More Photos (3):

Related articles:

Around the world: Tainted meat affects likely to last months Around the world Around the world Around the world Around the world Around the world Around the world Around the world Around the world Around the world

Education
Assessment Technology, Inc
Social Studies Content Writer Health Care
Rio Salado College
PA's/Online Instructors General
CORT
WAREHOUSE/DRIVER Construction
Komatsu Equipment Co
Mechanic General
CORT
Warehouse Supervisor

VERACRUZ — Tropical Storm Marco roared ashore on Mexico's Gulf Coast with near-hurricane-force winds Tuesday, prompting a shutdown of some oil platforms and forcing the evacuation of some 3,000 people.

Once over land, Marco quickly weakened to a tropical depression and was expected to dissipate as it moved over Mexico's mountainous terrain. Forecasters still warned that rains of up to 5 inches could unleash mudslides.

The storm flooded coastal highways and brought heavy rains to the coast, including the city of Veracruz. But the busy port appeared to have escaped most of the storm's wrath.

SYDNEY — Australia's air-safety bureau is investigating the sudden altitude plunge of a Qantas airplane that left as many as 40 people injured, 20 of them seriously, during a flight from Singapore to the Western Australian city of Perth.

The A330-300, carrying 303 passengers and a crew of 10, was forced to make an emergency landing Tuesday in Learmonth, Western Australia.

Two Air Transport Safety Bureau investigators were in Learmonth and five more were expected to arrive later today, the bureau said. The investigators have quarantined the flight-data recorder and cockpit voice recorder and will interview crew and passengers.

The bureau was expected to give more details in a news conference later today.

OHRID — Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday the U.S. is committed to keeping troops in Kosovo through late next year despite strong Russian opposition to creation of the world's newest country this year.

Following a morning visit to Kosovo, Gates flew to this lakeside resort in Macedonia, a neighbor that has yet to recognize Kosovo's independence. But Kosovo's president told reporters during a news conference with Gates that he was optimistic that Macedonia and Montenegro would join the nearly 50 nations that have recognized his country.

Russia, like several other countries with separatist troubles of their own, worries that the Kosovo example will encourage resistance movements in breakaway regions.

The U.N. Security Council unanimously passed a resolution Tuesday calling on all countries with a stake in maritime safety off Somalia to send naval ships and military aircraft to confront growing piracy there.

The measure urging stepped-up international action also called for ships and planes to use "the necessary means" to stop piracy. It was adopted under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, which means its provisions can be enforced militarily.

The French-drafted resolution said the surge in piracy and armed robbery off Somalia's coast poses a serious threat "to the prompt, safe and effective delivery of humanitarian aid to Somalia," where as many as 3.5 million people will reportedly be dependent on food aid by year's end.

BEIJING — Lawyers advising the families of children sickened in China's tainted-milk scandal said Tuesday they are facing growing official pressure to withdraw from the cases.

A loose grouping of more than 100 lawyers across China has been offering free legal advice to the families of children who became ill after drinking milk laced with the industrial chemical melamine, said Chang Boyang, one of the lawyers.

The group has helped the parents of a 1-year-old boy who developed kidney stones after drinking tainted milk to file a lawsuit against the dairy at the center of the crisis, Sanlu Group Co. The court in Henan province has not yet said whether it will hear the suit, believed to be the first since the scandal broke last month.

The government has been struggling to show the public it is dealing successfully with the scandal, which has battered the country's image. At least four babies have died and more than 54,000 children have been sickened.