--Second NewsWatch--

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(Wildfires-BC) (Audio:090)

It's finally time to come home for thousands of wildfire evacuees from Fort Nelson, B-C, and the Fort Nelson First Nation.

The area's mayor, Rob Fraser, says 47-hundred residents, forced from their homes May 10th when strong winds pushed the Parker Lake wildfire within a few kilometres of Fort Nelson, will be able to return home this morning.

He says the municipality and the First Nation will jointly rescind their evacuation orders at 8 a-m local time and lift the roadblocks.

The Parker Lake fire and the larger Patry Creek blaze continue to burn out of control, so evacuation alerts will remain in place and residents need to be ready to leave again on short notice. (2)

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(Plane-Crash-BC)

A plane crash has claimed two lives near Squamish, B-C.

The crash was reported Friday evening after an automatic crash notification from a smartphone.

Mounties say police accessed the remote crash site south of Squamish, on the west side of Howe Sound, by air on Saturday and police confirmed the plane's two occupants did not survive.

Investigators are working with the Transportation Safety Board and the B-C Coroners Service to determine the cause of the crash. (2)

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(Ireland-Plane-Turbulence)

Twelve people were injured Sunday when a Qatar Airways flight from Doha to Dublin hit turbulence over Turkey.

Eight of the injured were hospitalized after the Boeing 7-87 Dreamliner landed as scheduled in Dublin and was met by emergency services.

Passenger Paul Mocc told Irish broadcaster R-T-E that he saw "people hitting the roof'' and food and drink flying everywhere.

The incident came five days after a British man died of a suspected heart attack and dozens of people were injured when a Singapore Airlines flight from London hit severe turbulence. (2)

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(Papua-New-Guinea-Landslide)

The government of Papua New Guinea says Friday's landslide buried more than two-thousand people alive and it has formally asked for international help.

The government figure is three times more than the United Nations' estimate of 670.

The remains of only six people had been recovered so far from the buried village in Enga province.

Australia is preparing to send aircraft and other equipment to help its South Pacific neighbour. (2)

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(US-Severe-Weather) (Audio:005)

Powerful storms have killed at least 18 people, injured hundreds and left a wide trail of destruction and power outages across Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas.

The storms obliterated homes and destroyed a truck stop where drivers took shelter during the latest deadly weather to strike the central U-S.

Seven deaths were reported in Cooke County, Texas, near the Oklahoma border, where a tornado Saturday night plowed through a rural area near a mobile home park. (2)

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(US-Election-2024-Trump)

Testimony is over at Donald Trump's criminal hush-money trial in New York after a parade of 22 witnesses took the stand, including his former personal lawyer, a porn actress, a tabloid publisher and White House insiders.

It's the U-S Memorial Day holiday today -- so prosecutors and Trump's lawyers are scheduled to make their closing arguments to the jury on Tuesday.

After that, it'll be up to 12 jurors to decide whether prosecutors have proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump illegally falsified 34 records at his company as part of an effort to keep embarrassing stories from becoming public during his 2016 presidential campaign. (2)

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(NewsWatch by Karen Rebot)

The Canadian Press