WORLD DIGEST || Boy survives after skewer pierces skull

Boy survives after skewer pierces skull

HARRISONVILLE, Mo.

A 10-year-old Missouri boy is recovering after he was attacked by insects and tumbled from a tree, landing on a meat skewer that penetrated his skull from his face to the back of his head.

Miraculously, that’s where Xavier Cunningham’s bad luck ended. The skewer had completely missed Xavier’s eye, brain, spinal cord and major blood vessels, The Kansas City Star reports.

Xavier’s harrowing experience began Saturday afternoon when yellow jackets attacked him in a tree house at his home in Harrisonville. He fell to the ground and started to scream. His mother, Gabrielle Miller, ran to help him. His skull was pierced from front-to-back with half a foot of skewer still sticking out of his face.

Xavier had surgery Sunday to remove the skewer.

Police: Teen stabs love rival at school

warren, mich.

A 17-year-old Michigan high school student could be facing a murder charge after she fatally stabbed a classmate Wednesday over a guy whom both had dated, police said.

The deadly clash between two “straight-A students” took place in a Fitzgerald High School classroom in suburban Detroit, Warren Police Commissioner William Dwyer said. A school resource officer immediately began life-saving procedures, but the 16-year-old victim was pronounced dead at a hospital an hour later.

Superintendent Laurie Fournier identified the slain girl as Danyna Gibson on Wednesday evening. Fournier said a “vigil to remember and honor the life of Danyna” will be at 1 p.m. today on the high school’s football field.

The victim was on the school robotics team, student council, ran cross country and played in the marching band, a police official said.

US ‘likely’ is world’s top oil producer

The United States may have reclaimed the title of the world’s biggest oil producer sooner than expected.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration said Wednesday that, based on preliminary estimates, America “likely surpassed” Russia in June and August after jumping over Saudi Arabia earlier this year.

If those estimates are right, it would mark the first time since 1973 that the U.S. has led the world in output, according to government figures.

U.S. production jumped in recent years because of techniques including hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” which is the use of chemicals, sand, water and high pressure to crack rock formations deep below ground, releasing more oil and natural gas.

Putin: Suspects in poisoning are innocent civilians

moscow

President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Russian authorities know the identities of the two men accused by Britain of carrying out a nerve-agent attack on a former spy, but he added they are civilians and there is “nothing criminal” about them.

The statement by Putin marked an abrupt shift from Russia’s earlier position on the poisoning case that has damaged relations between Moscow and the West. Initially, Russian officials said they had no idea who the men were and questioned the authenticity of some of security-camera photos and video released by Scotland Yard showing them in London and Salisbury, where the poisoning took place.

Britain last week charged two men in absentia, identifying them as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov.Authorities alleged they were agents of Russia’s military intelligence agency known as the GRU and accused them of poisoning former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury on March 4.

Associated Press