New Bataan - The number of people missing after a typhoon devastated the Philippines jumped to nearly 900 after families and fishing companies reported losing contact with more than 300 fishermen at sea, officials said.

The fishermen from southern General Santos city and nearby Sarangani province left a few days before Typhoon Bopha hit the main southern island of Mindanao on Tuesday, Civil Defense chief Benito Ramos said. The death toll has already surpassed 600, mostly from flash floods that wiped away precarious communities in the southern region unaccustomed to typhoons.

Ramos said the fishermen were headed to the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea and to the Pacific Ocean. Coast guard, navy and fishing vessels are searching for them, and some may have sought shelter on the many small islands in the area.

"Maybe they are still alive," Ramos said Sunday.

Bopha was dissipating finally in the South China Sea after briefly veering back toward the country's northwest on Saturday, prompting worries of more devastation.

Rescuers were searching for bodies or signs of life under tons of fallen trees and boulders in the worst-hit town of New Bataan, where rocks, mud and other rubble destroyed landmarks, making it doubly difficult to search places where houses once stood.

Hundreds of refugees, rescuers and aid workers took a break Sunday to watch the Manny Pacquiao-Juan Manuel Marquez fight on a big TV screen, only to be dismayed by their hero's sixth-round knockout.

Columbus, Ohio - Columbus Police sprayed Mace on several people in a crowd that had gathered to sign up for a list to get subsidized housing at a northwest Columbus apartment complex.

Police said the crowd started to gather Friday night for the Saturday morning event at The Heritage apartment complex on Gatewood Road near Sunbury Road in northeast Columbus.

Authorities said that its highest number, the crowd reached 2,000 people.

Residents in the area called police overnight and complained about the noise and number of cars in the neighborhood.

According to police, a melee broke out when the manager of the complex started to set up for the event just before 7 a.m. Saturday morning.

Several individuals were sprayed with Mace by police and treated at the scene by emergency crews.

Police did not report making any arrests.

The number of food banks or soup kitchens opening up in Britain has grown at an alarming rate due to the economic crisis claiming more victims living below the poverty line.

This comes as the number of people, who cannot afford to eat, has doubled in the last year and new food banks are being set up every three days to help the British people cope with financial needs.

According to Euronews, up to 13 million people in Britain are now living below the poverty line.

The coalition government's harsh benefit cuts, low wages, rising energy and costs for transport, add weight to the uneasiness of the lives of not so fortunate people in Britain.

Food bank network director Adrian Curtis said, "We are currently growing a new foodbank project somewhere in the UK every three days, which I think demonstrates the scale of what we are dealing with and we are still only touching the tip of the iceberg."

Two suspected robbers believed to be targeting an alleged home-based marijuana growing operation were killed in a shootout on the first day of legal marijuana in Washington state, authorities said.

The 35-year-old homeowner told detectives he shot the masked intruders Thursday after they broke into his home near Puyallup, Pierce County Sheriff spokesman Ed Troyer said, according Komonews.com. Troyer told the news outlet that the masked men most likely sought to grab the pot and maybe cash.

The Associated Press reported the secluded, luxury home had a security system, a private driveway and that the homeowner had motorcycles, boats and nice cars.

The homeowner and his 9-year-old son were not hurt. The homeowner, whose name was not released, was detained, at least pertaining to an illegal growing operation, Troyer told the wire service. He has since been released.

Beaver Falls - Police are searching for two 14-year-old boys, and reported a 13-year-old who are charged as adults with fatally shooting a Beaver Falls woman.

Beaver Falls police have charged Todavia Cleckley and Marcus Velasquez with criminal homicide and other charges in Saturday's shooting of 22-year-old Kayla Peterson. She was shot at a house about 3:30 p.m. that day and died at Allegheny General Hospital two hours later.

Cleckley's Facebook page shows a young man posing with a revolver in one hand and a pistol in the other. The photo was posted less than 12 hours after Peterson's shooting.

Online court records show police were still searching for the suspects. According the the Beaver County Times a third boy, a 13-year-old has also been charged in the shooting.

Beaver County District Attorney Anthony Berosh says he intends to prosecute both as adults.

Source: KDKA and The Associated Press

A man is dead after he and a woman were found bound and gagged in the middle of a street in San Francisco's Bayview District Sunday night, police said. The two victims were found about 8:30 p.m. Sunday in the 900 block of Brussels Street, Officer Albie Esparza said.

Both were alive at the time they were found, but the man, possibly in his 20s, whose name was not released, was unconscious, Esparza said.

They were both transported to San Francisco General Hospital where the man succumbed to his injuries about midnight, police said.

