The US Navy released the names and hometowns of the 10 sailors who went missing after the USS John S. McCain, a guided-missile destroyer, collided with a merchant ship near Singapore, east of the Malacca Strait on Monday. Initial reports indicated that the destroyer sustained damage to her port side aft, the left rear of the ship, in the collision that left five injured and 10 sailors missing. Authorities said four of those injured were medically evacuated by a Singapore navy helicopter with non-life threatening injuries and the fifth injured sailor stayed on board with minor injuries.
The collision was reported at 6:24 a.m. Japan Standard Time, while the ship was en route to a routine port visit in Singapore. The ship headed to port under its own power after the collision. The other ship, the Alnic MC, is a 600-foot oil and chemical tanker with a gross tonnage of 30,000 and is about three times the size of the McCain. The USS McCain is based at the fleet’s homeport of Yokosuka, Japan. It was commissioned in 1994 and has a crew of 23 officers, 24 chief petty officers and 291 enlisted sailors, according to the Navy’s website.
The US Navy confirmed they recovered the remains of two sailors — Kenneth Smith, 22, and Dustin Doyon, 26 but suspended the search for the sailors who are still missing after “more than 80 hours of multinational search efforts,” the statement said.
Those lost in the collision have been identified as Kenneth Smith, 22 of Cherry Hill, New Jersey; Dustin Doyon, 26, of Suffield, Connecticut; Kevin Bushell, 26, of Gaithersburg, Maryland; Jacob Drake, 21, of Cable, Ohio; Timothy Eckels Jr., 23, of Manchester, Maryland; Charles Findley, 31 of Amazonia, Missouri; John “CJ” Hoagland III, 20 of Killeen, Texas; Corey Ingram, 28 of Poughkeepsie, New York; Abraham Lopez, 39, of El Paso, Texas and Logan Palmer, 23, of Decatur, Illinois.
The incident is the second serious collision for a Navy vessel in two months and fourth since January. The USS Fitzgerald collided with a freighter off the coast of Japan on June 17, leaving seven sailors dead. The Navy last week relieved the Fitzgerald’s skipper and two top sailors of their command for losing “situational awareness” in the hours leading up to the collision. About a dozen sailors in all are facing some punishment, including all of the destroyer’s watch, the Navy said.
The Navy is preparing to conduct an extremely rare suspension of ship operations worldwide for a day or two in order to review safety and operational procedures. Navy officials are also investigating the role that training, manning and crew communications may have played in the accidents. Vice Adm. Joseph P. Aucoin, the head of the Seventh Fleet, the Navy’s largest overseas, was removed Wednesday in connection with the four accidents since January, according to a statement by the Navy.
Admiral Aucoin had been expected to retire in the coming weeks, but his superiors pushed up his departure date after losing confidence in his leadership. Admiral Aucoin is being replaced by Rear Adm. Phil Sawyer, “who has already been nominated and confirmed for the position and promotion to vice admiral,” the Navy statement said.
Read more
Tens of thousands of residents began evacuating coastal communities in Texas as forecasters predicted Hurricane Harvey could make landfall late Friday as a major category-three storm, delivering a life-threatening 35-40 inches of rain to some parts of the Gulf Coast. Several counties along the Gulf coast, including Nueces county, Calhoun county and Brazoria county, have ordered mandatory evacuations in low-lying areas.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has activated about 700 members of the state National Guard and put military helicopters on standby in Austin and San Antonio in preparation for search and rescues and emergency evacuations. In the Gulf of Mexico, oil and natural gas operators had begun evacuating workers from offshore platforms.
Harvey intensified on Thursday from a tropical depression into a category 1 hurricane. Early on Friday morning, the National Hurricane Center reported it had become a category 2. Fuelled by warm Gulf of Mexico waters, it was projected to become a major category 3 hurricane. Typical category 3 storms damage small homes, topple large trees and destroy mobile homes. The wall of water called a storm surge poses the greatest risk.
Hurricane trackers expect the storm’s eye to come ashore near the city of Corpus Christi, where Mayor Joe McComb called for a voluntary evacuation. Forecasters predict that if Harvey stalls over Texas it could deliver catastrophic flooding before drifting back over the Gulf of Mexico towards Louisiana.
