ReportWire

Tag: Search and rescue efforts

  • Officials probe India bridge collapse as divers comb river

    Officials probe India bridge collapse as divers comb river

    [ad_1]

    MORBI, India — Scuba divers combed through a river in western India on Wednesday to make certain no bodies were left behind after the collapse of a newly repaired suspension bridge, as officials investigate what led to the tragedy that killed at least 135 people.

    The 143-year-old pedestrian bridge collapsed Sunday evening, sending hundreds plunging into the waters of the Machchu River in Gujarat state’s Morbi town. As rescuers continue to search through the deep and muddy waters, questions have swirled over why the bridge collapsed and who might be responsible. The bridge, built during British colonialism and touted by the state’s tourism website as an “artistic and technological marvel,” had reopened just four days earlier.

    As of Tuesday night, 196 people were rescued and all 10 of the injured were in stable condition. Officials said no one was missing according to their tally, but emergency responders and divers continued search efforts.

    “We want to be on the side of caution,” Police Inspector-General Ashok Yadav had said.

    Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived at the site Tuesday to inspect the collapsed bridge and visit injured people at a hospital. He also chaired a meeting with officials and urged for a detailed investigation into what went wrong.

    Police have so far arrested nine people — including managers of the bridge’s operator, Oreva Group — and have begun a probe into the incident. State authorities also have a case against Oreva for suspected culpable homicide, attempted culpable homicide and other violations.

    As families mourn the dead, attention has shifted to the quality of the renovation and repair work carried out by Oreva, a group of companies known mainly for making clocks, mosquito zappers and electric bikes.

    On Tuesday evening, prosecutors told a local court that the contractors who oversaw the repair work were not qualified, Press Trust of India news agency reported.

    Citing a forensic report, the prosecution said that while the bridge’s flooring was replaced, its cable was not and so it could not bear the weight of the new flooring, causing the cable to snap.

    In March, the Morbi town government awarded a 15-year contract to to Oreva to maintain and manage the bridge. The same month, Oreva closed the bridge for seven months for repairs.

    The bridge, which spans a wide section of the Machchu river, has been repaired several times in the past and many of its original parts have been replaced over the years. It was reopened Oct. 26, the first day of the Gujarati New Year, which coincides with the Hindu festival season. The attraction drew hundreds of sightseers.

    Sandeepsinh Zala, a Morbi official, told the Indian Express newspaper the company reopened the bridge without first obtaining a “fitness certificate.” That could not be independently verified, but officials said they were investigating.

    A security video of the disaster showed it shaking violently and people trying to hold on to its cables and metal fencing before the aluminum walkway gave out and crashed into the river. The bridge split in the middle with its walkway hanging down and its cables snapped.

    It was unclear how many people were on the bridge when it collapsed. Survivors said it was so densely packed that people were unable to quickly escape when cables began to snap.

    Modi was the top elected official of Gujarat for 12 years before becoming India’s prime minister in 2014. A Gujarat state government election is expected in coming months and opposition parties have demanded a thorough investigation of the accident.

    India’s infrastructure has long been marred by safety problems, and Morbi has suffered other major disasters. In 1979, an upstream dam on the Machchu river burst, sending walls of water into the city and killing hundreds of people in one of India’s biggest dam failures.

    In 2001, thousands of people died in an earthquake in Gujarat. Morbi, 150 kilometers (90 miles) from the quake’s epicenter in Bhuj, suffered widespread damage. According to a report in the Times of India newspaper, the bridge that collapsed Sunday was also severely damaged in that earthquake.

    ———

    Associated Press journalist Ajit Solanki contributed.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Greece: Dozens missing after boat carrying migrants sinks

    Greece: Dozens missing after boat carrying migrants sinks

    [ad_1]

    ATHENS, Greece — Greek authorities have launched a major search and rescue operation for dozens of migrants missing after a boat they were traveling on from Turkey overturned and sank in rough weather overnight between the islands of Evia and Andros.

    The coast guard said Tuesday that nine people, all men, had been found on an uninhabited rocky islet in the Kafirea Straits between the two islands, which lie east of the Greek capital. The survivors, who were picked up by a coast guard patrol boat, told authorities there had been a total of about 68 people on board the sailing boat when it sank, and that they had initially set sail from Izmir on the Turkish coast.

    Authorities were initially alerted by a distress call in the early hours of Tuesday from passengers saying the boat they were on was in trouble, but they did not provide a location. Weather in the area was particularly rough, with gale force winds. The coast guard said a helicopter, a coast guard patrol boat and two nearby ships were participating in the search and rescue operation.

    ———

    Follow all AP stories on global migration at https://apnews.com/hub/migration.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Nine arrested after bridge collapses in India, killing 134

    Nine arrested after bridge collapses in India, killing 134

    [ad_1]

    MORBI, India — Police in western India arrested nine people on Monday as they investigated the collapse of a newly repaired 143-year-old suspension bridge in one of the country’s worst accidents in years, officials said. The collapse Sunday evening in Gujarat state plunged hundreds of people into a river, killing at least 134.

    As families mourned the dead, attention turned to why the pedestrian bridge, built during British colonialism in the late 1800s and touted by the state’s tourism website as an “artistic and technological marvel,” collapsed and who might be responsible. The bridge had reopened just four days earlier.

    Inspector-General Ashok Yadav said police have formed a special investigative team, and that those arrested include managers of the bridge’s operator, Oreva Group, and its staff.

    “We won’t let the guilty get away, we won’t spare anyone,” Yadav said.

    Gujarat authorities opened a case against Oreva for suspected culpable homicide, attempted culpable homicide and other violations.

    In March, the local Morbi town government awarded a 15-year contract to maintain and manage the bridge to Oreva, a group of companies known mainly for making clocks, mosquito zappers and electric bikes. The same month, Oreva closed the bridge, which spans a wide section of the Machchu river, for repairs.

    The bridge has been repaired several times in the past and many of its original parts have been replaced over the years.

