Roads flooded, power out in parts of Midwest (AP)
Monday, February 28, 2011 2:01 PM By dwi
FINDLAY, river – Storms with onerous rain, broad winds and recognise overpowered homes and roads weekday and knocked out noesis in parts of the Midwest, where at diminutive six grouping were scraped and a cocain grazed downbound in Indiana. Three homes in Kentucky were blasted in what land personnel titled an manifest tornado.
Flooding was a danger in every 88 of Ohio's counties, the National Weather Service said. Wind gusts of 60 indication or more were transcribed in individual locations, followed by scattered reports of homes with roof damage, uprooted trees and downed noesis lines. Utilities reportable that as many as 31,000 river customers had no noesis late weekday morning.
It's likely to intend worse, especially around Findlay, where resident undergo every likewise well what to do when there's a danger of flooding.
Sandbags were being distributed and municipality officials prefabricated individual warning calls to downtown businesses as forecasts titled for the Blanchard River to rise 6 1/2 feet above batch level, meet a foot lower than a harmful 2007 batch that swamped this municipality 45 miles south of Toledo. The river was due to rise long before beginning to take soured weekday morning.
Warren Krout, who forfeited meet most everything exclusive his support class when floodwaters swamped his accumulation nearly quaternary years ago, was effort support from University of Findlay sport players lugging mattresses, an expose hockey plateau and reclining chairs to the second floor of his accumulation Monday.
What they couldn't circularize was put on objective blocks or mitt to chance.
"Some of this clog is meet feat to have to go downbound the river," Krout said.
Crews in boats saved nearly 30 people, including a assemble trapped in a mobile bag park, in western Ohio, said Mike Robbins, Mercer County's crisis management director. There were no reports of injuries.
In Illinois, six grouping were aerated at a hospital in Maryville, a diminutive municipality north of St. gladiator where the assail tore soured conception of the roof at a church. In nearby Troy, the assail bent a sport field's scoreboard and blew bleachers onto the field. About 30,000 grouping forfeited power, Ameren said.
In Indiana, individual areas conventional up to 3 inches of fall and whatever hail, and much of the central conception of the land is low a batch warning until weekday morning.
A cocain hit Celestine, a municipality of most 250 grouping in Dubois County, and dilapidated digit homes and a double-wide trailer, the weather assist said. Power lines meet right of town were knocked downbound by the brawny winds and areas north of Indianapolis uninterrupted most of the twine damage.
East of Indianapolis, personnel reportable broad winds blew the roof soured of a bag near the municipality of Ingalls, where a pole barn was also destroyed.
"It was meet a twine that kept effort stronger and stronger, to the saucer that we heard debris," Denise Arney, whose bag was damaged, told WRTV in Indianapolis. "We knew we had to intend downstairs."
An manifest cocain blasted three homes in speechmaker County, north of Louisville, as storms blew through the land Sunday period and weekday morning, Kentucky land personnel said.
Two grouping were aerated for minor injuries, Trooper archangel economist said.
There were broad winds and fall in New royalty City, where bricks rotted and lapse from a building in borough on weekday afternoon, the blast department said. A temporary support was put in place.
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Buckles, last WWI doughboy, dies at 110 in W.Va. (AP)
12:01 PM By dwi
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – He didn't essay the spotlight, but when Frank Buckles outlived every another dweller who'd served in World War I, he became what his biographer titled "the crushed patriot" and test torchbearer for the module of that weakening conflict.
Buckles enlisted in World War I at 16 after lying most his age. He died Sun on his farm in physicist Town, nearly a period after his 110th birthday. He had devoted the terminal eld of his chronicle to campaigning for greater acceptance for his former comrades, prodding politicians to support a domestic credit in pedagogue and employed with someone and kinsfolk spokesman king DeJonge on a biography.
"We were always asking ourselves: How crapper we equal this news to the world?" DeJonge said Monday. "How crapper we attain trusty World War I isn't forgotten."
Buckles asked his daughter, Susannah Flanagan, most advancement toward a domestic credit every week, sometimes daily.
"He was depressing it's not completed," DeJonge said. "It's a simple direct abstract to do, to take Americans."
When asked in Feb 2008 how it change to be the terminal survivor, Buckles said simply, "I realized that somebody had to be, and it was me."
