Niamh Hennessy looks at the bank meltdown, bailouts, rescue plans and protests of the year gone by

As many as eight firefighters and a pilot are presumed dead after a helicopter crashed just after picking up workers battling a blaze in a Northern California forest.

DEMOCRATS in Wisconsin and Hawaii headed to the polls yesterday in a presidential campaign that has grown increasingly negative with charges of broken promises, plagiarism and petty partisanship.

Cloudy skies and occasional raindrops brought a welcome improvement in conditions in southern California, where firefighters were battling wildfires.

Firefighters were battling two raging wildfires in Southern California that forced nearly 2,000 people to evacuate.

Crews searching for any sign of six miners trapped for more than three weeks are “hoping a miracle could happen”, a US federal official told lawmakers.

Taliban leaders and South Korean officials were continuing negotiations by telephone over the fate of the remaining 19 hostages today, but no new face-to-face talks had been planned, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.

Virginia Tech shooter Seung Hui Cho might have made a practice run two days before the massacre, even chaining the doors to the building where he killed 32 people, police said today.

Officials in the US were warned as early as 1990 that a bridge which collapsed into the Mississippi River was “structurally deficient”.

The Afghan army today dropped leaflets warning of impending military action in the region where Taliban militants are holding 21 South Koreans, though the army said the upcoming operation is not connected to the hostages.

Paris Hilton may spend far less than the 45 days she has been sentenced to serve in jail for violating probation, authorities said.

The economy will enjoy solid growth this year and next, the Central Bank forecast today.

Typhoon Saomai, the most powerful storm to hit China in five decades, raged ashore today and churned across the crowded south-east, killing at least two people, wrecking houses and capsizing ships after 1.5 million residents were evacuated.

TENS of thousands of immigrants spilled into the streets in dozens of cities across America yesterday in peaceful protests that some compared to the movements led by the Rev Martin Luther King Jr and farm-labour organiser Caesar Chavez.

Police retrieved the bodies of four men believed to be Macedonians kidnapped in southern Afghanistan but the convoy carrying the remains was later hit by a roadside bomb today, a provincial governor said.

Convicted killer Stanley "Tookie" Williams, the Crips gang co-founder whose case stirred a debate about capital punishment and the possibility of redemption, was executed this morning.

Gov Arnold Schwarzenegger refused to block the execution of Stanley Tookie Williams, rejecting the notion that the founder of the murderous Crips gang had atoned for his crimes and found redemption on death row.

THE US Supreme Court, in an abortion case of relatively narrow scope, cleared the way yesterday for a Missouri prison inmate to terminate her pregnancy.

A bomb blast in a parked car in south-east Turkey today killed two soldiers and injured one civilian, an official said.

A freight train derailed in eastern Turkey today after suspected Kurdish rebels detonated a remote-controlled bomb on the tracks, officials said.

A US Chinook helicopter that crashed in eastern Afghanistan may have been shot down by hostile fire, and the fate of 17 American service members aboard was unclear, the US military said today. The Taliban claimed it attacked the aircraft.

Yahya Barzanji, Irbil

TERRI SCHIAVO'S parents know their brain-damaged daughter is dying and are "dealing with reality", a family spokesman said yesterday, even as their supporters pledged to take their fight to Washington.

A US judge has reserved his decision on the fate of a brain-damaged woman at the centre of an extraordinary political battle.

US PRESIDENT George Bush called yesterday's elections in Iraq a success and promised the United States would continue trying to prepare Iraqis to secure their own country.

SAME-SEX couples will legally exchange vows today when Massachusetts becomes the first US state to allow gay marriage, an election-year milestone likely to fuel legal and political battles nationwide.

Susannah Martin, hanged in 1692 during the Salem witch trials, can finally rest in peace.

A 41-year-old man convicted of killing a minister has been executed by injection.