■ UNITED STATES
Rocket explodes at airport
A rocket exploded on Thursday at an airport in the California desert, killing two people and seriously injuring four others, firefighters said. "There was an explosion on the Mojave Airport at 2:30pm this afternoon," fire engineer Roberto Figueroa of the Kern County Fire Department said. "There are two confirmed fatalities and four seriously injured. What exploded was a rocket," he said. The cause of the explosion was not immediately known. The airport is located 130km north of Los Angeles. Local television CBS2 broadcast images taken from a helicopter showing debris scattered over a wide area and a semi-trailer split by the blast.
■ UNITED STATES
Cat predicts patients' deaths
Oscar the cat seems to have an uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients are going to die -- by curling up next to them during their final hours. His accuracy, observed in 25 cases, has led the staff at the Providence, Rhode Island, home to call family members once he has chosen someone. It usually means they have less than four hours to live. "He doesn't make too many mistakes. He seems to understand when patients are about to die," said David Dosa in an interview. He described the phenomenon in a poignant essay in Thursday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
■ CANADA
Court officers sentenced
Four former Toronto court officers who used an inmate as a mop to wipe up some spilled juice were sentenced to a combination of house arrest, curfew and probation. The four -- John Feeney, a supervisor, and former officers Thomas Findlay, Kamaljeet Kang and Jeffrey Martin -- were convicted of a 2004 assault on a prisoner who they claimed had spilled some juice on Findlay and refused to clean it up. Authorities said the men then followed Dexter Boyce to his cell, where they kicked and punched him before picking him up and mopping the floor with him. Prosecutors had sought terms of up to five months for the four men, who were convicted last month and sentenced on Wednesday.
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