The National Hurricane Center said it expected flash flooding along the middle and upper Texas coast. The storm is expected to stall and unload torrents of rain for four to six straight days. In just a few days, the storm may dispense the amount of rain that normally falls over an entire year, shattering records. The storm is also predicted to generate a devastating storm surge — raising the water as much as 13 feet above normally dry land at the coast.
The National Weather Service office in Corpus Christi said that due to the combination of flooding from storm surge and rainfall, “locations may be uninhabitable for an extended period.” It warned of “structural damage to buildings, with many washing away” and that “streets and parking lots become rivers of raging water with underpasses submerged.”
Harvey made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane at 11 p.m. Friday between Port Aransas and Port O’Connor, Texas. With 130 mph winds, the storm became the first major hurricane, rated Category 3 or higher to strike U.S. soil in 12 years. In 2008, Hurricane Ike hit near Galveston, Texas as a Category 2 storm that killed 113 in the US and caused $37.5 billion in damages.
Read more
A federal appeals court has thrown out the prison sentences of former Blackwater contractors who were involved in a 2007 massacre in Nisoor Square in central Baghdad that left 17 civilians dead and 20 injured when they opened fire with machine guns and threw grenades into the crowded public space. The appeals court ruled three of the contractors could be resentenced, meaning their 30-year prison sentences could be dramatically shortened. A fourth contractor’s murder conviction was thrown out entirely, so he’ll now face a new trial.
The Blackwater guards claimed that the convoy was ambushed and that they fired at the attackers in defense of the convoy. The Iraqi government and Iraqi police investigator Faris Saadi Abdul stated that the killings were unprovoked. The Iraqi government claimed that as the convoy drew close to Nisour Square, a Kia sedan carrying a woman and her adult son was approaching the square from a distance, driving slowly on the wrong side of the road, ignoring a police officer’s whistle to clear a path for the convoy. The security team fired warning shots and then lethal fire at the Kia. They then set off stun grenades to clear the scene. Iraqi police and Iraqi Army soldiers, mistaking the stun grenades for fragmentation grenades, opened fire at the Blackwater men, to which they returned fire.
The Blackwater guards contend that the Kia continued to approach even when fired upon and after an Iraqi policeman went over to the car, it looked as if the policeman was pushing it. They feared they were under attack by a car bomb so they fired at the car, killing both occupants as well as the Iraqi policeman. Iraqi police officers began to fire at the Blackwater men. The guards felt they could not be sure they were dealing with actual police since insurgents often disguise themselves by wearing police uniforms.
A military report appeared to corroborate “the Iraqi government’s contention that Blackwater was at fault. Blackwater Worldwide’s license to operate in Iraq was temporarily revoked. An FBI investigation found that, of the 17 Iraqis killed by the guards, at least 14 were shot without cause.
In 2008, the U.S. charged five Blackwater guards with 14 counts of manslaughter, 20 counts of attempted manslaughter and a weapons violation. On December 31, 2009, a U.S. district judge dismissed all charges on the grounds that the case against the Blackwater guards had been improperly built on testimony given in exchange for immunity.
In 2011, a U.S. federal appeals court reinstated the manslaughter charges against Paul A. Slough, Evan S. Liberty, Dustin L. Heard and Donald W. Ball after closed-door testimony. A fifth guard had his charges dismissed, and a sixth guard -Jeremy Ridgeway pled guilty to voluntary manslaughter and attempted manslaughter.
On October 22, 2014, a Federal District Court jury convicted Nick Slatten of first-degree murder and sentenced him to life in prison. Three other guards Paul A.Slough, Evan S. Liberty and Dustin L.Heard were found guilty of all three counts of voluntary manslaughter and using a machine gun to commit a violent crime. They were each sentenced to 30 years in prison. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit tossed Slatten’s murder conviction and ordered the other defendants to be re-sentenced. A new trial was also recommended for Slatten, on the grounds that it was unjustifiable to try him with his co-defendants, and that he should have been tried separately.
