America

    A father who was publicly identified by a high court judge for sexually assaulting his baby daughter shortly before she died has fled abroad after receiving death threats, his family has said. Paul Worthington, 48, has denied harming 13-month-old Poppi – who died in December 2012 – but a ruling published this week concluded on the balance of probabilities he had sexually assaulted her before her death. Worthington’s sister Tracy said on Thursday her brother had left his home following threats to his life. She said he was trying to get advice from miscarriage of justice experts as he tried to prove his innocence. She told the Guardian: “He has had to leave the country because of all of this. People keeping knocking on my door asking where he is, thinking he is going to be w...

    Video shows millions of dollars of Islamic State (IS) funds being blown up in an American airstrike. The aerial footage, released by the US Defense Department, shows a building being targeted in Mosul - the extremist group's main stronghold in Iraq. Clouds of paper bills quickly fill the air as the building is flattened by two 2,000-pound bombs. The Pentagon said several millions of dollars in cash were destroyed, but the exact amount is not known. The US-led coalition has been targeting IS oil resources and cash piles in the hope of sapping its financial strength. IS earns an estimated £315m ($450m) a year from oil production in its territory in Iraq and Syria. The terror group also has a small army of tax collectors raking in nearly as much from zakat tax, a form of alms...

    An American couple whose seven year old son was discovered decomposed in their Spanish apartment had lost their sense of reality, the case prosecutor has said. Bruce and Schrell Hopkins, aged 39 and 38, claimed the child did not wake up one morning but they would not accept he was dead. They have been charged with negligent homicide. The couple, originally from the Detroit area, have been provisionally released after questioning from a judge but their passports have been confiscated. Case prosecutor Enrique Barata said the exact cause and time death of their asthmatic son Caleb had yet to be established - though he was known to be alive when the family celebrated a birthday at a restaurant on 15 November. He was found beneath several blankets in the rented apartment in Gir...

    Mexican marines recaptured fugitive drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman following an intense military operation, six months after his spectacular prison tunnel escape embarrassed authorities. The chase for the world's most-wanted drug lord ended in the northwestern coastal city of Los Mochis, in his Sinaloa home state, where marines clashed with gang suspects before capturing Guzman. The 58-year-old's arrest is a major sigh of relief for President Enrique Pena Nieto, whose administra-tion was humiliated when Guzman broke out of a maximum-security prison on July 11. "Mission accomplished: We got him," Pena Nieto wrote on Twitter. The arrest followed "intense and careful" intelligence and investigative work that "broke up the network of influence and protection of this cr...

    As of Sunday afternoon, The Washington Post called them "occupiers" — and more precisely, "an armed militia." The New York Times opted for "armed activists" and "militia men." And the Associated Press put the situation this way: "A family previously involved in a showdown with the federal government has occupied a building at a national wildlife refuge in Oregon and is asking militia members to join them." Not one seemed to lean toward terms such as "insurrection," "revolt," anti-government "insurgents" or, as some on social media were calling them, "terrorists." When a group of unknown size and unknown firepower has taken over any federal building with plans and possibly some equipment to aid a years-long occupation — and when its representatives tells reporters that they...

    Twin infants born just as New Year's Champagne corks were popping share the same parents, but different birth years. Maribel Valencia, of San Diego, California made it to a local hospital on Thursday just in time to give birth to a baby girl -- Jaelyn -- in the final seconds of 2015. Jaelyn's brother Luis was born about two minutes into 2016, local media reported. Maribel Valencia holds her newborn twins at the San Diego Kaiser Permanente Zion Medical Center in San Diego. "We were actually watching the clock," the pleased father -- also named Luis -- told the local NBC television station. "We wanted to see if we were one of the first ones" born in the new year. Both infants, who had not been expected to arrive until later this month, and their mother were reported to be do...

    A man shot and killed his wife and two others in his home on New Year's Eve before his son wrestled the gun away and fatally shot him in a chain of events apparently set off by a dispute over a washing machine. The two other victims killed were the son's 48-year-old girlfriend who also lives at the house in Rowland Heights and a 27-year-old man who was visiting, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said. The 54-year-old father was a heavy drinker with a large gun collection, and authorities had made dozens of previous trips to the home, the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department said. Investigators were talking to surviving witnesses to figure out what led to the father pulling out a semi-automatic pistol and opening fire. It looks like it was a dispute between the dad an...

    A U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor, a British Royal Air Force Typhoon, and a French air force Rafale fly in formation Dec. 7 as part of a the Trilateral Exercise held at Langley Air Force Base, Va… JOINT BASE LANGLEY-EUSTIS, Va. — The rumble started early Tuesday, as one fighter jet after another ascended from a runway here near the Atlantic Ocean and into a bright, clear sky. The mission: Prepare for war against potential adversaries like Russia, which is now patrolling the same skies as the United States over Syria and flexing its muscles in eastern Europe. The first-ever Trilateral Exercise between the United States, France and Britain has been in planning for several years, but began Dec. 2 over coastal Virginia with a decidedly real-world feel. The U.S Air Force’s F-22 Rapt...

    Authorities in Virginia have closed schools on Friday after a high school geography assignment triggered allegations that students were being indoctrinated into Islam. In a statement on the Augusta County School District website, officials said the decision to shut 23 schools was made because of the "tone and content" of emails and phone calls made by parents. The statement read: "Following parental objections to the World Geography curriculum and ensuing related media coverage, the school division began receiving voluminous phone calls and electronic mail locally and from outside the area. "As a result of these communications, the Sheriff's Office and the school division co-ordinated to increase police presence at Augusta County schools and to monitor those communications...