Train attack kills three, wounds 16 near Quetta

Men armed with assault rifles attacked the passenger train in Mach town, some 50 kilometres southeast of Quetta, the capital of the insurgency-hit southwestern province of Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran.

“Three people have been killed and 16 were injured in the attack,” Naseeb-Ullah, provincial home secretary told AFP by telephone.

“We have imposed an emergency in the hospitals while the seriously injured have been taken to Quetta’s main hospital,” he added.

Police said about two dozens attackers fired on the train when it reached Mach, which lies deep in the mountains.

A railway official confirmed the incident.

One Intelligence official in Quetta blamed the attack on Baloch militants who are fighting for more political rights and a greater share of profits from the region’s natural resources.

Hundreds of people have died in violence in the province since the insurgency flared in late 2004. Despite having some of the lowest living standards in Pakistan, the region has the richest supply of natural resources.

Toll in Indiana fair stage collapse rises to six

The death toll from the collapse of an outdoor concert stage in heavy wind just before a show at the Indiana State Fair last week rose to six on Friday with the death of a Ball State University senior.

Jennifer Haskell of Muncie, who had attended the fair with a friend who was also killed, died on Friday, the same day her friend Alina BigJohny, 23, was buried in Fort Wayne.

More than 40 people were injured in the stage collapse on Saturday night when a blast of wind whipped through the grandstand area just minutes before the country duo Sugarland was set to begin performing.

"After a long, courageous battle, Jenny Haskell died at 8:15 this morning from her injuries sustained from the tragedy at the State Fair," Haskell's parents said in a statement released by Ball State University officials.

Haskell, 22, was majoring in exercise science and was active on the campus landscaping crew.

Governor Mitch Daniels has asked the Indiana Inspector General to assign several staffers to the State Fair Commission to assist in the fact finding and documentation procurement aspect of an investigation into the incident.

The fair commission has hired Thornton Tomasetti, a New York engineering company, to coordinate and conduct the structural portion of the investigation. The Washington D.C.-based firm of Witt Associates will do an analysis of the fair's preparedness and response to the event.

First lawsuits filed over deadly Indiana fair collapse

The first wrongful death lawsuits have been filed as a result of the stage collapse at the Indiana State Fairgrounds in Indianapolis last week which killed six and injured more than 40 others, lawyers said onSaturday.

Suits were filed on behalf of Tammy VanDam of Wanatah, Indiana, 42, the mother of a 17-year-old daughter, and her partner Beth Urschel, 49.

VanDam was killed by the collapse of the stage after a high blast of wind whipped through the grandstand area just minutes before the country duo Sugarland was scheduled to perform. Urschel was severely injured.

Although Indiana law does not recognize the rights of same-sex couples, "this is an inequity we also intend to address in this lawsuit," Kenneth J. Allen, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in a statement.

"Tammy's death is not only devastating for Beth, it also leaves her daughter without a mother's love and guidance during the most vulnerable stage of her life," Allen said.

Allen said Beth Urschel suffered "serious and painful crush injuries" and will have lifelong impairment. Defendants include Mid-America Sound Corp, Live Nation Worldwide and Lucas Entertainment Group.

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels has asked the Indiana Inspector General to assign several staffers to the State Fair Commission to assist in the fact finding and documentation procurement aspect of an investigation into the incident.

The fair commission has hired Thornton Tomasetti, a New York engineering company, to coordinate and conduct the structural portion of the investigation.

The Washington D.C.-based firm of Witt Associates will do an analysis of the fair's preparedness and response to the event.

"This was a terrible tragedy that could and should have been prevented; the responsible parties must be held to account," Allen said.

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.

Mobile home tips, kills two

Two men died and a third was seriously injured when the mobile home they were moving in St. Amable, Quebec, tipped over on them, officials say.

Capt. Yannick Parent of the Richelieu-Saint-Laurent Regional Police said the three men were moving the home for their friend and neighbor when it toppled over on them Friday, The (Montreal) Gazette reported.

The men were trapped under the house for almost an hour.

Two were found unconscious by police and later pronounced dead. The third man was hospitalized in stable condition.

The owner of the mobile home, who was on site when the accident happened, was not injured. No one was inside the house at the time.

Police are looking into the cause of the accident.

Polar bear kills British student in Norway

A British teenager was killed and four of his companions were hurt in a polar bear attack on their camp on a glacier in the Norwegian Svalbard Archipelago.

Horatio Chapple, 17, was participating in an expedition organized by the British Schools Exploration Society, The Independent reported. He was a student at Eton, one of Britain's premier schools.

Those injured included two team leaders and two high school students, officials said. After they were evacuated from the Von Postbreen Glacier, they were flown from Longyearbyen, the principal settlement in the archipelago, to the mainland.

"We got a call via satellite phone from a British group of campers that there had been a polar bear attack and that one person was dead and that others were injured and they needed assistance," said Liv Asta Odegaard, spokeswoman for the Svalbard governor. "There are no roads in the area so we scrambled a helicopter."

Polar bears are common in Svalbard, where local residents carry rifles when they leave settled areas. Attacks are frequent but fatalities are unusual, with only four reported since 1971.

Ilona Wisniewska of the Svalbard tourism board said when bears attack they are usually shot before they have the chance to hurt more than one or two people.

System could warn of bridge dangers

U.S. researchers say a new, affordable early warning system for the nation's aging bridges might avert bridge collapses that could result in loss of life.

A University of Maryland engineer says his inexpensive, wireless system could prevent the kind of bridge collapse that killed 13 people and injured 145 on a Minneapolis interstate bridge on Aug. 1, 2007, and do so at 1 percent of the cost of current wired systems.

"Potentially hundreds of lives could be saved," Mehdi Kalantari says. "One of every four U.S. highway bridges has known structural problems or exceeded its intended life-span. Most only get inspected once every one or two years. That's a bad mix."

Kalantari has developed tiny wireless sensors that monitor and transmit minute-by-minute data on a bridge's structural integrity that can be analyzed by a central computer to warn officials instantly of possible trouble, a UM release said Friday.

The sensors measure a number of indicators of a bridge's structural health -- including strain, vibration, flexibility and development of metal cracks.

"This new approach makes preventive maintenance affordable -- even at a time when budgets are tight," Kalantari says. "Officials will be able to catch problems early and will have weeks or month to fix a problem."