Two dead, four injured in small plane crash in Alaska

Two people were killed and four others injured in a small plane crash near Alaska's Lower Yukon Valley that had rescuers searching for more than 14 hours, authorities said on Sunday.

The four survivors were rescued from the wreckage of the Cessna 207 aircraft on Sunday morning on a mountainous area about 150 miles west of Anchorage, said Beth Ipsen, a spokesman for the Alaska State Troopers.

"The survivors were transported to a hospital in Anchorage where they are receiving treatment for their injuries. I don't have information in their injuries or conditions. Hopefully they'll be okay," Ipsen told Reuters.

Authorities did not release the identities of the victims pending notification of their families, and Ipsen said she did not know if the pilot was among the survivors.

The passengers included all three teachers assigned to the school in the Athabascan village of Anvik, including one married couple and their two children, ages 8 and 10, Karen Ladegard, superintendent for the Iditarod School District that includes Anvik, told the Anchorage Daily News.

Troopers got an emergency call from Inland Aviation, the private company that owns the plane, on Saturday night, she said.

But rescuers could not reach the crash site until Sunday morning due to bad weather, Ipsen said.

Ipsen said the plane was traveling from Anvik, Alaska, to the town of McGrath when it issued an SOS distress call at 8:22 p.m. to the aviation company.

The site was pinpointed by GPS around 37 miles west of McGrath, Ipsen said. The only communication after that was a weak distress transmission on Sunday morning, she said.

Attempts were made to reach the site overnight by the Alaska National Guard, Inland and commercial planes, she said.

The National Weather Service said the temperatures in McGrath overnight hovered around the upper 50s.

An Alaska National Guard helicopter finally reached the site on Sunday, Ipsen said.

She did not have any information on the survivors' conditions or what went wrong with the plane. The National Transportation Safety Board will be investigating, she said.

19 dead in attack on Afghan governor's compound

A team of six suicide bombers launched a coordinated assault on a provincial governor's compound in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, killing 19 people in the latest high-profile attack to target prominent Afghan government officials, authorities said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in the Parwan provincial capital of Charikar, some 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of Kabul. Bagram Air Base, NATO's headquarters for Regional Command East, is located about 7 miles away.

Afghan police said the assault began with a car bomb outside the front gate. The blast blew open a hole in the wall, allowing five insurgents wearing suicide vests and carrying automatic weapons and rocket propelled grenades to rush into the compound.

Afghan police said they killed three of the attackers as they approached the governor's house.

The attack appeared to target a meeting of top provincial security officials that was taking place in the compound. Afghan National Police Gen. Abdul Jalil Rahimi said he was at the meeting, along with Parwan Gov. Abdul Basir Salangi, top provincial Afghan army and police officials, and at least two NATO police advisers.

"Two of the bombers were able to get into the building of the governor's house," Rahimi said.

Parwan Gov. Abdul Basir Salangi, a former rebel commander during the Russian occupation, also fired at the insurgents with his own machine gun. He said it was the second time in the past month he was targeted by an assassination attempt.

Provincial Police Chief Gen. Sher Ahmad Maladani also took part in the gun battle, which he said lasted for approximately one hour.

"The last attacker was killed by police when he was only about 15 meters away from me," said Maladani. The bomber was killed before he could detonate his explosives.

The attack left much of the compound in ruins. Part of the governor's offices were burned. Broken glass and body parts littered the courtyard. Several cars were wrecked by explosions and bullets.

Fourteen of the dead were civilian Afghan government employees and five were policemen, according to the Afghan Interior Ministry.

And the international coalition announced that an insurgent attack killed a NATO service member in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday. The death brings to 382 the number killed in 2011 and 59 in August.

Pakistani police don't know who kidnapped American

Authorities were still searching Sunday for clues about who kidnapped an American in Pakistan but came up with no leads after questioning the guards at his house when he was abducted, police said Sunday.

Gunmen snatched development expert Warren Weinstein before dawn Saturday after tricking his guards and breaking into his house in the eastern city of Lahore, a brazen raid that heightened fears among aid workers, diplomats and other foreigners already worried about Islamic militancy and anti-U.S. sentiment in Pakistan.

Weinstein is the Pakistan country director for J.E. Austin Associates, a development contractor that has received millions of dollars from the aid arm of the U.S. government, according to a profile on LinkedIn, a networking website. He had told his staff that would be wrapping up his latest project and moving out of Pakistan by Monday, just a couple days after he was kidnapped.

Police were hoping the guards could shed some light on who targeted Weinstein but came up empty-handed, said Shoaib Khurram, a senior police official in Lahore.

