Plane breaks apart over California neighborhood, killing 5 people

YORBA LINDA, Calif. – Five people died and two were injured after a small plane apparently broke apart Sunday over a Southern California suburb, raining debris on a neighborhood and setting a house on fire, authorities said. Four people in the house that burned in the city of Yorba Linda were killed, along with the pilot, who was the only person in the twin-engine Cessna 414A, Orange County Sheriff’s Lt. Cory Martino told reporters. The debris field spanned about four blocks, Martino told reporters Monday.

HOUSTON – The U.S. government is preparing to begin construction of more border walls and fencing in South Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, likely on federally owned land set aside as wildlife refuge property. Heavy construction equipment was expected to arrive starting Monday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said. A photo posted by the nonprofit National Butterfly Center shows an excavator parked next to its property. Congress last March approved more than $600 million for 33 miles of new barriers in the Rio Grande Valley.

CARACAS, Venezuela – More than a dozen European Union countries endorsed Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country’s interim president on Monday, piling the pressure on embattled President Nicolas Maduro to resign and clear the way for a new presidential election. Maduro stood defiant, rejecting a U.S. offer of humanitarian aid that has shifted attention to Venezuela’s western border with Colombia, where opponents were gearing up to try to bring emergency food and medicine into the country.

DAKAR, Senegal – An international group of public health experts on Monday called on the World Health Organization to convene an emergency committee to consider declaring Congo’s Ebola outbreak an international public health emergency. The group of experts wrote in the Lancet that such a call would help galvanize “support to address the Ebola outbreak that started last May.” The outbreak, declared just over six months ago in Congo’s east, is the country’s 10th- and the world’s second-largest recorded.