LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY
“It’s not frustrating. I enjoy it. It’s the normal thing to do in the wintertime.”
Eulas Henderson, a 56-year-old security guard, as he shoveled still-falling snow from the sidewalk outside his Detroit home Article, this page
2 die in Oklahoma helicopter crash
OKLAHOMA CITY - A medical helicopter crash landed outside an Oklahoma City nursing home early Friday, killing two people onboard and injuring a third who was pulled from the burning wreckage, officials said.
Only the flight team was onboard when the helicopter crashed while headed from Oklahoma City to Watonga, 70 miles away, to pick up a patient, said Fire Department Battalion Chief Marc Woodard. No one on the ground was seriously injured or killed.
Two men in the helicopter, including the pilot, were killed, but nursing-home workers were able to pull the lone survivor from the wreckage, and he was taken to a hospital in critical condition, Woodard said.
The crash occurred between the St. Ann Retirement Center and the St. Ann Nursing Home, which are operated by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City.
Woodard said the skies were clear Friday morning when the helicopter crash-landed about 100 feet from the front door of the nursing home in the northwest of the city.
U.S. force in Niger to build drone base
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama said Friday that about 100 American troops have been deployed to the African nation of Niger. Two U.S. defense officials said the troops would be setting up a base for unarmed drones to conduct surveillance.
Obama announced the deployment in a letter to Congress saying that the forces “will provide support for intelligence collection and will also facilitate intelligence sharing with French forces conducting operations in Mali, and with other partners in the region.”
The drone base will allow the U.S. to give France more intelligence on the militants its forces have been fighting in Mali. Over time, it could extend the reach not only of American intelligence-gathering but also U.S. special operations missions to strengthen Niger’s own security forces.
6 radioactive-waste tanks leaking
YAKIMA, Wash. - Six underground tanks at the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site are leaking, federal and state officials said Friday, prompting calls for an investigation from a key senator.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee made the announcement after meeting with federal officials in Washington, D.C.
Last week it was revealed that one of the 177 tanks at south-central Washington’s Hanford Nuclear Reservation was leaking liquids.
Inslee said the leaking material poses no immediate risk to public safety or the environment because it would take a while - perhaps years - to reach groundwater.
However, Tom Towslee, a spokesman for Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said the senator will be asking the Government Accountability Office to investigate Hanford’s tank monitoring and maintenance program.
The tanks, which already are long past their intended 20-year life span, hold millions of gallons of a highly radioactive stew left from decades of plutonium production for nuclear weapons.
The federal government created Hanford in the 1940s as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. The government spends $2 billion each year on Hanford cleanup - one-third of its entire budget for nuclear cleanup nationally. The cleanup is expected to last decades.
‘Victory or Death’ note back at Alamo
SAN ANTONIO - The iconic “Victory or Death” letter from the commander of the Alamo has returned for the first time since it was carried away on horseback at the start of the famous siege in 1836.
A police motorcycle escort Friday afternoon led a box truck from Austin to San Antonio, taking the historic letter to the front of the Alamo grounds.
In the letter, Alamo commander William Barret Travis seeks help for his badly outnumbered rebel Texans at the old Spanish mission.
“I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch,” Travis wrote in the roughly 200-word letter dated that Feb. 24.
The missive failed to prevent their deaths. The Alamo fell two weeks later on March 6, 1836. The following month, Gen.
Sam Houston defeated elements of the same Mexican army to win Texas’ independence.
The yellowing, single-page letter will be on display for 13 days in a specially built cabinet.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 02/23/2013