Casualties

The Defense Department last week identified the following American military personnel killed in Afghanistan and Iraq: Christopher S. Frost, 24, of Waukesha, Wis.; staff sergeant, Air Force. Frost was killed Monday along with seven members of the Iraqi air force when their Russian-built MI-17 transport helicopter crashed in a sandstorm near Baiji, Iraq, north of Baghdad. He was assigned to the 377th Air Base Wing at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. -- Steven R. Koch, 23, of Milltown, N. J.; specialist, Army.

It didn't have to be like this. In the age of green screens and VFX houses, filmmakers responsible for the sixth installment of the "Fast & Furious" franchise didn't have to actually destroy hundreds of cars. They didn't have to run over a custom 1969 Ford Mustang with a tank. The 2008 BMW M5, one of several demolished, didn't need to be thrown through a building. And the 1970 Ford Escort Mark 1 - beloved in the United Kingdom - didn't need to be tossed 70 feet in the air over a freeway divider with a live stunt driver behind the wheel.

To help students cope if war breaks out in the Persian Gulf, Marine Corps officials and Irvine school principals and psychologists set up a contingency plan Thursday to exchange information about deaths, injuries and rumors. "We have to prepare ourselves as if we're going to war," said Dan Graham, principal of El Toro Marine School, an Irvine Unified School District elementary school with a large number of military children. "We can't assume we're not going to war. We'd like to think last-minute things happen, and we hope they do. If they don't, we are prepared to assist our families."

TEHRAN - A powerful earthquake hit southeastern Iran near Pakistan on Tuesday, but the extent of damage and casualties was not immediately clear. Iranian state television initially reported at least 40 people had died in the quake, which Iranian seismologists estimated at magnitude 7.7. But authorities later said no one was known to have died in Iran. State TV said 27 people had been injured. The quake struck at 3:14 p.m. local time, with its epicenter in Saravan, an isolated region not far from Iran's borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The death of Rick Centanni of Yorba Linda was announced Friday over the intercom at Esperanza High School in Anaheim. Class of 2008. Member of the football team. Marine lance corporal killed earlier this week by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. Just 19. A secretary put Centanni's yearbook, the one in which his photo shows off his broad shoulders and wide smile, out at the front desk. Students, she knew, were sure to ask to see it. This isn't the first time this has happened at Esperanza.

Rescue workers on Saturday pulled bodies from the rubble of a shopping center that collapsed, killing eight people and injuring 32 others in southeastern China, state media and a city official reported. Initially, more than 100 people were believed to have been trapped under debris after the accident Friday afternoon in Dongguan, state media reported.

War casualties TOTAL U.S. DEATHS In and around Iraq: 4,352 In and around Afghanistan: 793 Other locations: 72 Includes military and Department of Defense-employed civilian personnel killed in action and in nonhostile circumstances as of Thursday Source: Department of Defense

BOSTON - As 3 o'clock neared Monday afternoon, officials at Brigham and Women's Hospital, one of Boston's premier medical centers, expected this year's marathon would be a nonevent. "We were winding down," said Barry Wante, the hospital's emergency management director. The slow pace was welcome after last year, when unseasonably warm weather led to a rash of heat injuries among runners, inundating the city's hospitals. Full coverage: Explosions at the Boston Marathon But on Monday, the hospital's radios suddenly crackled with reports from the finish line.

Kevin and Celeste Corcoran had already survived one trauma two years ago when a car struck their daughter, Sydney, and left her with a fractured skull. Sydney, now an 18-year-old senior at Lowell High School in Lowell, Mass., fought hard to recover, and was bound for Middlesex Community College this fall. On Monday, Sydney and her parents were standing near the finish line at the Boston Marathon when two explosions ripped through the street, said Paul Corcoran, her great-uncle.

KABUL, Afghanistan - The commander of the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan said Sunday that his forces were prepared to comply with President Hamid Karzai's demand that Afghan forces stop requesting international airstrikes in residential areas. Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. downplayed the effects of Karzai's directive, even though Afghanistan's fledgling security forces rely entirely on U.S. and NATO warplanes for air power against Taliban-led insurgents. "We can continue to support the Afghan National Security Forces and meet the president's intent," Dunford said.

Aaron Swartz was a wunderkind, a gifted boy who became a remarkable young man. He created a Wikipedia-like Web app and RSS software when he was a teenager. As a college student, he co-founded the website service Reddit. But like a figure in a fairy tale, despite his gifts, he was also evidently haunted: by severe depression, and lately by the prospect of a federal trial for a bakers' dozen of felony charges. Swartz was found dead over the weekend, hanged in his New York apartment, a suicide at age 26. The online world is aghast.

ASHDOD, Israel - School is out in this coastal city, Israel's fifth-most populous, but the playgrounds are empty. Most shops in the Sea Mall shopping center are closed. Halfway between Gaza City and Tel Aviv, Ashdod has been the target of rockets from the Gaza Strip during several days of hostilities between Israel and Hamas, the militant group that controls the strip. Between air raid sirens, citizens try to maintain some sense of normality, while staying within running distance of shelter.

CBS is breaking up its low-rated "Partners. " The network is canceling the comedy about the professional and personal relationship of two male friends -- one of whom is gay. The show, from "Will & Grace" co-creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick, was the lowest-performing show on the network's Monday hit comedy bloc, which includes "Mike and Molly" and "2 Broke Girls. " "Partners" is the third new show to be canceled this season. CBS yanked "Made in Jersey" while NBC pulled "Animal Practice.

During his deployment to Afghanistan as a flight medic with the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, Sgt. Eric Williams kept a blog about the dangers and frustrations of a war zone. In his "Coming Home" entry of July 17, the 27-year-old Williams wrote that his yearlong deployment was nearing an end. He said he would need time to reflect on what he had seen in Afghanistan and to adjust to a homeland where few civilians truly know, or perhaps even care, about the war or the soldiers fighting in it. "We have [been]

BEIRUT - Syria's armed opposition, driven back from Damascus in a fierce government counteroffensive last summer, appears to be responding with a revamped strategy that runs through some of the capital's most explosive sectarian and ethnic fault lines. A pair of bombings this week struck districts that are strongholds of President Bashar Assad's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam whose adherents are generally hostile to the Sunni-led uprising. Trusted Alawite commanders run much of Assad's security apparatus.