South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
NEWS BRIEFING Evacuations ordered in Ohio as 50-car train derailment sparks fire
EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — Freight train cars continued to burn Saturday, sending up heavy smoke following a derailment that prompted an evacuation order and a declaration of a state of emergency in an Ohio village near the Pennsylvania state line.
About 50 cars derailed in East Palestine at about 9 p.m. EST Friday as a train was carrying a variety of products from Madison, Illinois, to Conway, Pennsylvania, rail operator Norfolk Southern said Saturday. There was no immediate information about what caused the derailment. No injuries or damage to structures were reported.
Mayor Trent Conaway of the village of East Palestine declared a state of emergency, citing a “train derailment with hazardous materials.” Air quality was being monitored throughout a one-mile zone that was ordered evacuated and there had been no dangerous readings to report, he said.
Norfolk Southern said the train had more than 100 cars, 20 of which were classified as carrying hazardous materials — defined as cargo that could pose any kind of danger “including flammables, combustibles, or environmental risks.”
Fire Chief Keith Drabick said officials were most concerned about a shipment of the chemical vinyl chloride, but safety features of the rail car carrying that were still functioning.
Emergency crews would keep their distance until rail officials told them it was safe to approach, Drabick said. He said there were also other chemicals in the cars and officials would seek a list from Norfolk Southern and federal authorities.
Officials said 68 agencies from three states and a number of counties responded to the derailment, which happened about 51 miles northwest of Pittsburgh.
Pope in South Sudan: Pope Francis warned Saturday that South Sudan’s future depends on how it treats its women, as he highlighted their horrific plight in a country where sexual violence is rampant, child brides are common and the maternal mortality rate is the highest in the world.
On his penultimate day in Africa, Francis called for women and girls to be respected, protected and honored during a meeting in the South Sudanese capital Juba with some of the 2 million people who have been forced by fighting and flooding to flee their homes. Women, girls and children make up the majority of those displaced.
The encounter was one of the highlights of Francis’ three-day visit to the world’s youngest country and one of its poorest.
Joined by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and the Presbyterian head of the Church of Scotland, Francis is on a historic ecumenical pilgrimage to draw global attention to the country’s plight and encourage its stalled peace process.
The aim of the three-day visit is to encourage South Sudan’s political leaders to implement a 2018 peace accord ending a civil war that erupted after the overwhelmingly Christian country gained independence from mostly Muslim Sudan in 2011.
India child marriages: Indian police have arrested more than 2,000 men in a crackdown on illegal child marriages involving girls under the age of 18 in a northeastern state, officials said Saturday.
Those arrested last week included more than 50 Hindu priests and Muslim clerics for allegedly performing marriages for underage girls in Assam, state police chief Gyanendra Pratap Singh said.
“We have so far arrested 2,169 men based on 4,074 registered police cases involving a total of about 8,000 men,” said Singh.
In India, the legal age for marriage is 21 for men and 18 for women. Poverty, lack of education, and social norms and practices, particularly in rural areas, are considered reasons for child marriages across the country.
Iranian director released: Acclaimed Iranian director Jafar Panahi was released on bail Friday, two days after going on hunger strike to protest his imprisonment last summer, his supporters said.
Panahi was arrested last July and later ordered to serve six years on charges of propagandizing against the government, a sentence dating back to 2011 that had never been enforced.
He is among a number of Iranian artists, sports figures and other celebrities who have been detained after speaking out against the theocracy. Such arrests have become more frequent since nationwide protests broke out in September over the death of a young woman in police custody.
Panahi, 62, had continued making award-winning films for over a decade despite being legally barred from travel and filmmaking. His latest film, “No Bears,” was released to widespread praise in September while he was behind bars, a week before the protests erupted.
Grizzly protections: The Biden administration is taking a step toward lifting federal protections for grizzly bears in the northern Rocky Mountains, which could open the door to hunting in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho in the future, wildlife officials said.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Friday that the governors of Montana and Wyoming provided “substantial information” that grizzly populations in the regions around Yellowstone and Glacier national parks had improved and threats had been reduced.
The wildlife service said it would now begin a yearlong review of whether the step of eliminating the safeguards was warranted.
In 2017, the wildlife service removed protections for grizzly bears in the Yellowstone ecosystems, prompting conservation groups, tribes and individual citizens to sue.
A year later, a judge restored those protections in Wyoming and Idaho, putting the animals back on the endangered species list.
Chile wildfires: Chile extended an emergency declaration to yet another region on Saturday as firefighters struggled to control dozens of raging wildfires that have claimed at least 22 lives amid a scorching heat wave that has broken records.
The government declared a state of catastrophe in the La Araucania region, which is south of Nuble and Biobio, two central-southern regions where the emergency declaration had already been issued.
The measure allows for greater cooperation with the military.
At least 22 people have died in connection to the fires and 554 have been injured, including 16 in serious condition, according to Interior Minister Carolina Toha. The death toll is likely to rise, Toha said, as there are unconfirmed reports of at least 10 people missing.
Over the past week, fires have burned through an area equivalent to what is usually burned in an entire year, Toha said in a news conference.