Tag Archives: Accidents and disasters

World

3 dead after 7.6 quake hits remote part of Papua New Guinea

Leave a comment

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — At least three people are dead after a powerful earthquake hit a remote part of Papua New Guinea Sunday morning, authorities say. Others were injured and infrastructure damaged in the magnitude 7.6 jolt that was felt across the Pacific country.

The three people died in a landslide in the gold-mining town of Wau, said Morobe Provincial Disaster Director Charley Masange. Other people had been injured from falling structures or debris, and there was damage to some health centers, homes, rural roads and highways, Masange told The Associated Press.

Masange said it could take some time to assess the full extent of the injuries and damage in the region. But he said the sparse and scattered population and lack of large buildings near the epicenter in the nation’s largely undeveloped highlands may have helped prevent a bigger disaster, given the earthquake was so strong.

One resident from the town closest to the epicenter described his ordeal to the AP.

Renagi Ravu was meeting with two colleagues at his home in Kainantu when the quake struck.

Ravu tried to stand up from his chair but couldn’t maintain his balance and ended up in a kind of group hug with his colleagues, while plates and cups crashed from his shelves to the ground, he said. His children, ages 9 and 2, had their drinks and breakfast spill over.

Ravu, who is a geologist, said he tried to calm everybody as the shaking continued for more than a minute.

Ravu said that about 10,000 people live in and around his town, which is located 66 kilometers (41 miles) from the quake’s epicenter.

He said people were feeling rattled.

“It’s a common thing that earthquakes are felt here, but it usually doesn’t last as long and is not as violent as this one,” Ravu said. “It was quite intense.”

Ravu was sorting through the damage to his home, which he said likely included a broken sewer pipe judging from the smell. He said friends elsewhere in Kainantu had messaged him with descriptions of cracked roads, broken pipes and fallen debris, but hadn’t described major building collapses or injuries.

“They are starting to clean up their houses and the streets,” he said. Communication seems to have been affected, he added, with some cell towers likely to have fallen.

A magnitude 7.5 earthquake in 2018 in the nation’s central region killed at least 125 people. That quake hit areas that are remote and undeveloped, and assessments about the scale of the damage and injuries were slow to filter out.

Felix Taranu, a seismologist at the Geophysical Observatory in the capital Port Moresby, said it was too early to know the full impacts of Sunday’s earthquake, although its strength meant it “most likely caused considerable damage.”

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the quake hit at 9:46 a.m. local time at a depth of 90 kilometers (56 miles). NOAA advised there was no tsunami threat for the region.

Papua New Guinea is located on the eastern half of the island of New Guinea, to the east of Indonesia and north of eastern Australia. It sits on the Pacific’s “Ring of Fire,” the arc of seismic faults around the Pacific Ocean where much of the world’s earthquakes and volcanic activity occurs.

Read original article here

US

Heat wave breaks in Southern California with spotty rain

Leave a comment

SAN DIEGO — Southern Californians welcomed cooler temperatures and spotty rain Saturday from a tropical storm veering off the Pacific Coast days after a relentless heat wave nearly overwhelmed the state’s electrical grid.

Officials braced for flooding in coastal and mountain areas from the storm and feared powerful winds could expand the massive Fairview Fire about 75 miles (121 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles. But minimal flooding was reported early Saturday and crews made significant progress on the fire and said they expected full containment on Monday. More than 10,000 homes and other structures have been threatened by the blaze.

The National Weather Service forecast an end to the grueling heat wave in the Los Angeles area Saturday though heat and wind advisories remained in effect through the evening, and warned of possible flooding in mountain areas and some beach communities.

In San Diego County, inland areas such as Mt. Laguna and Julian received several inches of rain from the storm while coastal communities got less than an inch, the National Weather Service reported.

Hurricane Kay made landfall near Mexico’s Bahia Asuncion in Baja California Sur state Thursday, but it quickly weakened into a tropical storm by the time it reached Southern California. The tropical conditions added a swelter to the heat wave that saw temperatures soar past 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) in many parts of California this week.

Some residents welcomed the respite from unusually high temperatures.

“The heat was killer, so for now this feels good,” Charles Jenkins said as rain fell Friday in San Diego.

With flooding possible, officials in coastal cities posted warning signs in low-lying areas and made sandbags available to the public. In the Orange County community of Seal Beach, a beach parking lot experienced minor flooding Friday from the high tide, police said.

