Nation & World Glance
APNewsBreak: Lost sailors did not activate emergency beacon
HONOLULU — The U.S. Coast Guard announced Monday that the two Hawaii women who say they were lost at sea never activated their emergency beacon, adding to a growing list of inconsistences that cast doubt on the women’s harrowing tale of survival.
U.S. Coast Guard spokesman Lt. Scott Carr told The Associated Press that their review of the incident and subsequent interviews with the survivors revealed that they had the Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB) aboard but never turned it on. The women said they chose not to activate the device because they never feared for their lives.
Parts of their story have been called into question, including the tropical storm the two say they encountered on their first night at sea in May. National Weather Service records show no organized storms in the region in early May.
When asked if the two had the radio beacon aboard, the women told the AP on Friday they had a number of other communications devices, but they didn’t mention the EPIRB.
The device communicates with satellites and sends locations to authorities. It’s activated when it’s submerged in water or turned on manually.
Tech companies find more signs of Russian election activity
WASHINGTON — Major tech companies plan to tell Congress Tuesday that they have found additional evidence of Russian activity on their services surrounding the 2016 U.S. election.
Facebook, for instance, says a Russian group posted more than 80,000 times on its service during and after the election, potentially reaching as many as 126 million users.
The company plans to disclose these numbers to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, according to a person familiar with the testimony.
The person declined to be named because the committee has not officially released the testimony.
Twitter plans to tell the same committee that it has uncovered and shut down 2,752 accounts linked to the same group, Russia’s Internet Research Agency, which is known for promoting pro-Russian government positions.
That number is nearly 14 times larger than the number of accounts Twitter handed over to congressional committees three weeks ago, according to a person familiar with the matter. This person requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the new findings ahead of the hearing on Tuesday.
And Google announced in a blog post that it found evidence of “limited” misuse of its services by the Russian group, as well as some YouTube channels that were likely backed by Russian agents.
WASHINGTON — Global warming is hurting people’s health a bit more than previously thought, but there’s hope that the Earth — and populations — can heal if the planet kicks its coal habit, a group of doctors and other experts said.
The poor and elderly are most threatened by worsening climate change, but there remains “glimmers of progress” especially after the 2015 Paris agreement to limit heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions, according to a new big study published Monday in the British medical journal Lancet.
Comparing the report to a health checkup, four researchers and several outside experts described Earth’s prognosis as “guarded.”
“There are some very severe warning signs, but there are some hopeful indicators too,” said co-author Dr. Howard Frumkin, a professor of environmental health at the University of Washington. “Given the right treatment and aggressive efforts to prevent things from getting worse, I think there’s hope.”
The report highlighted health problems stemming from more frequent heat waves, disease spread by insects, air pollution and other woes. While the disasters have been costly, deaths haven’t been increasing because society is doing a better but more expensive job adjusting to the changing conditions, the researchers noted.
Utilities warn that power could be out for days in Northeast
HARTFORD, Conn. — A storm packing hurricaneforce wind gusts and soaking rain brought trees and power lines crashing down early Monday, knocking out power for nearly 1.5 million homes and businesses and forcing hundreds of schools to close in New England.
Thousands of trees were toppled, some falling onto houses and cars. In New Hampshire, floodwaters swept away a house. In Maine, the state’s largest utility warned residents to be prepared to be without electricity for up to a week.
New England bore the brunt of the storm, which brought sustained winds of up to 50 mph in spots. A gust of 130 mph was reported at the Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire, while winds hit 82 mph in Mashpee on Cape Cod in Massachusetts.
“It was really terrifying,” said Rachel Graham, who described pine trees crashing nearby as she rode out the storm with her husband and their 2-year-old daughter in a yurt in Freeport, Maine. “It was a lot of crashes and bangs.”