South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)

2 US vets released by Russia get emotional welcome home in Ala.

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BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Two U.S. military veterans who disappeare­d three months ago while fighting with Ukrainian forces against Russia arrived home in Alabama on Saturday, greeted by hugs, cheers and tears of joy at the state’s main airport.

Alex Drueke, 40, and Andy Huynh, 27, had gone missing June 9 in the Kharkiv region of northeaste­rn Ukraine near the Russian border. The Alabama residents were released as part of a prisoner exchange. The pair had traveled to Ukraine on their own and bonded over their shared home state.

“It’s them!” a family member shouted as the pair appeared at the top of an escalator at the Birmingham-Shuttleswo­rth Internatio­nal Airport in Birmingham.

Smiling but looking tired, the two were pulled into long emotional hugs by family members after their connecting flight home. Then they were whisked to a waiting car.

“Surreal. I still have chill bumps. I always imagined this day. I always held not just hope but belief in this day. But I thought it was going to be two or three years from now at best,” said Drueke’s aunt, Dianna Shaw.

“There are prisoners of war who have been held for months and years. There are people who have been detained wrongfully for years and for this to come about in three months is, just, unimaginab­le to me,” she added. “Even though I’m living it, it feels unimaginab­le, and I don’t want people to forget all the Ukrainians who are still being held.”

The men were among 10 prisoners released by Russian-backed separatist­s as part of a prisoner exchange mediated by Saudi

Arabia.

The men arrived Friday at New York’s John F. Kennedy Internatio­nal Airport.

“We’re looking forward to spending time with family and we’ll be in touch with the media soon,” Drueke said shortly after arriving in New York with Huynh. “Happy to be home.”

Korean War MIA: A soldier from Massachuse­tts who went missing during the Korean War has been accounted for using modern scientific techniques, military officials said.

Army Cpl. Joseph Puopolo, 19, of East Boston, was accounted for in August, according to a statement Friday from the Defense POW/ MIA Accounting Agency.

It was the news his family — including his now

99-year-old sister Elizabeth Fiorentini — has been awaiting for decades, Fiorentini’s grandson and Puopolo’s grandnephe­w, Richard Graham, said Saturday.

Puopolo, an artillerym­an with the 8th Army, was reported missing in action on Dec. 2, 1950, according to the military. Four former POWs reported in 1953 that Puopolo had died at a POW camp in February 1951.

After the war, both sides exchanged remains, and those that could not be identified were buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, the agency said.

A set of previously unidentifi­ed remains were disinterre­d in December

2019, and identified as being those of Puopolo through dental and anthropolo­gical analysis, mitochondr­ial DNA analysis and circumstan­tial evidence, the agency said.

Ariz. abortion ruling:

Arizona Democrats vowed Saturday to fight for women’s rights after a court

reinstated a law first enacted during the Civil War that bans abortion in nearly all circumstan­ces, looking to capitalize on an issue they hope will have a major impact on the midterm elections.

Republican candidates were silent a day after the ruling, which said the state can prosecute doctors and others who assist with an abortion unless it’s necessary to save the mother’s life.

Katie Hobbs and Kris Mayes, the Democratic nominees for governor and attorney general, respective­ly, implored women not to sit on the sidelines this year, saying the ruling sets them back more than a century to an era when only men had the right to vote.

India rains: Hazardous weather has killed at least 36 people in northern India over the previous 24 hours, including 12 who were struck by lightning, officials said Saturday as they warned of more heavy downpours in the coming

days.

Across the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, at least 24 people died after their homes collapsed amid unrelentin­g rains, Relief Commission­er Ranvir Prasad said. Officials said 39 people in the state have died from lightning strikes over the previous five days.

Col. Sanjay Srivastava, whose Lightning Resilient India Campaign works with the Indian Meteorolog­ical Department, said that deforestat­ion, the depletion of bodies of water, and pollution all contribute to climate change, which leads to more lightning.

There has been a 34% increase in lightning strikes across India over the past year.

Laos drug bust: Authoritie­s in Laos have made their third largest seizure ever of methamphet­amine, confiscati­ng 33 million tablets along with 1,100 pounds of crystal methamphet­amine, an official with the U.N. anticrime agency said Saturday.

The huge bust came after 200,000 tablets were found Friday night in a truck that was stopped at a checkpoint in the northweste­rn province of Bokeo, said Jeremy Douglas, the regional representa­tive for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Douglas said that truck was stopped near the Kings Roman Casino, which is located in a special economic zone of Laos that operates virtually autonomous­ly of national law. Such zones are found in the neighborin­g countries of Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia, all of which have loose law enforcemen­t and have struggled with organized crime.

A measles outbreak has killed more than 700 children and infected thousands of others across Zimbabwe, highlighti­ng the risks of faltering childhood immunizati­on campaigns around the globe.

As of Sept. 6, the country’s Ministry of Health and Child Care was reporting more

Zimbabwe outbreak:

than 6,500 cases and 704 deaths. It has not released numbers since then.

The outbreak is the result of a grim confluence of factors: Routine immunizati­on dropped significan­tly in Zimbabwe during the COVID-19 pandemic. Anxious parents stayed away from health centers; health care workers were reassigned from routine vaccinatio­n programs to the COVID-19 pandemic response; and school closures and lengthy lockdowns scuppered the usual outreach campaigns.

Zimbabwe had one of the highest rates of vaccinatio­n coverage in sub-Saharan Africa 25 years ago, but vaccine hesitancy has swelled, amplified by influentia­l churches that discourage immunizati­on and urge members to rely on prayer and the intercessi­on of pastors instead. The Johane Marange Apostolic Church, which has hundreds of thousands of members, is at the center of the measles outbreak.

 ?? ISHARA S. KODIKARA/GETTY-AFP ?? Police fire a water cannon against anti-government protesters Saturday in Colombo, Sri Lanka, a day after severely curtailing public protest rights in response to months of unrest sparked by the island nation’s sharp economic downturn. In a report this month, the Asian Developmen­t Bank estimated inflation in Sri Lanka at nearly 45% this year.
ISHARA S. KODIKARA/GETTY-AFP Police fire a water cannon against anti-government protesters Saturday in Colombo, Sri Lanka, a day after severely curtailing public protest rights in response to months of unrest sparked by the island nation’s sharp economic downturn. In a report this month, the Asian Developmen­t Bank estimated inflation in Sri Lanka at nearly 45% this year.

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