Breaking News & Updates

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt’s state news agency say that Hosni Mubarak is “clinically dead.”

Associated Press

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The National Park Service has halted a search for four Japanese climbers believed buried on Mount McKinley due to dangerous search conditions.

The agency announced Sunday that 10 rescuers including a handler with a dog reached on Saturday the debris zone where an avalanche is believed to have buried the four climbers early Wednesday morning.

A mountaineering ranger lowered himself into the crevasse where the party’s sole survivor fell. The ranger probed avalanche debris 100 feet beneath the glacier’s surface and found rope that matched rope of the Japanese climbing team.

The risk of ice falling made it too dangerous to keep digging, according to the National Park Service.

The lone survivor, 69-year-old Hitoshi Ogi, was able to climb out of the crevasse.

He continued his descent and on Thursday afternoon reached the Kahiltna base camp, where he reported the incident to rangers.

Missing and presumed dead are. Yoshiaki Kato, 64, Masako Suda, 50, Michiko Suzuki, 56, and Tamao Suzuki, 63.

All are members of the Japanese alpine club Miyagi Workers Alpine Federation.

Ogi suffered only a minor hand injury, according to the Park Service.

TORONTO (AP) — Toronto paramedics say one person is dead and another is seriously hurt after a stage collapsed while setting up for a Radiohead concert.

Associated Press

BEIRUT — U.N. observers in Syria suspended their activities and patrols Saturday because of escalating violence in the country, the head of the mission said, the strongest sign yet that an international peace plan for Syria is disintegrating.

Maj. Gen. Robert Mood said rising bloodshed over the past 10 days was posing significant risks to the lives of the some 300 observers in the country, and was impeding their ability to carry out their mandate.

The observers were sent to the country after international envoy Kofi Annan brokered a peace plan that included a cease-fire that was supposed to take effect on April 12. But both sides have continued to stage daily attacks and the observers themselves have been caught up in the violence on several occasions.

Associated Press

TOKYO — Japan’s government on Saturday approved bringing the country’s first nuclear reactors back online since last year’s earthquake and tsunami led to a nationwide shutdown, going against wider public opinion that is opposed to nuclear power after Fukushima.

The decision paves the way for a power company in western Japan to immediately begin work to restart two reactors in Ohi town, a process that is expected to take several weeks.

Despite lingering safety concerns, the restart could speed the resumption of operations at more reactors across the country. All Japan’s 50 nuclear reactors are offline for maintenance or safety checks.

Public opposition to the resumption of nuclear operations remains high because of the crisis the tsunami touched off at Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, the worst atomic disaster since Chernobyl. As the government announced its decision, a protest was held outside the prime minister’s offices.

The restart is being closely watched as an indicator of how aggressively the government will act to approve operations at other reactors.

Associated Press

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Crown Prince Nayef, the hard-line interior minister who spearheaded Saudi Arabia’s fierce crackdown crushing al-Qaida’s branch in the country after the 9/11 attacks in the United States and then rose to become next in line to the throne, has died. He was in his late 70s.

Nayef’s death unexpectedly reopens the question of succession in this crucial U.S. ally and oil powerhouse for the second time in less than a year. The 88-year-old King Abdullah has now outlived two designated successors, despite ailments of his own. Now a new crown prince must be chosen from among his brothers and half-brothers, all the sons of Saudi Arabia’s founder, Abdul-Aziz.

The figure believed most likely to be tapped as the new heir is Prince Salman, the current defense minister who previously served for decades in the powerful post of governor of Riyadh, the capital. The crown prince will be chosen by the Allegiance Council, an assembly of Abdul-Aziz’s sons and some of his grandchildren.

A statement by the royal family said Nayef died Saturday in a hospital abroad. Saudi-funded pan-Arab TV station Al-Arabiya later confirmed he died in Geneva.

Associated Press

CAIRO — Faced with a choice between Hosni Mubarak’s ex-prime minister and an Islamist candidate, Egyptians entered their latest round of elections in an atmosphere of suspicion, resignation and worry, voting in a presidential runoff that will mean the difference between installing a remnant of the old regime and bringing Islam into government.

The race between Ahmed Shafiq, a career air force officer like Mubarak, and the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi, a U.S.-trained engineer, has deeply divided the country, 16 months after a stunning uprising by millions forced the authoritarian Mubarak to step down after 29 years in office.

The two-day vote is taking place under the shadow of political dramas over the past week that effectively mean the military generals who took power after Mubarak’s ouster will continue to rule despite promises to hand over authority to the elected president by July 1.

Associated Press

China launched its most ambitious space mission yet on Saturday, carrying its first female astronaut and two male colleagues in an attempt to dock with an orbiting module and work on board for more than a week.

The Shenzhou 9 capsule lifted off as scheduled at 6:37 p.m. (1037 GMT) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on the edge of the Gobi Desert. All systems functioned normally and, just over 10 minutes later, it opened its solar panels and entered orbit.

The launch was declared a success by space program chief Chang Wanquan, a People’s Liberation Army general who sits on the ruling Communist Party’s powerful central military commission — underscoring the program’s close military ties.

Female astronaut Liu Yang, 33, and two male crew members — mission commander and veteran astronaut Jing Haipeng, 45, and newcomer Liu Wang, 43 — are to dock the spacecraft with a prototype space lab launched last year in a key step toward building a permanent space station.

CANBERRA, Australia — The dingo really did take the baby.

Thirty-two years after a 9-week-old infant vanished from an Outback campsite in a case that bitterly divided Australians and inspired a Meryl Streep film, the nation overwhelmingly welcomed a ruling that finally closed the mystery.

A coroner in the northern city of Darwin concluded Tuesday that a dingo, or wild dog, had taken Azaria Chamberlain from her parents’ tent near Ayers Rock, the red monolith in the Australian desert now known by its Aboriginal name Uluru.

That is what her parents, Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton and Michael Chamberlain, had maintained from the beginning.

The eyes of the parents welled with tears as the findings of the fourth inquest into their daughter’s disappearance were announced, watched by people around Australia on live television.

“We’re relieved and delighted to come to the end of this saga,” a tearful but smiling Chamberlain-Creighton, since divorced and remarried, told reporters outside the court.

The first inquest in 1981 had also blamed a dingo. But a second inquest a year later charged Chamberlain-Creighton with murder and her husband with being an accessory after the fact. She was convicted and served more than three years in prison before that decision was overturned. A third inquest in 1995 left the cause of death open.