Rebel News - Independent News and Analysis

Spanish tennis star Rafael Nadal has booked his third successive trip to US Open semifinal without the loss of a set at Flushing Meadows.

The world number one thrashed his fellow Spaniard Fernando Verdasco 7-5, 6-3, 6-4 on Thursday.

A woman in the US city of Philadelphia has opened fire on co-workers at the Kraft Foods Inc. facility, killing two people and injuring two others, police say.

"We have two confirmed dead, two critically injured and the assailant has been apprehended," said Wilfred Frederick, a police officer with Philadelphia's Seventh District.

A massive explosion in the western US city of San Francisco has set fire to dozens of houses in a residential neighborhood, reports say.

The fire near San Francisco International Airport has been apparently caused by a leak in a large natural gas pipe that ran underground through the San Bruno neighborhood south of the city, US media reported on Thursday.

The founder of Iran's first hypnotherapy clinic says her team has made significant improvements in reducing the force of asthma attacks.

"Hypnosis offers many opportunities for research…As you know, Asthma is a psychosomatic disorder whose treatment costs a lot of money. It also makes life harder. What we are studying is the effect of hypnosis on the force of the attacks, their duration and the space between each attack," Dr. Mahvash Agah told Press TV in an interview published on Thursday.

At least 169 houses in Colorado have been reduced to ashes as flames towering skyward forced residents to pack up and run for their lives.

Firefighters have managed to build contain 30 percent of the fire, which has charred 6,365 acres or about 25 sq km (10 sq miles).

An Indian passenger bus has crashed into a river, leaving at least 17 people dead and 35 others feared dead, according to police officials.

The accident happened in the Dewas district of Madhya Pradesh on Wednesday evening when the bus was trying to cross a flooded bridge.

French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard says he has finally decided to receive an honorary Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).

The 79-year-old's producing partner had previously said that Godard would not attend the November ceremony due to old age.

Eight people have been reported missing as firefighters battle to contain a major wildfire in the western US state of Colorado.

The fire erupted Monday in Fourmile Canyon northwest of Colorado's state capital Denver. The fire extended over some 2,800 hectares (7,000 acres), said Boulder County Sheriff Commander Rick Brough, quoted in an AFP report Wednesday.

The number of rape convictions in Wales has risen a four-year high, increasing from 46.6 percent in 2006 to 59.3 percent in 2010, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) says.

According to the figures issued under the Freedom of Information Act, the CPS has pursued 796 rape cases between 2006 and 2010; 57 percent of them are believed to have resulted in conviction.

The UK no longer enjoys the competitive advantage of being at the forefront of higher education finance and provision, according to OECD.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) says Britain's standing in terms of higher education has fallen behind countries like Iceland, Slovakia and Poland in Europe, slipping from third to 15th place among the countries that rank their students gaining university degrees.