Southern plagues: Drought, flood, fire and now killer storms
Southern plagues: Drought, flood, fire and now killer storms
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Tornadoes that dropped out of the night sky killed five people in two states and injured at least a dozen more early Wednesday, adding to a seemingly biblical onslaught of drought, flood and fire plaguing the South.
The storms tore through just as firefighters began to get control of wildfires that killed seven and wiped out more than 150 homes and businesses around the resort town of Gatlinburg, Tennessee. In Alabama, the weather system dumped more than 2 inches of rain in areas that had been parched by months of choking drought.
At least 10 confirmed twisters damaged homes, splintered barns and toppled trees in parts of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee, the National Weather Service said. Tombstones were even knocked over in the cemetery behind the badly damaged Rosalie Baptist Church, near where three people died in northeastern Alabama.
“It looks like the rapture happened up there,” said church member Steve Hall, referring to the end-times belief of many Christians.
“Are we thinking the Lord is trying to get our attention?” said the pastor, Roger Little.
Pilot told Colombia controllers ‘no fuel’ before crash
MEDELLIN, Colombia (AP) — The pilot of the chartered plane carrying a Brazilian soccer team told air traffic controllers he had run out of fuel and desperately pleaded for permission to land before crashing into the Andes, according to a leaked recording of the final minutes of the doomed flight.
In the sometimes chaotic exchange with the air traffic tower, the pilot of the British-built jet could be heard repeatedly requesting authorization to land because of “fuel problems.” A female controller explained another plane had been diverted with mechanical problems and had priority, instructing the pilot to wait seven minutes.
As the plane circled in a holding pattern, the pilot grew more desperate. “Complete electrical failure, without fuel,” he said in the tense final moments before the plane set off on a four-minute death spiral that ended with it slamming into a mountainside Monday night.
Just before going silent the pilot said he was flying at an altitude of 9,000 feet and made a final plea to land: “Vectors, senorita. Landing vectors.”
The recording, obtained Wednesday by Colombian media, appeared to confirm the accounts of a surviving flight attendant and a pilot flying nearby who overheard the frantic exchange. These, along with the lack of an explosion upon impact, point to a rare case of fuel running out as a cause of the crash of the jetliner, which experts said was flying at its maximum range.
As Trump claims to have saved Carrier jobs, details are hazy
WASHINGTON (AP) — In persuading Carrier to keep hundreds of jobs in Indiana, President-elect Donald Trump is claiming victory on behalf of factory workers whose positions were bound for Mexico. But the scant details that have emerged so far raise doubts about the extent of the victory.
At Carrier’s Indianapolis plant, the deal spares about 800 union workers whose jobs were going to be outsourced to Mexico, according to federal officials who were briefed by the heating and air conditioning company. This suggests that hundreds will still lose their jobs at the factory, where roughly 1,400 workers were slated to be laid off.
Also, neither Trump nor Carrier has yet to say what the workers might have to give up or precisely what threats or incentives were used to get the manufacturer to change its mind.
“There’s excitement with most people, but there’s a lot of skepticism and worry because we don’t know the details,” said TJ Bray, 32, who has worked for Carrier for 14 years and installs insulation in furnaces.
“There’s a few that are worried. And there’s still a few that don’t even believe this is real. They think it’s a play, a set-up or a scam.”
Prosecutor clears officer in man’s death, says man was armed
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — A prosecutor on Wednesday cleared a Charlotte police officer in the killing of a black man whose death touched off civil unrest, and he presented detailed evidence to rebut assertions that the slain man was unarmed.
Officer Brentley Vinson was justified in opening fire on Keith Scott and won’t face charges, Charlotte-Mecklenburg District Attorney Andrew Murray said.
In a 40-minute news presentation to news reporters, Murray produced evidence that Keith Scott was armed with a handgun and the officer who killed him feared Scott would shoot.
The announcement “profoundly disappointed” Scott’s family, but they haven’t decided whether to file a lawsuit, their lawyer said.
Scott, 43, was killed Sept. 20 in the parking lot of an apartment complex.
Syria’s Aleppo loses clown who warmed war-torn hearts
BEIRUT (AP) — When war is constant, it can be easy to lose sight of how much a single death can matter. But the passing of one committed social worker will be especially devastating to his community in Aleppo.
The 24-year-old Anas al-Basha was a center director at Space for Hope, one of many unheralded local initiatives operating against the odds to provide civil society services to Syria’s war-torn opposition areas.
He was also a joker who dressed as a clown to cheer up the Aleppo’s traumatized children. He was killed Tuesday in a presumed Russian or government missile strike on the Mashhad neighborhood in the besieged, eastern side of the city.
In a now largely bombed-out enclave, Space for Hope supports 12 schools and four psycho-social support centers in eastern Aleppo, providing counseling and financial support for 365 children who have lost one or both parents. Many of the staff of 34 learned social work on the job as the country’s five-year civil war unfolded.
Anas’s supervisor, Samar Hijazi, said she will remember him as a friend who loved to work with children.