Vanuatu struggles to account for damage

Vanuatu struggles to account for damage

WELLINGTON, New Zealand

The official death toll from a massive cyclone that tore through Vanuatu has risen to four, with fears it could jump significantly, officials from the tiny South Pacific archipelago said today.

Officials had still not made contact with outlying islands and were struggling to determine the scale of devastation from Cyclone Pam, which tore through Vanuatu early Saturday, packing winds of 168 miles per hour.

10 US staff to leave amid Ebola scare

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone

Ten health-care workers with a Boston-based nonprofit organization responding to Sierra Leone’s Ebola outbreak are to be evacuated to the U.S. after one of their colleagues was infected with the deadly disease.

Partners in Health said Saturday that the 10, the largest group to be evacuated to the U.S. over possible Ebola exposure, would travel on noncommercial aircraft and be isolated in Ebola-treatment facilities.

On March 11, a Partners in Health medical worker in Sierra Leone tested positive for Ebola, and the 10 fellow workers “came to the aid of their ailing colleague,” the organization said. The 10 have not shown signs of Ebola and Partners in Health said the evacuations were ordered “out of an abundance of caution.”

2 suicide bombers kill 15 in Pakistan

LAHORE, Pakistan

A pair of suicide bombers attacked two churches in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore on Sunday as worshippers prayed inside — killing 15 people in the latest assault against religious minorities in this increasingly fractured country, officials said.

A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, Ahsanullah Ahsan, claimed responsibility for the assault in a statement emailed to reporters, and warned, “There will be more of such attacks.”

Afterward, an angry Christian mob blocked a major highway, ransacked a bus terminal and burned two people to death who they suspected of being involved in the attacks.

Brazil raises toll of dead in bus accident

RIO DE JANEIRO

The Brazilian government raised the death toll of a bus accident to 54 while police continued their search for more victims Sunday in the rugged lands of southern Brazil.

The dead include at least eight young children, three adolescents, 24 women and 14 men, the government of Santa Catarina state said in a statement earlier Sunday when the death toll stood at 49.

The bus plunged 1,300 feet down a mountain near the city of Joinville on Saturday.

Studies boost hopes for a new class of cholesterol medicines

SAN DIEGO

New research boosts hope that a highly anticipated, experimental class of cholesterol drugs can greatly lower the risk for heart attacks, death and other heart-related problems. The government will decide this summer whether to allow two of these drugs on the market.

People taking one of these drugs had half the risk of dying or suffering a heart problem compared to others who were given usual care — typically one of the statin drugs such as Lipitor or Zocor, doctors found.

The studies were published online Sunday by the New England Journal of Medicine and discussed at an American College of Cardiology conference in San Diego.

Associated Press