Gas Leak Reported Just Before Blast That Also Left 22 Injured

Two people are dead and more than a dozen people are missing after a massive explosion rocked East Harlem, leveling two buildings and sending smoke and flames billowing into the air. At least 22 others were also injured in the blast, which happened around 9:15 a.m. Wednesday on Park Avenue at 116th Street.

The explosion reduced two, five-story buildings to rubble, shattered store windows for blocks and hurled glass, bricks and other debris throughout the neighborhood. Witnesses said the explosion could be heard 40 blocks away.

"I came out, looked up and a building was just gone," witness Mack Mayor said. "It's just like a war zone out here." "The smoke started to rise. It looked like something fell because it wasn't like a fire. It just looked like debris smoke, similar to 9/11," said witness Samuel Paul, who was on the 15th floor of a building on 125th Street.

Hours later, firefighters were still battling the flames as crews began sifting through the debris.

An off-duty Philadelphia police officer reports that late Saturday morning, the victim was walking his dog when it stopped to defecate on the off-duty officer's yard. Allegedly, the officer began yelling at the victim, demanding he remove the feces from the yard immediately.

The conversation escalated into an argument, and eventually the victim left. He returned, however, a short time later without his dog, and began arguing with the off-duty officer again.

A fight ensued, during which the officer pulled out his weapon and fired backwards at the victim, who was behind the officer at the time and was struck in the leg.

The victim was carted off to a nearby hospital, where he was treated for his injuries and released. The off-duty officer was also treated for facial cuts and bruises.

Israel expressed "regret" Tuesday over the shooting of a Jordanian judge at a border crossing, but its army insisted he had attacked soldiers and tried to grab a gun.

The shooting on Monday set off a diplomatic row between Israel and Amman - which signed a peace treaty 20 years ago - with Jordan's prime minister saying Israel is "completely responsible" and demanding an apology for the "hideous" shooting.

The Israeli army said 38-year-old Raed Zeiter, a Palestinian with Jordanian citizenship who worked as a judge in Amman, had charged at the soldiers with a metal pole while shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest), prompting them to fire at his legs.

"The suspect then began to strangle a soldier and the force resorted to using live fire once again," killing the man, the army said.

It said its preliminary findings were based on extensive questioning of witnesses to the event - which took place at the Allenby Bridge crossing between the occupied West Bank and Jordan - and that a military police investigation was ongoing.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights disputed the army's account, saying one of the soldiers pushed Zeiter after he had disembarked from a bus with other passengers so that Israeli soldiers could search it.

Zeiter responded in kind and other soldiers joined the scuffle, with one of them firing three rounds at his chest, the PCHR said, citing "a witness."

He was left bleeding for 30 minutes without any medical help before an Israeli ambulance came to retrieve the body, the group said.

"PCHR condemns the killing of Zeiter in cold blood... and urges the international community to act immediately to stop the crimes of the (Israeli) occupation forces," it said.

Hundreds of Palestinians turned out Tuesday for the funeral of Zeiter, accompanying the body - which was wrapped in a Palestinian flag - to its burial place in his family's northern West Bank hometown of Nablus.

"They killed my only son in cold blood," said Zeiter's father Alaa, who had travelled from Amman.

"My son was unarmed; he wouldn't even know how to use a weapon."

At least one building collapsed and several more were thought to be on fire following a massive explosive in Harlem that left nearly a dozen people injured, early reports suggest.

As emergency crews and firemen from across New York City rushed to 116th Street and Park Avenue on the Upper East Side, a large plume of dark smoke fanned across the city just as the morning rush hour was coming to an end.

It was visible within minutes from the bustling heart of commercial Midtown.

Witnesses, many on their way to work and some still in their apartments, said they had heard a very loud blast from where the apartment building once stood at East 115th St and Park Avenue in Harlem.

First reports said the building, which is thought to have been about five storeys, had been devastated by the blast.

UK Queen in depleted uranium trade? British anti-war campaign group the Stop the War Coalition has in a video claimed that Britain's Queen Elizabeth is one of the richest women on earth and much of her profits are from arms trade including the notorious depleted uranium trade.

The video apparently created by anti-monarchy activists and published on YouTube says the British monarch has managed to increase her wealth from £300 million early in her 60-year reign to £17 billion at present thanks to investments in arms firms that produce uranium used in depleted uranium (DU) shells, including Rio Tinto Zinc.

For a growing number of Americans, there may never be such a thing as real retirement.

"The market is filled with people who are petrified of the idea of retiring because they might not have the funding to afford retirement," Goalinvestor.com's Melissa Doran Rayer, whose company provides financial planning services and created a data chart to show how retirement trends are shifting, told Yahoo News in a recent interview.

The search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight was descending into confusion and acrimony on Wednesday as Vietnam called off part of its search pending further information from Malaysia.

As families spent a fifth day waiting for news of flight MH370, which vanished on Friday with 239 people on board, disagreements within the international search operation were surfacing and Malaysian officials failed to clarify the aircraft's last known movements.

India announced it had joined the search for the missing jetliner on Malaysia's request, widening the net to an area near the Andaman Sea.

Vietnam said it had halted its air search and scaled back a sea search while it waited for Malaysia to offer more detail.

Police and fire officials are on the scene of an explosion and partial building collapse at 116th Street and Park Avenue in Upper Manhattan Wednesday morning.

At least 11 injuries were reported, and Harlem Hospital has one patient with heavy trauma and is expecting at least one more.

East Harlem residents reported hearing a large explosion in the six-story apartment building around 9:30 a.m.

A fourth-alarm fire was burning, and the structural integrity appeared to be compromised. Witnesses reported seeing what appeared to be at least a partial roof collapse.

• Nine new reports of noise and light in sky near Malaysia-Thai border
• Eyewitnesses in villages reported sightings of plane low over the sea
• Search now focuses on Strait of Malacca and Andaman Sea
• Relatives in Beijing shout and throw bottles at Malaysian Airlines staff
• They demand: 'Why is Malaysian military keeping what they know secret?'
• Officials now reveal search is covering 27,000 square nautical miles

Malaysian authorities have defended their handling of the hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines passenger jet as they revealed the search is now covering 27,000 square nautical miles.

Officials have admitted they were unsure which direction the plane was headed when it disappeared as the international search mission carries on in its fifth day.

The mystery over the plane's whereabouts has been confounded by confusing and occasionally conflicting statements by Malaysian officials, adding to the anguish of relatives of the 239 people on board the flight - two thirds of them Chinese.

Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein described the multinational search for the missing plane as an unprecedented and complicated effort and defended his country's efforts.

He said two areas, in the Straits of Malacca and the South China Sea, were being searched by a total of 49 ships and 39 planes.

Who knows, soon we might see headlines and cable TV shows asking: "Is Dianne Feinstein a whistleblower or a traitor?"

A truthful answer to that question could not possibly be "whistleblower." It may already be a historic fact that Senator Feinstein's speech on March 11, 2014 blew a whistle on CIA surveillance of the Senate intelligence committee, which she chairs. But if that makes her a whistleblower, then Colonel Sanders is a vegetarian evangelist.

In her blockbuster Tuesday speech on the Senate floor, Feinstein charged that the CIA's intrusions on her committee's computers quite possibly "violated the Fourth Amendment." You know, that's the precious amendment that Feinstein - more than any other senator - has powerfully treated like dirt, worthy only of sweeping under the congressional rug.