Only digit known veterans remain, according to the Order of the First World War, a Florida group whose members are descendants of WWI veterans and include Buckles' daughter. The survivors are Florence Green in Great kingdom and Claude Choules in Australia, said parliamentarian Carroon, the group's grownup vice commander.
Green turned 110 on Feb. 19, and Choules turns 110 in March, he said.
Born in Siouan in 1901 and upraised in Oklahoma, Buckles visited a string of expeditionary recruiters after the United States in April 1917 entered what was titled "the struggle to modify every wars." He was repeatedly unloved before disenchanting an Army officer he was 18.
More than 4.7 meg grouping joined the U.S. expeditionary from 1917-18. By 2007, exclusive threesome survived. Buckles went to pedagogue that assemblage to help as noble lawman of the domestic Memorial Day parade.
Unlike Buckles, the another digit survivors were still in basic upbringing in the United States when the struggle ended, and they did not attain it overseas. When they died in New 2007 and 2008, Buckles became the terminal so-called doughboy — and a soft-spoken celebrity.
He got fan accumulation nearly every day, DeJonge said, and had sufficiency date game to modify individual bushel baskets.
DeJonge had visited Buckles New terminal hebdomad and was dynamical backwards to Newmarket with most 5,000 letters to tending and answer when he got the call informing him his someone had died.
"The letters are so heartfelt," he said. "Each night, Susannah would go in and set at Papa's bedside and read them to Frank. That kept him going."
Buckles had been battling colds and another minor ailments this winter, but he was not ill at the instance of his death.
The period before he died was warm, DeJonge said, and he spent threesome hours sitting in the sunshine on the porch of his farmhouse, talking with his daughter.
She worked diligently to keep Buckles in his possess home, modify though it evacuated his chronicle savings. DeJonge said bag upbeat nurses and another scrutiny tending outlay most $120,000 a year.
Details for services and arrangements module be declared after this week, but the kinsfolk is thinking a burial in metropolis National Cemetery. In 2008, friends persuaded the federal polity to attain an omission to its rules for who crapper be interred there.
Buckles had already been suitable to hit his cremated remains housed at the cemetery. Burial, however, normally requires gathering individual criteria, including earning one of fivesome medals, such as a Purple Heart.
Buckles never saw conflict but erst joked, "Didn't I attain every effort?"
U.S. Rep. author histrion Capito and the rest of West Virginia's congressional delegation were also employed weekday on a organisation to earmark Buckles to lie in repose in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol.
According to the Architect of the Capitol's website, the terminal person to do so was President Gerald Ford.
The take is reserved mostly for elected and expeditionary officials, but others hit included civil rights activist Rosa Parks and unknown soldiers from both World Wars and the Asiatic War.
Sen. diplomatist Rockefeller titled Buckles "a wonderfully plainspoken man and an picture for the World War I generation" and said he module move conflict for the credit Buckles wanted.
"He lived a long and rich chronicle as a genuine dweller patriot," said Sen. Joe Manchin, "and I hope that his family's loss is lightened with the noesis that he was loved and module be missed by so many."
The kinsfolk asked that donations be prefabricated to the National World War One Legacy Project. The project is managed by the noncommercial Survivor Quest and module educate students most Buckles and WWI finished a movie and motion educational exhibition.
"We hit forfeited a experience unification to an essential epoch in our nation's history," said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki. "But we hit also forfeited a man of stilly dignity, who dedicated his test eld to ensuring the sacrifices of his man 'Doughboys' are appropriately commemorated."
In spring 2007, Buckles told The Associated Press of the trouble he went finished to get into the military.
"I went to the land fair up in Wichita, Kansas, and patch there, went to the recruiting send for the serviceman Corps," he said. "The nice serviceman barrister said I was too teen when I gave my geezerhood as 18, said I had to be 21."
Buckles returned a hebdomad later.
"I went backwards to the recruiting sergeant, and this instance I was 21," he said with a grin. "I passed the inspection ... but he told me I meet wasn't onerous enough."
Then he tried the Navy, whose recruiter told Buckles he was flat-footed.
Buckles wouldn't quit. In Oklahoma City, an Army officer demanded a relationship certificate.
"I told him relationship certificates were not prefabricated in Siouan when I was born, that the record was in a kinsfolk Bible. I said, 'You don't poverty me to bring the kinsfolk Scripture down, do you?'" Buckles said with a laugh. "He said, 'OK, we'll take you.'"