"We do not yet have any concrete information that there was a specific threat," Khurram told The Associated Press.

Kidnappings for ransom are common in Pakistan, with foreigners being occasional targets. Criminal gangs are suspected in most abductions, but Islamic militants, are believed to also use the tactic to raise money.

J.E. Austin Associates stressed Weinstein's commitment to Pakistan's economic development in a written statement and said he has worked with a wide range of Pakistani government agencies, including the Pakistan Furniture Development Company and the Pakistan Dairy Development Company.

"His efforts to help make Pakistani industries more competitive have resulted in many hundreds of well-paying jobs for Pakistani citizens and contributed to raising the standard of living in the communities where these businesses are located," it said.

Shahab Khawaja, a former official at Pakistan's Ministry of Industries and Production, said Weinstein has been working in Pakistan since 2004 and was scheduled to finish his contract with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on August 15. The two men, who are close friends, met in the capital, Islamabad, in recent days.

"I was shocked and deeply disturbed by his kidnapping," said Khawaja.

Police said Weinstein, believed to be in his 60s, had returned to his home in Lahore on Friday evening from Islamabad.

According to Pakistani police, two of the kidnappers showed up at Weinstein's house Saturday and told the guards inside the gate of the walled compound that they wanted to give them food, an act of sharing common during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The guards opened the gate, and five other men suddenly appeared. The armed assailants overpowered the guards and stormed into the house. Some gunmen are believed to have entered through the back. They snatched the American from his bedroom but took nothing else.

Hussain Bhatti, who worked with Weinstein in Pakistan, said the American decided to replace the security company guarding his house in recent months because of general threats to U.S. citizens working in Pakistan. But he did not know who would have targeted Weinstein.

Americans in Pakistan are considered especially at risk because militants oppose Islamabad's alliance with Washington and the war in Afghanistan. The unilateral U.S. raid that killed al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden on May 2 in northwest Pakistan only added to tensions between the two countries.

Teen dies after fall in Yosemite Park

A 17-year-old has died at a California hospital after falling on the Mist Trail in Yosemite National Park and injuring his head severely, authorities said.

Kao Kue was airlifted to Doctor's Medical Center after the fall Sunday, the Los Angeles Times reported. He died Thursday.

Fourteen people have died in Yosemite this year, officials said. Kue will not be counted in the park's statistics because he died elsewhere.

Four people have died on the Mist Trail, which follows the Merced River. A man slipped and fell into the river in May, and three people were killed in June after climbing a guardrail at Vernal Falls.

Kari Cobb, a spokeswoman for the park, said the number of deaths this year is above average, possibly because heavy snow during the winter has raised water levels in rivers.

She said visitors to the park should be conscious of the dangers on some of its trails.

"Their safety and the risks associated with hiking the park are completely up to them to mitigate," Cobb said. "It's up to them to make the appropriate decisions to make them safe. We have signs on our most popular trails that tell visitors about some of the risks, and it is up to them to heed them."

China braces for Typhoon Muifa

Typhoon Muifa was still a day from landfall but was already impacting China Sunday, officials said.

Shanghai closed two major sea bridges as wind gusts buffeted the region, Xinhua reported.

Authorities also imposed speed limits on highways and were conducting safety inspections of transportation infrastructure, the state-run news agency said.

The National Meteorological Center said the storm was moving northward off the east China coast and was expected to come ashore in Shandong province to the north of Shanghai Monday morning.

The center of the typhoon passed to the east of Shanghai but its winds were still strong enough to down billboards and briefly cut off power in some areas, Sang Baoliang, deputy head of Shanghai's flood control headquarters, said.

More than 310,000 people in Shanghai had been evacuated ahead of the storm, which is the ninth typhoon to hit China this year.

Maritime officials in Zhejiang province said late Saturday 35 fishing boats carrying 300 people, who had been reported missing off the coast of Shandong, had been found along the Zhejiang coast.

Copter crash in Indonesia, at least 9 dead

A helicopter, chartered by a mining company and carrying 10 people, crashed in Indonesia's North Sulawesi province, authorities said.

China's state-run Xinhua news agency, quoting a rescuer, said all 10 died in the crash Wednesday.

"Nine people were found dead (at) the scene and another was in critical condition, the person also died on the way to a hospital in Manado," Rudiyanto, head of the search and rescue office in North Sulawesi, told Xinhua by telephone.

Those aboard included three Australians and five Indonesians, he said.

CNN, quoting the mining company, reported nine died in the crash and one was injured. The report said besides two Indonesia crew members, other included two Australians, two South Africans and four Indonesians.

The Jakarta Post, quoting a military official, said the helicopter went down minutes after takeoff Wednesday night.