September already has produced one of the hottest and longest heat waves on record for California and some other Western states. Nearly 54 million people were under heat warnings and advisories across the region this week as temperature records were shattered in many areas.

California’s state capital of Sacramento hit an all-time high Tuesday of 116 degrees (46.7 C), breaking a 97-year-old record. Salt Lake City tied its all-time high temperature Wednesday at 107 degrees (41.6 C).

On Tuesday, as air conditioners whirred amid the stifling heat, California set a record for power consumption and authorities nearly instituted rolling blackouts when the electrical grid capacity was at its breaking point.

Scientists say climate change has made the West warmer and drier over the last three decades and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive. In the last five years, California has experienced the largest and most destructive fires in state history.

While firefighters made progress against the Fairview Fire, the fast-moving Mosquito Fire in the foothills east of Sacramento doubled in size Friday to at least 46 square miles (119 square kilometers) and threatened 3,600 homes in Placer and El Dorado counties, while blanketing the region in smoke.

Flames jumped the American River, burning structures in the mountain hamlet of Volcanoville and moving closer to the towns of Foresthill, home to about 1,500 people, and Georgetown, population 3,000. More than 5,700 people in the area have been evacuated, said Placer County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Josh Barnhart.

David Hance slept on the porch of his mother’s Foresthill mobile home when he woke up to a glowing red sky early Wednesday morning and was ordered to evacuate.

“It was actually fricking terrifying, cause they say, ‘Oh yeah, it’s coming closer,’” he said. “It was like sunset in the middle of the night.”

Hance left behind most of his electronic gear, all his clothing and family photos and fled to Auburn, where he found his mother, Linda Hance, who said the biggest stress is wondering: “Is my house still there?”

Organizers of the Tour de Tahoe announced Friday they were canceling the annual 72-mile (115-km) bicycle ride scheduled Sunday around Lake Tahoe because of the heavy smoke from the blaze — more than 50 miles (80 km) away — and noted that cycling is a “heavy cardio activity that does not pair well with terrible air quality.” Last year’s ride was canceled due to smoke from another big fire south of Tahoe.

The Mosquito Fire’s cause remained under investigation. Pacific Gas & Electric said unspecified “electrical activity” occurred close in time to the report of the fire on Tuesday.

————

Antczak reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writers Stefanie Dazio and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles, Noah Berger in Auburn, California, Scott Sonner in Reno, Nevada, and Gillian Flaccus in Portland, Oregon, contributed to this report.

Read original article here

Business

Ford to appeal $1.7 billion verdict in Georgia truck crash

Leave a comment

WOODSTOCK, Ga. — Ford Motor Co. plans to appeal a $1.7 billion verdict against the automaker after a pickup truck crash that claimed the lives of a Georgia couple, a company representative said Sunday.

Jurors in Gwinnett County, just northeast of Atlanta, returned the verdict late last week in the yearslong civil case involving what the plaintiffs’ lawyers called dangerously defective roofs on Ford pickup trucks, lawyer James Butler Jr. said Sunday.

Melvin and Voncile Hill were killed in April 2014 in the rollover wreck of their 2002 Ford F-250. Their children Kim and Adam Hill were the plaintiffs in the wrongful death case.

“While our sympathies go out to the Hill family, we do not believe the verdict is supported by the evidence, and we plan to appeal,” Ford said in a statement to The Associated Press on Sunday.

Butler said he was stunned by evidence in the case.

“I used to buy Ford trucks,” Butler said on Sunday. “I thought nobody would sell a truck with a roof this weak. The damn thing is useless in a wreck. You might as well drive a convertible.”

In closing arguments, lawyers hired by the company defended the actions of Ford and its engineers.

The Michigan-based automaker sought to defend the company against accusations “that Ford and its engineers acted willfully and wantonly, with a conscious indifference for the safety of the people who ride in their cars when they made these decisions about roof strength,” defense lawyer William Withrow Jr. said in his closing arguments, according to a court transcript.

The allegation that Ford was irresponsible and willfully made decisions that put customers at risk is “simply not the case,” another defense lawyer, Paul Malek, said in the same closing argument.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs had submitted evidence of nearly 80 similar rollover wrecks that involved truck roofs being crushed that injured or killed motorists, Butler’s law firm, Butler Prather LLP, said in a statement.

“More deaths and severe injuries are certain because millions of these trucks are on the road,” Butler’s co-counsel, Gerald Davidson, said in the statement.

