Military jet crashes in Calif., killing pilot

Military jet crashes in Calif., killing pilot

PORT HUENEME, Calif.

A military jet crashed into a field near a naval base off the Southern California coast Wednesday, killing the pilot, authorities said.

The plane crashed and disintegrated about 5:15 p.m. near Naval Station Ventura County, sending up a huge plume of black smoke.

The Ventura County Fire Department reported the pilot was killed. Nobody on the ground was hurt.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Allen Kenitzer said the aircraft was a Hawker Hunter MK.58.

The cause of the crash wasn’t immediately known, nor was it clear if the plane was taking off or attempting to land at the base near the city of Port Hueneme, about 65 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

Al-Qaida: IS should rejoin, fight West

WASHINGTON

U.S. intelligence analysts are closely watching al-Qaida’s overtures to the renegade Islamic State to reunite and fight the West, and while a full reconciliation is not on the horizon, there is evidence the two groups have curtailed their feud and are cooperating on the Syrian battlefield.

The al-Qaida global terror network recently has extended olive branches to the rival Islamic State through messages released by its affiliates around the world.

Hundreds feared buried in mudslide

KOSLANDA, Sri Lanka

A mudslide triggered by monsoon rains buried scores of workers’ houses at a tea plantation in central Sri Lanka on Wednesday, raising fears that hundreds may have been killed.

In the chaos that followed, there was confusion about the number of dead and missing because government officials reported different figures and later reduced the number of missing by 100 without explanation.

The mudslide struck about 7:30 a.m. and wiped out 120 workers’ homes at the Koslanda tea plantation, said Lal Sarath Kumara, an official from the Disaster Management Center.

Official probed in raffle-for-vote offer

CHICAGO

Prosecutors are investigating a longtime Chicago alderman who offered raffle tickets to people who vote in next week’s election, a move the alderman Wednesday conceded was wrong.

In a Facebook posting that has since been removed, Alderman Leslie Hairston offered a raffle ticket — with the chance to win multiple prizes of gift certificates from local stores — to anyone who brought a voting receipt to her office.

That led to a call to the Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez’s election hotline, said Sally Daly, spokeswoman for Alvarez. “The state’s attorney’s election-fraud unit has opened an investigation and is looking into the matter,” Daly said Wednesday.

State election law states that anyone who offers money “or other valuable consideration” to anyone to vote, register to vote or influence their vote “shall be guilty of a class 4 felony.”

Malala wins ‘Children’s Nobel’

STOCKHOLM

Children’s-rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai on Wednesday received the World’s Children’s Prize 2014 in Sweden, after winning a global vote involving millions of children.

The awards organization cited the 17-year-old Pakistani girl for “her courageous and dangerous fight for girls’ right to education.”

Yousafzai, who became the world’s youngest Nobel laureate earlier this month when she was awarded the peace prize, said she was honored to win this prize, known also as the “Children’s Nobel.”

Combined dispatches