U.S. lowers threshold for watch lists

The U.S. government has lowered the threshold for information deemed important enough to put suspicious individuals on a watch list or no-fly list or have their visa revoked, senior State Department officials tell CNN.

With the first of its flights touching down in earthquake-devastated Haiti late Wednesday afternoon, the U.S. began deploying military planes, ships and ground troops to the Caribbean nation.

Harayenti’s voice starts out strong as she speaks about the moment the major earthquake struck last week. “My only thought was ‘run, run,’” she says. “I jumped from the top of the staircase screaming ‘Daddy.’”

Guatemalan authorities have issued arrest warrants for two prominent brothers in connection with last year’s slaying of a lawyer who left behind a videotape saying President Alvaro Colom would be responsible if anything happened to him, the suspects’ attorney confirmed Wednesday.

Indonesian police stormed a suspected terrorist hideout in central Java early Thursday, the National Police said.

A massive magnitude 8.8 earthquake rocked Chile early Saturday, the U.S. Geological Survey said, killing at least 147 people and triggering tsunami warnings for the entire Pacific basin.

Heavy snow blanketed Beijing on Sunday, shutting roads, disrupting public transit, and delaying or canceling at least 200 flights, state media reported.

About 600 witnesses are expected to testify in a trial that started Monday for a bank heist some call Argentina’s “robbery of the century.”

China hosted Japan and South Korea on Saturday for the second trilateral leaders’ meeting, state-run media said.

Hondurans divided over an ongoing political crisis agree on one thing — they don’t think very highly of their leaders, according to a new survey.

More than 100 giant icebergs that broke off from Antarctica between eight and 10 years ago are closing in on New Zealand’s southern coast, only the second time in 78 years that large bergs have been sighted so far north.

A suicide car bomber struck a congested traffic circle outside Peshawar Tuesday, killing at least 26 people — including several women and children — and wounding 60 others, police and hospital officials said.

A rising Canadian folk singer was killed by coyotes this week in a national park in Nova Scotia, a park spokesman said Thursday. Taylor Mitchell, 19, was recently nominated for Young Performer of the Year honors.

A senior leader of the party of Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was released Saturday night at the end of his six-year house arrest.

Controversial Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders appeared in court Wednesday on charges of inciting discrimination and hatred that relate in part to his much-criticized film about Islam.

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe on Thursday condemned “unjustified” Western sanctions against his country saying they were being used to force him from power.