BEIJING, China (CNN) - A military transport helicopter carrying people injured in China's disastrous earthquake crashed Saturday afternoon, state media reported.

The helicopter was carrying a crew of four and 10 injured residents when it went down in fog and turbulence in Wenchuan County, the news agency Xinhua said.

Xinhua did not say whether the crash resulted in any casualties. A search and rescue operation was underway, it said.

Wenchuan County is located in Sichuan province, which was hit hardest in the 7.9-magnitude earthquake on May 12.

By Saturday, the official death toll from the quake had risen to 68,977, with another 18,618 people missing.

(CNN) - A 6.4-magnitude earthquake hit the Pacific Ocean off the northern Philippines Sunday morning and was felt as far as southeastern Taiwan, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.

The epicenter was about 50 miles west of Basco, the capital of the Batan Islands in the Philippines and about 340 miles south of Taipei, Taiwan.

No injuries, fatalities or damage were immediately reported, said Manny Torres of the National Disaster Coordinating Center in Manila, Philippines. The center put the earthquake at a 6.3 magnitude.

The Philippines an archipelagic nation in Southeast Asia made up of 7,107 islands. Earthquakes have rattled the region off and on, sometimes with deadly consequences.

A 7.7-magnitude quake killed 1,621 people in Luzon in July 1990. And in August 1976, 8,000 people died in a 7.9-magnitude earthquake in Mindanao.

BEICHUAN COUNTY, China (CNN) - Chinese soldiers and engineers set up a drainage system at an earthquake-created lake that threatened to burst its banks in this central Chinese county, state-run media reported Saturday.

Tangjiashan Lake did not exist before the 7.9-magnitude earthquake which struck mountainous Sichuan province May 12. The quake caused a landslide that dammed Jianjiang River and created the lake.

By Saturday night, the team removed 135,500 cubic meters (176,150 cubic yard) of mud and rocks from the lake, leaving a 475-meter-long (519 yards) channel to divert overflow, Xinhua news agency reported.

The lake's water levels were rising about 1.6 meters (1.75 yards) a day. Authorities were concerned the lake could burst its banks, or that another aftershock or earthquake could rupture the earthen dam and cause a sudden flood of water on the communities downstream.
The project took nearly a week to complete.

(CNN) - Sen. Barack Obama has resigned from his Chicago church - where controversial sermons by his former pastor and another minister had created political headaches for the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The resignation comes days after the Rev. Michael Pfleger, a visiting Catholic priest, mocked Obama's Democratic rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, for crying in New Hampshire during the runup to the primary there.

Previously, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright - former pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ and Obama's minister for about 20 years - drew unwanted attention for the campaign when videos of several of his fiery sermons surfaced.

In them, Wright suggested the U.S. government may be responsible for the spread of AIDS in the black community and equated some American wartime activities to terrorism.

Obama has said he was not present for the controversial sermons by Wright or Pfleger and had condemned both - most recently saying he was "deeply disappointed" by Pfleger's "divisive, backward-looking rhetoric."

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (CNN) - The Space Shuttle Discovery launched on Saturday, in the latest effort to carry supplies to the International Space Station.

The shuttle - which lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center at 5:02 p.m. - will transport components for the Japanese Experiment Module, or Kibo science laboratory. Kibo means "hope" in Japanese.

The shuttle also will carry the Japanese Remote Manipulator System. The crew will install Kibo's large pressurized module and its robotic arm system.

MIAMI, Florida (CNN) - Tropical Storm Arthur, the first named storm of the 2008 Atlantic season, formed Saturday near the coast of Belize, but was already over land and was expected to weaken later in the day, the National Hurricane Center said.

But the center said the the storm still could reemerge into the Gulf of Mexico and regain intensity on Sunday.

As of 5 p.m., the center of Arthur was located about 75 miles (125 km) northwest of Belize City, Belize, and about 195 miles (315 km) southwest of Cozumel, Mexico, forecasters said in an advisory.
The storm's maximum sustained winds were near 40 mph (65 km/hr), with higher gusts, mainly over water east of its center. Tropical storm-force winds extend outward up to 260 miles (415 km) from the center of the storm, forecasters said.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) - The number of deaths among Iraqi civilians, police and insurgents fell sharply in May, data from the country's Health, Defense and Interior ministries showed, and the American death for the month toll in Iraq was at its lowest in four years.

In May, 504 Iraqi civilians lost their lives, the data said, compared with 969 in April. And the death toll for American troops there stood at 21 as of Saturday - the lowest since February 2004, when 20 troops were killed.

The number of Iraqi police killed also plummeted to 32 - less than half of April's death toll for Iraqi police. Insurgent death tolls fell from 354 to 172. However, the number of Iraqi soldiers killed only fell slightly - from 38 to 27, the data said.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) - A suicide car bombing in Iraq's al-Anbar province on Saturday night killed 10 people, six of them police, an official in Iraq's Interior Ministry told CNN.

Another five police and seven civilians were injured in the bombing in the town of Hit (prono: Heet), on the outskirts of the Navea Training Center, an Iraqi military post.

Earlier Saturday, a bombing killed three Iraqis, including a child, and wounded seven others Saturday in Baquba, the U.S. military said in a statement.

WASHINGTON (CNN) - After nearly six hours of testimony on Saturday, the Democratic National Committee's Rules and Bylaws committee broke to have lunch and ponder dueling ideas on how to seat delegates from Florida and Michigan.

The rules committee is addressing two main issues - how many delegates each state is allowed and how those delegates will be allocated between the two candidates.

Supporters of Sen. Hillary Clinton, who came out ahead in both votes despite the fact the states had been penalized for moving their primaries earlier in the season, pushed the committee to give each delegate a full vote and to count the election results as they were registered.

Obama backers testifying before the committee also called for all delegates to be seated, but were pushing for a more equitable split of the delegates - noting that Obama's name didn't even appear on Michigan's ballot and that no candidates campaigned in Florida, giving the more well-known Clinton an edge.

(CNN) - Actress Sharon Stone said in a statement Saturday saying she "could not be more regretful" of her comments earlier this month regarding the earthquake in China, in which she suggested the quake was an act of "karma."

"Yes, I misspoke," said the statement, released by Stone's publicist and entitled, "In my own words by Sharon Stone."

"I could not be more regretful of that mistake. It was unintentional. I apologize. Those words were never meant to be hurtful to anyone," Stone said. "They were an accident of my distraction and a product of news sensationalism."