QUOTE OF THE DAY
“This is a strong community with strong character. There’s no doubt they will bounce back. But they need help.”
President Barack Obama as he toured the rubble of former Plaza Towers Elementary School in tornado-hit Moore, Okla. Article, 1A
Temporary bridges to replace fallen span
SEATTLE - Federal investigators used 3D laser scans Sunday to study what remained of a collapsed Washington state bridge as Gov. Jay Inslee announced temporary spans will be installed across the Skagit River within weeks - if plans go well.
The Washington state collapse, caused by a semi-truck carrying an oversize load striking the bridge, fractured one of the major trade and travel corridors on the West Coast.
Inslee said he hoped the temporary spans, each with two lanes for northbound and southbound traffic, would be finished in about three weeks’ time or about mid-June. The spans will be pre-built and trucked to Mount Vernon.
The state plan also calls for a permanent span to be built and competed by autumn, officials said.
Senators say military assaults must end
WASHINGTON - In Congress and in the White House, pressure is mounting to hold military commanders accountable for the rising number of sexual assaults in the armed services.
“This needs to end,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and a member of the Armed Services Committee, said Sunday.
“When a victim comes forward, they should have an advocate to walk them through the military justice system, and commanders who allow this to continue to flourish, quite frankly, should be fired.”
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said the military’s future includes both men and women in leadership, and cultural changes are needed “when it comes to the command structure” to make sexual assault and harassment “unacceptable, intolerable; and those who engage in it should pay a price.”
The extent of the assaults came to light when the Pentagon released a report earlier this month estimating that as many as 26,000 military members might have been sexually assaulted last year and that thousands of victims are unwilling to come forward despite new oversight and assistance programs.
Authorities search for victim of crash
EPHRATAH, N.Y. - A brain-cancer patient and his wife were on board the volunteer medical flight piloted by a Connecticut man that crashed in a wooded area of central New York, authorities said Sunday.
Frank and Evelyn Amerosa of Utica were aboard an Angel Flight on Friday night when the twin-engine aircraft went down in Ephratah, a town about an hour west of Albany, according to police and family members.
Officials and family members said John Campbell, 70, of Stamford, Conn., was flying the couple back from the Boston area, where Frank Amerosa was being treated for brain cancer.
Rescue workers on Sunday scoured the woods and searched a big, murky pond where the bulk of the aircraft was submerged. Wreckage from the crash was dispersed over a large area, with pieces of the plane found as far as five miles away.
Town Supervisor Todd Bradt said more than 100 rescuers searched for Frank Amerosa into Sunday night but did not find him. The search will continue today.
National Transportation Safety Board investigators who returned to the crash site Sunday aim to retrieve the bulk of the wreckage from the water over the next few days, said agency spokesman Eric Weiss. They are looking for smart phones, GPS devices, computer tablets or other items that could “give the investigators some electronic evidence of what happened in the last minutes of flight,” he said.
Teen faces charges in school bomb plot
PORTLAND, Ore. - An Oregon teenager intended to blow up his school in a plot “forged and inspired by the model of the Columbine shootings,” and he will be charged with attempted aggravated murder, a prosecutor said late Saturday.
Grant Acord, 17, will be charged as an adult and also faces six counts of manufacturing and possessing a destructive device after investigators found six bombs in a secret compartment in his bedroom, said Benton County District Attorney John Haroldson.
Acord was taken to a juvenile jail Thursday night after police received a tip that the teen was making a bomb to blow up West Albany High School, located about 75 miles south of Portland.
He said Acord had written plans, a checklist and a specific timeline for the attack. The bombs that investigators found included pipe bombs, Molotov cocktails, a Drano bomb and a napalm bomb, Haroldson said.
Police found no bombs during a search of the high school.
Haroldson declined to provide the specific date Acord purportedly planned to attack the school, but he said it would be included in court paperwork to be filed after the Memorial Day weekend.
Front Section, Pages 3 on 05/27/2013