‘A real kick in the rear’: Northeast hit by late-season snow
NEW YORK (AP) — A blustery late-season storm plastered the Northeast with sleet and snow Tuesday, paralyzing much of the Washington-to-Boston corridor after a stretch of unusually mild winter weather that had people thinking spring was already here.
The powerful nor’easter fell well short of the predicted snow totals in New York and Philadelphia but unloaded 1 to 2 feet in many places inland, grounded more than 6,000 flights and knocked out power to nearly a quarter-million customers from Virginia northward.
By the time it reached Massachusetts, it had turned into a blizzard, with near hurricane-force wind gusting over 70 mph along the coast and waves crashing over the seawalls. Up to a foot of snow was expected in the Boston area.
It was easily the biggest storm in a merciful winter that had mostly spared the Northeast, and many weren’t happy about it.
“It’s horrible,” said retired gumball-machine technician Don Zimmerman, of Lemoyne, Pennsylvania, using a snowblower to clear the sidewalk along his block. “I thought winter was out of here. … It’s a real kick in the rear.”
Turkey’s Erdogan renews war of words on Netherlands
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday directed fresh verbal attacks at the Netherlands amid their growing diplomatic spat, holding the country responsible for Europe’s worst mass killing since World War II.
In a televised speech, Erdogan referred to the massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, eastern Bosnia, in 1995, and blamed a Dutch battalion of United Nations peacekeepers who failed to halt the slaughter by Bosnian Serb forces.
Erdogan said: “We know the Netherlands and the Dutch from the Srebrenica massacre. We know how rotten their character is from their massacre of 8,000 Bosnians there.”
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte condemned Erdogan’s comments, calling them a “disgusting distortion of history.”
“We will not lower ourselves to this level. It is totally unacceptable,” Rutte told Dutch broadcaster RTL Z.
It was the latest in Erdogan’s war of words on the Netherlands, which prevented two Turkish ministers from holding campaign rallies in the country over the weekend. The two ministers had sought to campaign for an April 16 referendum on expanding Erdogan’s powers, courting the votes of eligible Turks in the Netherlands.
Trump White House sees “deep state” behind leaks, opposition
NEW YORK (AP) — The White House and its allies are stepping up their attacks on a foe typically associated with fragile democracies, military coups and spy thrillers.
The “deep state,” an alleged shadowy network of powerful entrenched federal and military interests, has increasingly become the focus of Republicans who accuse such forces of trying to undermine the new president.
Though senior White House staff members don’t use the exact label, the notion behind it has taken hold. President Donald Trump claims his predecessor tapped his phone and America’s intelligence agencies have conspired to leak harmful information to embarrass him. His chief strategist has vowed to dismantle the permanent Washington “administrative state.” White House spokesman Sean Spicer says “people that burrowed into government” are trying to sabotage the president.
To Trump’s critics, these assertions come off as paranoid fear of a non-existent shadow government and an effort to create a scapegoat for the White House’s struggles. But to Trump’s supporters, this represents an overdue challenge to an elite ruling class concerned only with maintaining its own grasp on power.
“Of course, the deep state exists. There’s a permanent state of massive bureaucracies that do whatever they want and set up deliberate leaks to attack the president,” said Newt Gingrich, a Trump confidant. “This is what the deep state does: They create a lie, spread a lie, fail to check the lie and then deny that they were behind the lie.”
Mexican official: 250 skulls found in clandestine graves
MEXICO CITY (AP) — More than 250 skulls have been found over the last several months in what appears to be a drug cartel mass burial ground on the outskirts of the city of Veracruz, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Veracruz state’s top prosecutor, Jorge Winckler, said the clandestine pits appeared to contain remains of cartel victims killed years ago.
The news came as no surprise to Lucia Diaz, one of the mothers of people who have disappeared whose group is known as Colectivo Solecito.
The mothers pushed authorities to investigate the fields where the skulls were found because they suspected more than a year ago that the wooded area known as Colinas de Santa Fe was a secret burial ground.
In the face of official inaction, the activists themselves went to the fields starting in August 2016, sinking rods into the ground to detect the telltale odor of decomposition, and then digging.
When they find what they believe are burial pits, they alert authorities, who carry out the final excavations.
“We dig holes, but we try not to touch the remains,” Diaz said, because DNA may be the only hope of identifying the dead and touching the bones might contaminate them.
So far, Diaz said, searchers have found about 125 pits that contain about 253 bodies. Nobody knows when the burials began, but Diaz said some were quite recent.
City alleges drugmaker let OxyContin flood black market
EVERETT, Wash. (AP) — As deaths from painkillers and heroin abuse spiked and street crimes increased, the mayor of Everett took major steps to tackle the opioid epidemic devastating this working-class city north of Seattle.
Mayor Ray Stephanson stepped up patrols, hired social workers to ride with officers and pushed for more permanent housing for chronically homeless people. The city says it has spent millions combating OxyContin and heroin abuse — and expects the tab to rise.
So Everett is suing Purdue Pharma, maker of the opioid pain medication OxyContin, in an unusual case that alleges the drugmaker knowingly allowed pills to be funneled into the black market and the city of about 108,000. Everett alleges the drugmaker did nothing to stop it and must pay for damages caused to the community.
Everett’s lawsuit, now in federal court in Seattle, accuses Purdue Pharma of gross negligence and nuisance. The city seeks to hold the company accountable, the lawsuit alleges, for “supplying OxyContin to obviously suspicious pharmacies and physicians and enabling the illegal diversion of OxyContin into the black market” and into Everett, despite a company program to track suspicious flows.
“Our community has been significantly damaged, and we need to be made whole,” said Stephanson, who grew up in Everett and is its longest-serving mayor, holding the job since 2003.
2nd helping: American brings back free meals on some flights
DALLAS (AP) — American Airlines said Tuesday that it plans to offer free meals to everyone in economy on two cross-country routes starting May 1.
The decision by the world’s biggest airline comes a month after Delta Air Lines announced that it would restore free meals in economy on a dozen long-haul U.S. routes this spring.
Airlines dropped free sandwiches and other meals in economy on domestic flights after brutal downturns in 2001 and 2008. They have been slow to bring back food despite rising profits, leading to grumbling by some passengers.
Fares on transcontinental flights can be very similar — five airlines are offering the same $184 price for a one-way nonstop flight from New York to Los Angeles on June 1. So airlines are looking for an edge with touches such as better seats and, now, free food.
Vice president of marketing Fernand Fernandez said some of American’s best customers fly those transcontinental routes and the airline wants to give them better service “in this competitive market.”