    It was reopened nearly seven months later, on Oct. 26, the first day of the Gujarati New Year, which coincides with the Hindu festival season, and the attraction drew hundreds of sightseers.

    Sandeepsinh Zala, a Morbi official, told the Indian Express newspaper the company reopened the bridge without first obtaining a “fitness certificate.” That could not be independently verified, but officials said they were investigating.

    Authorities said the structure collapsed under the weight of hundreds of people. A security video of the disaster showed it shaking violently and people trying to hold on to its cables and metal fencing before the aluminum walkway gave way and crashed into the river.

    The bridge split in the middle with its walkway hanging down, its cables snapped.

    Police said at least 134 people were confirmed dead and many others were admitted to hospitals in critical condition. Emergency responders and rescuers worked overnight and throughout Monday to search for survivors. State minister Harsh Sanghvi said most of the victims were teenagers, women and older people.

    At least 177 survivors were pulled from the river, said Jigar Khunt, an information department official in Gujarat. It was unclear how many people were on the bridge when it collapsed and how many remained missing, but survivors said it was so densely packed that people were unable to quickly escape when its cables began to snap.

    “There were just too many people on the bridge. We could barely move,” Sidik Bai, 27, said while recovering from injuries in a hospital in Morbi.

    Sidik said he jumped into the water when the bridge began to crack and saw his friend being crushed by its metal walkway. He survived by clinging to the bridge’s cables.

    “Everyone was crying for help, but one by one they all began disappearing in the water,” Sidik said.

    Local news channels ran pictures of the missing shared by concerned relatives, and family members raced to overcrowded hospitals searching for their loved ones.

    Gujarat is the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was visiting the state at the time of the accident. He said he was “deeply saddened by the tragedy” and his office announced compensation for families of the dead and called for speedy rescue efforts.

    “Rarely in my life, would I have experienced such pain,” Modi said during a public event in the state on Monday.

    Modi was the top elected official of Gujarat for 12 years before becoming India’s prime minister in 2014. A Gujarat state government election is expected in coming months and opposition parties have demanded a thorough investigation of the accident.

    The bridge collapse was Asia’s third major disaster involving large crowds in a month.

    On Saturday, a Halloween crowd surge killed more than 150 people attending festivities in Itaewon, a neighborhood in Seoul, South Korea. On Oct. 1, police in Indonesia fired tear gas at a soccer match, causing a crush that killed 132 people as spectators tried to flee.

    India’s infrastructure has long been marred by safety problems, and Morbi has suffered other major disasters. In 1979, an upstream dam on the Machchu river burst, sending walls of water into the city and killing hundreds of people in one of India’s biggest dam failures.

    In 2001, thousands of people died in an earthquake in Gujarat. Morbi, 150 kilometers (90 miles) from the quake’s epicenter in Bhuj, suffered widespread damage. According to a report in the Times of India newspaper, the bridge that collapsed Sunday also was severely damaged.

    ———

    Hussain, Saaliq and Pathi reported from New Delhi.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Over 100 dead, dozens missing in storm-ravaged Philippines

    Over 100 dead, dozens missing in storm-ravaged Philippines

    [ad_1]

    MANILA, Philippines — More than 100 people have died in one of the most destructive storms to lash the Philippines this year with dozens more feared missing after villagers fled in the wrong direction and got buried in a boulder-laden mudslide. Almost two million others were swamped by floods in several provinces, officials said Monday.

    At least 53 of 105 people who died — mostly in flash floods and landslides — were from Maguindanao province in a Muslim autonomous region, which was swamped by unusually heavy rains set off by Tropical Storm Nalgae. The storm blew out into the South China Sea on Sunday, leaving a trail of destruction in a large swath of the archipelago.

    A large contingent of rescuers with bulldozers, backhoes and sniffer dogs resumed retrieval work in southern Kusiong village in hard-hit Maguindanao, where as many as 80 to 100 people, including entire families, are feared to have been buried by a boulder-laden mudslide or swept away by flash floods that started overnight Thursday, said Naguib Sinarimbo, the interior minister for the Bangsamoro autonomous region run by former separatist guerrillas under a peace pact.

    The government’s main disaster-response agency said there were at least 98 storm deaths, and seven other fatalities were later reported by three provincial governors. At least 69 people were injured and 63 others remain missing.

    About 1.9 million people were lashed by the storm, including more than 975,000 villagers who fled to evacuation centers or homes of relatives. At least 4,100 houses and 16,260 hectares (40,180 acres) of rice and other crops were damaged by floodwaters at a time when the country was bracing for a looming food crisis because of global supply disruptions, officials said.

    Sinarimbo said the official tally of missing people did not include most of those feared missing in the huge mudslide that hit Kusiong because entire families may have been buried and no member was left to provide names and details to authorities.

    The catastrophe in Kusiong, populated mostly by the Teduray ethnic minority group, was particularly tragic because its more than 2,000 villagers have carried out disaster-preparedness drills every year for decades to brace for a tsunami because of a deadly history. But they were not as prepared for the dangers that could come from Mount Minandar, where their village lies at the foothills, Sinarimbo said.

    “When the people heard the warning bells, they ran up and gathered in a church on a high ground,” Sinarimbo told The Associated Press on Saturday, citing accounts by Kusiong villagers.

    “The problem was, it was not a tsunami that inundated them but a big volume of water and mud that came down from the mountain,” he said.

    In August 1976, an 8.1-magnitude earthquake and a tsunami in the Moro Gulf that struck around midnight left thousands of people dead and devastated coastal provinces in one of the deadliest natural disasters in Philippine history.

    Lying between the Moro Gulf and 446-meter (1,464-foot) Mount Minandar, Kusiong was among the hardest hit by the 1976 catastrophe. The village never forgot the tragedy. Elderly villagers who survived the tsunami and powerful earthquake passed on the nightmarish story to their children, warning them to be prepared.