The woman's condition was unknown but was considered life-threatening, Esparza said.

The motive for the crime was unknown and remained under investigation, police said. There are no suspect descriptions available yet.

A seven and 11-year-old boy pulled a loaded gun on an Oregon woman during an attempted carjacking and robbery outside a church parking lot, police said on Sunday.

Armed with a .22 caliber handgun, cocked and loaded, police in Portland say the described 11-year-old delinquent, seen back on the streets today, and his 7-year-old accomplice were caught while trying to flee on Saturday afternoon.

'They told me they were going to blow my brains out if I didn't give them something,' 22-year-old victim Amy Garrett recalled to KATU on Sunday while still visibly shaken.

Miss Garrett was parked outside the Freedom Foursquare Church waiting for her parents when the two boys, later recognized as occasionally attending the church while living nearby, approached her window.

The youngest of the two allegedly nudged to the other, 'show her your piece,' prompting the oldest to pull up his shirt where the weapon was revealed.

• 

  
  Outrage: Carl Michael von Hausswolff has painted a picture using ashes which he claims to have taken from the crematorium of a Nazi concentration camp in Poland
  Swedish artist used ashes from Majdanek concentration camp for painting
• The exhibition also includes a photograph taken at the location of the ruins of Hermann Göring's hunting cabin.
• He has now been reported to the police for desecrating remains and breaking burial law

A Swedish artist has caused outrage after exhibiting artwork which he claims to have painted using ashes gathered in the crematorium of a Nazi concentration camp.

Carl Michael von Hausswolff stole the ashes from Majdanek concentration camp in Poland during a 1989 trip and over two decades later, mixed it with water and used it as paint.

He has now been reported to the police for desecrating the remains of Majdanek's Holocaust victims, under Swedish burial protection laws.

Mr von Hausswolff visited Poland in 1989 to exhibit his art at a gallery not far from Lublin, a town near Majdanek. He says he was 'gathering material for the exhibition' when he visited the concentration camp.

'I gathered some ashes from one of the cremation ovens, but did not use it for the exhibition - the material was too charged with the cruelties which had taken place.'

We're a little hypocritical about animal cruelty in this country. We can get very wound up when we read about someone abusing their pet dog or cat, right up to threatening that person with death.

But most of us don't summon the same level of outrage when appalling examples of livestock being mistreated on factory farms comes to light.

The cattle, the pigs, the chickens, they're not our home companions. They're meat on our table, and the cheaper the better. We don't much concern ourselves about their lives before they get there. That's the government's job, right?

This latest story, revealed by CTV's investigative public affairs program W5, shows a Manitoba pig-breeding operation where sows spend their lives in tiny crates, are repeatedly impregnated to produce litters until they can't anymore, then unceremoniously killed. Employees cull defective piglets by smashing their heads against something hard.

Cruel, yes. But apparently not against the law. Saturday's W5 segment uses video footage shot secretly by an animal-welfare investigator to expose conditions in the Puratone facility just north of Winnipeg.

In a story on W5's web site, reporter Tom Kennedy writes that after viewing the video, Barbara Cartwright, chief executive officer of Canada's Federation of Humane Societies, predicted Canadians were in for a shock.

"They are not used to seeing this," she said. "They still believe animals are being raised in the old farm style."

The reality couldn't be more different, Kennedy writes.

"The video shows what amounts to a living production line with thousands of pregnant sows, each held in a tiny metal stall where they will spend the nearly four months of their gestation," he reports.

"When they are ready, they are transferred to a slightly larger stall called a farrowing crate where they will give birth. After three weeks, the piglets are then sent away for fattening and eventual slaughter while the sows are returned to the gestation crates, re-impregnated to start the cycle again."

London -- Police believe he was from Africa, probably from Angola, but they don't know his identity.

The mystery began in September when residents of a suburban street in the Mortlake neighborhood of West London woke up on a quiet Sunday morning to find the crumpled body of a black man on the sidewalk of Portman Avenue, near a convenience store, an upscale lingerie shop and a storefront offering Chinese medical cures.

Detectives believed at first the man was a murder victim and cordoned off the area. Within a day, however, police concluded the man - probably already dead - had fallen to the ground when a jet passing overhead lowered its landing gear as it neared the runway at nearby Heathrow Airport.

The apparent stowaway had no identification papers - just some currency from Angola, leading police to surmise that he was from that African nation, especially as inquiries showed that a plane from Angola was beginning its descent into Heathrow at about that time.

The macabre explanation made perfect sense to residents, who are familiar not only with the roar of the jets descending, but are also able to see the planes lower their landing gears as they pass overhead, said Catherine Lambert, who lives a few doors down from the spot where the man landed.