News Watch

On the island of Ko Samui, Thailand, a bomb placed in a parked car exploded at the Central Festival Samui mall on April 10, injuring seven people, including a 12-year-old Italian tourist. 

Officials suspect that the person responsible for the bombing is from one of the three southern Thailand provinces where Muslim insurgents have repeatedly used bombs in attacks. Ko Samui, a popular tourist destination just north of the southern provinces, had not previously been the target of a bomb...

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Two bombs were set off in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on April 12.

In the first attack, a roadside bomb in Sheikh Zuweid targeted an army vehicle, killing six soldiers and injuring two. Later in the day, a suicide bomber drove a truck into a police barracks in Al-Arish, killing eight people, injuring 45 and damaging the building and nearby homes. 

Sinai Province, an Islamic State-allied Islamist militant group, claimed responsibility for the attacks. In April, at least 41 people...

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Peru declared a state of emergency after heavy rains caused a massive mudslide that tore through the Peruvian town of Chosica on March 25, killing at least seven people and destroying 65 homes. The mudslide, nearly 30 miles northeast of Lima, also blocked the nation’s main east-west highway.

The Calbuco volcano in southern Chile erupted on the evening of April 22 and again around 1 a.m. on April 23, each time sending an ash cloud miles into the air. Lava flows melted snow on the mountain, causing river levels to rise. No deaths were reported, but more than 6,000 people were evacuated from the area. 

Ash from the volcano, sometimes measuring as deep as 22 inches, fell as far as 70 miles away, including in neighboring Argentina. 

Due to the potential damage from fine...

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A massive storm struck the coast of New South Wales, Australia, April 21-23, causing extensive flooding and leaving three people dead in the town of Dungog when their houses were washed away. A fourth person died when her car was washed off a bridge.

During the storm, some areas received more than a foot of rain, there were wind gusts up to 60 miles per hour, and waves off the coast were measured as high as 50 feet. More than 200,000 homes in the state were temporarily left without...

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As ITN went to press, the State Department had travel warnings on 37 destinations: Afghanistan, Algeria, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, El Salvador, Eritrea, Haiti, Honduras, Iran, Iraq, Israel/West Bank/Gaza, Kenya, North Korea, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Republic of South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela and...

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A Germanwings flight from Barcelona to Düsseldorf crashed in the French Alps on March 24, killing all 150 people on board, including three US citizens. 

Radar data showed that, about 40 minutes into the flight, the plane rapidly descended from a cruising altitude of 38,000 feet to 6,175 feet, at which point it struck the side of a mountain. The copilot, who had been treated for depression in the past, is suspected of deliberately crashing the plane in a murder/suicide event. 

A...

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Gunmen from the Islamist militant group al-Shabaab invaded the campus of Garissa University College in Garissa, northeastern Kenya, on April 2, killing 148 people and wounding at least 75. 

The gunmen took more than 500 students hostage, then released Muslim students but kept Christian ones. Authorities reported that the four gunmen involved in the attack were killed, two of them by police before the hostages were taken. Most of the hostages were saved.

Kenya has been targeted...

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