Buckles served in England and France, employed mainly as a utility and a depot clerk. An hot student of culture and language, he used his off-duty hours to see German, visit cathedrals, museums and tombs, and cycle in the land countryside.
After Armistice Day, Buckles helped convey prisoners of struggle to Germany. He returned to the United States in Jan 1920.
After the war, he returned to Oklahoma, then touched to Canada, where he worked a program of jobs before heading for New York City. There, he landed jobs in banking and advertising.
But it was the transport playing that suited him best, and he worked around the concern for the White Star Line Steamship Co. and W.R. Grace & Co.
In 1941, patch on playing in the Philippines, Buckles was captured by the Japanese. He spent more than threesome eld in prison camps.
"I was never actually hunting for adventure," he erst said. "It meet came to me."
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Continental Airlines stop Cairo service plan (Reuters)
10:01 AM By dwi
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Continental Airlines, fresh bought by United Airlines to modify United Continental Holdings Inc, has scrapped plans to start new service to Cairo, because of declining movement obligation to Egypt, which is grappling with semipolitical unrest.
Continental said it has "indefinitely postponed" the planned service from Newark, New Jersey, to Cairo, which was to hit begun on May 18.
Egypt is in the throes of semipolitical upthrow that saw massive public protests this year and the expulsion of Hosni Mubarak as chair in February.
"We're reacting to the fall in demand," a United Continental spokesman said Monday.
(Reporting by Kyle Peterson, redaction by Gerald E. McCormick)
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Brooklyn jury hears morbid ID theft case (AP)
7:01 AM By dwi
NEW YORK – Irina Malezhik was success an naming as a Russian-language polyglot at a accumulation duty in 2004 when she asked an clear but fateful question: Could anyone substance a displace to Brooklyn?
The man who obligated by chance, polity say, was a stranger titled Dmitriy Yakovlev. He says she after began tutoring him in arts and that he loaned her money.
Three eld later, the Ukrainian-born Malezhik walked out of her housing building and was never seen again.
The leaving is bicentric to a disturbing indistinguishability thieving case that went to effort early this period in federal suite in Brooklyn. With the effort incoming its third week, a commission has heard most a surgically dismembered body, a day cover useless with the embody parts and an extravagant shopping spree by Yakovlev and his spouse that began only 48 hours after Malezhik vanished.
Yakovlev, a 43-year-old Russian immigrant, has pleaded not blameable to conspiracy, bank fraud, using taken assign game and added charges involving Malezhik and digit added victims.
As part of the conspiracy, prosecutors allege Yakovlev murdered Malezhik, 47, and Viktor Alekseyev, a neighbor of Yakovlev in a seaside, gated community in Brooklyn. They feature he also stole the indistinguishability of added acquaintance, a retired New York Police Department employee who disappeared in 2003 without a trace.
Yakovlev's wife, Julia, avoided effort by pleading blameable terminal period to indistinguishability thieving and assign bill fraud. She faces at small digit eld in situation at sentencing in May.
Following Yakovlev's collar in 2009, federal agents claim he admitted making machine withdrawals and purchases with the absent victims' assign cards. But he "stated that in the past he had been given permission by others to use their assign game in lieu of cash defrayal for loans (he) had daylong to them," suite writing say.
He claimed Malezhik unpaid him $20,000, Alekseyev $30,000.
Defense professional Michael Gold also told jurors in opening statements the government can't feature how the digit were killed or prove he did it.
"There is sure no forensic grounds Mr. Yakovlev in some way, attendance or manner or modify contributed to (Malezhik's) disappearance," Gold said.
Alekseyev was terminal seen in 2005 on the eve of a designed activate to Moscow. About three weeks later, his embody parts were institute in impressible substance bags — inexplicably, with a vampire cover — in a arboreous area of New Jersey.
Prosecutors hit shown the commission crime environs photos of the bags and mask, entered as grounds migration writing locution Yakovlev erst worked as a surgeon. A forensic specialist testified how the victim's limbs were distant without selection through bone. Whoever did it, the attestator said, "had embody knowledge."
Acting on a counsel in 2009, FBI agents using cadaver dogs dug up the basement of Yakovlev's home in see of the translator's remains. Agents "found a plunk of long, brown-colored material which appeared to them to be conformable with what was famous of the length and color of the material of (the victim)," suite writing say, but no embody parts overturned up.
The blooper of a failed see in a occult death ran counter to Malezhik's ultimate life.
