News Watch

One of the most active volcanoes in Europe, Mount Etna, on the Italian island of Sicily, began explosively erupting in late February, spewing lava and ash into the air. Etna often emits steam and ash, but explosive eruptions and lava flows are more uncommon.

On March 16, group members on a guided tour of the mountain, including a news crew led by a vulcanologist, were struck by super-heated rocks after a lava flow came into contact with snow, causing a steam explosion. Some members of...

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As ITN went to press, the State Department had travel warnings on 41 destinations: Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, El Salvador, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, Iran, Iraq, Israel/West Bank/Gaza, Jordan, Kenya, North Korea, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Republic of South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia...

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A suicide bomber targeted a protest in the city of Lahore in northern Pakistan on Feb. 13, killing at least 13 people and injuring 83 others. Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a group associated with the Taliban in Pakistan, claimed responsibility for the attack. The protesters, who were mostly pharmacists, were demonstrating against a proposal that will change laws regarding the sales of drugs in the province of Punjab.

On Feb. 16 in southern Pakistan, a suicide bomber targeted an important Sufi...

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Three bombs were detonated in Baghdad, Iraq, on consecutive days, Feb. 14-16, altogether killing more than 70 people and injuring hundreds of others. 

In the deadliest attack, on Feb. 16, a car bomb was detonated on a busy street in southern Baghdad near a row of car dealerships, killing at least 48 people. It was the deadliest single attack in Baghdad in several months. Daesh, which controls some areas of Iraq, claimed responsibility. 

According to UN estimates, in...

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On March 1, a day after Taliban fighters killed 12 policemen in the southern Afghanistan province of Helmand, 23 people were killed and 106 were wounded in two attacks by the Taliban in the country’s capital, Kabul. 

In Kabul, most of the deaths occurred at a police station, where a suicide car bomber set off his explosives and a 5-hour gun battle ensued between police and another attacker. Not long after that attack, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives outside...

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A series of avalanches in the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan killed more than 100 people in early February. Most deadly was an avalanche that struck a small village in the northeastern Afghani province of Nuristan, killing 53 people.

Extreme winter weather in the northern areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan caused dangerous traveling conditions, with reports of people freezing to death in their cars after roads were blocked by snow. In Afghanistan’s capital, the...

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Tropical cyclone Dineo made landfall in southern Mozambique on Feb. 16, killing at least seven people, destroying more than 20,000 buildings and leaving 130,000 people homeless.

Dineo then moved south to South Africa and was downgraded to a tropical storm, though it maintained winds of 60 miles per hour. Some sections of Kruger National Park, a popular safari destination, were closed for the duration of the storm.

Philippines earthquake

On the island of Mindanao in the...

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On the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines, an earthquake measuring 6.7 on the Richter scale occurred near the city of Surigao on Feb. 11. Four people were killed and more than 100, injured. More than 90 aftershocks were recorded.

Including the collapse of a hotel and of a bridge, the quake damaged buildings and infrastructure and left many residents without power or water. The Surigao Airport closed temporarily because cracks had formed on runways.