    “Every year, they hold drills to brace for a tsunami. Somebody was assigned to bang the alarm bells and they designated high grounds where people should run to,” Sinarimbo said. “Villagers were even taught the sound of an approaching big wave based on the recollection of the tsunami survivors.”

    “But there wasn’t as much focus on the geo-hazards on the mountainside,” he said.

    There were more than 100 rescuers from the army, police and volunteers from other provinces Saturday in Kusiong, but they were unable to dig at a spot where survivors said the church lay underneath because the muddy mound was still dangerously soft, officials said.

    A coast guard video provided to media on Monday showed some of its men helping search for buried bodies in Kusiong by poking long wooden sticks into the muddy, light-brown sludge.

    The stormy weather in a large swath of the country hindered transportation as millions of Filipinos planned to travel over a long weekend for visits to relatives’ tombs and for family reunions on All Saints’ Day in the largely Roman Catholic nation.

    Nearly 200 domestic and international flights were canceled, Manila’s international airport was briefly closed amid stormy weather and voyages in storm-whipped seas were prohibited by the coast guard, stranding thousands of passengers.

    Floodwaters swamped many provinces and cities, trapping some people on their roofs. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. inspected the extent of damage aboard a helicopter over Cavite province Monday and later handed boxes of food and other supplies to storm victims in Noveleta town, where some residents were trapped on their roofs at the height of flooding over the weekend.

    “The powerful surge of water destroyed the flood controls so there was so much flooding,” he told a news conference.

    About 20 typhoons and storms batter the Philippine archipelago each year. It is located on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a region along most of the Pacific Ocean rim where many volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur, making the nation one of the world’s most disaster-prone.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • 4 people killed in shooting at home near Denver

    4 people killed in shooting at home near Denver

    [ad_1]

    AURORA, Colo. — Authorities are searching for a suspect in an overnight shooting that left four people dead at a home in suburban Denver.

    Dan Oates, Aurora’s interim police chief, said three men and one woman were killed in the attack just after 2 a.m. Sunday. Two “very young” children and a woman who is the suspect’s domestic partner were unharmed.

    A restraining order had been issued earlier in the week barring the suspect, 21-year-old Joseph Mario Castorena, from coming to the home or contacting his domestic partner, who lived there. Police searched Castorena’s home a few blocks away from the site of the slayings but did not find him.

    “He’s certainly considered armed, and he’s obviously dangerous,” Oates said.

    “This was an accumulation of events here that led to this,” Oates said.

    Police used drones to search for Castorena at sunrise and were looking for him in the immediate neighborhood Sunday.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Philippine storm victims feared tsunami, ran toward mudslide

    Philippine storm victims feared tsunami, ran toward mudslide

    [ad_1]

    MANILA, Philippines — Victims of a huge mudslide set off by a storm in a coastal Philippine village that had once been devastated by a killer tsunami mistakenly thought a tidal wave was coming and ran to higher ground where they were buried alive by the boulder-laden deluge, an official said Sunday.

    At least 20 bodies, including those of children, have been dug out by rescuers in the vast muddy mound that now covers much of Kusiong village in southern Maguindanao province, among the hardest-hit by Tropical Storm Nalgae, which blew out of the northwestern Philippines early Sunday.

    Officials fear 80 to 100 more people, including entire families, may have been buried by the deluge or washed away by flash floods in Kusiong between Thursday night and early Friday, according to Naguib Sinarimbo, the interior minister for a Muslim autonomous region run by former separatist guerrillas.

    Nalgae, which had vast rain clouds, left at least 73 people dead in eight provinces and one city in the Philippine archipelago, including in Kusiong, and a trail of destruction and flooding in one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries.

    The catastrophe in Kusiong, populated mostly by the Teduray ethnic minority group, was particularly tragic because its more than 2,000 villagers have carried out disaster-preparedness drills every year for decades to brace for a tsunami because of a deadly history. But they were not as prepared for the dangers that could come from Mount Minandar, where their village lies at the foothills, Sinarimbo said.

    “When the people heard the warning bells, they ran up and gathered in a church on a high ground,” Sinarimbo told The Associated Press, citing accounts by Kusiong villagers.

    “The problem was, it was not a tsunami that inundated them but a big volume of water and mud that came down from the mountain,” he said.

    In August 1976, an 8.1-magnitude earthquake and a tsunami in the Moro Gulf that struck around midnight left thousands of people dead and devastated coastal provinces in one of the deadliest natural disasters in Philippine history.

    Lying between the Moro Gulf and 446-meter (1,464-foot) Mount Minandar, Kusiong was among the hardest hit by the 1976 catastrophe. The village never forgot the tragedy. Elderly villagers who survived the tsunami and powerful earthquake passed on the nightmarish story to their children, warning them to be prepared.

    “Every year, they hold drills to brace for a tsunami. Somebody was assigned to bang the alarm bells and they designated high grounds where people should run to,” Sinarimbo said. “Villagers were even taught the sound of an approaching big wave based on the recollection of the tsunami survivors.”

    “But there wasn’t as much focus on the geo-hazards on the mountainside,” he said.

    Bulldozers, backhoes and payloaders were brought to Kusiong on Saturday with more than 100 rescuers from the army, police and volunteers from other provinces, but they were unable to dig at a spot where survivors said the church lay underneath because the muddy mound was still dangerously soft, officials said.

    The national disaster-response agency reported 22 missing from the storm’s onslaught in several provinces. Sinarimbo said many of the missing in Kusiong were not included in the government’s official tally because entire families may have been buried and no member was left to provide names and details to authorities.

    Army Lt. Col. Dennis Almorato, who went to the mudslide-hit community Saturday, said the muddy deluge buried about 60 rural houses in about 5 hectares (12 acres) of the community. He gave no estimate of how many villagers may have been buried but described the extent of the mudslide as “overwhelming” and said the nighttime disaster may have unfolded fast.

    A regional army commander, Major Gen. Roy Galido, has been ordered to lead an emergency command center to head search and retrieval work in Kusiong, officials said.

