Alabama hostage standoff

The FBI says the Alabama man who held a 5-year-old boy captive in an underground bunker for nearly a week engaged in a "firefight" with SWAT agents before he was killed during a rescue operation.

Officials say they stormed a bunker in Alabama to rescue a 5-year-old child being held hostage there after his abductor was seen with a gun.

Hundreds of people have turned out at a service to remember an Alabama bus driver who was shot to death trying to protect the young children on his school bus.

Negotiators have been talking through a 4-inch-wide ventilation pipe to a man holding a 5-year-old boy hostage in an underground shelter in rural Alabama.