Read more
A federal judge in Michigan has blocked the deportation of more than 1,400 Iraqi nationals, giving them time to make their cases in court before the government may deport them. U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith granted a preliminary injunction request made by attorneys for the Iraqi nationals who had asked him to halt their deportation, saying they would be persecuted in Iraq. Goldsmith said the possible deportees, many whom are Chaldean Christian, would face “grave harm and possible death” in Iraq because there they are members of a persecuted minority.
In June, 234 Iraqi nationals were arrested and detained on removal orders that in most cases had been dormant for five to 10 years. For many years Iraqi has refused to accept deportees from the U.S. but they recently agreed to start accepting them after their country was taken off of the travel ban.
In addition to the 114 arrested during the ICE raids in Michigan in June, the judge’s order applies to 85 other Iraqis arrested outside the state. In total, there are 1,444 Iraqi nationals in the U.S. with final orders of deportation who could be affected by the judge’s ruling.
Judge Goldsmith entered a preliminary injunction to give the Iraqis 90 days to argue their cases before the Board of Immigration Appeals and the courts before the government can deport them back to Iraq. Goldsmith said that the government made legal representation of the immigrants difficult because many of them have been moved around from state to state to different immigration centers. Many of those targeted entered in the U.S. as children, and more than half of them have been in the country for more than a decade because Iraq refused to take them back, according to the ruling.
The court said that those detained have been housed around the country in federal detention facilities with limited access to legal advocates and their families. Most of them are from Detroit, which has a large Chaldean Christian population. They were targeted for deportation because they overstayed their visas or committed crimes — typically misdemeanors, according to advocates.
Clarence Dass, an attorney who represents about 25 of the 114 Iraqis arrested last month said “For people who have been learning their fate every two weeks, 90 days is a lifetime,” Dass said. “All we are asking is for a chance to show that deportation of these particular individuals is a death sentence, and the judge’s decision today allows us to do that. Once we show those facts and circumstances, I am hopeful we will be able to save their lives.”
A spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said the agency declined to comment on the ruling. ICE has said previously that the Iraqis detained have criminal records, pose safety threats, and have already had their cases heard in courts. The crimes they were convicted of range from marijuana possession to homicide.
Read more
Six Burundi teenagers have been reported missing after taking part in an international robotics competition in Washington DC. A police spokesperson said authorities “do not have any indication of foul play” as the investigation continues into what happened after the group attended the FIRST Global Challenge robotics competition with students from 157 nations.
Teams of high school students from more than 150 countries took part in the competition organized by FIRST Global, a U.S.-based non-profit that organized the competition which was designed to encourage careers in math and technology.
Police reports indicated that the four boys and two girls were last seen in the early evening of July 18th in northwest DC after which their adult mentor was unable to locate them. FIRST Global informed the police later that day. All six members of the robotics team Audrey Mwamikazi, 17, Nice Munezero, 17, Don Charu Ingabire, 16, Kevin Sabumukiza, 17, Richard Irakoze, 18, and Aristide Irambona, 18 reportedly have one-year US visas.
The DC police have said that Ms Mwamikazi and Mr Ingabire are in Canada because they were spotted crossing the border but no details have been released about how they got there or why. Canada’s Border Services Agency said it could neither confirm nor deny that the pair entered Canada. DC police also said the other four teenagers seem to be in a safe place, but police are not reporting any further details.
The Republic of Burundi,has a population of 11.2 million people and is a landlocked country in the African Great Lakes region of East Africa. It is bordered by Rwanda, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It has been plagued by instability for decades with bouts of ethnic cleansing and ultimately two civil wars and genocides during the 1970s and again in the 1990s left the country undeveloped and its population as one of the world’s poorest.
Burundi continues to experience civil unrest after a failed coup in 2015. The U.S. State Department issued a travel warning in late June about the African nation, advising Americans of “political tensions, political and criminal violence, and the potential for civil unrest.” The warning also stated that rebel forces, ex-combatants and youth gangs from the Democratic Republic of Congo reportedly crossed into Burundi and attacked and kidnapped civilians; armed criminals have ambushed vehicles.