    The stormy weather in a large swath of the country prompted the coast guard to prohibit sea travel in dangerously rough seas as millions of Filipinos planned to travel over a long weekend for visits to relatives’ tombs and for family reunions on All Saints’ Day in the largely Roman Catholic nation.

    More than 100 domestic and international flights were canceled, Manila’s international airport was briefly closed amid stormy weather and sea voyages in storm-whipped seas were prohibited by the coast guard, stranding thousands of passengers.

    Floodwaters swamped many provinces and cities, trapping some people on their roofs, and more than 700 houses were damaged. More than 168,000 people fled to evacuation camps. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. expressed disappointment over the high casualty toll in a televised meeting with disaster-mitigation officials Saturday.

    “We should have done better,” Marcos Jr. said. “We were not able to anticipate that the volume of water will be that much so we were not able to warn the people and then to evacuate them out of the way of the incoming flash floods.”

    About 20 typhoons and storms batter the Philippine archipelago each year. It is located on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a region along most of the Pacific Ocean rim where many volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur, making the nation one of the world’s most disaster-prone.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • 50 dead, dozens feared missing as storm lashes Philippines

    50 dead, dozens feared missing as storm lashes Philippines

    [ad_1]

    MANILA, Philippines — Flash floods and landslides set off by torrential rains left at least 50 people dead, including in a hard-hit southern Philippine province, where as many as 60 villagers are feared missing and buried in a huge mudslide laden with rocks, trees and debris, officials said Saturday.

    At least 42 people were swept away by rampaging floodwaters and drowned or were hit by debris-filled mudslides in three towns in Maguindanao province from Thursday night to early Friday, said Naguib Sinarimbo, the interior minister for a five-province Muslim autonomous region governed by former separatist guerrillas.

    Eight other people died elsewhere in the country from the onslaught of Tropical Storm Nalgae, which slammed into the eastern province of Camarines Sur early Saturday, the government’s disaster response agency said.

    But the worst storm impact so far was a mudslide that buried dozens of houses with as many as 60 people in the tribal village of Kusiong in Maguindanao’s Datu Odin Sinsuat town, Sinarimbo told The Associated Press by telephone, citing accounts from Kusiong villagers who survived the flash flood and mudslide.

    Army Lt. Col. Dennis Almorato, who went to the mudslide-hit community Saturday, said the muddy deluge buried about 60 rural houses in about 5 hectares (12 acres) section of the community. He gave no estimate of how many villagers may have been buried in the mudslide, which he described as “overwhelming.”

    At least 13 bodies, mostly of children, were dug up Friday and Saturday by rescuers in Kusiong, Sinarimbo said.

    “That community will be our ground zero today,” he said, adding that heavy equipment and more rescue workers had been deployed to intensify the search and rescue work.

    “It was hit by torrents of rainwater with mud, rocks and trees that washed out houses,” Sinarimbo said.

    The coastal village, which lies at the foot of a mountain, is accessible by road, allowing more rescuers to be deployed Saturday to deal with one of the worst weather-related disasters to hit the country’s south in decades, he said.

    Citing reports from mayors, governors and disaster-response officials, Sinarimbo said 27 died mostly by drowning and landslides in Datu Odin Sinsuat town, 10 in Datu Blah Sinsuat town and five in Upi town, all in Maguindanao.

    An official death count of 67 in Maguindanao on Friday night was recalled by authorities after discovering some double-counting of casualties.

    The unusually heavy rains flooded several towns in Maguindanao and outlying provinces in a mountainous region with marshy plains, which become like a catch basin in a downpour. Floodwaters rapidly rose in many low-lying villages, forcing some residents to climb onto their roofs, where they were rescued by army troops, police and volunteers, Sinarimbo said.

    The coast guard issued pictures of its rescuers wading in chest-high, brownish floodwaters to rescue the elderly and children in Maguindanao. Many of the swamped areas had not been flooded for years, including Cotabato city where Sinarimbo said his house was inundated.

    The stormy weather in a large swath of the country prompted the coast guard to prohibit sea travel in dangerously rough seas as millions of Filipinos planned to travel over a long weekend for visits to relatives’ tombs and for family reunions on All Saints’ Day in the largely Roman Catholic nation. Several domestic flights have also been canceled, stranding thousands of passengers.

    The wide rain bands of Nalgae, the 16th storm to hit the Philippine archipelago this year, enabled it to dump rain in the country’s south even though the storm was blowing farther north, government forecaster Sam Duran said.

    The storm was battering Laguna province Saturday night with sustained winds of 95 kilometers (59 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 160 kph (99 mph) and moving northwestward — just south of the densely populated capital Manila, which had been forecast for a direct hit until the storm turned.

    More than 158,000 people in several provinces were protectively evacuated away from the path of the storm, officials said.

    About 20 typhoons and storms batter the Philippine archipelago each year. It is located on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a region along most of the Pacific Ocean rim where many volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur, making the nation one of the world’s most disaster-prone.

    ———

    Associated Press journalists Joeal Calupitan and Aaron Favila contributed to this report.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Coast Guard: 13 rescued from sinking vessel off Virginia

    Coast Guard: 13 rescued from sinking vessel off Virginia

    [ad_1]

    PORTSMOUTH, Va. — Thirteen people were rescued from a sinking fishing vessel early Friday more than 60 miles (96 kilometers) off the coast of Virginia, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

    The Coast Guard responded to a spot 63 miles (101 kilometers) southeast of Chicoteague after receiving a call for help around 2 a.m., relayed by another vessel, according to Petty Officer 1st Class Jonathan Lally, a Coast Guard spokesperson.

    The fishing vessel and a container ship were involved in an incident and the fishing vessel was taking on water, Lally said. Officials are looking into the possibility that two vessels collided, he said.

