Romanian officials: Fire in COVID-19 hospital unit kills 10
BUCHAREST, Romania —A fire at a hospital treating COVID-19 patients in northeastern Romania killed 10 people and injured 10, seven of them critically, officials said Saturday.
The blaze spread through the intensive care ward designated for COVID-19 patients at the public hospital in the city of Piatra Neamt, local Emergency Situations Inspectorate spokesperson IrinaPopa said.
Popa said all but one of the people who died or were injured in the fire were hospital patients.
Health Minister Nelu Tataru told Romanian media the fire was “most likely triggered by a short circuit.”
News outlets reported that the Piatra Neamt Regional Emergency Hospital has long been poorly managed, with eight government-appointed managers overseeing the facility in the last year.
The hospital’s current manager, Lucian Micu, was appointed just three weeks ago after his predecessor resigned over the poor treatment of patients. The resignation followed media reports of patients, including many suspected to have COVID-19, being forced to wait outside in the cold to see a doctor.
Micu said Saturday that a doctor on duty tried to save the patients fromthe flames andwas incritical condition with first- and second-degree burns covering 80% of his body.
Piatra Neamt is about 220 miles north of Romania’s capital city of Bucharest.
The U.S. Army onSaturday identified fiveAmerican soldiers
Egypt copter crash:
killed in a helicopter crash last week while on a peacekeeping mission in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.
The Army identified the dead as Capt. Seth Vernon Vandekamp, 31, from Katy, Texas; Chief Warrant Officer 3 Dallas Gearld Garza, 34, from Fayetteville, North Carolina; ChiefWarrant Officer 2 Marwan Sameh Ghabour, 27, fromMarlborough, Massachusetts; Staff Sgt. Kyle RobertMcKee, 35, from Painesville, Ohio; and Sgt. Jeremy Cain Sherman, 23, fromWatseka, Illinois.
The soldiers were part of an international force that monitors the four-decadeold Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement. The Multinational Force and Observers said the soldiers were on a routine mission when the Black Hawk helicopter crashed Thursday near Sharm el-Sheikh, a popular Egyptian seaside resort.
A French peacekeeper and Czech officer also were killed, and a sixth American on the helicopter was injured.
The Army said the cause of the crash is still under investigation.
A federal judge in New York ruled Saturday that Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf assumed his position unlawfully — a determination that invalidated Wolf's suspension of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which shields young people from deportation.
“DHS failed to followthe order of succession as itwas lawfully designated,” U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis wrote. “Therefore, the actions taken by purported Acting Secretaries,
Immigration ruling:
who were not properly in their roles according to the lawful order of succession, were taken without legal authority.”
Karen Tumlin, an attorney who represented a plaintiff in one of two lawsuits that challengedWolf's authority, called the ruling “another win for DACA recipients and those who have been waiting years to apply for the program for the first time.”
Wolf issued a memorandum in July effectively suspendingDACA, pending review by DHS. A month earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that President Donald Trump failed to follow rulemaking procedures when he tried to end the program, but the justices kept awindowopen for him to try again.
In August, the Government Accountability Office, a bipartisan congressional watchdog, saidWolf and his acting deputy, Ken Cuccinelli, were improperly serving and ineligible to run the agency under the Vacancies Reform Act. The two have been at the forefront of administration initiatives on immigration and lawenforcement.
In Garaufis’ ruling Saturday, the judge wrote that DHS didn't follow an order of succession established when then-Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen resigned in April 2019.
DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.
Eritrea drawn into conflict:
Rockets were fired at Eritrea’s capital Saturday, diplomats said, as the deadly fighting inEthiopia’s northern Tigray region appeared to spill across an international border.
At least three rockets appeared to be aimed at the airport in Eritrea’s capital, Asmara, hours after the Tigray regional government warned it might attack. It has accused Eritrea of attacking it at the invitation of Ethiopia’s federal government since the conflict in northern Ethiopia erupted Nov. 4.
Eritrea is one of the world’s most reclusive countries, and no one on the ground, including the information ministry, could immediately be reached. Details on any deaths or damagewere not known.
Tigray regional officials did not respond to requests for comment.
Experts have warned that Eritrea, long at bitter odds with the Tigray regional government, or Tigray People’s Liberation Front, could be pulled into Ethiopia’s growing conflict that has killed untold hundreds of people on each side and sent some 25,000 refugees fleeing into Sudan.
Earlier Saturday, the TPLF said it fired rockets at two airports in the neighboring Amhara region of Ethiopia.
War declaration: The leader of a pro-independence group in Western Sahara declared war Saturday on Morocco, shattering a three-decade-long ceasefire and threatening a fullblown military conflict in the disputed desert territory in northwest Africa.
The announcement came a day after Morocco launched a military operation in a U.N.-patrolled buffer zone after having accused the pro-independence group, the Polisario Front, of blocking access to neighboringMauritania.
The eruption of hostilities adds to the instability roiling some of Africa’s biggest countries, with a protracted war in Libya, longsimmering insurgency in Mali and the threat of a civil war in Ethiopia.
On Friday, Morocco said it had put up a “security cordon” on an important road connecting the country toMauritania, whichthe Polisario considers illegal because the independence group says it was built in breach of the 1991 U.N.brokered truce.
Both sides said late Friday that they had exchanged fire but did not confirm any deaths or injuries. Nor did they specify how many combatants on each sidewere involved.
Sparsely populated Western Sahara was occupied by Morocco in 1975 after Spanish colonial authorities withdrew.