“An award of punitive damages to hopefully warn people riding around in the millions of those trucks Ford sold was the reason the Hill family insisted on a verdict,” Butler said.

Read original article here

World

Brazil police: Items owned by missing men found in Amazon

Leave a comment

ATALAIA DO NORTE, Brazil — Search teams found a backpack, laptop and other personal items that belonged to Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and freelance British journalist Dom Phillips, who went missing in a remote area of Brazil’s Amazon a week ago, Federal Police said Sunday night.

Phillips’ backpack was discovered Sunday afternoon tied to a tree that was half-submerged, a firefighter told reporters in Atalaia do Norte, the closest city to the search area, which is near the Javari Valley Indigenous Territory. It is the end of the rainy season in the region and part of the forest is flooded.

Officers with the Federal Police brought the items by boat to Atalaia do Norte later in the afternoon. In a statement a few hours later, they said they had identified the belongings of both missing men, such as Pereira’s health card and clothes.

A tarp from the boat used by the men was found Saturday by Matis volunteers, members of an Indigenous group of recent contact, one of them told The Associated Press.

“We used a little canoe to go to the shallow water. Then we found a tarp, shorts and a spoon,” said Binin Beshu Matis.

After that find, the search teams concentrated their efforts around that spot in the Itaquai river.

On Saturday, police reported finding traces of blood in the boat of a fisherman who is under arrest as the only suspect and organic matter of apparent human origin inside the river. Both materials are under forensic analysis, and no more details were provided.

Pereira, 41, and Phillips, 57, were last seen June 5 near the entrance of the Indigenous territory, which borders Peru and Colombia. They were returning alone by boat on the Itaquai river to Atalaia do Norte but never arrived.

That area has seen violent conflicts between fishermen, poachers and government agents. Violence has grown as drug trafficking gangs battle for control of waterways to ship cocaine, although the Itaquai is not a known drug trafficking route.

Authorities have said that a main line of the police investigation into the disappearance has pointed to an international network that pays poor fishermen to fish illegally in the Javari Valley reserve, which is Brazil’s second-largest Indigenous territory.

One of the most valuable targets is the world’s largest freshwater fish with scales, the arapaima. It weighs up to 200 kilograms (440 pounds) and can reach 3 meters (10 feet). The fish is sold in nearby cities, including Leticia, Colombia, Tabatinga, Brazil, and Iquitos, Peru.

The only known suspect in the disappearances is fisherman Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, also known as Pelado, who is under arrest. According to accounts by Indigenous people who were with Pereira and Phillips, he brandished a rifle at them the day before the pair disappeared.

The suspect denies any wrongdoing and said military police tortured him to try to get a confession, his family told The Associated Press..

Pereira, who previously led the local bureau of the government’s Indigenous agency, known as FUNAI, has taken part in several operations against illegal fishing. In such operations, as a rule the fishing gear is seized or destroyed, while the fishermen are fined and briefly detained. Only the Indigenous can legally fish in their territories.

“The crime’s motive is some personal feud over fishing inspection,” the mayor of Atalaia do Norte, Denis Paiva, speculated to reporters without providing more details.

AP had access to information police shared with Indigenous leadership. But while some police, the mayor and others in the region link the pair’s disappearances to the “fish mafia,” federal police have not ruled rule out other lines of investigation, such as narco trafficking.

Fisherman Laurimar Alves Lopes, who lives on the banks of Itaquai, told AP that he gave up fishing inside the Indigenous territory after being detained three times. He said he endured beating and starvation in jail.

Lopes, who has five children, said he only fishes near his home to feed his family, not sell.

“I made many mistakes, I stole a lot of fish. When you see your child dying of hunger you go get it where you have to. So I would go there to steal fish to be able to support my family. But then I said: I’m going to put an end to this, I’m going to plant,” he said during an interview on his boat.

Lopes said he was taken to local federal police headquarters in Tabatinga three times, charging he was beaten and left without food.

In 2019, Funai official Maxciel Pereira dos Santos was gunned down in Tabatinga in front of his wife and daughter-in-law. Three years later, the crime remains unsolved. His FUNAI colleagues told AP they believe the slaying was linked to his work against fishermen and poachers.

Rubber tappers founded all the riverbank communities in the area. In the 1980s, however, rubber tapping declined and they resorted to logging. That ended, too, when the federal government created the Javari Valley Indigenous Territory in 2001. Fishing has become the main economic activity since then.

