Fighting fear, fighting Ebola

September 16, 2014 - Daily News Briefing

After an initially slow response, the world is coming to the aid of West Africa.

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About 500 Syrians, Palestinians, Egyptians and Sudanese are feared to have died after their boat was rammed and sank off the Malta coast last week, the International Organization for Migration said Monday. The group of migrant workers was undertaking a perilous journey from the Egyptian port of Damietta, seeking a better life in Europe, when their boat was overtaken by human traffickers equipped with two vessels on Wednesday, said organization spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume. According to the organization's interviews with two of the survivors, the human traffickers rammed the boat carrying the migrants with one of their vessels. The two survivors, both Palestinian, said there had been a violent confrontation between the migrants and the traffickers. Berthiaume told The Associated Press the traffickers "used one boat to knock the other" and that there were about nine known survivors in all.

Two raging wildfires in California forced hundreds of people to evacuate their homes, including one near a lakeside resort town that burned nearly two dozen structures. The blaze, sparked Sunday afternoon near Bass Lake in Central California, prompted authorities to evacuate about 1,000 residents out of about 400 homes, Madera County Sheriff's spokeswoman Erica Stuart said. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said flames damaged or destroyed 21 structures. The Fresno Bee reports one neighborhood was hit especially hard, with several homes turned to ash and smoldering embers.

Microsoft will acquire the maker of the long-running hit game Minecraft for $2.5 billion. The technology company said it will buy Stockholm-based game maker Mojang. Minecraft, which lets users build in and explore a Lego-like virtual multiplayer world, has been downloaded 100 million times on PC alone since its launch in 2009. It is the most popular online game on Xbox, and the top paid app for Apple's iOS and Google's Android operating system in the US.

A funeral will be held Thursday for a Pennsylvania State Police trooper who was killed in an ambush outside his barracks. Cpl. Bryon K. Dickson II was killed and another trooper, Alex Douglass, was critically wounded in the Friday night attack at the Blooming Grove barracks. Police are still hunting for the killer. The troopers were ambushed around 10:50 p.m. Friday as one of them was leaving the barracks and another was arriving.

Residents and tourists hunkered down in shelters and hotel conference rooms overnight Sunday as a powerful and sprawling Hurricane Odile made landfall on the southern Baja California peninsula. The area is home to gleaming megaresorts, tiny fishing communities and low-lying neighborhoods of flimsy homes. Forecasters predicted a dangerous storm surge with large waves as well as drenching rains capable of causing landslides and flash floods.The US National Hurricane Center in Miami said satellite imagery indicates Odile's center made landfall Sunday night at about 9:45 p.m. PDT near Cabo San Lucas. It said at landfall, Odile had estimated wind intensity of 125 mph.

Hillary Rodham Clinton's third-place finish in the 2008 Iowa caucuses seemed but a fading memory when the former secretary of state took the stage in front of roughly 10,000 loyal Democrats at outgoing Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin's annual fall fundraiser south of Des Moines. Though Clinton is the favorite for the 2016 Democratic nomination should she run, she advised the audience and the media on Sunday that her focus was on the November midterm elections. Still, she left just enough hints that a second bid for president could come, and that it might begin in Iowa.

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.

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