    Another vessel rescued 12 people and a 13th person, the captain of the sinking vessel, was hoisted by Coast Guard helicopter, he said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Costa Rica finds 2 bodies in crash of plane carrying Germans

    Costa Rica finds 2 bodies in crash of plane carrying Germans

    [ad_1]

    SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — Authorities in Costa Rica have found two bodies in the search for six people, apparently including the German businessman behind Gold’s Gym, who went missing when their small plane disappeared from radar just off the country’s Caribbean coast.

    The Security Ministry said the bodies of one adult and one child had been found, but that the bodies had not yet been identified.

    Searchers also turned up backpacks and bags, and pieces of the plane.

    All five passengers were believed to be German citizens, said Security Minister Jorge Torres. The plane’s pilot was Swiss.

    Costa Rican authorities said pieces of the twin-engine turboprop aircraft were found in the water Saturday, after the flight went missing Friday.

    A flight plan filed for the small plane listed Rainer Schaller as a passenger. A man by the same name runs international chains of fitness and gym outlets, including Gold’s Gym and McFit. At least one other of those aboard the plane seemed to be a relative of Schaller, but the relation was not immediately confirmed by authorities.

    Searchers are concentrating on a site about 17 miles (28 kilometers) off the coast from the Limon airport.

    The plane was a nine-seat Italian-made Piaggio P180 Avanti, known for its distinctive profile. It disappeared from radar as it was heading to Limon, a resort town on the coast.

    The security minister said the flight had set out from Mexico.

    “Around six in the afternoon we received an alert about a flight coming from Mexico to the Limon airport, carrying five German passengers,” Torres said. A search started immediately but was called off temporarily due to bad weather.

    Rainer Schaller is listed as “Founder, Owner and CEO of the RSG Group,” a conglomerate of 21 fitness, lifestyle and fashion brands that operates in 48 countries and has 41,000 employees, either directly or through franchises.

    The RSG Group did not respond to requests for comment on whether Schaller had been aboard the plane.

    Schaller was in the news in 2010 for his role as organizer of the Berlin Love Parade techno festival. A crush at the event killed 21 people and injured more than 500. Authorities at the time said Schaller’s security failed to stop the flow of people into a tunnel when the situation was already tense at the entrance to the festival grounds.

    Schaller fought back against the accusations of wrongdoing, noting that his security concept received official city approval.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Defense motions could sidetrack trial in Taos compound case

    Defense motions could sidetrack trial in Taos compound case

    [ad_1]

    TAOS, N.M. — A judge has ruled five defendants are competent to stand trial more than four years after they were found in a squalid New Mexico compound with 11 malnourished children and the body of a young boy.

    But multiple motions filed by defense lawyers last week may slow the proceedings again.

    Taos County sheriff’s officials raided the compound in remote northern New Mexico in August 2018, saying they also discovered a firing range and firearms.

    In a second search days later, authorities reported recovering the decomposing remains of a 3-year-old boy from an underground tunnel.

    Authorities said the child was the son of one of the five adult suspects and had been reported missing by his mother in Georgia.

    All five members of the extended family are charged with conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States and providing material support to terrorists.

    Their attorneys said the defendants would not be facing terrorism-related charges if they were not Muslim.

    Albuquerque TV station KOB reports that defense lawyers filed motions last week trying to get the judge to drop all kidnapping charges.

    The group says they’re immune to kidnapping statutes because the dead boy’s father had legal custody of him at the time.

    They also say the autopsy report lists the official cause of death as undetermined.

    In addition, defense attorneys are asking the judge to throw out any evidence the sheriff’s office and FBI obtained from the compound during execution of the search warrant.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Baby reported missing in migrant capsizing off Italy island

    Baby reported missing in migrant capsizing off Italy island

    [ad_1]

    ROME — Rescuers searched the waters near a southern Italian island Sunday for a 2-week-old baby girl reported missing after a migrant boat capsized.

    Italian authorities said the boat overturned a day earlier near the uninhabited islet of Lampione, part of the archipelago which includes Lampedusa, a tourist island where many rescued migrants are sheltered.

    Italy’s new interior minister, Matteo Piantedosi, told Italian daily newspaper Il Messaggero that Italian border police rescued the capsized boat’s other passengers.

    The 39 survivors from various sub-Saharan countries included eight children and the parents of the missing newborn, Italian daily newspaper La Sicilia reported Sunday on its website.

    The rescue was one of several carried out by Italian military vessels or private charity boats off Lampedusa and off Italy‘s southern mainland in recent days. Hundreds of rescued people are now being temporarily sheltered in a chronically overcrowded migrant residence on Lampedusa.

    Italy has grappled for more than a decade with how to prevent Europe-bound migrants from attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea in smugglers’ boats launched from Libya, Tunisia or elsewhere in north Africa.

    Most of these migrants see their asylum bids fail because they are fleeing poverty, not war or persecution.

    Italy’s new premier, far-right leader Giorgia Meloni, campaigned on a pledge to crack down on the migration route. She advocates a naval blockade of the southern Mediterranean rim.

    “We must continue to reaffirm the need to have migratory flows entrusted to the states and to their ability to manager this phenomenon, and not to the action of traffickers and neither to that of spontaneous (action) even if it’s humanitarian,” Piantedosi told Il Messaggero.

    A key partner in Meloni’s day-old coalition government is Matteo Salvini. As Italy’s interior minister a few years ago, Salvini tried to stop rescue boats from disembarking migrants in Italian ports, and was prosecuted for his efforts.

    Piantedosi said he planned to discuss migrant issues later Sunday with his French counterpart and with French President Emmanuel Macron, who was attending a pro-peace conference in Rome.

    ———

    Follow AP’s coverage of global migration at https://apnews.com/hub/migration

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • 3 arrested after 2 killed, tribal officer shot in Washington

    3 arrested after 2 killed, tribal officer shot in Washington

    [ad_1]

    SEATTLE — Authorities said Friday that they arrested three suspects in the slayings of two people and shooting of a police officer after a daylong search on a tribal reservation in northeastern Washington.

    The Colville Tribes Emergency Services said on Facebook Friday evening that the third suspect was arrested in Elmer City, one of several small communities on the rural reservation. Two others were arrested earlier in the day.

