Hurricane Kyle heads for Nova Scotia
PORTLAND, Maine, Sept. 28 (UPI) -- Hurricane Kyle weakened Sunday but was still a Category 1 storm with sustained winds near 75 mph as it headed toward Canada, the U.S Hurricane Center said.
At 5 p.m. EDT, forecasters said Kyle was moving toward the north-northeast at about 25 miles per hour. They said given the hurricane's current track, Kyle would come over or near southwestern Nova Scotia, Canada, Sunday night and over New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island early Monday.
Hurricane-force winds were extending 85 miles from Kyle's eye, while tropical storm-force winds were reach out 230 miles from the storm's center, the hurricane center said.
Up to 6 inches of rain were predicted for parts of coastal New England and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.
400 still missing from Hurricane Ike
GALVESTON, Texas, Sept. 28 (UPI) -- Four hundred people are still listed as missing in the wake of Hurricane Ike, with more than 200 of them from Galveston Island, Texas, officials say.
Sixty of the missing lived on the hard-hit Bolivar Peninsula, a Gulf of Mexico beachfront community. One of them, 58-year-old Gail Ettenger, was found dead late last week miles away in a remote, mosquito-ridden marsh, The Houston Chronicle reported Sunday.
Since Hurricane Ike hit Sept. 12, more than 140 Texas who had been missing have been reunited with friends and relatives through blogs, media Web sites, the Red Cross and occasionally through dramatic rescues, authorities said. But officials say there is still much more work to do to track down the hundreds still unaccounted for.
"We don't know if they got washed out to sea, or buried in the sand or in debris piles," Capt. Rod Ousley of the Texas Parks & Wildlife Service told the Chronicle. "We just keep looking until they come up … we're just going to keep trying."
Six dead in Baghdad car bombings
BAGHDAD, Sept. 28 (UPI) -- Two car bombs went off minutes apart in southwestern Baghdad Sunday, killing at least six people, an Interior Ministry official said.
The official said the bombings, which occurred shortly after the traditional Islamic meal of Iftar, left 32 people wounded, CNN reported.
Iftar is a ceremonial meal during Ramadan in which Muslims are allowed to temporarily end their traditional fasting practices.
The official had few details regarding the deadly attacks, but told CNN one of the cars involved had been parked near a Baghdad market.
Lawmakers call for Mexico death penalty
MEXICO CITY, Sept. 28 (UPI) -- Mexican lawmakers, responding to public anger at a wave of kidnappings and drug killings, say they are considering reinstating the death penalty.
Only three years after the death penalty was abolished, Mexico's Green Party, or PVEM, has drafted a bill calling for executing kidnappers who are or were police officers, or those who kill or mutilate victims, The San Antonio Express-News reported Sunday.
Although legislators from other parties may be reluctant to approve reinstating the death penalty, the PVEM says it is responding to an outcry over rampant kidnappings and the increasingly bloody and indiscriminate drug gang violence in Mexico.
"We find ourselves in a kidnapped country," Francisco Elizondo, a PVEM congressman promoting the bill, told the newspaper. "Mexico has gone from a country where we only had narco-trafficking problems to (one with) many other problems with organized crime like terrorism and kidnapping."
Organized crime has been blamed for well over 3,000 deaths in Mexico this year, including an Independence Day grenade attack in central Mexico by the armed wing of the Gulf Cartel that killed eight civilians.
