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After two weeks of illness, Juan Bustos, the president of the Chamber of Deputies of Chile, died at 10:46 local time (14:46 UTC) yesterday. The death took place at a Clínica Alemana in Santiago. Bustos died as a result of a liver cancer. He was 72 years old. At the time of his death, Bustos was with his wife and five of his seven children, who were deeply upset by the death. The other two children are expected to arrive from Europe soon to attend the funeral. Juan Bustos will be given a state fueral due to the position he occupied. In additio

The War in South Ossetia has escalated as Russian forces are being sent into the conflict on the Ossetian side. At 10:00 a.m. local time, Georgian sources reported that three Russian Su-24 attack aircraft invaded Georgian air space and dropped bombs onto a target near the town of Kareli. A later flight dropped one bomb near Gori. While no one was harmed in the second attack, seven people were reportedly injured by the first bombing. According to the Agence France-Presse, a speaker of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has called this info

Witnessed by at least 90,000 spectators, the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games was held at the National Stadium — nicknamed "Bird's Nest" — in Beijing China this evening. The ceremony began at 8:00 p.m. local time (12:00 noon UTC) with two thousand and eight ancient Chinese percussion instruments called "Fou", each controlled by a young man. The first greeting message was a Confucius' saying, "How Happy We Are, To Meet Friends From Afar", which the percussionists chanted. 204 teams from over the world marched into the stadium. In Oly

An express train struck a collapsed motorway bridge in the Czech Republic, leaving 7 people dead and 64 injured. The EuroCity train, which was en route from Kraków, Poland to Prague, derailed after it collided while traveling at 134km/h (84mph). According to Czech Railways spokesman Radek Joklik, "it probably hit part of a motorway bridge under construction which fell onto the track." It is believed that the bridge, which is near Studénka, may have fallen onto the train, crushing carriages below it. The train, which was carrying 400 people, s

Several governments and the United Nations have expressed concern over the current situation in South Ossetia. Carl Bildt, the Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs, has said that "the way in which the situation in South Ossetia has deteriorated is cause for profound concern. It is extremely important that all those involved show restraint and play their part in bringing about a political solution." Bildt pointed out that "there have been reports of Russian warplanes having dropped bombs inside Georgia, beyond South Ossetia, and these reports h

Four current and former British Airways (BA) employees have been charged with price fixing by the United Kingdom's Office of Fair Trading (OFT). They are the first employees of a major UK company to be prosecuted for this offense. BA have already been fined a record £270 million for their part in the scheme by authorities in both Britain and the United States. On at least six occasions, BA and Virgin Atlantic agreed to illegally fix fuel surcharge prices. BA have also paid US$136 million to settle a US class action by passengers affected by th

Former United States Senator John Edwards admitted today to ABC News that he had an extramarital affair with novice filmmaker Rielle Hunter while his wife was in remission with cancer. Edwards has denied being the father of Hunter's child, Frances Quinn, and a former aide to his presidential campaign, Andrew Young, has reportedly claimed paternity. Also, in an interview for tonight's edition of Nightline, the former Senator and presidential hopeful told ABC News' Bob Woodruff that while he has not taken a paternity test, he is not the father o

Across Easter weekend Wellington, New Zealand was host to Rock2Wgtn, an international two-day hard rock festival. Large crowds showed up at Westpac Stadium to see the various acts. The world has never seen an event of this kind before, and New Zealand has never had any kind of major rock festival or multi-day music festival. Day one featured three theatrical acts. Finnish band Lordi, known for their monster costumes, opened the night. They were followed by the US shock rocker Alice Cooper, whose themed set included the horror theatrics regular

Two web sites purporting to sell tickets to the 2008 Summer Olympic Games due to open in Beijing, China on Friday have been the subject of lawsuits from the International Olympic Committee in United States courts in recent weeks. The web sites, beijingticketing.com and beijing-2008tickets.com, were designed to resemble official sites and often appeared above the official sites in Google searches, and scammed some victims out of up to US$50,000 each for tickets to events such as the Opening Ceremony and swimming, which were listed despite the of

The latest advertisement for United States Republican presidential candidate John McCain is questioning Democrat Barack Obama's benefit to families. Last week the BBC reported that the McCain campaign had released an advertisement comparing Obama to American celebrities Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, calling him "the biggest celebrity in the world." McCain's newest advertisement, released early this week, continues along those same lines. "Is the biggest celebrity in the world ready to help your family?" the narrator asks, according to The

Late Tuesday, authorities in the U.S. state of Texas carried out the execution of José Medellín, a Mexican national convicted of raping and murdering two teenage girls in 1993. The execution was carried out despite being at the center of an international legal dispute with objections from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. José Ernesto Medellín, 33, was born in Mexico but moved to the U.S. as a child. He was sentenced to death for the 1993 rape and murder of two girls aged 14 and 16 in Houston, Texas

Wednesday, an American military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba found Salim Hamdan, a Yemini and Osama bin Laden's former driver guilty of supporting terrorism. Today, the jury handed down a sentence of 66 months, with credit for time already served. This means that Hamdan could be released in five months. Prosecutors had sought a thirty-year sentence. Pentagon spokesperson Bryan Whitman said: "He will serve out the rest of his sentence. At that time he will still be considered an enemy combatant, but he will be eligible for review by an