South Carolina flood: Swamped streets, thousands without running water; death toll at 12 ADVERTISING South Carolina flood: Swamped streets, thousands without running water; death toll at 12 COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — After a week of steady rain, the showers tapered
South Carolina flood: Swamped streets, thousands without running water; death toll at 12
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — After a week of steady rain, the showers tapered off Monday and an inundated South Carolina turned to surveying a road system shredded by historic flooding, and in a cruel twist, thousands of residents faced the prospect of going days without running water.
The governor warned communities downstream, near the low-lying coast, that they may still see rising water and to be prepared for more evacuations. More than 900 people were staying in shelters and nearly 40,000 people were without water.
At least 12 weather-related deaths in two states were blamed on the vast rainstorm, with one of the latest coming when a sedan drove around a barricade and stalled in rushing waters. The driver drowned, but a woman who was riding in the car managed to climb on top of it and was rescued by a firefighter who waded into the water.
“She came out the window. How she got on top of the car and stayed there like she did with that water— there’s a good Lord,” Kershaw County Coroner David West said.
On Monday, the rains moved north into North Carolina and the mid-Atlantic states. The storm was part of a system that dumped an unprecedented amount of rain across South Carolina and several other states. Satellite images released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show South Carolina getting drenched by a “fire hose” of tropical moisture.
US commander: Afghans requested US airstrike that killed innocents at Kunduz hospital
WASHINGTON (AP) — Afghan forces who reported being under Taliban fire requested the U.S. airstrike that killed 22 people at a medical clinic in northern Afghanistan over the weekend, the top commander of American and coalition forces in Afghanistan said Monday, correcting an initial U.S. statement that the strike had been launched because U.S. forces were threatened.
The strike wasn’t sought by U.S. forces, Gen. John F. Campbell said at a hastily arranged Pentagon news conference.
“We have now learned that on Oct. 3, Afghan forces advised that they were taking fire from enemy positions and asked for air support from U.S. forces,” Campbell said. “An airstrike was then called to eliminate the Taliban threat and several civilians were accidentally struck. This is different from the initial reports, which indicated that U.S. forces were threatened and that the airstrike was called on their behalf.”
The clinic was operated by the medical charity Doctors Without Borders. The attack killed at least 22 people and wounded dozens more, setting the hospital on fire.
In response to Campbell’s remarks, the organization’s general director, Christopher Stokes, said the U.S. had admitted that it attacked the facility.
Netanyahu vows ‘strong hand’ against Palestinians throwing stones, firebombs
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Monday that he will use a “strong hand” to quell violent Palestinian protests and deadly attacks, signaling that the current round of violence is bound to escalate at a time when a political solution to the conflict is increasingly distant.
Netanyahu said he has sent thousands more soldiers and police to the West Bank and Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem and that “we are allowing our forces to take strong action against those who throw rocks and firebombs.” He said restrictions limiting what security forces can do were being lifted, but did not elaborate.
Netanyahu’s warnings came after a rash of violence that began Thursday when Palestinian gunmen killed an Israeli couple in their car near a settlement in the West Bank as their four children watched. Two days later, a Palestinian stabbed an Israeli man to death and seriously wounded his wife as they walked in Jerusalem’s Old City, then attacked and killed another Israeli man.
Israeli forces, meanwhile, killed two suspected Palestinian assailants over the weekend and on Monday shot dead two teenage stone-throwers, one of them a 13-year-old boy, in West Bank clashes.
In all, eight Palestinians were wounded by live fire and 45 by rubber-coated steel pellets in the West Bank and Jerusalem on Monday, the Red Crescent said.
Pennsylvania woman accused of injecting 14-year-old daughter, another teen with heroin
COATESVILLE, Pa. (AP) — A suburban Philadelphia woman repeatedly injected her 14-year-old daughter and another teen with heroin, even tying a string around their arms to isolate their veins, prosecutors said Monday.
The Chester County district attorney’s office alleged that Jessica Lynn Riffey, 34, of West Caln Township, supplied the 14-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy with heroin and injected them multiple times last month.
Riffey was charged with corruption of minors, endangering the welfare of children and drug delivery. She was jailed in lieu of $50,000 pending a preliminary hearing Friday. Online court records didn’t list a lawyer who could comment on the charges and a message left at a number listed in her name wasn’t immediately returned Monday.
Prosecutors also allege that Riffey’s boyfriend supplied heroin for the teens to snort. He has been charged separately with drug dealing and other offenses.
District Attorney Thomas Hogan said the family lived in a trailer in which numerous people were using heroin. He said the mother was supposed to be caring for and protecting her daughter and instead exposed her to the drug and enabled her use of it.
Questions arise about permits for Guatemala neighborhood where mudslide killed 139
SANTA CATARINA PINULA, Guatemala (AP) — Emergency workers spent a fourth day digging bodies out of a massive mudslide on Monday, watching the death toll rise to 139 as questions mounted about why people were allowed to build homes at the base of a dangerous hillside next to a small river.
Backhoes continued to remove thousands of tons of dirt from the acres-wide mudflow on the outskirts of Guatemala City, with practically no hope of finding anyone alive and increasing difficulties in rescuing whole bodies.
Guatemala’s national Disaster Reduction Commission, known as the Conred, said Monday it had warned about the risk to the Cambray neighborhood since last year, and had recommended that residents be relocated.
The commission has now declared the Cambray area uninhabitable; about 300 people remain missing.
Commission Director Alejandro Maldonado said he had warned Mayor Tono Coro of the municipality of Santa Catarina Pinula that the river was eating away at the base of the steep hill.
Coast Guard: US cargo ship with 33 aboard sank during hurricane; 1 body found, search goes on
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — The captain of the 790-foot El Faro planned to bypass Hurricane Joaquin, but some kind of mechanical failure left the U.S. container ship with 33 people aboard helplessly — and tragically — adrift in the path of the powerful storm, the vessel’s owners say.
On Monday, four days after the ship vanished, the Coast Guard concluded it sank near the Bahamas in about 15,000 feet of water. One unidentified body in a survival suit was recovered, and the search went on for any trace of the other crew members.
Survival suits are designed to help seamen float and stay warm. But even at a water temperature of 85 degrees, hypothermia can set in quickly, Coast Guard Capt. Mark Fedor said. He noted that the hurricane had winds of about 140 mph and waves topping 50 feet.
“These are trained mariners. They know how to abandon ship,” Fedor said. But “those are challenging conditions to survive.”
The ship, carrying cars and other products, had 28 crew members from the U.S. and five from Poland.
Twitter anoints co-founder as CEO in attempt to breathe new life into short messaging service
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Twitter is embracing Jack Dorsey as its CEO in hopes that its once-spurned co-founder can hatch a plan to expand the short messaging service’s audience and end nearly a decade of financial losses.
The hiring revealed Monday in a regulatory filing ends Twitter’s three-month search for a new leader. It marks Dorsey’s second stint as CEO since he helped start the San Francisco company more than nine years ago with Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass.
Twitter dumped Dorsey his first time around, but its board of directors is now convinced he has the maturity and expertise to fix the problems that have caused the company’s stock to lose nearly half its value in the past five months.
“As a founder and inventor of the product, Jack knows more about Twitter than anyone else,” said Peter Currie, the Twitter director who led the search for a new CEO.
Investors applauded the move as Twitter’s stock surged $1.84, or 7 percent, to close at $28.15.
