The 10-year-old boy killed during a ride on the world's tallest waterslide was decapitated in the accident, a person familiar with the investigation said. The person was not authorized to speak publicly about Caleb Schwab's death and spoke Wednesday on condition of anonymity. Caleb died Sunday on the Verruckt raft ride at the Schlitterbahn WaterPark in Kansas City, Kansas.

1. Hanks took the role 1.5 hours into reading the script, but he said he'd only take it if ...
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday pledged to reinvigorate ties after their first meeting since Ankara shot down a Russian warplane last November. Erdogan's visit to Putin's hometown of Saint Petersburg is also his first foreign trip since the failed coup against him last month that sparked a purge of opponents and cast a shadow over Turkey's relations with the West. "We lived through a very complicated moment in the relations between our states and we very much want, and I feel our Turkish friends want, to overcome the difficulties," Putin told journalists at a joint press conference.
Witnesses saw a 14-year-old boy, suspected of spraying gang graffiti, fire at officers before he was shot to death, a Los Angeles Police Department official said on Wednesday. Deputy Chief Robert Arcos told reporters a loaded handgun was recovered from the scene where Jesse James Romero, 14, was gunned down by an LAPD officer during a foot pursuit at about 6 p.m. on Tuesday (0100 GMT Wednesday). Police departments nationwide are under increased scrutiny over fatal shootings, especially of young men, which have re-ignited a debate over the use of lethal force by officers and the role of racial bias in the U.S. criminal justice system.
Democratic Senate candidate Ted Strickland has apologized for a comment he made about former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. During a Monday campaign event in Cleveland, Strickland, Ohio’s former governor, had said Scalia’s death “happened at a good time” because of pending court decisions. In a video posted by NTK Network on YouTube, Strickland is shown speaking to AFL-CIO members about how Supreme Court rulings on labor laws could affect America’s labor unions.

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Shifting sands on a Hawaiian beach have revealed — and then concealed again — carvings that Hawaii's indigenous people made on the shoreline at least 400 years ago. Two tourists from Texas stumbled across the petroglyphs last month on Oahu's Waianae Coast on the western side of the island. "It was just a stroke of luck," Lonnie Watson, one of the visitors, said in a statement issued by the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources.
Thousands of Portuguese firefighters struggled on Thursday to control nearly 200 forest fires after flames killed at least four people on the mainland and the island of Madeira the previous day. Prime Minister Antonio Costa cut short his holidays and flew to Madeira, where more than 200 buildings in the regional capital and popular resort Funchal had been destroyed or damaged and some 1,000 people including tourists evacuated. “We understand the dimension of this horrible tragedy that devastated various municipalities here in Madeira, and we also know about the calamities affecting other zones of the country that now have to be addressed,” he told reporters.
The mother of two of the three girls injured when a Ferris wheel gondola flipped over at a Tennessee county fair said her daughters remain hospitalized two days after the accident. Kimmee Reynolds posted a statement on Facebook that said her youngest girl, 6-year-old Briley Jae, has a concussion, bleeding on her brain and remains on a ventilator. Police are citing a mechanical failure in the accident that dumped three children from a Ferris wheel at Tennessee's Greene County Fair.

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More bad news has arrived for the Democratic National Committee, for the FBI believes the DNC email leaks were much bigger than originally thought. Officials believed the hack primarily targeted emails on just DNC matters, but more evidence has surfaced hackers may have gained access to a number of members’ personal accounts. This update comes after the FBI may have taken its time to toss out an alert.
Apple is very interested in virtual reality, but not all of its hardware can support VR at this point. Detailing the alleged new features of the new laptops, a report casually mentions that some models will pack high-end Polaris graphics cards, which have been built to offer gamers cheap access to VR, at least on desktops. “Apple is using one of AMD’s ‘Polaris graphics chips because the design offers the power efficiency and thinness necessary to fit inside the slimmer Apple notebook,” Bloomberg noted in a new report.
A newly launched satellite will help China protect its maritime interests, the official China Daily newspaper reported on Thursday amid growing tensions over disputed territory in the South China Sea. "The satellite will play an important role in monitoring the marine environment, islands and reefs, and ships and oil rigs," the China Daily said, citing project leader Xu Fuxiang. In July, an international court in The Hague ruled against China's claims in the resource-rich South China Sea in an action brought by the Philippines, a decision stridently rejected by Beijing.