An illegal fishing trip to the vast Javari Valley lasts around one month, said Manoel Felipe, a local historian and teacher who also served as a councilman. For each illegal incursion, a fisherman can earn at least $3,000.

“The fishermen’s financiers are Colombians,” Felipe said. “In Leticia, everybody was angry with Bruno. This is not a little game. It’s possible they sent a gunman to kill him.”

Read original article here

World

Crowd confronts cleric at Iran tower collapse that killed 32

Leave a comment

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Protesters angry over a building collapse in southwestern Iran that killed at least 32 people shouted down an emissary sent by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sparking a crackdown that saw riot police club demonstrators and fire tear gas, according to online videos analyzed on Monday.

The demonstration directly challenged the Iranian government’s response to the disaster a week ago as pressure rises in the Islamic Republic over rising food prices and other economic woes amid the unravelling of its nuclear deal with world powers.

While the protests so far still appear to be leaderless, even Arab tribes in the region seemed to join them Sunday, raising the risk of the unrest intensifying. Already, tensions between Tehran and the West have spiked after Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard on Friday seized two Greek oil tankers seized at sea.

Ayatollah Mohsen Heidari AleKasir tried to address upset mourners near the site of the 10-story Metropol Building but hundreds gathered Sunday night instead booed and shouted.

Surrounded by bodyguards, the ayatollah, in his 60s, tried to continue but couldn’t.

“What’s happening?” the cleric stage-whispered to a bodyguard, who then leaned in to tell him something.

The cleric then tried to address the crowd again: “My dears, please keep calm, as a sign of respect to Abadan, its martyrs and the dear (victims) the whole Iranian nation is mourning tonight.”

The crowd responded by shouting: “Shameless!”

A live broadcast on state television of the event then cut out. Demonstrators later chanted: “I will kill; I will kill the one who killed my brother!”

The Tehran-based daily newspaper Hamshahri and the semiofficial Fars news agency said the protesters attacked the platform where state TV had set up its camera, cutting off its broadcast.

Police ordered the crowd not to chant slogans against the Islamic Republic and then ordered them to leave, calling their rally illegal. Video later showed officers confronting and clubbing demonstrators as clouds of tear gas rose. At least one officer fired what appeared to be a shotgun, though it wasn’t clear if it was live fire or so-called “beanbag” rounds designed to stun.

It wasn’t immediately clear if anyone was injured or if police made any arrests.

The details in the videos corresponded to known features of Abadan, located some 660 kilometers (410 miles) southwest of the capital, Tehran. Foreign-based Farsi-language television channels described tear gas and other shots being fired.

Independent newsgathering remains extremely difficult in Iran. During unrest, Iran has disrupted internet and telephone communications to affected areas, while also limiting the movement of journalists inside of the country. Reporters Without Borders describes the Islamic Republic as the third-worst country in the world to be a journalist — behind only North Korea and Eritrea.

Following the tower collapse in Abadan last Monday, authorities have acknowledged the building’s owner and corrupt government officials had allowed construction to continue at the Metropol Building despite concerns over its shoddy workmanship. Authorities have arrested 13 people as part of a broad investigation into the disaster, including the city’s mayor.

Rescue teams pulled three more bodies from the rubble on Monday, bringing the death toll in the collapse to 32, according to the state-run IRNA news agency. Authorities fear more people could be trapped under the debris.

The deadly collapse has raised questions about the safety of similar buildings in the country and underscored an ongoing crisis in Iranian construction projects. The collapse reminded many of the 2017 fire and collapse of the iconic Plasco building in Tehran that killed 26 people.

In Tehran, the city’s emergency department warned that 129 high-rise buildings in the capital remained “unsafe,” based on a survey in 2017. The country’s prosecutor-general, Mohammad Javad Motazeri, has promised to address the issue immediately.

Abadan has also seen disasters in the past. In 1978, an intentionally set fire at Cinema Rex — just a few blocks away from the collapsed building in modern Abadan — killed hundreds. Anger over the blaze triggered unrest across Iran’s oil-rich regions and helped lead to the Islamic Revolution that toppled Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

Abadan, in Iran’s oil-rich Khuzestan province, is home to Iran’s Arab minority, who long have complained about being treated as second-class citizens in the Persian nation. Arab separatists in the region have launched attacks on pipelines and security forces in the past. Videos and the newspaper Hamshahri noted that two tribes had come into the city to support the protests.

