Balloon pilot killed in Georgia
Balloon pilot killed in Georgia
ATLANTA (AP) — As a fierce thunderstorm that seemed to come out of nowhere closed in, hot-air balloon pilot Edward Ristaino spotted an open field 4,000 feet below and calmly and tersely warned the five skydivers aboard the craft, “You need to get out now.”
He may have saved their lives, but he lost his own. With lightning spidering across the sky and the wind rocking their parachutes, the skydivers floated safely to the ground, while the balloon was sucked up into the clouds, then sent crashing to earth. Ristaino’s body wasn’t found until Monday, nearly three days later.
“If we would have left a minute later, we would have been sucked into the storm,” said skydiver Dan Eaton.
The group had taken off Friday evening, ascending into a blue sky from a festival in Fitzgerald, Ga. From the air, they could see only a haze that soon turned menacing.
“It started off as just a red dot on the radar, and then it mushroomed very quickly into a big storm,” Ben Hill County Sheriff Bobby McLemore said.
Occupy planning
strike on May 1
NEW YORK (AP) — Occupy Wall Street activists on Monday called for supporters to skip work on May 1 to protest what they’re calling police brutality during 73 arrests in New York during the weekend.
Several dozen activists joined members of New York’s City Council for a news conference in Zuccotti Park to complain about police tactics. On Saturday, police started detaining people after hundreds of Occupy supporters gathered in the park to mark six months since the start of the movement.
Occupy organizers across the country have been mobilizing for months toward a one-day general strike in May.
They’re encouraging people to stay out of work and school, and to refrain from spending money. In New York, a coalition of unions and worker justice groups are planning a solidarity march through the city.
Yellowstone bison being relocated
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Sixty-four bison from Yellowstone National Park were being shipped almost 500 miles to northeast Montana’s Fort Peck Reservation on Monday, under a long-stalled relocation initiative meant to repopulate parts of the West with the iconic animals.
The transfer — anticipated for months — came in the middle of a snowstorm and with no prior public announcement, as state and tribal officials sought to avoid a courtroom battle with opponents worried about bison competing with cattle for grazing space.
Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer described the move as a major step in efforts to restore Yellowstone’s genetically-pure bison across a larger landscape.