Death Toll

The death toll from Typhoon Skip soared to 129 today, bringing to nearly 600 the number of people killed in three storms that pounded the Philippines in the past two weeks.

Syrian security forces reportedly shot and killed at least six people in the southern city of Dara and in the central city of Homs on Tuesday, a day of extensive protests against President Bashar Assad on the Eid al-Fitr, the last day of fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. According to activists inside Syria, the death toll between Monday afternoon and Tuesday afternoon stood at 23, including 17 killed on Monday. Protests also broke out in the commercial city of Aleppo, which has largely remained on the sidelines during the country's five months of uprisings, the greatest challenge to four decades of rule by the Assad family.

The toll in four days of street fighting in Thailand's capital rose to 30 dead and 232 injured, authorities announced Sunday as the government set a deadline of Monday afternoon for protesters to vacate their encampment in a glitzy shopping district. 11 p.m. UPDATE: The death toll in Thailand's protests has risen to 35. Troops continued to fire high-powered rifles from behind sandbags in the direction of the protest camp they had surrounded in a bid to contain anti-government demonstrators within a roughly square-mile base in downtown Bangkok's Ratchaprasong district.

The death toll in clashes in the Jamaican capital climbed past 50 on Wednesday as the government struggled to regain shaky control of slums where a reputed drug lord is headquartered. The man, a hero in some parts of the Caribbean island but wanted for extradition by the U.S., remained a fugitive and may have escaped the offensive launched to capture him. On a fourth day of smoldering urban violence, Kingston continued under a state of emergency, many streets deserted and gunfire erupting sporadically.

Monsoon floods have killed 10 more people in Bangladesh and in India's remote northeast and stranded more than a million villagers, as weather forecasters warned that the region's rivers continued to swell. Officials in Bangladesh said Tuesday that the latest victims were four children, bringing the nation's death toll from a weeklong deluge to 59. The fatalities occurred Monday in the southern and southeastern districts of Cox's Bazar, Bhola and Feni, government relief officials said.

With more than 700 people reported dead, rescuers smashed through fallen walls and sawed into rubble Sunday in an urgent push to find survivors of the massive earthquake that roared through Chile a day earlier. Some 2 million were said to be displaced, injured or otherwise impaired by the disaster. Untold numbers remained missing. Government forces struggled to contain looting in some of the most heavily damaged areas, dispatching the army to the task in Concepcion, Chile's second-largest city.

Thailand's army declared a glitzy shopping district in the center of Bangkok a "live firing zone" Saturday as the death toll rose to 24 on the third day of a bloody standoff between troops and anti-government protesters. Taking cover behind sandbags and on rooftops, troops fired live rounds in a bid to contain the demonstrators, who have demanded that Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva resign, call immediate elections and leave the country. The "Red Shirt" protesters faced the troops down, erecting barriers of tires and bamboo sticks and wielding gas bombs, stones, guns and homemade rockets as they vowed to maintain their two-month siege.

The death toll in time-bomb explosions at two seaside cafes July 11 has risen to nine, security officials reported Wednesday. The two bombs, placed by unidentified saboteurs, injured 88.

Rescuers said Tuesday that they recovered the bodies of two avalanche victims in the Swiss Alps, raising this winter's death toll to 24. Last winter, 55 people died in avalanches, a 15-year high.