Evacuation | featured news

The Kremlin's evacuation of Russians from Syria on Tuesday marks a turning point in its view of the civil war, representing increasing doubts about Bashar Assad's hold on power and a sober understanding that it has to start rescue efforts before it becomes too late....

Hundreds of thousands of people were told to flee low-lying areas, New York and Washington shut down their subways, federal offices and local schools closed, and presidential candidates curtailed their campaigning as Hurricane Sandy roared ever closer to the Eastern Seaboard on Sunday, promising epic storm surges, howling winds and drenching rain across much of the Mid-Atlantic region and Northeast.

All buildings at the University of Texas at Austin were reopened Friday afternoon after a bomb threat earlier prompted a campus-wide evacuation, officials said.

Two universities, in Texas and in North Dakota, ordered the evacuation of their campuses on Friday after receiving bomb threats.

Guatemala's Fuego volcano erupted on Thursday, spewing smoke and ash into the sky and forcing the evacuation of thousands of people, local emergency services said.

A volcano in western Nicaragua erupted Saturday, shooting gas and ashes some 2.5 miles into the sky, a government agency said.

For most of the U.S., Hurricane Isaac has come and gone, and now Southerners and Midwesterners are grappling with the good and bad it left behind. Evacuation orders eased for parts of Louisiana, and many Missouri residents saw the possible end of a long and painful drought when Isaac passed over the state Friday and Saturday, dumping much of its strength before going on to Illinois and Indiana.

A forest fire that continues to burn in the San Gabriel Mountains north of Azusa forced the evacuation of several campgrounds and other facilities that typically attract up to 12,000 visitors on Labor Day weekend, a U.S. Forest Service spokesman said.

Nearly 3,000 residents were evacuated from the heart of Munich on Tuesday before explosives experts detonated the remains of an undetonated, 550-pound World War II bomb, Andy Eckardt of NBC News reports. Bales of straw which had been placed around the bomb to cushion the shock of the detonation were set ablaze and thrown through the air by the detonation, according to the European Pressphoto Agency. Some of them landed on the roofs of neighboring buildings and ignited fires.

More than 2,500 residents were evacuated from the heart of Munich late Monday night after construction workers found an unexploded 550-pound World War II bomb.