A man has been charged today with killing six members of his family, whose bodies were found bludgeoned to death in a home in Pennsylvania.

A Chicago woman was charged with first-degree murder today for allegedly hanging her four-year-old son to death by wrapping a sheet from a bunk bed around his neck, authorities said.

A woman who set off a frantic and fruitless search for survivors when she said her husband had called her from under the destroyed World Trade Centre has been jailed for three years.

The son of the US political leader, Louis Farrakhan, has been shot in both legs.