At least 20 killed in school attack
CHARSADDA, Pakistan (AP) — Once again, Islamic militants stormed a school in northeastern Pakistan in a deadly attack that lasted for hours. And once again, the blood of students and teachers stained classrooms and hallways, raising questions about whether security forces are able to protect the country’s educational institutions from extremists.
At least 20 people were killed and 23 were wounded Wednesday in the assault at Bacha Khan University in Charsadda before the four gunmen were slain and the military declared an end to the siege. Two teachers were among the dead, including a chemistry professor who was praised as a hero for shooting back at the attackers and allowing some students to escape.
The university attack was grimly reminiscent of the December 2014 massacre at an army public school in nearby Peshawar that killed 150, mostly children.
A breakaway faction of the Taliban took responsibility for the university attack, although a spokesman for the larger Taliban organization, led by Mullah Fazlullah, denied having anything to do with it and called it “un-Islamic.”
The violence shows how vulnerable schools remain in Pakistan, where extremists have sought to prevent Western-style education, especially for girls.
NOAA, NASA: 2015 was Earth’s hottest by a wide margin
WASHINGTON (AP) — Last year wasn’t just the Earth’s hottest year on record — it left a century of high temperature marks in the dust.
The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration and NASA announced Wednesday that 2015 was by far the hottest year in 136 years of record keeping. For the most part, scientists at the agencies and elsewhere blamed man-made global warming, with a boost from El Nino.
NOAA said 2015’s temperature was 58.62 degrees Fahrenheit (14.79 degrees Celsius), passing 2014 by a record margin of 0.29 degrees. That’s 1.62 degrees above the 20th-century average. NASA, which measures differently, said 2015 was 0.23 degrees warmer than the record set in 2014 and 1.6 degrees above 20th century average.
Because of the wide margin over 2014, NASA calculated that 2015 was a record with 94 percent certainty, more than double the certainty it had last year when announcing 2014 as a record. NOAA put the number at above 99 percent — or “virtually certain,” said Tom Karl, director of NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.
For the first time Earth is 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than it was in pre-industrial times, NOAA and NASA said. That’s a key milestone because world leaders have set a threshold of trying to avoid warming of 1.5 or degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times.
Oldest Christian monastery in Iraq is razed
IRBIL, Iraq (AP) — The oldest Christian monastery in Iraq has been reduced to a field of rubble, yet another victim of the Islamic State group’s relentless destruction of ancient cultural sites.
For 1,400 years the compound survived assaults by nature and man, standing as a place of worship recently for U.S. troops. In earlier centuries, generations of monks tucked candles in the niches and prayed in the cool chapel. The Greek letters chi and rho, representing the first two letters of Christ’s name, were carved near the entrance.
Now satellite photos obtained exclusively by The Associated Press confirm the worst fears of church authorities and preservationists — St. Elijah’s Monastery of Mosul has been completely wiped out.
In his office in exile in Irbil, Iraq, the Rev. Paul Thabit Habib, 39, stared quietly at before- and after-images of the monastery that once perched on a hillside above his hometown of Mosul. Shaken, he flipped back to his own photos for comparison.
“I can’t describe my sadness,” he said in Arabic. “Our Christian history in Mosul is being barbarically leveled. We see it as an attempt to expel us from Iraq, eliminating and finishing our existence in this land.”
Last run for current SAT this week; new one debuts in March
WASHINGTON (AP) — The current version of the SAT college entrance exam has its final run this weekend, when hundreds of thousands of students nationwide will sit, squirm or stress through the nearly four-hour reading, writing and math test. A new revamped version debuts in March.
Sixteen-year-old Alex Cohen, a junior at the Miami Country Day School in Florida, thinks he’s solid on math, but he’s been studiously cramming on vocabulary words to get ready for the exam.
“I don’t want to study for the new one, so hopefully I’ll do well on this one,” he said.
Alex said his college adviser was worried about students being “guinea pigs” for the new SAT that rolls out March 5 and told him to focus on Saturday’s exam. “There’s a lot of vocabulary on this test so I’ve been trying to memorize as many words as I can per day,” said Alex, who wants to study business and finance in college.
The College Board, the nonprofit organization that owns the SAT, says more than 351,000 students registered to take the Jan. 23 test. That’s a nearly 10 percent increase over the number of students registered for last January’s exam. A major snowstorm could force cancellations along some parts of the East Coast. Make-up sessions would be offered with the current exam.
Emergency planners plan for deadly ‘Big One’ earthquake
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — As military helicopters ferry search and rescue teams over the Pacific Northwest, below them are scenes of devastation from a giant earthquake that could strike the region at any time.
Tsunami waters surge through coastal communities. Buildings, bridges and roads lie in ruins. Fires burn out of control. Survivors are stranded on rooftops, cling to floating debris or are trapped inside wrecked buildings.
Seismologists say a full rupture of a 650-mile-long offshore fault running from Northern California to British Columbia and an ensuing tsunami could come in our lifetime, and emergency management officials are busy preparing for the worst.
Federal, state and military officials have been working together to draft plans to be followed when the “Big One” happens.
These contingency plans reflect deep anxiety about the potential gravity of the looming disaster: upward of 14,000 people dead in the worst-case scenarios, 30,000 injured, thousands left homeless and the region’s economy setback for years, if not decades.
Palin joins Trump in call to “make America great again”
TULSA, Oklahoma (AP) — Conservative firebrand Sarah Palin joined Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in Oklahoma Wednesday as part of her endorsement pledge in the increasingly intense race for the GOP nomination.
“Are you all ready to work to make America great again?” Palin asked a crowd of thousands packed into an arena at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, echoing Trump’s campaign mantra.
Palin, who was absent from Trump’s Wednesday morning event in Norwalk, Iowa, despite a scheduled appearance, rejoined the Trump campaign in Tulsa, warming up the crowd ahead of the candidate’s speech. But Palin also struck a personal tone, alluding to problems her son and other returning military vets endure when returning to civilian life.
“It’s kind of the elephant in the room,” she began, addressing her family’s struggle.
Palin’s oldest son, Track, was arrested earlier this week in a domestic violence case in which his girlfriend told police she was afraid he would shoot himself with a rifle. Track Palin was charged with assault, interfering with the report of a domestic violence crime and possessing a weapon while intoxicated in connection with the incident.
