Water is a lifeline for the farmers and fishermen who live along Laguna de Bay, the largest lake in the Philippines. The rich ecosystem also serves as a reservoir to catch floodwaters to save Manila, on its western shore, from drowning. But water became the Philippines' biggest enemy last week as Typhoon Parma dumped as much as 36 inches of rain in some parts of this nation of islands, compounding misery in areas already flooded by earlier storm Ketsana. Fears ...

Days after one storm left hundreds dead and most of Manila under water, the Philippines was bracing itself Thursday for the impact of a super typhoon gathering pace in the western Pacific. Typhoon Parma is expected to bring heavy rainfall and major property damage to the Philippines on Saturday, according to meteorologists. The storm was upgraded to a super typhoon Thursday as it churned towards the island nation with winds of 240 kph (150 mph). The storm was about 600 ...

The British government has not dropped the case of a British police officer who was shot dead outside the Libyan embassy in London 25 years ago, the Foreign Office insisted Sunday. Prime Minister Gordon Brown raised the killing of Yvonne Fletcher with Libya's leader, Moammar Gadhafi, as recently as July, when he visited Tripoli, a Foreign Office spokesman said. "It is vital that the investigation is allowed to resume by the Libyans. The Fletcher family deserves answers. We continue to ...

Bernard Madoff has decided not to appeal the 150-year prison sentence he received for operating the biggest investment fraud in history. "We are not going to appeal," Madoff attorney Ira Lee Sorkin told CNN on Thursday. Sorkin said he met with Madoff this week at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan. "Even if the Court of Appeals sends it back, certainly a guidelines sentence under the circumstances would give him a life sentence," he added. Citing crimes ...

British lawmakers demanded answers Thursday after a newspaper reported that a UK tabloid illegally hacked the phones of thousands of public figures including Gwyneth Paltrow, George Michael and Elle MacPherson. The commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police said he asked his assistant to look into the allegations and determine whether to investigate. It comes after The Guardian newspaper reported Thursday the cell phones of "several thousand public figures" were hacked into by reporters and staff of the News of the World ...

The British are coming, the British are coming -- to Brooklyn? By subway? New York's struggling Metropolitan Transportation Authority has sold the naming rights to the second-busiest subway stop in Brooklyn. The Atlantic Avenue-Pacific Street Station will now have the name of a British bank, Barclays, added to it. Several subway riders are outraged that Barclays has purchased the naming rights to this subway stop, which sees about 10 million people go through it each day. One straphanger said, "A ...

As prosecutors asked to jail Bernard Madoff for 150 years, a U.S. District Court judge Friday entered a preliminary order calling on the convicted Ponzi schemer to forfeit more than $170 billion in assets, prosecutors announced. Madoff's wife, Ruth, will be allowed to keep $2.5 million in funds "in settlement of the claims she would have otherwise brought against the property," acting U.S. Attorney Lev Dassin said. Madoff, who pleaded guilty to 11 counts, including fraud, money laundering and perjury, ...

A Guantanamo Bay detainee indicted in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa arrived in New York on Tuesday to face criminal charges. Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani is the first detainee held at Guantanamo to be transferred to the United States to face criminal prosecution. The Tanzanian national has been held at the camp in Cuba since September 2006. Ghailani's arrival in New York comes amid mounting tension between Congress and President Obama over the planned closing of Guantanamo. ...

In a gallery at the Art Institute of Chicago, there's a painting from 1913 by the German Expressionist Franz Marc called The Bewitched Mill. A waterfall spills down the center of the canvas between a scene of machines and houses on one side and trees and animals on the other. It's a fantasy of magical reconciliation between the natural and man-made worlds — always a nice trick if you can do it. Somebody who can do it and then ...

The most telling reaction I have encountered in the row over excessive expenses claims by British lawmakers came from a London taxi-driver. "I am sick and tired" he said "of hearing them excuse themselves by saying that what they did was OK because it was within the rules. Whatever the rules said, didn't they ever stop to ask themselves if what they were doing was right?" Now of course it is payback time. It is payback time in the sense ...