The airline operating an Airbus A310-300 jet that crashed in the Indian Ocean on Tuesday with 153 people aboard was being monitored by EU authorities, according to France's transport minister. Dominique Bussereau told French television that inspectors in his country had also noted several faults on the doomed Yemenia Airways plane, Agence France-Presse reported. "The company was not on the blacklist (of airlines banned from European airspace) but was being subjected to closer inspection by us and was due to ...

Health experts are warning parents against holding "swine flu parties" in the hope of infecting their children with the H1N1 virus. Talk of swine flu parties has emerged on Internet forums. The idea is that exposing a child to the H1N1 virus while it remains relatively mild will give the child immunity if the virus returns in a more virulent form later on. The idea is an extension of chicken pox and measles parties that were once a popular way ...

A national poll suggests that nearly three-quarters of all Americans support the plan to withdraw most U.S. combat troops from Iraqi cities and towns, even though most respondents said they think the troop movements will lead to an increase in violence in that country. The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll comes Tuesday, the day of the long-anticipated deadline for American troops to pull out of Iraqi towns and cities. The U.S. military gradually has been moving its combat troops out ...

Wearing powder blue pants and a plaid fedora, 84-year-old Orval "Hoppy" Ray arrived fashionably late to a celebration in Picher, Oklahoma, a vacated mining town at the center of one of the nation's largest and most polluted toxic-waste sites. Former residents, bought out by the government because their town was deemed so dangerous, gathered in Picher's elementary school to say farewell to a place where kids suffered lead poisoning, where homes built atop underground mines plunged into the Earth and ...

Tuesday marked the deadline for American troops to pull out of Iraq's towns and cities -- a long-anticipated date that has been met by street festivals in Baghdad. Celebrations were tempered, however, by fears of renewed violence as insurgents seek to use the date to stage new attacks. Newscasters on state TV network Al-Iraqiya draped Iraqi flags around their necks as an on-screen clock counted down to midnight Monday (5 p.m. ET). Earlier Monday evening, hundreds of people danced and ...

Sri Lanka's 26 years of civil war effectively ended on May 19, 2009 with a single image. Televisions across the globe broadcast a government-issue photo of slain Tamil Tiger head, Velupillai Prabhakaran, lying on a muddy patch of ground with wide eyes and a fractured skull. His life's end terminated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's decades-long fight for an independent homeland for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority — about ten percent of the population — and a cycle of ...

The picture says it all. The shot of 14-year-old Curtis D. Tucker shows him unrolling one of his birthday treasures in 1976, mouth slightly agape and eyes intensely focused on the gift. The present was one he had fervently requested from his parents and a hot item for many a young, red-blooded male during that bicentennial year: a poster of Farrah Fawcett (then known as Farrah Fawcett-Majors). "I was a huge Farrah fan," said Tucker, now a cartoonist and entrepreneur ...

The death toll climbed to at least 12 in a gas explosion on a freight train in western Italy, officials said Tuesday. A child was among those killed, said Antonio Garufi, a local government official. The number of injured had risen to 36, with 16 in critical condition. Most of the injuries were burns. Two children were among the severely burned, said Guido Bertolaso, head of the Italian civil protection agency. The train was carrying gas tanks when it ...

The "good" news in the housing market is that more homes are selling. The number of existing homes sold in May was 2.4% higher than the number sold in April, which itself was higher than the number sold in March. Yes, prices are still falling, thanks largely to foreclosures and short sales, but at least the market is starting to show signs of life. Just don't pull out the noisemakers quite yet. The segment of the market that's ...

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will visit Myanmar at the end of the week for talks that will include the detention of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the United Nations said. Ban is going at the invitation of the military junta that runs Myanmar, and is expected to also discuss the detention of other political prisoners. "The secretary-general believes that the sooner these issues are addressed, the earlier Myanmar will be able to move towards peace, democracy and prosperity," said ...