    The search for the suspects began after the Colville Tribal Police Department responded to a report of a shooting on Thursday in Keller, a small community about 275 miles (450 kilometers) east of Seattle. Officers found two people dead, and an officer who came across a vehicle described as having left the scene was shot in the arm, according to the department. He was doing well after being transported for medical care, the department said in a news release.

    Police identified two of the suspects as Curry Pinkham and Zachary Holt. They did not release the name of the third man who was arrested. They also did not release a possible motive for the slayings.

    The search spread overnight to the town of Nespelem, a close-knit community about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from Keller, with 10 law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, Washington State Police and Border Patrol, assisting. Authorities urged residents to remain indoors as they looked for the men.

    Robin Redstar, a Colville Tribal member and Nespelem resident, said she and other residents waited in their home for hours, and at one point one of the suspects was believed to be in a gully behind her house. Authorities eventually arrested a man in front of her home around 10 a.m. after he tried to enter her neighbor’s back door, Redstar said.

    Her neighbor, a hunter with guns, was able to detain the man and get him to the street, where a tribal police car was waiting, Redstar said. Two of her neighbor’s friends helped get the man to the police car. She said she saw her neighbor with the suspect when she ran out to her truck.

    “It was pretty quick. Corbie (the neighbor) was giving him a good speech about morals,” she said.

    Authorities didn’t release many details, but the Colville Tribal Police announced around noon that two of the suspects had been arrested.

    By 4 p.m., the search for the final suspect had spread to Elmer City, with the Colville Tribes Emergency Services saying Pinkham had reportedly been seen in the area and warning residents not to approach him. At about 6 p.m., the agency said Pinkham had been apprehended.

    Cody Desautel, executive director of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, wrote that schools in Nespelem and Keller were closed Friday because the situation had affected both districts. School was also canceled Friday in another nearby school district, covering the small towns of Wilbur and Creston.

    Only about 200 people live in Keller, an unincorporated community that runs alongside the Sanpoil River. The center of town is marked by a post office, a community center and a Catholic church, and small groups of homes are sprinkled along residential streets branching off a rural highway.

    The Confederated Tribes of the Colville comprise about 9,400 descendants of a dozen Native American tribes. The reservation covers nearly 2,200 square miles (nearly 5,700 square kilometers) west of Lake Roosevelt, the reservoir formed on the Columbia River behind the Grand Coulee Dam.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Search of landfill for suburban Detroit teen’s remains ends

    Search of landfill for suburban Detroit teen’s remains ends

    [ad_1]

    LENOX TOWNSHIP, Mich. — Police have ended a five-month search at a rural landfill for the remains of a 17-year-old suburban Detroit girl who disappeared in early January.

    Investigators have said they believe Zion Foster’s body was placed in a dumpster, which later was emptied into a garbage truck and taken about 40 miles (65 kilometers) northeast of Detroit to Lenox Township.

    Searchers began combing through debris and garbage at the end of May at Pine Tree Acres landfill but came up empty even after going through 3,500 truckloads — 7,500 tons (6,800 metric tons) — of material from Michigan and Canada.

    Police believed they were in the right area based on GPS readings from the truck and other evidence.

    “Ending the search without recovering Zion’s remains is very difficult for all of us,” Detroit Police Chief James White said Friday. ”I can only imagine the pain Zion’s family is going through, and we all certainly share in that pain.”

    No one has been charged in her death, though a cousin, Jaylin Brazier, admitted in court that he was present when she died. He is in prison for lying to investigators.

    Investigators have submitted a warrant package to the Wayne County prosecutor’s office for review.

    “While this operation has concluded, our investigation has not, and we are confident in the work our investigators have done,” White said.

    Zion, a high school senior from Eastpointe, was wearing a fast-food uniform when she was last seen. Eastpointe borders Detroit, but Detroit police took charge because the death occurred in the city.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Italian coast guard finds bodies of 2 minors on migrant boat

    Italian coast guard finds bodies of 2 minors on migrant boat

    [ad_1]

    ROME — Two minors were found dead Friday on a migrant boat carrying nearly 40 people in the Mediterranean Sea and a search was under way for a woman reported missing from the vessel, Italy’s coast guard said.

    A coast guard statement said 36 people were found alive on the boat, which had been reportedly disabled by an explosion, in waters off Malta. It was not immediately clear how the minors had died or what the passengers’ nationalities were.

    Italian state TV said the migrants, including many from sub-Saharan Africa, had sailed from the Tunisian port of Sfax.

    The coast guard statement said a Tunisian fishing boat informed the coast guard earlier Friday that the migrants were in difficulty within Malta’s search-and-rescue zone.

    In accordance with Maltese authorities, the Italian coast guard dispatched a motorboat to their aid. The statement said the fishing boat had told rescuers there had been an explosion on the migrants’ boat.

    A coast guard aircraft and vessel were searching for the woman reported missing. The ages of the two dead minors were not made public.

    Doctors examining the migrants said several had suffered burns.

    The survivors were brought to Lampedusa, a tiny Italian island south of Sicily, which has a residential center for rescued migrants where initial documentation can be done ahead of asylum requests.

    Many of the migrants who reach Italy by sea from Africa, the Middle East or Asia — either on their own boats or aboard rescue vessels — are fleeing poverty, not war or persecution, and their asylum bids are rejected.

    ———

    Follow AP’s global migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Princeton student Misrach Ewunetie found dead, officials say

    Princeton student Misrach Ewunetie found dead, officials say

    [ad_1]

    PRINCETON, N.J. — A Princeton University student from Ohio who went missing near campus roughly a week ago was found dead Thursday, Mercer County Prosecutor Angelo Onofri said.

    Misrach Ewunetie, 20, was found by an employee at about 1 p.m. behind tennis courts on the campus facilities grounds, Onofri said. There were no obvious signs of injury “her death does not appear suspicious or criminal in nature,” but an official cause of death will be determined after a medical examiner’s review, he said.

