19 are killed as militants open fire on helicopter - Detroit Free Press

Headlines

Violence in Iraq

Militants downed an Iraqi army helicopter Thursday in clashes that have killed at least 19 people, including 11 policemen, a regional official said, in what appeared to be part of an al-Qaida surge to retake one of its former strongholds.

The fighting around the town of Hadid, north of the Diyala provincial capital of Baqouba, follows a warning last weekend from al-Qaida's leader in Iraq that the group would push back into areas it was driven out of by the U.S. after sectarian fighting peaked in 2007. A day after al-Qaida issued the threat, shootings and bombings killed 115 people in Iraq's deadliest day in more than two years -- an assault for which the terrorist group claimed responsibility.

Diyala provincial spokesman Salih Ebressim Khalil said militants opened fire Thursday on the Iraqi army helicopter, killing one soldier, wounding another and forcing the aircraft to make an emergency landing. The rest of the crew was unharmed.

Somali constitution

Leaders debate abortion rights

Somali leaders are debating a new constitution that protects the right to have an abortion to save the life of the mother, and an international law group said the draft guarantees more fundamental rights than the U.S. Constitution.

That's one reason some women are celebrating the document and hard-line conservatives are protesting some of its more liberal promises.

But some of the rights introduced, such as the right to medical care or clean, potable water, will be hard for the government to guarantee in a country where basic needs like food are not always met.

Somali leaders -- 825 of them -- began a nine-day meeting Wednesday to examine, debate and vote on the constitution, a document that has been years in the making. A vote by the group, known as the National Constituent Assembly, is likely to be held late next week.

Hepatitis C

Officials aim to identify patients exposed

Health officials across the country are scrambling to identify thousands of patients who may have been exposed to hepatitis C from a traveling medical technician facing criminal charges in New Hampshire.

David Kwiatkowski is accused of stealing anesthetic drugs from Exeter Hospital and contaminating syringes used on patients. Thirty of them have been diagnosed with the same strain of hepatitis C that he carries.

Testing has been recommended for about 4,700 people in New Hampshire alone, and officials are still determining who needs testing in seven other states, including Arizona, where Kwiatkowski was fired in 2010 after being spotted with drugs he was not authorized to administer.

U.S. weather

Drought increases, is widest in decades

The widest drought to grip the U.S. in decades is getting worse with no signs of abating, a new report warned Thursday, as officials urged conservation and more ranchers considered selling cattle.

The drought covering two-thirds of the continental U.S. had been considered relatively shallow, the product of months without rain, rather than years. But Thursday's report showed its intensity is rapidly increasing, with 20% of the nation now in the two worst stages of drought -- up 7% from last week.

The U.S. Drought Monitor classifies drought in various stages, from moderate to severe, extreme and, ultimately, exceptional.

Five states -- Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska -- are blanketed by a drought that is severe or worse. States like Arkansas and Oklahoma are nearly as bad, with most areas covered in a severe drought.

A House Republican leader said Thursday that the House may take up legislation next week to help farmers and ranchers hit by the drought.

Quick hits

Chinese scandal: Gu Kailai, the wife of disgraced Chinese politician Bo Xilai, and one of her aides were formally charged with the murder of a British businessman, the official New China News Agency reported Thursday.

Twitter outage: Twitter blamed systems failures -- not a crush of traffic around the Olympic Games -- for an outage Thursday that saw people around the world experience problems accessing the site for more than an hour.

Buttocks surgery death: A south Florida woman posing as a doctor was arrested Thursday and charged in the death of a woman who died after authorities said her body was pumped with unknown toxic substances during a buttocks-enhancement surgery.