A South Korean man on death row for murdering 13 people in one of the country's worst killing sprees has died after hanging himself.

"The story, as I heard it in an interview a few years ago with an American soldier, a friend of the dead medic’s, was that after a small firefight, Omar hid himself, then leapt up, heartlessly killing the medic whose only interest was the wounded. Omar was then captured and eventually sent to Guantanamo. "Even were that story true, and it is not, there would still be no excuse for sending a fifteen-year old child to Guantanamo. That act violated all international conventions on the treatment of child soldiers, but then almost everything America has done over the last eight years has violated international conventions, international laws, common decency, and the spirit of its own Bill of Rights."

Giraffe herds in Niger were nearly wiped out a decade ago but have rebounded miraculously. Experts credit a government keen for revenue that has made laws to protect them.

Officials along Mexico's Caribbean coast are readying storm shelters amid warnings that Tropical Storm Ida could become a hurricane as it nears the resort city of Cancun.

Afghanistan's Defense Ministry says a NATO airstrike in a western province mistakenly hit a joint base housing coalition troops and Afghan forces, killing four Afghan soldiers and three policemen.