There have also been reports of human rights abuses as well. According to the UN, over 300,000 people fled the country since 2014 due to violent gangs from Congo and disappearances and killings allegedly committed by Burundian security forces.
Read more
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has extended the state of emergency for another three months. The extension followed weekend ceremonies to commemorate the first anniversary of the failed military coup in which around 250 people, mostly unarmed civilians, were killed. Anniversary celebrations came a week after the leader of the main opposition, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, ended a nearly 280-mile “March for Justice” from Ankara to Istanbul by holding a rally attended by more than a million people calling for an end to emergency rule and injustice.
President Erdogan vowed to continue the brutal crackdown against activists, journalists, teachers and opposition lawmakers. He also called for the reinstatement of the death penalty in Turkey. Since emergency rule was imposed on July 20 last year, more than 50,000 people have been arrested and 150,000 people have been suspended in a crackdown which Erdogan’s opponents say has pushed Turkey on a path to greater authoritarianism.
Speaking at parliament, Deputy Prime Minister Nurettin Canikli said the emergency rule had helped created the necessary legal environment to cleanse the state of Gulen’s network. The Turkish government says it is necessary to root out supporters of the U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen who is believed to be behind the coup attempt. Gulen has denied any involvement.
Since the failed coup where Turkish military forces tried to overthrow the government, the Turkish government has taken what some say are controversial steps to strengthen its power. In March, the Jurist Report was published by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The report describes a plethora of human rights violations committed by the Turkish government between July 2015 and December 2016.
The same month the report was published, around 330 individuals were put on trial for alleged involvement in an attempted coup. In November Turkey significantly restricted the activities of NGOs like human rights organizations and children’s groups and arrested opposition party leaders alleging they were connected to terror organizations. Earlier this month the Turkish Parliament elected seven new members to the country’s 13-member Council of Judges and Prosecutors (HSK) in an overnight vote.
Ten human rights activists, including Amnesty International Turkey director Idil Eser, were in court to face terrorism related charges. The targeting of human rights defenders and similar earlier crackdowns on lawyers and associations raises the question of who will be left to defend the tens of thousands of people caught up in the post-coup purge.
Read more
Sixteen service members were killed after a military transport plane that was being used on a training flight crashed in Mississippi, prompting an urgent rescue effort in one of the South’s most rural regions, the authorities said. A Marine Corps spokeswoman at the Pentagon, Capt. Sarah Burns, said that one of the service’s KC-130 aircraft had “experienced a mishap.” The Marines use KC-130s for aerial refueling.
The cause of the crash, in an unincorporated part of Leflore County, was not immediately clear. The plane crashed along County Road 547, a dirt road that connects acres of farmland between Itta Bena and Moorhead. Military aircraft are a common sight in the skies of rural Mississippi. Witnesses described the plane as disintegrating in the air as it neared the ground, leaving a debris field about five miles in diameter. Many speculate that the plane experienced an explosion mid-air because of the large debris field.
The air tanker was based at Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, New York, and was on its way from a Marine installation at Cherry Point, North Carolina, to a naval air field at El Centro, California, when it went down, officials said. The planes final destination was Yuma, AZ. The plane vanished from air traffic control radar somewhere over Mississippi before the crash that killed all fifteen marines and a navy corpsman on board.
Six of the Marines and the sailor were from an elite Marine Raider battalion at Camp Lejeune, N.C.. Nine were based out of Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, N.Y., home of a Marine Aerial Refueling and Transport Squadron. The service members were identified as Cpl. Dan Baldassare, 20; Staff Sgt. Robert Cox; 28, Capt. Sean Elliott; 30, Maj. Caine Goyette; 41, Gunnery Sgt. Mark Hopkins; 34, Sgt. Chad Jenson,; 25, Gunnery Sgt. Brendan Johnson; 46, Sgt. Julian Kevianne; 31, Staff Sgt. William Joseph Kundrat; 33, Sgt. Talon Leach; 27, Sgt. Owen Lennon,; 26, Sgt. Joseph Murray; 26, Cpl. Collin Schaaff; 22, Sgt. Dietrich Schmieman; 26, Staff Sgt. Joshua Snowden; 31 and Navy Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class Ryan Lohrey, 30.
