Author: Sunfire

Mail.com

SANTA CLARITA, Calif. (AP) — A roller coaster hit a tree branch at the Six Flags Magic Mountain amusement park Monday, dislodging the front car, leaving four people slightly injured and keeping nearly two dozen summer fun-seekers hanging 20 to 30 feet in the air for hours as day turned to night.

Two of the four people hurt on the Ninja coaster were taken to a hospital as a precaution, but all the injuries were minor, fire and park officials said. “We were going across one turn and all of a sudden a loud noise happened,” Jeremy Ead, one of the injured riders, told KCAL-TV. “I ducked down just in time. A hard branch hit me in the head. I was there bleeding from my head, which was a little worse than this,” he said, pointing to a gash in his forehead.   Continue reading “All riders now off disabled California coaster”

Mail.com

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — In the mid-1950s, air travel was a shadow of the highly advanced operation of checks and rules seen today. The skies were largely uncontrolled, and pilots outside major U.S. cities relied on sight to avoid catastrophes.

Then, two commercial airplanes crashed over the Grand Canyon in June 1956, killing all 128 people aboard in the deadliest aviation disaster of the time and helping spur an overhaul to flight safety. A country already grappling with increasingly busy skies pressured Congress for major changes to improve air traffic control and radar systems and to create a federal agency to regulate it.   Continue reading “Grand Canyon crash a game-changer in air travel”

Mail.com

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A Utah police officer who killed his wife, their two children, his mother-in-law and then himself received text messages from his wife just hours earlier threatening to leave him and take their kids and confronting him for raping her, new documents show.

A Spanish Fork Police report shows Joshua Boren and his wife exchanged heated texts the night and morning before the January killings. In them, Kelly Boren confronted her husband about raping her and told him their marriage was over, The Deseret News reported (http://bit.ly/1oC8lWG ). The couple already had been separated for some time.   Continue reading “Police: Officer who killed family had raped wife”

Fox News

Three Israeli suspects in the killing of a Palestinian teenager who was abducted and burned to death last week confessed to the crime on Monday and were re-enacting the incident for authorities, an official said, as the country’s leaders raced to contain a public uproar over the slaying.

The confessions came as violence continued on Israel’s volatile front with the Gaza Strip. Palestinian militants bombarded Israel with some 40 rockets and mortars, drawing Israeli airstrikes in retaliation, and at least eight Palestinian militants were killed. As Israel pressed ahead with a mobilization of forces along the Gaza border, the Hamas militant group vowed revenge, saying “the enemy will pay a tremendous price.”   Continue reading “Suspects confess to killing Palestinian teen as Israeli strikes kill 8 Hamas militants”

Mail.com

BERLIN (AP) — Chris Boudreau’s son Damian told her over dinner on a November evening in 2012 that he was going to Egypt to study Arabic, the language of Islam.

She never saw him again. “He flew to Seattle, then Amsterdam, then into Istanbul,” said Boudreau. “There was a training camp just outside the city where radicals train prior to crossing the border into Syria.”   Continue reading “Europe takes rehab approach to Islamic extremists”

Mail.com

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A Utah police officer used his service weapon when he killed his wife, two children and his mother-in-law before turning the gun on himself in January, authorities said Monday.

An investigation completed by Spanish Fork City Police was unable to determine Lindon police officer Joshua Boren’s exact motive, Lt. Matt Johnson said. But investigators did learn Boren, 34, and his wife were having marital problems.   Continue reading “Utah officer who killed family used service weapon”

RT News

At least 32 people have been injured in three US cities as Americans celebrated the Fourth of July weekend. Chicago, Indianapolis and Houston were all affected, with four people being shot at a music festival in the Texan city.

The Houston Caribbean Festival attracted 5,000 visitors, according to the city’s police spokesperson, Jodi Silva. However, at around 2am on Saturday morning, a man opened fire inside the arena, according to an eyewitness.   Continue reading “Dozens shot as Americans celebrate Independence Day weekend”

RT News

Fukushima operator TEPCO has been forced to switch off the cooling system at mothballed Reactor Unit 5, after it was discovered that it had been leaking water. In nine days, if the system is not repaired, temperatures will exceed dangerous levels.

Engineers have discovered that 1,300 liters of water leaked from a cooling system intended to stabilize the temperature of the spent fuel at the Reactor Unit 5, which was offline but loaded with fuel rods when the plant was damaged by the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.   Continue reading “​Fukushima has 9 days to prevent ‘unsafe’ overheating”

Mail.com

WASHINGTON (AP) — A top Obama administration official says no one, not even children trying to escape violent countries, can illegally enter the United States without eventually facing deportation proceedings.

But Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson basically acknowledged Sunday that such proceedings might be long delayed, and he said that coping with floods of unaccompanied minors crossing the border is a legal and humanitarian dilemma for the United States.   Continue reading “Child migrant crisis has legal, political hurdles”

Mail.com

SEATTLE (AP) — Washington state issued its first retail marijuana licenses on Monday with a middle-of-the-night email alerting bleary-eyed pot-shop proprietors that they’ll finally be able to open for business.

