A dam burst in the northeastern village of Cocal left a 12-year-old girl dead and three people missing, fire department officials said Thursday, according to Brazil's state news agency. The break occurred late Wednesday afternoon and was blamed on heavy rains in the state of Ceara, the state-run Agencia Brasil reported. Concern over the dam's integrity led officials to order residents to evacuate Cocal for 15 days. But they were allowed to return this week after the dam was deemed ...

As he stood in the rose garden on May 19 with state governors and auto executives to announce a new deal that tightens automobile fuel-efficiency standards, Barack Obama took note of the glorious weather. "The sun is out because good things are happening," he said. Many environmentalists — who spent the eight years of the Bush Administration in the cold — would agree. Obama announced tough new national standards for automobile emissions and fuel efficiency that essentially settled ...

Environmentalists savored a long-awaited victory on Thursday when the carbon cap-and-trade bill fashioned by Democratic Representatives Henry Waxman and Edward Markey passed out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, putting it on the road to becoming a law. Supporters had to withstand over 400 amendments filed by Republicans during the markup of the bill this week, but it's now possible the U.S. could see climate legislation go into effect by the end of the year. "The bill represents ...

Angered by what he perceived as the systemic discrimination of the minority Tamils by successive Sri Lankan governments, 18-year-old Velupillai Prabhakaran, armed with just a revolver, set out in 1972 to right the perceived wrongs by forming a militant group. That group eventually morphed into the Tamil Tigers, who have engaged in a brutal 25-year insurgency for an independent Tamil state that has left more than 70,000 dead. Along the way, the group has been declared a terrorist organization in ...

Despite predictions of a close race forcing an unstable coalition government, India's Congress Party on Saturday claimed a major victory in national elections, leaving it with enough parliamentary seats to form a government with only minimal support from other parties. Congress is expected to win 205 out of 543 seats, according to India's Election Commission, garnering 124 million votes. So how does Prime Minister Manmohan Singh plan to use the electorate's strong mandate for his second term in ...

Buried on page 795 of President Obama's budget, released last Thursday, is a paragraph banning the federal funding of needle-exchange programs for drug addicts — an apparent about-face on his campaign promise to overturn that longstanding ban. To the further consternation of AIDS and addiction activists, a statement of support for needle exchange was recently removed from the White House website. Is Obama reversing course? The Administration says no. Responding by email, Jeff Crowley, director of the White ...

A judge in Saudi Arabia has said husbands are allowed to slap their wives if they spend lavishly, a Saudi newspaper reported this past weekend. In one fell swoop, the judge debased Islam, vilified the kingdom and disregarded the ideals the Saudi monarch himself embraces. NEW YORK (CNN) -- A judge in Saudi Arabia has said husbands are allowed to slap their wives if they spend lavishly, a Saudi newspaper reported this past weekend. In one fell swoop, the judge ...

On a plane to the Maldives, tourists sigh about the luxury resorts and sun-dappled beaches to which they are bound. From above, the country's coral-fringed lagoons in the Indian Ocean look computer-generated: arrayed in turquoise pods, they stretch over an azure expanse that would span from Rome to Budapest. Ibn Battuta, the 14th century Arab explorer, hailed the archipelago as "one of the wonders of the world." Ever since, the Maldives has enchanted shipwrecked sailors, Hollywood celebrities and Russian oligarchs ...

Once touted as an environmental and economic cure-all, corn ethanol has had a rough year. The collapse in grain and oil prices, preceded by overinvestment in refineries over the past few years, badly hurt ethanol producers. Meanwhile, environmentalists have steadily chipped away at ethanol's green credentials. Far from being better for the planet than gasoline, many scientists now argue that ethanol actually has a sizable carbon footprint, because when farmers in the U.S. use their land to grow corn for ...

The death toll from flooding that has covered large parts of Brazil continued to rise Friday, with the government reporting seven new fatalities, bringing the total to 38. The rain-induced floods left nearly 800,000 people displaced, according to the Brazilian civil defense agency. Rain has fallen steadily in some parts of the country for more than two weeks and is forecast to continue for another 10 days. World Vision, a relief agency working in Brazil, predicted it could take 30 ...