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Ebola Toll Tops 2,000, Cases Near 4,000 2014-09-05 22:28 Geneva - More than 2 000 people have died in the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the World Health Organisation said on Friday, out of about 4 000 patients thought to have been infected in the three countries worst hit by the disease. The death toll in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone totalled 2 097 as at 5 Sept, out of 3 944 cases, a WHO document said. The data did not include patients in Nigeria or Senegal, which have also been affected, nor Democratic Republic of Congo, which has been...

GENEVA— The World Health Organization reports more than 800,000 people die by suicide every year. WHO, which is launching its first global report on suicide prevention, said more people die from suicide than from conflicts, wars and natural disasters combined. The World Health Organization reported every 40 seconds a person somewhere in the world commits suicide. Despite this shockingly high statistic, WHO said only a handful of countries have policies aimed at suicide prevention. WHO Director of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Shekhar Saxena said there also is much more that communities can do to provide support for vulnerable people....

Reports this past week identified two Americans – Douglas McCain from San Diego and Abdiraaman Muhumad from Minneapolis — who were killed by Syrian rebel groups last weekend as they were fighting with ISIS.A new claim was made on a Syrian rebel Twitter feed this morning saying that an additional three Americans have been killed fighting with ISIS near Ghouta. A video purporting to show the three dead Americans was posted on Youtube (WARNING: GRAPHIC VIDEO): Yet another American from Florida, Moner Mohammad Abusalha, conducted a suicide bombing for Jabhat al-Nusra — the official Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria —...

The number of dead in Syria’s civil war more than doubled in the past year to at least 191,000, the United Nations human rights office said Friday. The agency’s chief, Navi Pillay, bluntly criticized Western nations, saying their inaction in the face of the slaughter had “empowered and emboldened” the killers. In its third report on Syria commissioned by the United Nations, the Human Rights Data Analysis Group identified 191,369 deaths from the start of the conflict in March 2011 to April 2014, more than double the 92,901 deaths cited in the group’s last report, which covered the first two...

At least 70 people have died in northern Democratic Republic of Congo from an outbreak of hemorrhagic gastroenteritis, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday, denying that the illness was Ebola. "This is not Ebola," a WHO spokesman said in an email to Reuters on Thursday. A WHO report dated Thursday and seen by Reuters said that 592 people had contracted the disease, of whom 70 died

Cases in West Africa's Ebola outbreak this year have risen to 2,240, including 1,229 deaths, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday, reporting the toll in four countries, including Nigeria. While Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and No. 1 oil producer, appears to be containing its smaller outbreak, Liberia and Sierra Leone are struggling to halt the spread of the deadly Ebola virus among their populations. On Friday, these small two West African nations and a medical charity chided the WHO for its slow response, saying more action was needed to save victims threatened by the disease and hunger.

Two people were killed-- including a 16-year-old girl fatally shot on Chicago’s South Side and a 25-year-old man killed a block from the Chicago Police Department headquarters-- and at least eight others were wounded in overnight Chicago shootings. The teen girl was among two shot in a possible drive-by shooting in the city’s Englewood neighborhood early Saturday morning. Police said the girl was standing outside around 12:45 a.m. with a man when a car drove by and someone inside fired shots. She was shot in the head and was found unresponsive at the scene and a 20-year-old man was shot...

On board Iraqi army helicopter delivering aid to the trapped Yazidis, Jonathan Krohn sees a hellish sight Mount Sinjar stinks of death. The few Yazidis who have managed to escape its clutches can tell you why. “Dogs were eating the bodies of the dead,” said Haji Khedev Haydev, 65, who ran through the lines of Islamic State jihadists surrounding it. On Sunday night, I became the first western journalist to reach the mountains where tens of thousands of Yazidis, a previously obscure Middle Eastern sect, have been taking refuge from the Islamic State forces that seized their largest town, Sinjar....

Iraq general: 70% of Yazidis on Mount Sinjar are dead By Rick Moran An Iraqi general told a reporter for The Telegraph - the only western reporter who has flown over Mount Sinjar - that 70% of the Yahidis oin the rocky hill will die because of the lack of humanitarian aid. I was on board an Iraqi Army helicopter, and watched as hundreds of refugees ran towards it to receive one of the few deliveries of aid to make it to the mountain. The helicopter dropped water and food from its open gun bays to them as they waited...

The worst outbreak on record of the deadly Ebola virus continues to spread in West Africa. To date, there have been more than 1300 confirmed cases, and 729 have died.

