March 29, 2021 4:23 am
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) – Federal investigators say a helicopter carrying five passengers on a heli-skiing trip in Alaska crashed into a mountain and then rolled downhill nearly 900 feet. The pilot and four of the five passengers on board died in the crash, including billionaire Petr Kellner, the richest man in the Czech Republic. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the cause of the crash just north of Anchorage on Saturday night. The bodies have been recovered, but an approaching snowstorm may stall efforts to remove the wreckage from the mountain near Knik Glacier. The crash site is only accessible by helicopter because of the rugged terrain and snowy conditions.
March 29, 2021 4:22 am
(AP) – Heavy rain across Tennessee has flooded homes and roads, prompting officials to carry out numerous rescues. The flooding is being blamed for at least four deaths. Metropolitan Nashville Police say the body of a man whose car was submerged in a creek was recovered Sunday. Another man’s body was found on a golf course, while two bodies were found near a homeless camp. Nearly 6 inches of rain fell Saturday in Nashville. A portion of Interstate 40 was temporarily shut down due to high water. Some rivers and creeks are at or near their highest level since 2010.
March 29, 2021 4:21 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden and CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky are making impassioned pleas to Americans not to let their guard down in the fight against COVID-19. Walensky warned on Monday of a potential “fourth wave” of the virus and spoke of a “recurring feeling … of impending doom.” Biden said the virus will get worse, not better “if we let our guard down now.” He said that “people are letting up on precautions, which is a very bad thing.” Walensky spoke of hope but added, “Right now, I’m scared.”
March 29, 2021 4:21 am
BEIJING (AP) – A joint WHO-China study on the origins of COVID-19 says that transmission from bats to humans through another animal is the most likely scenario and that a lab leak of the coronavirus is “extremely unlikely.” A draft copy was obtained Monday by The Associated Press. The findings were largely as expected, and left many questions unanswered. The team proposed further research in every area except the lab leak hypothesis. The report’s release has been repeatedly delayed, raising questions about whether the Chinese side was trying to skew the conclusions. The AP received what appeared to be a near-final version from a Geneva-based diplomat from a WHO-member country.
March 29, 2021 4:18 am
SUEZ, Egypt (AP) – A canal service provider says workers have successfully set free a colossal container ship that for nearly a week has been stuck sideways across the Suez Canal, one of the world’s most crucial arteries for trade. Leth Agencies said the vessel had been refloated on Monday. Helped by the peak of high tide, a flotilla of tugboats managed to wrench the bow of the skyscraper-sized Ever Given from the sandy back of the crucial waterway, where it had been firmly lodged since last Tuesday.
March 29, 2021 4:16 am
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) – Prosecutors at the trial of Derek Chauvin played a video showing white former Minneapolis police officer kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes, 29 seconds as the Black man pleaded for his life and went limp. The video posted to Facebook soon after Floyd’s arrest by a bystander shows Chauvin pinning Floyd at the officers’ squad car and ignoring onlooker shouts to get off him. Chauvin’s trial began Monday with prosecutor Jerry Blackwell telling jurors that Chauvin “didn’t let up, he didn’t get up” even after Floyd said 27 times that he couldn’t breathe and went motionless. The defense says it’ll show that Chauvin reacted exactly as he was trained. The widely seen video sparked waves of outrage across the U.S. and beyond.
March 29, 2021 4:13 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – Operators of abortion clinics lost in court in their bid to reverse a decades-old Pennsylvania court decision upholding limits on the use of state Medicaid dollars to cover the cost of abortions. An appeal to the state Supreme Court is possible. A seven-judge panel of the Commonwealth Court on Friday ruled, with one dissent, both that the abortion clinic operators do not have standing to assert the constitutional rights of low-income women seeking an abortion and that it is bound by a 1985 state Supreme Court decision. Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf supports abortion rights, but his administration nevertheless fought the case, as did Republican lawmakers who intervened.
March 29, 2021 4:11 am
PHILADELPHIA (AP) – Authorities say a motorcyclist riding past the scene of a fire in north Philadelphia ran over a fire hose, went out of control, and died after a crash. Police said the 34-year-old man was pronounced dead at the scene minutes after the crash shortly before 3:30 a.m. Sunday in the West Oak Lane neighborhood. Officials said firefighters had stretched a hose across Broad Street to battle the flames, and the motorcyclist hit the house while heading north near 68th Avenue. WPVI-TV reported that the rider was thrown about 300 feet.
March 29, 2021 4:10 am
PITTSBURGH — (WPXI) – Special effects artists and actor Tom Savini, known for his work in “From Dusk Till Dawn,” “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” “Machete,” “Dawn of the Dead,” and “Friday the 13th,” was hit by a car and hospitalized in Pittsburgh. According to Savini’s social media, he was riding a bike on Thursday when he was hit. He was forced to cancel an upcoming appearance at the Nashville Full Moon Tattoo & Horror Festival. “Thanks so much to everyone who reached out and a huge thank you to both the Pittsburgh Police department & The Pittsburgh paramedics who came to my aid,” Savini wrote on social media. He shared pictures from UPMC Presbyterian Hospital showing him wearing a neck brace and with an injury to his head.
March 28, 2021 7:44 am
SUEZ, Egypt (AP) — Two additional tugboats sped Sunday to Egypt’s Suez Canal to aid efforts to free a skyscraper-sized container ship wedged for days across the crucial waterway, even as major shippers increasingly divert their boats out of fear the vessel may take even longer to free. The massive Ever Given, a Panama-flagged, Japanese-owned ship that carries cargo between Asia and Europe, got stuck Tuesday in a single-lane stretch of the canal. In the time since, authorities have been unable to remove the vessel and traffic through the canal — valued at over $9 billion a day — has been halted, further disrupting a global shipping network already strained by the coronavirus pandemic. The Dutch-flagged Alp Guard and the Italian-flagged Carlo Magno, called in to help tugboats already there, reached the Red Sea near the city of Suez early Sunday, satellite data from MarineTraffic.com showed. The tugboats will nudge the 400-meter-long (quarter-mile-long) Ever Given as dredgers continue to vacuum up sand from underneath the vessel and mud caked to its port side, said Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, which manages the Ever Given. Workers planned to make two attempts Sunday to free the vessel coinciding with high tides, a top pilot with the canal authority said.