Meanwhile, one of the two Greek tankers seized by Iran on Friday turned on its tracking devices for the first time since the incident. The oil tanker Prudent Warrior gave a satellite position Monday off Bandar Abbas, a major Iranian port, according to data from MarineTraffic.com analyzed by The Associated Press.

Five armed guards were on the Prudent Warrior on Monday, though Iranian authorities were allowing the crew to use their mobile phones, said George Vakirtzis, the chief financial officer of the ship’s manager Polembros Shipping.

“The whole thing is political and in the hands of the Greek Foreign Office and the Iranian government,” Vakirtzis told the AP.

Monday night, Iranian state TV aired footage of the raid on the Prudent Warrior. The video showed masked Guard troops land a helicopter on the ship, then storm the civilian ship’s bridge armed with assault rifles.

It remains unclear where the second ship, the Delta Poseidon, is.

———

Follow Jon Gambrell and Isabel DeBre on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP and www.twitter.com/isabeldebre.



Read original article here

US

Crews in New Mexico, Arizona scramble to corral wildfires

Leave a comment

Firefighters in New Mexico’s Rocky Mountain foothills are excavating new firebreaks and clearing brush to keep a massive wildfire from destroying more homes and pine forests

10 May 2022, 01:10

3 min read

LAS VEGAS, N.M. — Firefighters in northern New Mexico worked Monday in rugged terrain ahead of a massive wildfire, feverishly trying to position crews to clear brush and stop the monster blaze from burning more homes in the Rocky Mountain foothills.

The wildfire has charred 308 square miles (798 square kilometers) of tinder-dry ponderosa forests, making it the largest blaze burning in the U.S. during what has been an early start to the fire season. Thousands of people have been evacuated.

Much of the Southwest has been in the grips of drought for decades and warmer temperatures have combined with spring winds to make for dangerous fire conditions.

Crews in Arizona were dealing with strong winds Monday as they battled a fire near the U.S.-Mexico border that forced several dozen people from their homes.

And another wildfire in northern New Mexico near the federal government’s key facilities for nuclear research prompted Los Alamos National Laboratory and others in the area to begin preparing for evacuations, though officials stressed there was no immediate threat to the lab.

The fire has burned nearly 64 square miles (165 square kilometers).

Officials said some medically fragile residents and large animals already have been moved out of the area to lessen the traffic congestion should evacuations be ordered. They anticipated residents would have at least a day or two notice before being required to leave.

“If the fire gets its fifth gear, it will be here sooner than we want it to be,” said incident commander Rich Harvey. “We’re doing everything we can to check it.”

Strong, gusty winds continued to blow across the region after fanning the fires for weeks and often grounding essential aircraft used to drop water or fire retardant ahead of the flames, complicating efforts to contain them. Wind will continue to be a factor this week, along with low humidity, but to varying degrees depending on the day.

Fire officials predicted part of the main New Mexico fire would push north into rugged terrain that is difficult for firefighters to access.

“This isn’t a surprise to us. All the models showed this probably was going to happen,” said fire operations section chief Todd Abel, adding that crews have spent days working to protect ranch homes scattered thorough the area.

Nearly 1,700 firefighters were battling the blaze burning northeast of Santa Fe that was almost 50% contained. It has destroyed nearly 300 structures, including homes, commercial buildings and barns.

The region’s largest population center — Las Vegas, New Mexico, home to 13,000 people — remained largely safe from the flames after some area residents were allowed to return over the weekend. Schools were expected to return to in-person classes on Tuesday.

———

Montoya Bryan reported from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Associated Press writer Felicia Fonseca in Flagstaff, Arizona, contributed to this report.

Read original article here

World

Explosion at illegal oil refinery in Nigeria kills over 50

Leave a comment

Nigeria police and officials say more than 50 people have been killed and many injuredin an explosion that rocked an illegal oil refinery in southeastrn Nigeria

23 April 2022, 21:32

2 min read

ABUJA, Nigeria — More than 50 people were killed and many injured when an explosion rocked an illegal oil refinery in southeastern Nigeria, state officials and police said Saturday.

The death toll may be more than 100, according to a report in the Lagos-based Punch newspaper. The fire was reported to have spread to nearby properties.

The fire broke out Friday night and quickly spread to two fuel storage areas at the illegal crude oil refinery, causing the complex to be “engulfed by fire which spread rapidly” within the area, said Declan Emelumba, the Imo State commissioner for information.

The immediate cause of the explosion and the extent of the deaths, injuries and damage were being investigated, Emelumba said.

