CNN news 2008-04-27 加文本

I'm Asieh Namdar at the cnn.com newsroom in Atlanta. Here's a look at what's happening NOW IN THE NEWS.

We begin with a deadly fire at a mattress factory in Morocco. The Associated Press reports 55 people are dead. The news agency also says the blaze broke out on the ground floor of the factory in Casablanca. Some 150 people work there, dozens of firefighters were on site to try and bring the blaze under control.

Canada CTV reports 42 people are hurt after the floor of a church collapse. It happened in Abbotsford British Columbia. Witnesses say the floor collapse caused a lighting system to fall on a crowd of about 1200 people who were attending a Christian rock concert. A number of people were seriously hurt.(www.hxen.net)

Chicago's police superintendent says officers will now be armed with powerful M4-carbines in a bid to match the firepower of the city street gangs. Right now, rank-and-file officers are only allowed to carry handguns. Police are beefing up patrols after dozens of shootings left at least nine people dead last weekend.

A crew from a Spanish fishing boat has been set free. Twenty-six people were captured by pirates off the coast of Somalia. The Spanish government helped negotiate the release and now says they were in perfect health. The group was taken April 20th when the pirates approached the boat with grenade launchers.

And a bipartisan bill aimed at protecting endangered right whales from collisions with ships is heading to the full Senate. It would establish speed limits for vessels that travel through the whales' path in the North Atlantic. The mammals migrate from the southern US to the Gulf of Maine each summer. Collisions with ships is the NO.1 human cause of right whale deaths.

Well, those are the headlines this hour, for more on these stories and other news of the day, cnn is your source online, on TV or when you are on the go.