Neighbors took care of abandoned boy for weeks

Neighbors took care ofabandoned boy for weeks
ARLINGTON, Texas -- Police have located the mother of a young boy whose neighbors took turns caring for him and waited weeks to call police after she disappeared, authorities said Wednesday.
Investigators were interviewing Juline Bullard, 44, who was jailed on $5,000 bond on a child abandonment charge. The woman was located after authorities got a tip, police spokeswoman Christy Gilfour said.
Bullard reportedly told authorities that someone had agreed to care for the child for three months while she sought housing and a job.
The boy, known only as "Teddy," told neighbors he is 3 but may be as old as 5, authorities said.
He had charmed his benefactors.
"I knew I should report it. I just didn't want to turn him in for just anyone to have," said Belinda Smith, 57, with whom Teddy lived for a month. "He's such a special child."
Castro takes tumble
HAVANA -- President Fidel Castro tripped and fell after leaving the stage at a graduation ceremony, but later returned to say that he was "all in one piece."
Castro's off-camera tumble after the Wednesday night speech in the central city of Santa Clara was certain to launch a new round of speculation about the 78-year-old communist leader's health after 45 years of rule.
There was no official word from the government on Castro's condition after he left Santa Clara, about a three-hour drive east of Havana, in his regular black Mercedes Benz.
Speaking live on state television less than a minute after his fall, Castro told television viewers across the island of 11.2 million people that he thought he had broken his knee "and maybe an arm ... but I am all in one piece."
56 die in mine explosion
BEIJING -- A gas blast tore through a Chinese coal mine, killing at least 56 people in the country's deadliest mine accident this year, the government said today. Officials reported that another 92 were missing and chances of finding them alive were slim.
Some 446 people were at work in the Daping Mine southwest of Beijing at the time of the explosion and 298 escaped alive, said Sun Huashan, deputy administrator of the State Administration of Work Safety.
The official Xinhua News Agency said the explosion occurred Wednesday night in Henan province. Citing local officials, Xinhua said 56 miners were confirmed dead and more than 1,000 rescuers was searching for 92 others.
Prince Harry hit in face
LONDON -- Britain's Prince Harry was hit in the face with a camera during a scuffle with a photographer outside a London nightclub early today, a royal official said.
Clarence House, the office of Harry's father Prince Charles, said the prince then cut a photographer's lip when he pushed the camera away outside the Pangaea club at about 3 a.m.
"Prince Harry was hit in the face by a camera as photographers crowded around him as he was getting into a car," a spokesman said on customary condition of anonymity.
"In pushing the camera away, it's understood that a photographer's lip was cut."
Environmental report
GLAND, Switzerland -- People are plundering the world's resources at a pace that outstrips the planet's capacity to sustain life, the environmental group WWF said today.
In its annual Living Planet Report, the World Wide Fund for Nature said humans currently consume 20 percent more natural resources than the earth can produce, and that populations of terrestrial, freshwater and marine species fell by an average of 40 percent between 1970 and 2000.
Consumption of fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil increased by almost 700 percent between 1961 and 2001, the conservation body said.
The "ecological footprint" -- or environmental impact -- of the planet's 6.1 billion-strong population is alarming, with people in the West the worst culprits, said WWF in its 40-page report.
The footprint of an average North American is double that of a European but seven times that of the average Asian or African.
Associated Press