$10K reward offered for info on escapee, missing Ala. officer
FLORENCE, Ala. — The U.S. Marshals Service said Sunday that it is offering up to $10,000 for information about an escaped inmate and a “missing and endangered” correctional officer who disappeared Friday after the two left a jail in north Alabama.
Casey Cole White, 38, had been jailed on a capital murder charge in the Lauderdale County Detention Center in Florence, Alabama, about 75 miles west of Huntsville.
The inmate and assistant director of corrections Vicky White, 56, left the Lauderdale County Detention Center on Friday to go to a nearby courthouse, the sheriff ’s office said in a Facebook post Saturday. Investigators said the two are not related.
“Casey White is believed to be a serious threat to the corrections officer and the public,” the U.S. marshal for northern Alabama, Marty Keely, said in a statement Sunday.
While in state prison for other crimes in 2020, Casey White confessed to the 2015 stabbing death of Connie Ridgeway, WHNT-TV reported.
Vicky White has been with the department 16 years.
At a news conference Friday, Lauderdale County Sheriff Rick Singleton said she was armed when she left the jail with the inmate and headed to the courthouse for what she said was a mental health evaluation for Casey White. She was alone with the inmate, which the sheriff said violated department policy.
Singleton also said there was no mental health evaluation for the inmate scheduled at the courthouse.
The vehicle the officer and the inmate were in when they left the detention center was found at a nearby shopping center parking lot, according to the sheriff ’s office.
The Marshals Service said Casey White is 6 feet, 9 inches tall and weighs about 260 pounds. He has brown hair and hazel eyes.
The Marshals Service said people with information about Casey White’s location or Vicky White’s disappearance can call the service at 1-800-336-0102. Anonymous tips may also be submitted through the U.S. Marshals Tip App.
Rescue in China: A woman was rescued Sunday from the rubble of a building in central China more than 50 hours after it collapsed, leaving dozens trapped or missing, state media said.
Separately, police arrested nine people including the building owner on suspicion of causing a major liability accident, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
State broadcaster CCTV showed video of rescuers bringing the woman out on a stretcher about 4:30 p.m. Some could be heard shouting encouragement during the operation. She was taken to a hospital and is in stable condition, CCTV said.
She was the sixth person rescued from the building, which collapsed Friday afternoon in the inland city of Changsha, the capital of Hunan province. About 20 others remained trapped, and another 39 had not been accounted for as of late Saturday.
Banned from traveling: Israel has prevented the director of a Palestinian civil
society group from traveling abroad to attend a professional conference in Mexico.
Ubai Aboudi is the head of Bisan, one of six Palestinian groups that Israel last year designated a terrorist organization. Israeli officials declined to comment on the travel ban.
Aboudi said he tried to exit the occupied West Bank last week in order to travel to the World Social Forum, an annual gathering of civil society groups that this year is taking place in Mexico. But he said he was stopped by Israeli officials at the crossing into Jordan.
“I was informed that I am banned from traveling. I asked why I am banned from traveling. They said they did not want to inform me,” he said. Aboudi, who is a U.S. citizen, said that just a month earlier, he traveled to Jordan without any problems.
The Bisan Center for Research and Development is a nonprofit that says it is committed to promoting
a Palestinian society based on “freedom, justice, equality and dignity.” Aboudi has been arrested in the past by both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which administers autonomous areas of the occupied West Bank, for his political activities.
Bisan is among six Palestinian human rights groups that Israel last year effectively outlawed after designating them terrorist organizations.
Israel says the groups have ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — a small Palestinian faction with an armed wing that has carried out deadly attacks on Israelis. The PFLP is considered a terrorist group by Israel and its Western allies.
But Israel has provided little evidence backing up its claims against the six groups.
Protest in South Africa:
President Cyril Ramaphosa abandoned his Workers’ Day speech in the northwestern city of Rustenburg on
Sunday when striking mineworkers stormed the stage.
The workers employed by Sibanye-Stillwater mine are demanding a wage increase of 1,000 rand ($63) per month instead of the 850 rand ($54) being offered by the mine.
Ramaphosa had decided to mark the Workers Day, a public holiday in South Africa to mark May 1, by giving a speech to union members in Rustenburg, a mining center.
Ramaphosa was booed as he started his address with a call for the striking workers and other members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions to calm down and listen to what he had to say.
Shortly after that Ramaphosa was forced to give up his speech altogether when angry miners stormed the field and overwhelmed police surrounding the stage at the Royal Bafokeng Stadium. Ramaphosa’s security guards whisked him away from the venue.
Cuban diplomat: Ricardo Alarcón, who was for years the head of Cuba’s parliament and one of the country’s most prominent diplomats, has died in Havana, authorities in Cuba said Sunday. He was 84.
Alarcón was the trusted adviser to Fidel Castro, and his brother and successor Raúl, for decades and was a key negotiator in difficult talks with the United States in issues including immigration and the legal battle for the return of the child Elián González to Cuba in 2000.
Alarcón did not participate directly in negotiations that led to the island’s thaw with Washington in 2014 under the direction of Presidents Barack Obama and Raúl Castro, since he had by that time left public life.
However, he was heavily involved in efforts to secure the release of five Cuban intelligence agents detained in Florida in 1999. Their return to Cuba coincided with the process of reestablishing diplomatic relations.