Rebel News - Independent News and Analysis

Children's Heart surgery at Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital has been suspended after four toddlers died within three months of each other.

A report by National Health Service (NHS) published on Thursday said that, in an attempt to prevent its closure, the hospital managers were trying to increase the unit's capacity to take more patients and had recruited a relatively junior surgeon.

140 people have lost their lives in a boat accident in the Democratic Republic of Congo when an overloaded vessel capsized on a river in the west of the country.

Officials say the boat -- carrying passengers and goods -- overturned on the Kasai River in Bandundu province, AFP reported.

The virulent swine flu has killed 656 people across Turkey since October, a month after the country went on a nationwide vaccination campaign against the pandemic.

"A total of 656 people, confirmed by laboratories (to have been infected), have lost their lives as of July 29, 2010," the Turkish health ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

A woman in northern France has confessed to killing her eight newborn babies, the public prosecutor of the city of Douai, Eric Vaillant, has said.

Dominique Cottrez, 47, has been charged with murdering her eight newborn babies over two decades in the northern village of Villers-au-Tertre.

The United States is hit with another oil spill in the northern state of Michigan, as Washington is yet to deal with the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

The new leak sent more than one million gallons of oil into the Kalamazoo River, officials said Wednesday, AFP reported.

Torrential rains in eastern Afghanistan have caused flash floods, killing at least 40 people and leaving hundreds more homeless, a report says.

The incident also left 15 more Afghans injured on Wednesday, the country's Tolo television channel reported.

China's worst flooding in more than a decade has killed nearly 1,000 people across the country and stranded tens of thousands in the northeast without power.

The state-run flood control office said 928 people have been killed since the rainy season began in May and 477 others are missing.

Iran has been defeated by Slovenia in the opening match of the Stankovic Cup Basketball Tournament in Liuzhou, China.

The fact that center Hamed Haddadi, who also plays in the NBA for the Memphis Grizzlies, did not participate in the game put Iran at a height disadvantage.

Oil from BP's ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico has been clearing from the surface of the water much faster than expected, US government scientists have said.

They say bacteria in the water, as well as oil's finite life-span, may have contributed to the rapid dispersion, aiding the massive marine clean-up effort launched in response to the spill.

Wildfire in southern California has demolished dozens of homes and forced mass evacuations, prompting a state of emergency in the golden state.

The hot and dry weather helped the raging fire to engulf 15,000 acres of land on Wednesday, reducing to ashes around 25 homes, and causing more than 2,300 people to evacuate the disaster zone.