Less than three percent of the population identifies as gay, lesbian or bisexual (GLB), a new federal health report shows. According to the survey responses, 96.6 percent of adults ages 18 years and older identify as straight, 1.6 percent identified as gay or lesbian, and 0.7 percent identified as bisexual. These numbers are significantly lower than most American’s estimate. A 2012 Gallup Survey shows that U.S. adults, on average, approximate a quarter of the population to be gay or lesbian.

One of the most common and misleading tactics deployed against Israel by its critics is to compare the number of dead Israelis and dead Palestinians, and use the figures to portray Palestinians as victims of Israeli aggression. Vox's Max Fisher, who is on a campaign to convince people that Israel bears primary responsibility for the absence of peace in the region, pushed the argument this week to show that the conflict was “lopsided.” The Legal Insurrection blog has rounded up other examples of liberals and critics of Israel making similar arguments emphasizing comparative death totals. In a sense, it's understandable...

New details have been released after at least five people, including a young child, were killed late Sunday night when a wrong-way driver slammed head-on into their pickup in northeast Harris County. The two-vehicle wreck happened about 11 p.m. on the westbound North Sam Houston Parkway near John Ralston, according to the Harris County Sheriff's Office. Deputies said Efraim Carmona was driving a 2009 Dodge Ram 5500 pickup eastbound in the westbound lanes when he smashed into a 2000 Ford F-150. Five people in the Ford died at the scene. The front passenger in the Ford was injured and was...

WASHINGTON — Over the past decade, more than 1,000 veterans may have died as a result of misconduct by employees of the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to a report released Tuesday by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. “Too many men and women who bravely fought for our freedom are losing their lives, not at the hands of terrorists or enemy combatants, but from friendly fire in the form of medical malpractice and neglect by the Department of Veterans Affairs,” Coburn said in a letter addressed to taxpayers, which was attached to the report. In a press release, Coburn said the...

UPDATE (7:30 a.m.) CONDITIONS IN PILGER — Stanton County Sheriff Mike Unger said Tuesday morning that the five-year-old who died was a girl in a mobile home situated on Main Street. A traffic fatality 2.5 miles east of Pilger in Cuming County has not been linked to the storm. — 75 percent of the community is “gone, and that’s my opinion,” Unger said, including the middle school, Midwest Bank, a convenience store, post office, numerous houses, city hall, firehouse and St. John’s Lutheran church.

Muslim rebels attacked a Catholic parish in Bangui, the embattled capital of the Central African Republic, killing as many as 30 people, including the parish priest. The attack took place on Wednesday, when the Seleka rebels stormed the Our Lady of Fatima church compound with gunfire and grenades. Dozens of people, Christian and Muslim alike had taken refuge there to escape the fighting. The archdiocese of Bangui confirmed the death of Paul Emile Nzale. The 76-year-old parish priest. He's the second priest killed in the country this year, as a result of the on-going fighting. Both the Seleka and the...

At least 35 people were shot in Chicago, four of them fatally, in 36 hours over the weekend, with more than half of the shootings occurring over a half-day period stretching into early Sunday. Officers responded to at least 26 incidents, starting at 3:30 p.m. Friday in the West Woodlawn neighborhood on the South Side involving an attack that left a 17-year-old girl dead and two other people wounded, police said. There were also fatal shootings in the South Shore neighborhood Friday night and the Washington Park neighborhood early Sunday, both on the South Side.

Over 150,000 people have lost their lives since the March 2011 outbreak of the devastating civil war in Syria, according to new figures. The London based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which closely monitors the conflict using a network of activists and medical staff in Syria, has documented the deaths of 150,344 people. More than a third of those killed in Syria – by shellfire, air strikes and bullets – are civilians, the rights group said. Now in its third year, the war, which continues, unabated, has ravaged entire cities, leaving whole civilian neighbourhoods flattened by shell fire and...

At least 15 senior Taliban commanders were killed on Tuesday in Ghazni province by a suicide bomber reportedly attempting to keep them from carrying out plans to disrupt Saturday's elections, according to Afghan officials. In addition to the 15 confirmed dead, nine other militants were wounded by the blast, which occurred in the Gelan district of Ghazni, according to the National Directorate of Security (NDS). Among the casualties were said to be Pakistani Taliban leaders. Insurgents have publicly stated their intent to derail the elections, which will mark the country's first democratic transition of presidential power in history. The Taliban...

A bible next to a pool of blood inside the Joy Jesus church in Likoni near Mombasa. Photograph: Str/EPA At least four people were killed when two gunmen burst into a crowded church and opened fired on worshippers near the Kenyan port of Mombasa. The attack, which left about 17 wounded, came despite increased security in Kenyan cities amid heightened warnings of extremist violence. Robert Mureithi, a local police chief, said: "They were shot by gunmen who shot indiscriminately at worshippers and then fled.". There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Kenya has been hit by a series of...