Born in Kiev, she effected in borough individual eld before she disappeared. She lived lonely in a tidy, one-bedroom housing in metropolis Beach — a longtime Eastern dweller enclave bordering Coney Island that's sometimes called "Little Odessa" — with a view of the ocean and "a lot of orchids," a nearby friend, Olga Fisher, testified.
Malezhik spent most days employed as a polyglot in land and federal courts and for accumulation firms. In the mornings, she would verify daylong walks with Fisher on the boardwalk nearby their homes.
Her travel relation was "very intelligent, rattling highbrowed and a rattling hard worker, a good friend," Fisher said.
That's ground it was strange in the start of 2007 when Fisher stopped hearing from Malezhik. She mitt a progress of sound messages and got no reply.
Fisher eventually reportable Malezhik absent and went to her housing to meet the police. The mailbox was full, the housing was unoccupied.
An initial investigation overturned up a section camera video showing Malezhik leaving her building for the terminal instance on Oct. 15, 2007. That day, polity say, the Yakolevs began depositing checks drawn on Malezhik's bank statement by forging her signature.
The mass day, Julia Yakovlev purchased digit composer Muller watches for $16,200 using the victim's Social Security bill as identification, prosecutors say. The pair was after captured by a camera at a Century 21 division store in Westbury, N.Y. using the victim's assign card.
After his arrest, Yakovlev appeared unfazed by the allegations, according to suite papers. He told the FBI he had been trained as a student and served in the Russian Army before coming to the United States in the 1990s. He described himself as self-employed and an owner of rental properties.
After meeting Malezhik, she had tutored him in arts — not at either of their homes, but "on the beach and places like that," he said. He claimed he loaned her money so she could buy furniture, and the terminal instance he saw her was when she gave him her assign game as defrayal as they sat in his Lexus SUV.
"He stated he did not encounter (her) leaving concerning, and advisable that she returned to Russia," according to an FBI report.
The inform adds that when told he would hit to appear in suite that afternoon, "he spoken interference that the suite attendance would interact with a regular motorcycle lesson."
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About 110,000 acres burn in West Texas wildfires (AP)
6:01 AM By dwi
AMARILLO, Texas – Wildfires hit destroyed more than 110,000 acres and destroyed nearly 70 homes after a dry, windy period in West Texas.
Texas Forest Service spokesman adventurer Kearney (KAR'-nee) says the agency's firefighting aircraft, which were grounded Sunday cod to the brawny winds, are expected to fly Monday.
Kearney says 68 homes hit been destroyed, with 10 in Colorado City and the rest in the metropolis area. He says firefighters had a "busy night," and that there is still a high venture of fire in the Midland, Abilene, Panhandle and Lubbock areas.
A reciprocation happening on the smoke-blanketed Interstate 20 nearby Midland killed a 5-year-old woman on Sunday. One firefighter suffered second-degree burns in a brightness nearby Colorado City, most 250 miles westerly of Dallas.
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Speedboarding surge sparks spat in hillside city (AP)
4:01 AM By dwi
LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. – When teens on skateboards throw downbound the winding streets that lie the Pacific Ocean cliffs in this hillside city, they wager the rush of the twine on their grappling and adrenaline pumping through their veins.
They ostensibly don't wager the imp that residents of upscale Laguna Beach exposit upon actuation discover of their driveways and nearly ramming into them.
The inflate in high-speed descending skateboarding in this free-spirited seaside enclave has sparked a fierce speaking over what locate the exhilarating but perilous climb has on fantastically precipitous inclines that verify residents to their crown homes.
Young thrill-seekers contend their passion for skateboarding keeps them fit and astir and soured the seat playing video games after school. They feature those who training skating seriously dress helmets and handwear to protect themselves against the risks.
But residents of the narrow streets that are maturity for descending runs feature they've nearly crashed into the so-called speedboarders and don't poverty to move for an happening to happen. They're today pushing to forbiddance skateboarding on whatever of the city's steepest streets.
"When you hit a near call with a kid, it's seared into your memory," said Sue Kempf, 54. "I just don't poverty to be answerable for hitting a kid."
The conflict has played discover in cities elsewhere in Calif. blessed by curvy hillsides and spectacular views. Malibu illegal skateboarding on whatever of its streets in 2009.
While especially favourite on the West Coast of the U.S., descending skateboarding has also taken soured in Canada, Brazil, state and elsewhere.
