NATION & WORLD BRIEFS
Shooting in Boston during Caribbean carnival wounds at least 7
BOSTON – A shooting during the Boston Caribbean Carnival wounded at least seven people Saturday morning, police said.
All seven were taken to local hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries, Officer Michael Torigian said.
“Firearms have been recovered and arrests have been made,” he said. “It’s an ongoing investigation.”
Police received a call at 7:44 a.m. reporting that multiple people had been shot in the Dorchester neighborhood, and officers responded to the area, Torigian said.
The shooting happened during the J’ouvert Parade, which kicks off the carnival, now in it’s 50th year.
No injuries reporterd in fire at Louisiana oil refinery
GARYVILLE, La. – A massive fire at a south Louisiana oil refinery sent a tower of black smoke billowing into the air above the Mississippi River on Friday, forcing nearby residents to evacuate for several hours as emergency crews battled the blaze.
No injuries were reported and the fire was under control and contained to two damaged storage tanks by late afternoon, according Marathon Petroleum, which operates the facility in Garyville, about 30 miles northwest of New Orleans. Air quality monitoring was also taking place, officials said.
St. John the Baptist Parish President Jaclyn Hotard said she ordered the mandatory evacuation within two miles of the refinery as a precaution “even though we have been assured that all impacts are contained to the facility.”
By 2 p.m., Hotard had lifted the evacuation order.
New crew for the space station launches with 4 astronauts from 4 countries
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Four astronauts from four countries rocketed toward the International Space Station on Saturday.
They should reach the orbiting lab in their SpaceX capsule Sunday, replacing four astronauts living up there since March.
A NASA astronaut was joined on the predawn liftoff from Kennedy Space Center by fliers from Denmark, Japan and Russia. They clasped one another’s gloved hands upon reaching orbit.
It was the first U.S. launch where every spacecraft seat was occupied by a different country – until now, NASA had always included two or three of its own on its SpaceX taxi flights. A fluke in timing led to the assignments, officials said.
Bankman-Fried’s lawyers say he can’t prepare for trial behind bars
NEW YORK – Lawyers for Sam Bankman-Fried said Friday that prosecutors have delivered another four million pages of documents for the FTX founder to examine six weeks before trial, making it impossible for the former cryptocurrency executive to adequately review the evidence for an October trial from behind bars.
Bankman-Fried lost the right to remain free on bail when a judge decided two weeks ago that the fallen cryptocurrency wiz had repeatedly tried to influence witnesses against him. Prosecutors say he intentionally deceived customers and investors to enrich himself and others, while playing a central role in the company’s multibillion-dollar collapse after the equivalent of a bank run.
In a letter to U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, attorneys Christian Everdell and Mark Cohen renewed their request for the 31-year-old to be freed so he can adequately prepare for his Oct. 3 trial. He’d been living with his parents in Palo Alto, California, under the terms of a $250 million bail deal that was in place since he was brought to the United States from the Bahamas in December.
His lawyers appealed the ruling to jail him to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Hot air balloon lands on Vermont highway after being stalled in flight
HARTFORD, Vt. – A hot air balloon made an emergency landing on a highway median in Vermont after becoming stalled in flight.
Five people were aboard for a sunset ride Wednesday night when the pilot landed the craft safely on the Interstate 91 median in Hartford, the Valley News reported.
Drivers reported seeing the balloon hovering 30 feet in the air over the road before it landed, according to the Hartford Fire Department. Traffic was shut down for about 20 minutes while the balloon was landing.
Balloonist Chris Ritland “did a good job of landing the balloon safely in the median and avoiding any issues,” the Hartford Fire Department said in a statement.
US Forest Service rejects expansion plans for Minnisota ski area
MINNEAPOLIS – The U.S. Forest Service said Friday it has rejected the expansion plans of Lutsen Mountains, one of the premier skiing destinations in the Midwest.