Multiple videos posted on social media showed a gruesome scene, with people’s charred remains reduced to skeletons and cinders. The Associated Press was unable to independently verify them.

“A lot of people died. The people who died are all illegal operators,” said Michael Abattam, spokesman of the Imo State Police Command.

The Imo state government was looking for the owner of the refinery where the explosion occurred and declared him a wanted individual, an official said.

Illegal refineries are common in Nigeria, where shady business operators often avoid regulations and taxes by setting up refineries in remote areas, out of sight of authorities.

Nigeria is Africa’s largest producer of crude oil but it has very few official refineries and as a result most gasoline and other fuels are imported, creating an opening for the illegal refinery operators.

The practice is so widespread that is affecting crude oil production in the oil-rich Niger Delta region.

Read original article here

World

Sailors’ families seek answers about Russian ship sinking

Leave a comment

It took the Russian military over a week to acknowledge that one serviceman died and two dozen others were missing after one of its flagship cruisers sank in the Black Sea, reportedly the result of a Ukrainian missiles strike.

The acknowledgment happened after families started searching desperately for their sons who, they said, served on the ship and did not come home, and relatives are posing sharp questions about Russia’s initial statement that the entire crew was evacuated.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Friday in a terse announcement that one crew member died and 27 were left missing after a fire damaged the flagship Moskva cruiser last week, while 396 others were evacuated. The ministry did not offer any explanation for its earlier claims that the full crew got off the vessel before it sank.

The loss of the Moskva, one of three missile cruisers of its kind in Russia’s fleet, was shrouded in mystery from the moment it was first reported early on April 14. Ukraine said it hit the ship with missiles. The Russian Defense Ministry would not acknowledge an attack, saying only that a fire broke out on the vessel after ammunition detonated, causing serious damage.

Moscow even insisted that the ship remained afloat and was being towed to a port, only to admit hours later that it sank after all — in a storm. No images of the ship, or of the supposed rescue operation, were made available.

Only several days later, the Russian military released a short and mostly silent video showing rows of sailors, supposedly from the Moskva, reporting to their command in the Crimean city of Sevastopol. The footage offered little clarity on how many sailors were actually evacuated to safety.

Soon came the questions. An emotional social media post by Dmitry Shkrebets alleging that his son, a conscript who served as a cook on Moskva, was missing, quickly went viral.

The military “said the entire crew was evacuated. It’s a lie! A blatant and cynical lie!” Shkrebets, a resident of Crimea, wrote on VK, a popular Russian social media platform, on April 17, three days after the ship went down.

“My son, a conscript, as the very commanders of the Moskva cruiser told me, is not listed among the wounded and the dead and is added to the list of those missing … Guys, missing in the open sea?!”

Similar posts quickly followed from other parts of Russia. The Associated Press found social media posts looking for at least 13 other young men who reportedly served on the Moskva whose families could not find them.

One woman spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity, as she feared for her son’s safety. She said her son was a conscript and had been aboard the Moskva for several months before telling her in early February that the ship was about to depart for drills. She lost touch with him for several weeks after that.

The news about Russia invading Ukraine worried her, she said, and she started reading the news online and on social media every day. The last time they spoke on the phone was in mid-March. He was on the ship but did not say where it was.

She didn’t start looking for him until a day after she learned about trouble aboard the Moskva, because official statements from the Defense Ministry said the crew was evacuated. But no one called or messaged her about her son’s whereabouts, and she started to get agitated.

Calls to various military officials and hotlines got her nowhere at first, but she persisted. A call she made on the way to a grocery store brought bleak news — that her son was listed as missing and that there was little chance he survived in the cold water.

“I said ‘But you said you rescued everyone,’ and he said ‘I only have the lists’. I screamed ‘What are you doing?!’” she told the AP. “I got hysterical, right at the bus stop (where I was standing), I felt like the ground was giving way under my feet. I started shaking.”

The Kremlin statements about the ship’s loss and the crew’s fate follow a historical pattern in which Russia has often met bad news with silence, denials or undercounts about casualties. Previous examples include the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, the sinking of the nuclear-powered submarine Kursk in the Barents Sea in 2000 and the 1994-1996 Chechen war.

The families’ accounts could not be independently verified. But they went largely uncontested by Russian authorities.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to comment and redirected the question to the Defense Ministry when asked by the AP during one of his daily conference calls with reporters about families challenging the official statements about sailors being evacuated.