    “Misrach’s death is an unthinkable tragedy. Our hearts go out to her family, her friends and the many others who knew and loved her,” University Vice President W. Rochelle Calhoun said in a statement.

    An extensive search was launched for Ewunetie after she was reported missing. A large law enforcement presence remained on campus and in nearby areas Thursday.

    Ewunetie was last seen heading into her dorm room at the Ivy League school in the early morning hours of Oct. 14, school officials said. But when her roommate returned to the dorm about 90 minutes later, Ewunetie was not there.

    Family and friends said they had not heard from Ewunetie. Appearing Thursday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” her brother, Universe Ewunetie, said his sister’s phone last pinged sometime after 3 a.m. Friday at a housing complex that’s about a 30-minute walk from her dorm, which he said was out of character for her to be in such a location.

    According to her LinkedIn profile, Ewunetie was a junior pursuing a sociology degree with a computer applications certificate. She was valedictorian at Villa Angela-St. Joseph high school in Cleveland, Ohio, before accepting a full scholarship to Princeton.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Police search Georgia landfill for missing toddler’s remains

    Police search Georgia landfill for missing toddler’s remains

    [ad_1]

    SAVANNAH, Ga. — The search for a missing Georgia toddler presumed dead by police shifted Tuesday to a landfill outside Savannah where investigators planned to start sifting through trash for the child’s remains.

    Chatham County Police Chief Jeff Hadley said investigators had evidence that prompted the landfill search for the body of 20-month-old Quinton Simon, but he declined to say what it was.

    “We believe that he was placed in a specific dumpster at a specific location and it was brought here by regular means of disposal,” Hadley said during a news conference. “I have every belief that we will find his remains here at the landfill.”

    Police began searching for Quinton on Oct. 5 when his mother called 911 and said the boy had gone missing from his playpen. After more than a week spent searching the house and surrounding neighborhood, Hadley announced Thursday that police believe the child is dead.

    He also named the boy’s mother, Leilani Simon, as the a suspect in her son’s death and disappearance. Nearly a week later, she has not been arrested or charged.

    Hadley said his department and the FBI spent days planning and getting personnel and equipment in place to search the landfill.

    “We want justice for Quinton just like everybody else,” the police chief said, “and we want to find his remains so we can give him a proper resting place.”

    Dozens of FBI agents were on hand to assist police officers, said Will Clarke, supervisory agent for the bureau’s satellite office in Savannah.

    Clarke said investigators were focusing their search on a specific area of the landfill, where debris would be deposited on a designated search deck for authorities to comb through one pile at a time.

    “This will not be quick, it will not be easy and the outcome is uncertain,” Clarke said.

    Leilani Simon had no listed phone number and it wasn’t known Tuesday if she had a lawyer who could speak on her behalf. Court records showed she represented herself in two civil cases filed since March involving her custody of her children and child support.

    Police reports and court documents show there was turmoil in recent weeks between the child’s mother and grandmother, Billie Jo Howell, who had legal custody of him and an older sibling. Quinton, his mother and his mother’s boyfriend lived with Howell.

    Simon called police on Sept. 7 following an argument with her mother over laundry in which she said Howell had shoved her against a wall, according to a police report. No one was charged and an officer found no injuries other than Simon’s reddened elbow.

    The following day, Quinton’s grandmother filed papers in Chatham County Magistrate Court to have Simon and her boyfriend evicted from her home, WTOC-TV reported.

    A few weeks later, on Sept. 28, a Superior Court judge ordered Leilani Simon to pay $150 per month in child support.

    Quinton’s mother reported him missing a week later.

    “We’re not ready to charge anyone yet,” Hadley said Tuesday when asked why no arrests had been made. “We still have work to do. We still have an investigation to do. We’re not going to do anything preemptively that would harm a future prosecution.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Kansas to search grounds of former Native American school

    Kansas to search grounds of former Native American school

    [ad_1]

    FAIRWAY, Kan. — The grounds of a former Native American boarding school in Kansas will be searched to determine if any Indigenous children were buried there, state officials said.

    The Kansas Historical Society, which owns the site in Fairway, is contracting with the University of Kansas Center for Research to conduct a ground-penetrating radar survey of the 12 acres (nearly 5 hectares) to search for unmarked graves, The Kansas City Star reported.

    The current Shawnee Indian Mission historical site was one of hundreds of schools run by the government and religious groups in the 1800s and 1900s. Thousands of Native American children were forcibly taken from their homes and placed in such schools, with a goal of assimilating them into white American culture and Christianity.

    The U.S. Interior Department announced last year that it was investigating the nation’s treatment of Native American children at the boarding schools. A federal report released in May identified more than 500 student deaths at the institutions, but officials said that figure was expected to grow into the thousands as research continues.

    Leaders of the Shawnee Tribe and other tribes had requested a search of the Fairway site. But tribal officials said in a statement that they were not consulted about the Historical Society’s project proposal before it was announced.

    “We have requested formal consultation to address serious concerns about the motives of this project, potential deficiencies in the process that may render incomplete findings, and what plans may be for utilizing any results from the project,” the tribe said.

    Patrick Zollner, executive director of the historical society, responded that the Shawnee Tribe was the “first to know” about the project proposal. He said the society also contacted other tribes, including the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, Kaw Nation, Osage Nation and others.

    Shawnee Tribe leaders said they are concerned in part because it is unclear whether any children were buried on the mission’s current site, which is much smaller than the original property of nearly 2,000 acres (809 hectares). They also are concerned that the project is moving too quickly before the tribe’s concerns can be addressed, spokeswoman Maggie Boyett said.

    Zollner and Erinn Barcomb-Peterson, a spokeswoman with the University of Kansas, emphasized that consultation with the tribes is ongoing and that work will not proceed until that process is completed.

    A proposed contract for the ground study states that the historical society and the university will coordinate with tribes and other entities requesting consultation on the project. Under the contract, field work could be completed next April, with a report submitted next summer.

