired to more bravely face struggles and offer our love to God,” he told them.
Not long after, government agents arrived and for the second time during Holy Week took Guo away for what they described as a “vacation” — a euphemistic term in China for an enforced disappearance.
TAIPEI, Taiwan — People who knew the 18-year-old Taiwanese exchange student charged in the U.S. with threatening to shoot up his school say he liked guns and flamethrowers and had dreams of a police career.
An Tso Sun, who has been jailed in the state of Pennsylvania, was “a child who really cares about things,” said Cheng Wei-ting, a tutor who home-schooled Sun in Taiwan’s capital, Taipei.
“He was an extremely simple and kind student, yet he would often have unusual ideas,” Cheng said.
Sun idealized the famed Taiwanese-American forensics scientist Lee Chang-yu and wanted eventually to study criminal psychology at an American university, his father’s friend Tuo Zong-kang told reporters Thursday.
“He planned to study in the same fields as Lee, such as criminal psychology and forensics,” Tuo said.
From Associated Press