The Defense Ministry did not comment on the outcry either — until Friday, when it finally revealed that 27 crew members were missing and one was confirmed dead. The ministry still did not acknowledge an attack on the ship, however.

Political analyst Abbas Gallyamov says the sinking of the Moskva is a major political blow for President Vladimir Putin, not so much because of the outcry from families, but because it hurts Putin’s image of military might.

“This trait, might, is under attack now because we’re now talking about the devastation of the fleet,” Gallyamov said. But the families’ woes underscores “that one shouldn’t trust the Russian authorities.”

In the meantime, some families with missing sons plan to continue seeking the truth.

“Now we will turn to figuring out for how long one can ‘go missing’ in the open sea,” Shkrebets posted Friday.

Read original article here

US

6 students killed in Oklahoma crash were in car that seats 4

Leave a comment

The Oklahoma Highway Patrol says six teenage students killed in a collision with a semi were riding in a small car with only four seats

March 23, 2022, 2:14 PM

2 min read

TISHOMINGO, Okla. — Six teenage students killed in a collision with a semi were riding in a small car with only four seats, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol said Wednesday.

Only the 16-year-old car’s driver and front-seat passenger were wearing seat belts when the 2015 Chevrolet Spark carrying the girls collided with the rock hauler Tuesday afternoon in Tishomingo, a rural city of about 3,000 located about 100 miles (160 kilometers) southeast of Oklahoma City, the highway patrol said.

Those killed include the 16-year-old driver, three 15-year-olds, and two 17-year-old passengers, the highway patrol said. The girls’ names weren’t released because they are juveniles.

The highway patrol identified the driver of the semi as Valendon Burton, 51, of Burneyville, Oklahoma. The report said Burton was not injured in the crash.

The crash report, released Wednesday morning, said the circumstances of the wreck remained under investigation. But OHP Trooper Shelby Humphrey said Tuesday night that the girls’ car was making a right turn when it collided with the truck, KXII-TV reported.

Tishomingo Public School Superintendent Bobby Waitman said in a Facebook post that the district had “a great loss” involving students from the district’s high school.

“Our hearts are broken, and we are grieving with our students and staff,” Waitman said.

The crash happened one week after nine people were killed — including six members of a New Mexico college’s golf team and their coach — in a crash in West Texas. In that crash, the National Transportation Safety Board determined that a 13-year-old boy was behind the wheel of a truck when it crossed the centerline and collided with a van carrying students from the University of the Southwest golf team.

Read original article here

World

Russian airstrike hits base in western Ukraine, kills 35

Leave a comment

LVIV, Ukraine — Waves of Russian missiles pounded a military training base close to Ukraine’s western border with NATO member Poland, killing 35 people. The strike followed Russian threats to target foreign weapon shipments that are helping Ukrainian fighters defend their country against Russia’s grinding invasion.

More than 30 Russian cruise missiles targeted the sprawling training facility that is less than 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the closest border point with Poland, according to the governor of Ukraine’s western Lviv region. Poland is a key location for routing Western military aid to Ukraine.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Lviv had largely been spared the scale of destruction unfolding further east and become a destination for residents escaping bombarded cities and for many of the nearly 2.6 million refugees who have fled the country.

The training center in Yavoriv appears to be the most westward target struck so far in the 18-day invasion. The facility, also known as the International Peacekeeping and Security Center, has long been used to train Ukrainian military personnel, often with instructors from the United States and other NATO countries.

It has also hosted international NATO drills. As such, the site symbolizes what has long been a Russian complaint: That the NATO alliance of 30 member countries is moving ever closer to Russia’s borders. Russian has demanded that Ukraine drop its ambitions to join NATO.

Lviv governor Maksym Kozytskyi said most of the missiles fired Sunday “were shot down because the air defense system worked.” The ones that got through through killed at least 35 people and wounded 134, he said.

Russian fighters also fired at the airport in the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk, which is less than 150 kilometers (94 miles) north of Romania and 250 kilometers (155 miles) from Hungary, countries that also are NATO allies. The airport, which includes a military airfield as well as a runway for civilian flights, also was targeted Friday.

Fighting also raged in multiple areas of the country overnight. Ukrainian authorities said Russian airstrikes on a monastery and a children’s resort in the eastern Donetsk region hit spots where monks and refugees were sheltering, wounding 32 people.

Another airstrike hit a westward-bound train evacuating people from the east, killing one person and injuring another, Donetsk’s chief regional administrator said.

