A powerful bomb ripped through a bus in central Russia Wednesday morning, killing eight people and wounding at least 53 in what one official called a terror attack. Investigators were trying to determine whether the explosive device was carried by a passenger or had been planted somewhere on the bus in the city of Togliatti, according to Russian news agencies. Yuri Rozhin, the head of a local branch of Russia’s Federal Security Service, said the bomb could have been detonated by a suicide attacker, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.\nFloodwaters and mudslides spawned by Tropical Storm Noel killed at least 48 people in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, officials said Wednesday, raising the death toll as the storm regained force over water and curved toward Florida and the Bahamas. Hardest-hit by the sluggish storm were the Dominican Republic and Haiti on the island of Hispaniola, where thousands fled their homes and others sought refuge on rooftops. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said the storm’s center had emerged over the Atlantic and was regaining force after slogging across Cuba.
Some 13,000 refugees have fled into Uganda in the past 10 days amid one of the worst spates of fighting in Congo since elections last year. The latest fighting in Congo is pitting government forces and allied militants against forces loyal to a renegade army commander, Gen. Laurent Nkunda, who split from the Congo military after the official 2002 end of a four-year civil war that displaced millions of Congolese.
Three lead defendants in the 2004 Madrid train bombings were found guilty of mass murder and other charges Wednesday, but four other top suspects were convicted on lesser charges and an accused ringleader was completely acquitted. The verdicts were a partial victory for prosecutors, with 21 of the 28 people on trial convicted on at least some charges. Seven got off entirely, including an Egyptian who prosecutors said had bragged that he masterminded the March 11, 2004, blasts, which killed 191 people and injured more than 1,800.