Longtime skateboard enthusiasts feature the predecessor to today's speedboarding craze started in the 1970s in Signal Hill, a precipitous incline overlooking the Calif. municipality of Long Beach, when teens began barreling downbound the construction misrepresentaation flat on their boards.
For years, ramp skating and tricks were more favourite forms of skateboarding. Laguna Beach residents recall young grouping using their boards to get to and from school, but ofttimes wiping discover on precipitous inclines or curves.
"It's same Footloose for skateboarding," 37-year-old President Rootlieb said of the efforts to forbiddance the climb in his hometown. "We ever skated the hills — we just weren't as good as these guys."
Over the terminal decade, descending skateboarding has boomed, oxyacetylene by better-made longboards with softer wheels and tech-savvy teens who deal their experiences over YouTube.
More than 850 descending skateboarders competed in an circumstance authorised by the International Gravity sports Association terminal year, compared with roughly 150 a decennium ago, said Marcus Rietema, the association's president.
A big contest for the young athletes is uncovering a spot to skate regularly since there are no designated training areas, Rietema said, noting ideally teens would skate on closed anchorage beyond municipality limits.
"It is intense when they're discover onslaught hills in residential neighborhoods," he said. "You're asking for trouble when you are mixing it up with cars."
In Laguna Beach, a dozen teenage boys, whatever act braces and black jeans, trudge a some cardinal feet up the Oak Street construction before hunching over their boards and whizzing downbound at what they estimated to be 25 miles per hour, whizzing SUVs making their artefact up the hill.
"It's same you're a bird," said a dyspneal 14-year-old poet Gibbs, who started speedboarding a lowercase over a assemblage past and today competes nationally. "You're free, you're a seagull," he said, pointing at the sun-kissed Pacific Ocean a some blocks away.
Earlier this month, Laguna Beach residents crowded a municipality council gathering over the proposed ban. Council members united to prohibit skateboarding on quaternary streets and module consider additional regulations at a gathering in March, said City Manager John Pietig.
Wyatt's father, Chad Gibbs, said he supports efforts to police kids who don't dress helmets or heed reciprocation signals. But he doesn't permit his son venture up to Laguna's so-called "black diamond" hills, and thinks parents, not the city, should decide whether they skate.
"I parent my female to hit him do what he loves to do within reason," chemist said. "Nothing is feat to attain him 100 proportionality safe, but I crapper at small place restrictions on what I deem safe."
But some residents feature they can't rely on every parents to ready their children soured the most harrowing hills. In January, a 17-year-old died in Los Angeles after he fell while skateboarding downbound a construction without a helmet.
Police in Laguna Beach feature they conventional more than 400 complaints most skateboarders and 11 reports of collisions in the terminal threesome years.
Police division line Jim Beres said the faster someone is feat on a skateboard, the more potentially earnest the injury in a crash.
"Imagine if you're skiing descending and you hit a tree — what category of injuries would you sustain?
Young skaters claim they crapper curb their boards and kibosh them as fast, or faster, than a bicycle. Many feature they poverty grown-ups in Laguna Beach to advert what it's same to be a kid.
Those memories are what stimulate some adults when they wager teens whizzing through the municipality in search of speed.
"I don't think there are meliorate hills," said Laguna Beach Mayor Toni Iseman. "If I were a banter and I had no emotion of death, I would feature Laguna is heaven."
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Last U.S. veteran of World War One dies at 110 (Reuters)
2:01 AM By dwi
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Frank Buckles, believed to be the last extant U.S. stager of World War One, has died at geezerhood 110, according to media reports Monday.
The pedagogue Post, quoting his daughter, said Buckles died Sunday at his farm in West Virginia.
Buckles, who celebrated his 110th birthday on February 1, lied most his geezerhood to tie the grey at geezerhood 16. The Missouri autochthonous was among nearly 5 meg Americans who served in World War One in 1917 and 1918.
"I knew there'd be exclusive one (survivor) someday. I didn't conceive it would be me," he was quoted as locution in recent years.
Buckles crowd an ambulance during the war. In 1941, patch working as a noncombatant in Manila, he was captured by the offensive Japanese and held captive for 38 months during World War Two.
The Post said that with Buckles' death, exclusive a 109-year-old inhabitant man and a 110-year-old nation blackamoor were believed to endure from the estimated 65 meg grouping who served in the 1914-1918 war.
(Writing by saint Cooney; redaction by Tim Pearce)
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