Witnesses reported hearing a loud bloom around 4pm and then the plane began spinning down to the ground. Eyewitnesses recall hearing ammunition exploding after the crash. The Marine Corps acknowledged that ammunition was on board the flight without specifying what kind. Due to the presence of the ammunition, restrictions were placed on who could initially approach the scene of the crash, officials said.
The force of the crash nearly flattened the plane and witnesses said there were bodies across a highway, more than a mile from the crash site. Firefighters tried to put out the fire but withdrew after an explosion forced them back. The fierce blaze produced black smoke visible for miles across the flat region and continued to burn after dusk, more than four hours later. The fire department used about 9,000 gallons of foam to extinguish the blaze.
Marine Corps officials are being aided in their investigation by a number of different agencies, including the Mississippi Management Association, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Read more
The bodies of four young Pennsylvania men who went missing last week have been found. Hours after finding a fourth body buried in a farm here, authorities charged two men with multiple counts of homicide in what authorities said were marijuana deals that turned murderous. Cosmo Dinardo and his cousin Sean Kratz, both 20, were denied bail in preliminary arraignments. Bucks County District Attorney Matthew Weintraub announced that the bodies of the young men who went missing last week had been found buried on a farm owned by Dinardo’s parents in Solebury Township.
The victims were identified as 19-year-old Dean Finocchiaro, Mark Sturgis, 22, Tom Meo, 21, who disappeared together and Jimi Tar Patrick, 19. The defense attorney for Cosmo NiNardo, 20, said his client admitted to killing the four in three separate shootings, and told authorities the location of the bodies. DiNardo is ready to plead guilty to four counts of first-degree murder in order to take the death penalty off the table.
Jimi Patrick was the first to go missing and days later- the three other men disappeared. Investigators had focused their search on a property a few miles from the Delaware River, a farm owned by the parents of Cosmo Dinardo, the man who has been identified as a “person of interest” in the case.
Dinardo was initially charged with trying to sell Meo’s car, a 1996 Nissan Maxima and was being held in jail on $5 million cash bail after being deemed a flight risk. Dinardo confessed his involvement in the disappearances, implicated Kratz, and gave information about the location of the fourth victim, police say. Dinardo has a history of unspecified mental illness, and he was previously involuntarily committed to a mental health institution after firing a shotgun, authorities said.
In the arrest affidavit Dinardo told police that on July 5 he agreed to sell four pounds of marijuana for $8,000 to Jimi Patrick. Dinardo picked Patrick up at his home and drove him to the farm but Patrick only had $800, the affidavit states. Dinardo then offered to sell Patrick a shotgun for that amount. Dinardo took Patrick to a remote part of the property and gave him a shotgun. Dinardo then shot and killed Patrick with a .22 caliber rifle and buried his body six feet deep using a backhoe.
Two days later, Dinardo said he and Kratz, decided to rob Dean Finocchiaro during a drug deal. Dinardo told police he gave Kratz his mother’s Smith and Wesson .357 handgun for the robbery. They met at Finocchiaro’s home and went to the farm. Dinardo told police, Kratz shot Finocchiaro near a barn and the put his remains in a metal tank. Kratz’s account of the killing describes Dinardo as the shooter.
Dinardo had a deal in place that same night to sell marijuana to Thomas Meo. Dinardo met Meo and his friend Mark Sturgis and the two followed him to his farm where Kratz was waiting. Dinardo and Kratz described Dinardo shooting Meo in the back and shooting at Sturgis as he tried to flee. According to the police affidavit, Dinardo said after he ran out of ammunition, he drove a backhoe over Meo’s body. Afterwards, they put the bodies in the metal tank, poured gasoline inside and set it on fire. They returned the next day to bury the tank 12 feet deep using a backhoe.
Read more
A senior cardinal and top adviser to Pope Francis will return to Australia to face charges of sexual assault. Cardinal George Pell is the third-highest-ranking official in the Roman Catholic Church. Pell was charged in his native Australia with multiple counts of sexual assault from years ago.
