South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
8 bodies recovered from Greece ferry fire as search continues
ATHENS, Greece — Rescuers exploring the charred hull of a passenger ferry that caught fire off the Greek island of Corfu this month have recovered eight bodies and were searching Saturday for another three, Greek authorities have said.
A total of 281 people were rescued from the Italianowned Euroferry Olympia after the fire broke out early on Feb. 18, a few hours after the vessel left the northwestern Greek port of Igoumenitsa, bound for Brindisi, Italy.
Most of those aboard the ferry were rescued by the Greek Coast Guard, aided by Italian authorities, in the first few hours after the fire broke out. Another two passengers were rescued by helicopter later in the day, and a third managed to reach the deck after being trapped in the vessel’s bottom-level garage for more than 50 hours.
“The search is continuing,” said Nikolaos Alexiou, a spokesperson for the Greek Coast Guard.
The stricken ferry was towed Wednesday to the large port of Astakos, in western Greece, where search efforts intensified, according to a spokesperson for Greece’s fire service, Vassilis Vathrakoyiannis.
The spokeperson said it was difficult to say exactly when the fire was extinguished and that high temperatures exceeding 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit had remained an obstacle during much of the work.
“Those hot spots can reignite the fire at any moment,” Vathrakoyiannis said.
Videos posted by Greek news websites this past week showed the devastation caused by the blaze, with Greek fire service rescuers walking through the charred remains of trucks amid plumes of thick black smoke.
On Feb. 20, members of the Greek fire service’s special disaster unit found the body of a Greek man in the cabin of a truck in one of the ferry’s three garages. Another body was found Wednesday and six more Thursday and Friday.
A Tennessee woman sentenced to prison for illegally registering to vote while on probation will get a new trial on that charge.
Shelby County Criminal Court Judge Mark Ward on Friday granted a motion for the new trial for Pamela Moses, according to media reports.
Moses, 44, was convicted in November of registering to vote illegally in Memphis in 2019 and was sentenced this month to six years and one day. She has said she was unaware that she was ineligible to vote.
Moses had previous felony convictions that permanently barred her from voting. In 2015, she pleaded guilty to two felonies as well as three misdemeanors and was placed on probation for seven years.
She filed a motion asking for a new trial. Legal experts have called her sentence excessive.
Moses, a Black Lives Matter activist who ran for Memphis mayor in 2019, said she thought her probation from a 2015 guilty plea had ended, and that she could begin working to restore her voting rights, the Daily Memphian reported.
Moses said the Tennessee Department of Correction gave her a certificate saying her probation had ended, but then rescinded the certificate, the online newspaper reported.
Prosecutors said in a
New trial ordered:
release that Moses’ sentence was overturned and a new trial ordered because the “Tennessee Department of Correction failed to turn over a necessary document in the case.”
Indonesia earthquake:
Searchers in Indonesia continued to dig in the rubble of collapsed buildings and mud from landslides for more victims Saturday, a day after a strong earthquake shook Sumatra island, killing eight people, injuring 86 and leaving thousands displaced.
At least five people were killed in Pasaman district and three people died in the neighboring district of West Pasaman, the National Disaster Mitigation Agency said.
Rescuers were still searching for six villagers believed to be buried under tons of mud that tumbled down from the surrounding hills triggered by the quake.
The magnitude 6.2 earthquake struck 41 miles
north-northwest of Bukittinggi, a hilly town in West Sumatra province, causing panic on some parts of the island on Friday. It was centered about 7 ½ miles below the Earth’s surface and people in neighboring Malaysia and Singapore also felt the tremors.
At least 435 houses and buildings were damaged and more than 6,000 people fled their homes to temporary shelters, mostly in devastated areas of Pasaman and West Pasaman districts, the closest areas to the epicenter, agency spokesperson Abdul Muhari said in a statement.
Las Vegas mass shooting:
Fourteen people were shot before dawn Saturday at a hookah parlor and police said one man died and that two of those hit by gunfire suffered critical injuries.
The shooting happened at about 3:15 a.m. and preliminary information indicated there was a party during which two people got into an
altercation and exchanged gunfire, striking multiple people, said police Capt. Dori Koren.
Koren told reporters no arrests have been made and no suspect descriptions were immediately available but that authorities did not believe there was any danger to the general public.
Hookahs are water pipes used to smoke specially made flavored tobacco.
A tourist bus headed for the Austrian Alps crashed on a local highway in Upper Bavaria on Saturday, injuring 43 of the 61 people on board.
Around 7:30 a.m., the double-decker bus veered off the road and crashed near the town of Inzell in the Traunstein district of Bavaria, according to Bavarian police. No other vehicles were involved in the crash.
Police said seven people sustained serious injuries, while 36 others, including the driver, had less serious
Germany bus crash:
injuries.
The bus was traveling from the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia to the Austrian ski resort of Kaprun, police said.
CNN leadership: Chris Licht, a veteran television producer who helped create “Morning Joe” at MSNBC and later successfully retooled morning and late-night programming at CBS, is set to be the next leader of CNN, according to three people with direct knowledge of the decision.
Licht, 50, the executive producer of “Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” is poised to succeed Jeff Zucker, the CNN president whose nine-year tenure abruptly ended this month when he resigned over an undisclosed romantic relationship with a colleague.
Licht is expected to join the network once its parent company, WarnerMedia, completes a merger with Discovery Inc., a deal that could close by April.