“We’re pretty stoked,” said John Evich, an investor in Bellingham’s Top Shelf Cannabis, in a 2:30 a.m. Pacific time interview with The Associated Press. “We haven’t had any sleep in a long time, but we’re excited for the next step.”   Continue reading “APNewsBreak: Wash. issues first pot shop licenses”

Mail.com

CAMBRIDGE, England (AP) — The papers spent years hidden in a milk churn beneath a Russian dacha and read like an encyclopedia of Cold War espionage.

Original documents from one of the biggest intelligence leaks in history — a who’s who of Soviet spying — were released Monday after being held in secret for two decades. The files smuggled out of Russia in 1992 by senior KGB official Vasili Mitrokhin describe sabotage plots, booby-trapped weapons caches and armies of agents under cover in the West — the real-life inspiration for the fictional Soviet moles in “The Americans” TV series.   Continue reading “Soviet defector’s trove of KGB secrets made public”

Mail.com

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — A south Arkansas woman celebrated her 116th birthday Friday with cake, a party and a new title — she’s now officially the oldest confirmed living American and second-oldest person in the world, the Gerontology Research Group said.

Gertrude Weaver spent her birthday at home at Silver Oaks Health and Rehabilitation in Camden, about 100 miles southwest of Little Rock. This year’s festivities included the new award from the Gerontology Research Group, which analyzed U.S. Census records to determine that Weaver is the oldest living American, rather than 115-year-old Jeralean Talley, who was born in 1899.   Continue reading “At 116, Arkansas woman named oldest American”

Mail.com

PARIS (AP) — The mother of a pupil at a French pre-school stabbed a teacher to death in front of her class Friday, the last day of the school year, authorities said.

The education minister said the mother apparently had “serious psychiatric problems,” and pledged support for teachers in the face of angry or violent parents. Police said the mother was taken into custody.   Continue reading “France: Mom kills kindergarten teacher in class”

Mail.com

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A veteran who collapsed in an Albuquerque Veteran Affairs hospital cafeteria — 500 yards from the emergency room — died after waiting around 20 minutes for an ambulance, officials confirmed Thursday.

It took between 15 and 20 minutes for the ambulance to be dispatched and take the man from one building to the other, which is about a five-minute walk, officials at the hospital said. Kirtland Air Force Medical Group personnel performed CPR until the ambulance arrived, VA spokeswoman Sonja Brown said.   Continue reading “Veteran dies waiting for ambulance in VA hospital”

Mail.com

MARIETTA, Ga. (AP) — Justin Ross Harris was a devoted and loving father who talked about his toddler son often, his friends and family say. But prosecutors have portrayed him as a man unhappy in his marriage who exchanged nude photos with several women as his son died in a hot SUV.

Harris, 33, faces murder and child cruelty charges in the June 18 death of his 22-month-old son Cooper, who police say was left in a vehicle for about seven hours on a day when temperatures in the Atlanta area reached at least into the high 80s. The medical examiner’s office has said the boy died of hyperthermia — essentially overheating — and has called his death a homicide.   Continue reading “Police: Dad intentionally left child in hot car”

Mail.com

ARVADA, Colo. (AP) — She was a memorable figure in this western Denver suburb, a teenager wearing a traditional Muslim headscarf and dress, sitting alone on a park swing or walking into a Christian church with a backpack and notebook.

People who encountered 19-year-old Shannon Maureen Conley over the past few months said Thursday they were shocked, unnerved or simply sad to learn she had been arrested on charges of conspiring to help terrorists.   Continue reading “Shock, sadness after teen’s arrest in terror case”

Mail.com

Delaware officials should have closed a damaged interstate bridge sooner and missed opportunities by not having qualified personnel respond quickly to tips about the bridge’s deterioration, the state’s transportation secretary said Thursday.

An internal report released Thursday documents a series of missteps leading up to the June 2 emergency closure of the Interstate 495 bridge in Wilmington. The report says Department of Transportation officials did not respond appropriately to two separate 911 calls, one in April and the other in May, suggesting something was wrong with the bridge. They also took several days to act after receiving an engineer’s warning in May that columns of the 495 bridge over the Christina River appeared to be tilting.   Continue reading “Official: Del. should have closed bridge sooner”

RT News

A video has recorded a violent altercation erupting between a man on a New York City subway and police officers, who apparently arrested him for the crime of nodding off while commuting home for work.

The incident occurs at the 57th street station stop in Manhattan in a mostly-empty carriage.

The video posted to YouTube on Tuesday does not show what sparked the police confrontation, though from the man’s reaction and those who viewed and filmed the scene, he was confronted by police for sleeping on the train.   Continue reading “NYPD brutally arrest man on subway ‘for sleeping on way from work’”