The charges against Pell were announced in Melbourne by Victoria State Police Deputy Commissioner Shane Patton. Pell was ordered to appear in court July 26 to face multiple counts of “historical sexual assault offenses”. Patton said there are multiple complainants against Pell, but he gave no other details.
It is unclear what the criminal charges against Pell involve, but two men, now in their 40s, have said that Pell touched them inappropriately at a swimming pool in the late 1970s, when Pell was a senior priest in Melbourne.
In 2014, the Vatican admitted nearly 850 priests have been dismissed and more than 2,500 have been disciplined in a sprawling sexual abuse scandal dating back decades. Cardinal Pell said Pope Francis granted him a leave of absence to return to Australia to defend himself. The 76-year-old Pell — the highest-ranking Vatican official ever implicated in the scandal and has forcefully denied the accusations.
In a statement read to the press, Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said the Vatican respected Australia’s justice system but recalled that the cardinal had “openly and repeatedly condemned as immoral and intolerable” acts of sexual abuse against minors. He noted Pell’s cooperation with Australia’s Royal Commission investigation of sex abuse and that as a bishop in Australia, he worked to protect children and compensate victims.
Pell’s actions as archbishop came under scrutiny in recent years by a government-authorized investigation into how the Catholic Church and other institutions have responded to the sexual abuse of children. The Royal Commission revealed that 7 percent of priests were accused of sexually abusing children in the past several decades.
Last year, Pell testified to the commission that the church had made “enormous mistakes” in allowing thousands of children to be raped and molested by priests. He conceded that he, too, had erred by often believing the priests over victims who alleged abuse. He vowed to help end a rash of suicides that has plagued church abuse victims in his hometown of Ballarat.
It was unclear if Pell would face a church trial stemming from the accusations. The Vatican has clear guidelines about initiating a canonical investigation if there is a semblance of truth to sex abuse accusations against a cleric. In the case of a cardinal, it would fall to Francis himself to judge. Penalties for a guilty verdict in a church trial include defrocking.
Read more
The city of St. Anthony, Minnesota will pay nearly $3 million to the family of Philando Castile to settle a wrongful death lawsuit, less than two weeks after officer Jeronimo Yanez was acquitted on manslaughter charges for killing Castile during a 2016 traffic stop. Castile, a 32-year-old elementary school cafeteria worker, was shot five times by Yanez during a traffic stop after Castile told the officer he was armed.
The settlement is to be paid to Castile’s mother Valerie Castile, who is the family’s trustee. The $2.995 million settlement will be paid by the League of Minnesota Cities Insurance Trust, which holds the insurance policy for the city of St. Anthony. The plan for distribution of funds requires approval by a state court.
Attorney Robert Bennett, who is representing Valerie Castile, said a decision was made to move expeditiously rather than have the case drawn out in federal court, a process that would “exacerbate and reopen terrible wounds.” The settlement will also allow the family, the city and community to work toward healing, Bennett said.
The settlement will help benefit the Philando Castile Relief Foundation. Bennett said the foundation’s mission is to provide financial support, grief counseling, scholarships and other help to individuals and families affected by gun violence and police violence.
The Philando Castile Relief Foundation hopes to continue to award an annual $5000 scholarship. Through donations and part of the settlement, organizers hope to establish a permanent endowment to fund the annual $5,000 scholarship. In May, 18-year-old Marques Watson was announced as the first recipient.
Watson intends to study mechanical engineering. He’ll take advantage of a tuition-free offer at St. Paul College this fall and hopes to complete his four-year degree at a historically black college or university. Watson has participated in AVID, a school-based program that prepares underrepresented students for college, since seventh grade. He said he’ll be the first in his extended family to attend college.
Castile’s girlfriend Diamond Reynolds, who witnessed the shooting and posted video seconds after, is not part of the settlement. Reynolds has also hired an attorney, but it’s not clear if she is still planning a lawsuit or has any standing for a federal claim.
A claims manager with the League of Minnesota Cities, said St. Anthony’s insurance coverage is $3 million per occurrence. If Reynolds were to file and win a claim, the city’s remaining $5,000 in coverage would be paid to her and St. Anthony would have to cover any additional money awarded.
Read more
