KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A Kansas City, Mo., man charged with killing his ailing wife by throwing her from a balcony told police he couldn't afford her monthly medical bills. Stanley Reimer, 51, was charged Wednesday with second-degree murder after his wife's body was found on the pavement outside the couple's fourth-floor apartment the night before, The Kansas City Star reported Thursday. Criste Reimer, 47, weighed 75 pounds as a result of treatment for uterine ... [full story]

MIAMI -- Tropical Storm Dean gained strength Thursday to become the first Atlantic hurricane of 2007 and was headed for the Caribbean. Forecasters at the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Dean had sustained winds of 75 mph at 5 a.m., just enough to become a Category 1 hurricane. Dean was 485 miles east of Barbados moving west at 24 mph and was expected to strengthen and reach the islands Friday morning. Hurricane warnings ... [full story]

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas -- Southern Texas coastal areas braced for a soaking Thursday as Tropical Storm Erin headed for landfall around Corpus Christi. At 4 a.m. Thursday, the storm was about 55 miles southeast of Corpus Christi and moving west northwest toward the coast at 12 mph, the National Hurricane Center in Miami reported. Maximum sustained winds were near 40 mph with stronger gusts and some strengthening was possible prior to landfall, forecasters said. Tropical-storm ... [full story]

LIMA -- A major 7.9 magnitude earthquake in southern Peru killed more than 300 people and injured nearly 1,000 others, government officials said Thursday. The National Institute for Civil Defense said on its Web site that 336 people had been killed in Ica, about 175 miles south of Lima, and 827 others were injured. One death was reported in Lima. The quake, which hit at 6:41 p.m. was about 25 miles under the surface and ... [full story]

BEIJING -- In another coal mine accident in China, a mine shaft at a state-owned facility in east Jiangxi Province was flooded Thursday, trapping 14 miners. The official Xinhua reported 15 miners were working underground at the Zhayi colliery near Fengcheng city when the flooding occurred. One of the miners managed to escape but the other 14 could not, the report said. Rescue work was proceeding to reach the trapped miners, the report said. The ... [full story]

BEIJING -- A new media crackdown has begun in China after a television reporter was accused of fabricating a story about dumpling makers, a report said Wednesday. The new campaign is directed against what China calls “false news reports, unauthorized publications and bogus journalists,” The New York Times reported, adding it comes two months before the start of the once-every-five-years Communist Party congress. The tough measures were confirmed by the government’s official web site, the ... [full story]

NEW YORK -- Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani says it is not in the best interest of the United States to assist in the creation a Palestinian state. "Too much emphasis has been placed on brokering negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians -- negotiations that bring up the same issues again and again," Giuliani said in an essay published in Foreign Affairs. "It is not in the interest of the United States, at a ... [full story]

HAWAII -- Flossie, the hurricane-turned-tropical storm, didn't deliver much of a wallop as it churned past Hawaii this week. The Hawaii County Civil Defense emergency operations center was winding down and Hilo was returning to normal Wednesday with no damage reported, The Honolulu Advertiser said. Many Big Island residents were relieved the storm never fully materialized yet expressed some pleasure in seeing how people had pulled together getting ready for it to hit. "I'm glad ... [full story]

ABERDEEN, Scotland -- Workers on a North Sea oil rig off the coast of Scotland were evacuated safely after fire broke out in the engine room. Diamond Offshore Drilling Inc. said no one was injured in the fire on the semi-submersible rig Ocean Guardian. "The rig’s fire suppression system was activated and the fire was extinguished," the Houston company said Wednesday in a news release. "All personnel have been accounted for and there were no ... [full story]

JERUSALEM -- Benjamin Netanyahu remains in control of Israel’s Likud party after winning Tuesday’s primary election. Unofficial results Wednesday showed Netanyahu received 75 percent of the vote to beat out Jewish Leadership faction leader Moshe Feiglin and World Likud Chairman Danny Danon, Ynetnews said Wednesday. Nearly 40 percent of the party’s 94,944 registered party members cast ballots. Feiglin came in second with 22 percent of the vote and Danon received just 4 percent. Copyright © 2007, ... [full story]