MELBOURNE (Dispatches)-Four U.S. citizens and an Australian pilot have died after their light plane crashed into a shopping centre in Melbourne, Australia.
The charter flight appeared to have had a "catastrophic engine failure" shortly after taking off from the small Essendon Airport, said police.
Despite the destruction, no-one was killed or injured on the ground.
Victoria's Premier Daniel Andrews said it was the worst civilian aviation accident in the state in 30 years.



QUITO (AP) — Vote counting in Ecuador's presidential election dragged into a third day Tuesday with ruling party candidate Lenin Moreno still just short of a definitive first-round victory and supporters and opponents of outgoing President Rafael Correa trading heated accusations.
With the last ballots trickling in from Sunday's election, Moreno had a little over 39 percent of the votes and an almost 11-point lead over conservative Guillermo Lasso, a former banker who finished second in a field of nine candidates. But Moreno remained just under a point below the 40 percent threshold needed to avoid an April runoff.
It was the first time in recent memory that Ecuadorean authorities had not declared a winner on election night, leading Lasso and many of his supporters to charge that an attempt at fraud was underway as Correa's leftist movement sought to hold onto power at a time the rest of South America has shifted to the right. But Lasso's side did not present any evidence of irregularities.



BAKU (AP) — Azerbaijan's president on Tuesday appointed his wife as the first vice president of the ex-Soviet nation — the person next in line in the nation's power hierarchy.
Ilham Aliyev, 55 named his wife Mehriban, 52, to the position created after a constitutional referendum in September. Mehriban, who married her husband when she was 19, graduated from a medical university. She has served previously as a lawmaker and headed a charity.
The constitutional amendments approved at the referendum introduced the positions of two vice presidents, one of them the first vice president.




WASHINGTON (Press TV)-More than 100 migrant workers across the U.S. have reportedly been fired from their jobs after participating in "Day Without Immigrants” protest last week.
Business owners fired the workers after they skipped a day and stayed at home on Thursday to highlight the contributions of immigrants in the country, amid President Donald Trump’s sweeping measures to curb immigration, U.S. media reported on Monday.
Restaurants, child care centers and construction companies in states like Florida, Tennessee, Oklahoma and New York were among the many businesses that axed their employees.