Coast Guard suspending search for boys at sunset after week of frustrating, fruitless efforts
OPA-LOCKA, Fla. (AP) — After hundreds of rescue workers fanned out across a massive swath of the Atlantic for a full week, the Coast Guard’s search for two teenage fishermen was to end Friday, a heart-rending decision for families so convinced the boys could be alive they’re pressing on with their own hunt.
Even as officials announced at noon that the formal search-and-rescue effort would end at sundown, private planes and boats were preparing to keep scouring the water hoping for clues on what happened to the 14-year-old neighbors, Perry Cohen and Austin Stephanos.
Capt. Mark Fedor called the decision to suspend the search “excruciating and gut-wrenching.” He suggested what long had been feared by observers — that the boys had surpassed any reasonable period of survivability — with his offering of “heartfelt condolences.”
“I know no statistics will ease the pain,” he said in recounting the seven-day, nearly 50,000-square-nautical-mile search. “We were desperate to find Austin and Perry.”
With volunteers ready to keep searching all along the coastline and about $340,000 in search-fund donations by Friday evening, the families promised to keep looking for their sons.
Clinton releases tax, health records on busy Friday — physically ‘fit to serve as president’
WASHINGTON (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton is in “excellent physical condition and fit to serve as president,” her physician declared Friday — just one in a flood of disclosures about the Democratic presidential candidate pushed out by her campaign on a busy summer day.
Within a three-hour period, the State Department made public more than 2,200 pages of emails sent from Clinton’s personal account, her campaign released the information about her health and she unveiled eight years of tax returns. Meanwhile, Clinton herself was campaigning at the annual meeting of the National Urban League and calling for an end of the nation’s trade embargo of Cuba during a speech in Miami.
Friday was also the deadline for super PACs to file their first financial reports of the 2016 campaign with federal regulators, revealing the names of a slew of billionaires and millionaires paying for the early days of the election fight.
Campaign aides cast the records dump as part of an effort to compete with Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush on the issue of transparency. Clinton is the first 2016 presidential candidate to release her health records, and aides said she planned to release more details about her finances than Bush, the former Florida governor who has already made public 33 years of his tax returns.
The Clintons paid nearly $44 million in federal taxes and made almost $15 million in charitable contributions from the tens of millions the couple earned between 2007 and 2014, according to her campaign. Last year, they paid an overall federal tax rate of 35.7 percent. The couple earlier reported having earned more than $30 million from speeches and book royalties since mid-2013
Suspected Jewish radicals burn Palestinian child to death in possible spark for more violence
DUMA, West Bank (AP) — Suspected Jewish assailants set fire to a West Bank home on Friday and burned a sleeping Palestinian toddler to death in an attack that drew Palestinian rage and widespread Israeli condemnation. The attack, which threatens to set off another violent escalation, shines a light on the growing lawlessness of extremist Jewish settlers that Israel is either unable or unwilling to contain.
The extremists have for years staged attacks against Palestinian property, as well as mosques, churches, dovish Israeli groups and even Israeli military bases. The attacks, known as “price tags” because they exact a price for Israeli steps seen as favorable to the Palestinians, have stirred fear in Palestinians and frustration among critics who say Israel has not done enough to quell the assaults.
“This is a direct consequence of decades of impunity given by the Israeli government to settler terrorism,” said Palestinian official Saeb Erekat. “This is the consequence of a culture of hate funded and incentivized by the Israeli government and the impunity granted by the international community.”
Friday’s deadly attack comes as part of a larger trend of Jewish radicalization – one day after an anti-gay ultra-Orthodox extremist stabbed revelers at Jerusalem’s Gay Pride Parade and two days after Israeli authorities indicted two young Jewish activists for an arson attack on a famous Holy Land church. All have been strongly condemned across the Israeli political spectrum, though the recent spate of attacks has raised fears that a radicalized and violent ultraconservative fringe is growing from within the country’s hard-line national-religious camp.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called the attack a “war crime” and said the Palestinians would present it to the International Criminal Court as part of their case against Israel.
Investigators hopeful wing flap will shed light on mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
SAINT-ANDRE, Reunion (AP) — Under a microscope and expert eyes, the wing fragment that washed up on the beach of this volcanic island could yield clues not just to its path through the Indian Ocean, but also to what happened to the airplane it belonged to.
Analysts at the French aviation laboratory where the scrap was headed Friday can glean details from metal stress to see what caused the flap to break off, spot explosive or other chemical traces, and study the sea life that made its home on the wing to pinpoint where it came from.
French authorities have imposed extraordinary secrecy over the 2-meter (6-foot) long piece of wing, putting it under police protection in the hours before it left the island of Reunion. If the fragment is indeed part of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, it means the wreckage may have drifted thousands of kilometers (miles) across the Indian Ocean to this French island off the east coast of Africa.
Wrapped and loaded as cargo, it was headed to a military aviation laboratory near the city of Toulouse, Europe’s aviation hub.
“With a microscope, that can learn details from the torn metal,” said Xavier Tytelman, a French aviation safety expert. “You can tell whether a crash was more horizontal or vertical … You can extrapolate a lot.”
Ebola vaccine seems effective, could stop current outbreak and prevent future disasters
LONDON (AP) — An experimental Ebola vaccine tested on thousands of people in Guinea seems to work and might help shut down the waning epidemic in West Africa, according to interim results from a study published Friday.
There is currently no licensed treatment or vaccine for Ebola, which has so far killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa since the world’s biggest outbreak began in the forest region of Guinea last year. Cases have dropped dramatically in recent months in the other two hard-hit countries, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
“If proven effective, this is going to be a game-changer,” said Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization, which sponsored the study. “It will change the management of the current outbreak and future outbreaks.”
Scientists have struggled for years to develop Ebola treatments and vaccines but have faced numerous hurdles, including the sporadic nature of outbreaks and funding shortages. Many past attempts have failed, including a recently abandoned drug being tested in West Africa by Tekmira Pharmaceuticals.
The study involved several thousand people who had been near a new Ebola patient or a close contact of one. They were randomly assigned to get the vaccine right away or in three weeks.
