An EA-18G Growler launches from the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) in this U.S. Navy picture taken in the Arabian Gulf October 28, 2014. REUTERS/U.S. Navy/Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class John Philip Wagner Jr./Handout via Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and its allies carried out 27 airstrikes on Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq in the past three days, U.S. military officials said on Friday.

Fighting positions, buildings and fortifications were hit in seven attacks near the Syrian cities of Kobani and Aleppo and on the border with Iraq, according to a statement from the Combined Joint Task Force for the coalition overseeing the operation.

Islamic State was hit with 20 strikes in Iraq near the cities of Ramadi, Ar Rutbah, Mosul, al-Qaim, Samarra, Rawah and al Asad, the statement said.

(Writing by Bill Trott; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

KABC – Los Angeles
Tornado touches down in South LA

A second-story walkway to apartment units is shown after it collapsed during heavy rains in Long Beach, California, December 12, 2014. REUTERS/Bob Riha Jr.

By Steve Gorman and Michael Fleeman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A Pacific storm pounded Southern California with heavy rain and high winds on Friday, triggering flash floods and mudslides that prompted the evacuation of hundreds of homes, damaged dozens of others and disrupted passenger rail service along the coast.

One person was found dead on Friday in a rain-swollen flood-control channel in the Orange County town of Garden Grove, which could mark the third storm-related fatality on the West Coast since Thursday.

Separately, rescue teams saved two people after they were swept away in the fast-moving Los Angeles River near a homeless encampment, the Los Angeles Fire Department said in Twitter messages.

The Ventura County Fire Department said its personnel had responded to 37 flooding-related calls and that a second-story balcony collapsed in the Los Angeles suburb of Long Beach.

High winds tore down power lines throughout the region, leaving as many as 78,000 customers without electricity after the storm moved in before dawn, utility officials reported.

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A car makes its way through standing water as a winter storm brings rain and high winds to Cardiff, …

The National Weather Service warned that thunderstorms and even tornadoes were possible as the storm front advanced. A water spout was sighted over the ocean near Los Angeles International Airport on Friday morning.

The severe weather was spawned by a storm system dubbed a "pineapple express," a large low-pressure area that siphoned vast amounts of moisture from the tropical Pacific near the Hawaiian islands and dumped it on the West Coast as it moved over land, Weather Service Meteorologist Ryan Kattell said.

The same storm pummeled the Pacific Northwest and the northern half of California on Thursday with torrential downpours and gale-force gusts that caused widespread power outages and disrupted commercial flights in San Francisco.

ROCKS PILED TO ROOF LINES

One of the areas hardest hit on Friday was the community of Camarillo Springs, north of Los Angeles, where boulder-strewn rivers of mud swept down hillsides that a wildfire had stripped of vegetation last year.

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A second-story walkway to apartment units is shown after it collapsed during heavy rains in Long Bea …

Dozens of homes were damaged, and at least 10 were red-tagged as unsafe to enter, Ventura County authorities said.

Mounds of rock were left piled against several houses up to their roofs in the area. The National Weather Service said rain was falling at nearly 2 inches (5 cm) an hour before the slide. Authorities ordered the evacuation of more than 100 homes deemed to be at risk in the area.

About 1,000 homes were placed under evacuation orders in the Los Angeles suburb of Glendora, where mudslides from a wildfire-burned area there left several roads impassable overnight, police Lieutenant Matt Williams said.

He said emergency crews rescued one motorist whose truck became caught in the muck.

Severe weather prompted Amtrak to suspend service on two coastal routes between Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo, 150 miles to the north, the passenger rail line said. But service was restored to both hours later.

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Light vehicle traffic is seen on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California December 11, 20 …

The highest rainfall measured on Friday was at San Marcos Pass, just north of Santa Barbara, where more than 5 inches (12 cm) fell, Kattell said.

Harsh weather was blamed for two deaths on Thursday in Oregon. In southern Oregon near Ashland, a homeless man camping with his 18-year-old son was killed when a tree toppled onto their tent. Portland police said a tree fell on a car that then swerved into another tree, killing a boy who was a passenger.

It was not known whether the body in Garden Grove was a weather-related fatality or a victim who died of some other cause and was washed into the flood channel, officials said.

The storm was expected to provide little relief from the multi-year drought that has forced sharp cutbacks in irrigation supplies to farmers and conservation measures across California.