    The Shawnee Indian Methodist Manual Labor School was started at its present site in 1939 by Thomas Johnson, a Methodist minister for whom Johnson County was later named. At one point, it had 16 buildings and nearly 200 students a year who ranged in age from 5 to 23.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Death toll rises to 28 in Turkey coal mine explosion

    Death toll rises to 28 in Turkey coal mine explosion

    [ad_1]

    AMASRA, Turkey — The death toll from a coal mine explosion in northern Turkey rose to at least 28 people and rescue efforts continued as a fire burned in the mine, officials said Saturday.

    There were 110 miners working in the shaft when the explosion occurred Friday evening at the state-owned TTK Amasra Muessese Mudurlugu mine in the town of Amasra, in the Black Sea coastal province of Bartin.

    Energy Minister Fatih Durmaz said rescue efforts continued for 15 people with a majority of them in the mine’s gallery where a fire still burned.

    “It’s not a huge fire, but to get there safely, the fire and carbon monoxide gas must be eliminated,” he told journalists at the site.

    Four or five other miners were trapped in cave-ins, Durmaz added. The minister earlier said that preliminary assessments indicated that the explosion was likely caused by firedamp, which is a reference to flammable gases found in coal mines.

    Health Minister Fahrettin Koca tweeted that 28 miners were dead and 11 rescued miners were hospitalized in Bartin and Istanbul. Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said 58 people had been rescued alive.

    Ambulances were on standby at the site. Rescue teams were dispatched to the area, including from neighboring provinces, Turkey’s disaster management agency, AFAD, said.

    Turkey’s president was expected to visit Amasra on Saturday.

    In Turkey’s worst mine disaster, a total of 301 people died in 2014 in a fire inside a coal mine in the town of Soma, in western Turkey.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • 2 from sunken boat fend off sharks during Coast Guard rescue

    2 from sunken boat fend off sharks during Coast Guard rescue

    [ad_1]

    NEW ORLEANS — Two people from a sunken fishing boat were fending off sharks in the Gulf of Mexico when a crew rescued them and one other person from waters off the Louisiana coastline, the Coast Guard said.

    The Coast Guard launched a search after a relative reported the three people failed to return from a fishing trip Saturday evening.

    The 24-foot (7.3-meter), center-console fishing boat sank about 10 a.m. Saturday and stranded the three people without communication devices, the Coast Guard said in a news release.

    The three were wearing lifejackets and one was showing signs of hypothermia when they were rescued Sunday about 25 miles (40.2 kilometers) offshore from Empire, Louisiana, a small community southeast of New Orleans. They had been in the water more than 24 hours.

    The news release said a Coast Guard boat crew saw two of the people fending off sharks, and both of them had injured hands. The crew pulled them from the water, and the two were lifted onto a helicopter. The helicopter crew lifted the third boater from the water.

    The two injured people were taken to University Medical Center New Orleans, where they were listed as stable. The Coast Guard did not release their names and did not specify whether the injuries were from bites, from being scraped against sharks’ sandpaper-like skin or from another cause.

    “If the family member had not notified the Coast Guard, and if these three boaters were not wearing life jackets, this could’ve been a completely different outcome,” said Lt. Cmdr. Kevin Keefe, a Coast Guard search and rescue mission coordinator in New Orleans.

    The news release said Coast Guard crews in two boats, two planes and a helicopter searched about 1,250 square miles (3,237.5 square kilometers) of water, slightly larger than the size of Rhode Island.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Rain-fueled landslide sweeps through Venezuela town; 22 dead

    Rain-fueled landslide sweeps through Venezuela town; 22 dead

    [ad_1]

    LAS TEJERÍAS, Venezuela — A landslide fueled by flooding and days of torrential rain swept through a town in central Venezuela, leaving at least 22 people dead as it dragged mud, rocks and trees through neighborhoods, authorities said Sunday. Dozens of people are missing.

    Residents of Las Tejerías in Santos Michelena, an agro-industrial town in Aragua state 54 miles (87 kilometers) southwest of Caracas, had just seconds to reach safety late Saturday as debris swept down a mountainside onto them.

    The official death toll rose to 22 after the recovery of 20 bodies on Sunday, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez told state-owned Venezolana de Televisión.

    “There was a large landslide in the central area of Las Tejerías” where five streams overflowed, she said from the scene of the disaster. “We have already found 22 dead people; there are more than 52 missing.”

    “There are still people walled in,” Rodríguez said. “We are trying to rescue them, to rescue them alive.”

    She said shelters will be set up for people who lost their homes.

    Higher on the mountainside, most of the houses were swept away, including those of a group of Evangelicals who were praying when the landslide hit, said homemaker Carmen Teresa Chirinos, a resident of Las Tejerías. Families in tears hugged in front of destroyed homes and businesses.

    “There are a lot of people missing,” Chirinos said.

    Hours earlier, Major Gen. Carlos Pérez Ampueda, the vice minister for risk management and civil protection, had said via Twitter that several people were reported missing in the El Béisbol and La Agotada neighborhoods in the north of the town. Dozens of homes were damaged by the landslide.

    Rescuers were carrying out search operations with trained dogs and drones, Pérez Ampueda said. Crews of workers and heavy machinery removed debris to clear roads and restore electricity and water services.

    “So many families lost their houses and I, as a businessman, lost my pizzeria,” said Luis Fuentes, who opened his pizza restaurant two years ago. “Look, I have nothing.”

    Aragua Gov. Karina Carpio said the flood waters “terribly affected” 21 sectors in Las Tejerías, capital of the Santos Michelena municipality, which has some 54,000 inhabitants.

    During the past week, torrential rains have caused flooding in 11 of Venezuela’s 23 states.

    President Nicolás Maduro said 20.000 officials, including rescuers and members of security forces, have been deployed to affected regions.

    ———

    Associated Press journalists Jorge Rueda contributed to this report from Caracas and Matías Delacroix from Las Tejerías.

    [ad_2]

    Source link