Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina was elected in a surprise choice to be the new leader of the troubled Roman Catholic Church, the first non-European pontiff in nearly 1,300 years, and said he would take the name Francis.
Smokers are twice as likely to quit when they get text messages urging them to stick to their goal of being smoke free compared with those who receive texts with no motivational messages, a British study has found.
A fire ripped through a seven-storey hospital in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata before dawn today, killing at least 84 people, most of them patients who were asleep when the blaze started.
A helicopter crashed into a crane on top of one of Europe's tallest residential blocks in central London today, killing two people as it burst into flames and threw plumes of smoke into the foggy air.
Authorities in Ecuador upgraded today an eruption warning for the Tungurahua volcano, on the eve of a possible eruption. The warning was upgraded from yellow to orange when volcanic activity was seen to have risen suddenly.
Guatemala's Fuego volcano erupted, spewing smoke and ash 2 miles (3 kilometers) into the sky and forcing the evacuation of thousands of people as lava oozed down its slopes, local emergency services said.