(Reporting from Los Angeles by Steve Gorman, Michael Fleeman, Dan Whitcomb and Jon Alcorn; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Sandra Maler)

CBSTV Videos
On the ground with Eric Garner protesters

By Sebastien Malo and Frank McGurty

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Demonstrators staged mass "whistle-blowing" rallies outside police stations across New York City on Friday to start a second weekend of planned protests against the killing of an unarmed black man by a white patrolman.

In Harlem, about three dozen protesters marched past public housing projects where they say police abuse is particularly pervasive before rallying outside a local police station house. There, the crowd blew metal whistles, piercing the cold air with the high-pitch shrill.

"We are here because out of this precinct, regularly, routinely, they abuse people in these housing projects," organizer Kevin Lee, 59, told the throng of protesters.

The idea was to "literally blow the whistle on killer cops ... in the communities most affected by police brutality," according to a statement by Stop Mass Incarceration Network, which organized similar protests in the boroughs of Bronx and Queens to be held on Friday.

The whistle-blowing was part of a wave of protests that have swept the city since last week, when a grand jury decided not to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo in the July chokehold death of Eric Garner.

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People hold candles while they take part in a rally to call for action in response to police violenc …

While recent demonstrations have drawn fewer people, and the number of arrests has dropped, a poll released on Friday shows that many New Yorkers agree that justice has not been served in the Garner case.

Nearly two-thirds of New York adults believe that the grand jury should have brought criminal charges against Pantaleo, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll released on Friday. The poll of 760 adults was conducted from Dec. 4-10.

Earlier, as thousands of tourists and shoppers bustled through Times Square, protesters held up stark black and white signs bearing the names of more than 100 people who organizers say were victims of police violence. Some of them read out the name and a short narrative about each.

The artists, members of a Brooklyn-based collective called We Will Not Be Silent, organized the "language project" with the help of a Facebook event page.

"We try to take the language we hear on the street, the language of rage and sorrow," said Laurie Arbieter, one of the organizers. "We make complex thought come alive in the hands of the protesters by having it read boldly in black and white."

In Lower Manhattan, more than 100 people gathered in the cold on the steps of City Hall for a more traditional rally, some carrying homemade banners demanding an end to police violence.

(Additional reporting by Natasja Sheriff; Writing by Frank McGurty; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Lisa Shumaker)

BANJARNEGARA, Indonesia (AP) — A mudslide set off by torrential rains rushed down hills into a village in central Indonesia and swept away scores of homes, killing at least 18 people and leaving 90 others missing, officials said Saturday.

About 105 houses were swept away by the landslide late Friday in Jemblung village in Central Java province's Banjarnegara district, said Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for the National Disaster Mitigation Agency.

Hundreds of rescuers, including soldiers, police and residents, dug through the debris Saturday with their bare hands, shovels and hoes, while others used bamboo to carry black body bags containing corpses. About 420 residents were evacuated to temporary shelters.

Crying relatives watched in horror as residents and rescuers pulled out mud-caked bodies from the village, while distraught women screamed at a hospital, MetroTV video showed.

Nugroho said some rescuers heard what sounded like calls for help coming from the debris, but that a lack of equipment had prevented them reaching possible victims. "Mud, rugged terrain and bad weather hampered our rescue efforts," Nugroho said.

Tractors and bulldozers were later brought in to help with the rescue effort.

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Rescuers help to evacuate a cow after a village was swept away by landslides in Jemblung, Central Ja …

Eighteen bodies were pulled from the mud and the wreckage of crumpled homes, and rescuers were struggling to search for 90 people still missing, said Sutedjo Slamet Utomo, the district chief of Barnjarnegara, located about 460 kilometers (285 miles) east of the capital, Jakarta. Eleven badly injured villagers were hospitalized.

Residents in Jemblung village described how they were horrified by the mound of red soil that suddenly cascaded down hills and hit houses.

"It was like a nightmare. ... We suddenly heard a terrible roar and we were immediately fleeing from the rain of red soil," said Wahono, a resident who survived with his four family members. "Many failed and they were buried in the ground."

Wahono, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, said he heard people screaming and pleading for help in the heavy rain and darkness. But he said he was unable to do anything other than run with his family to safety.

The landslide was the second in several days on densely populated Java island. Mud and rocks hit Central Java's Wonosobo district on Thursday, killing at least one villager.

Seasonal rains and high tides in recent days have caused dozens of landslides and widespread flooding across much of Indonesia, a chain of 17,000 islands where millions of people live in mountainous areas or near fertile flood-prone plains close to rivers.

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Associated Press writer Niniek Karmini in Jakarta contributed to this report.