200 students trapped in collapsed school
PETIONVILLE, Haiti, Nov. 8 (UPI) -- Haitian rescue workers Saturday were frantically trying to reach nearly 200 children trapped in the rubble of a collapsed school, local media reported.
CNN said the Haiti Press Network reported that by midnight Friday, at least 200 of the 700 children present at the school when it collapsed were still buried inside the wreckage.
At least 50 children were confirmed dead in the catastrophe in Petionville, Haiti, near the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince.
"We are looking at major casualties here," Alex Claudon, a Red Cross official on the scene, told CNN.
Haitian President Rene Preval and Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis toured the disaster area Friday, with local media reporting that Preval said he saw and heard the trapped children crying for help himself.
The Haiti Press Network also reported that a member of the country's parliament is questioning whether the rebuilt school, the College La Promesse Evangelique, was over its student capacity, reportedly calling it not quite solid," CNN said.
Hurricane Paloma bears down on Cuba
HAVANA, Nov. 8 (UPI) -- Hurricane Paloma, heading toward Cuba, is packing sustained winds of 135 mph and has been upgraded to Category 4 status, meteorologists said Saturday.
Accuweater.com forecasters said Paloma was expected to make landfall late Saturday night or early Sunday morning along the south-central coast of Cuba. Rain and strong winds were already pounding the Cayman Islands Saturday as officials urged residents to stay off the streets and evacuated some low-lying coastal regions.
"Before Paloma gets to Cuba, there will be some upper level wind sheer that will take away some of its energy, but it is still likely to be Category 3," said AccuWeather.com senior meteorologist Michael Sager. "The storm will run perpendicular to the island and it will remain over land for about 12 hours. It's likely to have become more disorganized by the time the storm passes on to the Bahamas."
At 4 a.m. Saturday, the storm's center was 40 miles southwest of Little Cayman and about 75 miles east of Grand Cayman and was moving in a northeasterly direction, CNN reported.
Demand high for Obama inauguration tix
CHICAGO, Nov. 8 (UPI) -- Staffers for Illinois' congressional delegation say demand from voters for tickets to U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration is overwhelming.
Constituents say Obama's Jan. 20 inauguration in Washington will be a historic event and they are pouring in requests for tickets to the events by the thousands, officials told the Chicago Tribune Saturday.
"Constituents want to be in Washington and witness history," Kenneth Edmonds, a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr, D-Ill., told the newspaper. "No one should be surprised.