To the north, in the city of Chernihiv, one person was killed and another injured in a Russian airstrike that destroyed a residential block, emergency services said.

Around the capital, Kyiv, a major political and strategic target for the invasion, fighting also intensified, with overnight shelling in the northwestern suburbs and a missile strike Sunday that destroyed a warehouse to the east.

In Irpin, a suburb about 12 miles (20 kilometers) northwest of central Kyiv, bodies lay out in the open Saturday on streets and in a park.

“When I woke up in the morning, everything was covered in smoke, everything was dark. We don’t know who is shooting and where,” resident Serhy Protsenko said as he walked through his neighborhood. Explosions sounded in the distance. “We don’t have any radio or information.”

Chief regional administrator Oleksiy Kuleba said Russian forces appeared to be trying to blockade and paralyze the capital with day and night shelling of the suburbs. Kuleba said Russian agents were in the capital and its suburbs, marking out possible future targets.

He vowed that any all-out assault would meet stiff resistance, saying: “We’re getting ready to defend Kyiv, and we’re prepared to fight for ourselves.”

Talks aimed at reaching a cease-fire again failed Saturday, and the U.S. announced plans to provide another $200 million to Ukraine for weapons. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warned other nations that sending equipment to bolster Ukraine’s military was “an action that makes those convoys legitimate targets.”

Russian soldiers pillaged a humanitarian convoy that was trying to reach the battered and encircled port city of Mariupol, where more than 1,500 people have died, a Ukrainian official said. Ukraine’s military said Russian forces captured Mariupol’s eastern outskirts, tightening their siege of the strategic port. Taking Mariupol and other ports on the Azov Sea could allow Russia to establish a land corridor to Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of trying to break his country apart, as well as starting “a new stage of terror” with the alleged detention of a mayor from a city west of Mariupol.

“Ukraine will stand this test. We need time and strength to break the war machine that has come to our land,” Zelenskyy said during his nightly address to the nation Saturday.

Zelenskyy reported that 1,300 Ukrainian soldiers had died since the Russian invasion began Feb. 24.

The first major city to fall, earlier this month, was Kherson, a vital Black Sea port of 290,000 residents. Zelenskyy said Saturday that Russians were using blackmail and bribery in an attempt to force local officials to form a “pseudo-republic” in the southern Kherson region, much like those in Donetsk and Luhansk, two eastern regions where pro-Russian separatists began fighting Ukrainian forces in 2014. One of the pretexts Russia used to invade was that it had to protect the separatist regions.

Zelenskyy again deplored NATO’s refusal to declare a no-fly zone over Ukraine and said Ukraine has sought ways to procure air defense assets, though he didn’t elaborate. U.S. President Joe Biden announced another $200 million in aid to Ukraine, with an additional $13 billion included in a bill that has passed the House and should pass the Senate within days. NATO has said that imposing a no-fly zone could lead to a wider war with Russia.

Moscow has said it would establish humanitarian corridors out of conflict zones, but Ukrainian officials have accused Russia of disrupting those paths and firing on civilians. Russian forces have hit at least two dozen hospitals and medical facilities, according to the World Health Organization.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said just nine of 14 agreed-upon corridors were open on Saturday, and that about 13,000 people had used them to evacuate around the country.

The leaders of France and Germany spoke Saturday with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a failed attempt to reach a cease-fire. To end the war, Moscow has demanded that Ukraine drop its bid to join NATO and adopt a neutral status; acknowledge the Russian sovereignty over Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014; recognize the independence of separatist regions in the country’s east; and agree to demilitarize.

Thousands of soldiers on both sides are believed to have been killed along with many civilians, including at least 79 Ukrainian children, the government said.

The Russian invaders appear to have struggled more than expected against determined Ukrainian fighters. Still, Russia’s stronger military threatens to grind down Ukrainian forces. The United Nations has said the fighting has displaced millions of Ukrainians within the country on top of the millions who have left.

Elena Yurchuk, a nurse from the northern city of Chernihiv, was in a Romanian train station Saturday with her teenage son, Nikita, unsure whether their home was still standing.

“We have nowhere to go back to,” said Yurchuk, 44, a widow who hopes to find work in Germany. “Nothing left.”

———

Associated Press journalist Mstyslav Chernov in Mariupol and other reporters around the world contributed.

———

Follow the AP’s coverage of the Ukraine crisis at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Read original article here