Lutsen Mountains was hoping to expand onto 495 acres of public land in the Superior National Forest in northeastern Minnesota so it could add more runs, lifts and other facilities and essentially double its skiable terrain in the Sawtooth Mountains along the north shore of Lake Superior. It’s one of the largest ski areas in the Midwest, with a vertical rise of 1,088 feet and 95 runs.
In rejecting the permit application, the Forest Service cited impacts on tribal resources such as sugar maple stands, negative effects for users of the Superior Hiking Trail and backcountry skiers, and other impacts to the environment.
The company has until Oct. 10 to file objections.
US sanctions military leaders accused of making violence worse in Congo
DAKAR, Senegal – The United States has imposed sanctions on six people it accuses of exacerbating violence in eastern Congo.
The sanctioned Rwandan and Congolese individuals “belong to one of four key militias or armed forces contributing to instability in the eastern (Democratic Republic of the Congo) and perpetrating serious human rights abuses,” including targeting children and systematic sexual assault, the U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement Thursday.
The new round of economic penalties comes amid a recent spike in armed conflict along Congo’s northeastern border with Rwanda. Three decades of violence in the region displaced over 6 million people, according to the U.N., with the crisis intensifying since the rebel group M23 staged a resurgence in November 2021.
M23, whose intelligence commander Bernard Byamungu is among those sanctioned, is one of more than 120 armed groups in the region fighting for control of valuable mineral resources, territory or community protection.
A fire inside parked train kills 9 in southern India
NEW DELHI – A fire erupted inside a stationary train compartment at a railway station in southern India, killing nine people on Saturday morning, officials said.
The blaze broke out at 5 a.m. and burned for two hours before firefighters were able to put it out, authorities said.
It started inside a train’s private compartment, which was detached and parked on the tracks in the Madurai station, located in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, according to a statement by the Southern Railway.
Southern Railway did not say how many people were inside the compartment at the time of the fire, but said many managed to get out.
Officials told the Press Trust of India news agency that 20 others were injured and taken to a hospital.
Germany’s Scholz vows quick resolution to government’s latest standoff
BERLIN – German Chancellor OIaf
Scholz is vowing that his coalition government will quickly resolve a dispute over child benefits that has marred attempts to put months of damaging public infighting behind it.
Center-left Social Democrat Scholz leads a coalition of three parties that are broadly socially liberal. But their approaches to economic and other issues are often at odds, in particular between his two junior partners: the environmentalist, traditionally left-leaning Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats.
Scholz told the Mediengruppe Bayern newspaper group in comments published Saturday that the government “will clear up by next week” the shape of the child benefit plan.
The Cabinet is due to meet at a government guest house outside Berlin on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Power returns to most of Kenya after a 14-hour outage shuts down airport
NAIROBI, Kenya – Electricity was being restored in most parts of Kenya on Saturday, 14 hours after the longest outage in recent memory, the majority government-owned power distributor said.
There was still no clear explanation for the outage that hit on Friday night, shutting down the country’s main international airport, affecting major hospitals and even the president’s office compound.
“I am really sorry for what has happened,” Transport Minister Kipchumba Murkomen said in a statement close to midnight. “There is no excuse worth reporting and there is no reason why our airport is in darkness.”
Kenya Power later on Saturday said it had restored service in most areas.
Brazil’s Bolsonaro leaves hospital after routine health checks
RIO DE JANEIRO – Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has left the Sao Paulo hospital where he underwent a series of routine medical exams, his aide said Thursday.
Bolsonaro was admitted to Vila Nova Star Hospital in Sao Paulo on Wednesday “to assess his clinical condition,” especially in the digestive system, his close aide Fabio Wajngarten said on his official account on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. Bolsonaro is now heading back to the capital, Brasilia, Wajngarten said.
Bolsonaro has undergone several surgeries since he was stabbed in his abdomen on the campaign trail ahead of the 2018 presidential election. The former right wing leader left office at the end of 2022, after losing a reelection bid against leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Bolsonaro is under mounting pressure, targeted by several investigations for activities while he was president, and in relation to a rampage by his supporters in the national capital after he left office.