Black box detector to join jet search after Chinese plane spots 3 objects; still no firm clues
PERTH, Australia (AP) - A warship with an aircraft black box detector was set to depart Australia on Sunday to join the search for the missing Malaysian jetliner, a day after ships plucked objects from the Indian Ocean to determine whether they were related to the missing plane. None were confirmed to be from the plane, leaving searchers with no sign of the jet more than three weeks after it disappeared.
Twenty-nine Chinese family members, seeking answers from Malaysia’s government as to what happened to their loved ones, arrived in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday, said Malaysia Airlines commercial director Hugh Dunleavy. Two-thirds of the 227 passengers aboard Flight 370 were Chinese, and their relatives have expressed deep frustration with Malaysian authorities since the plane went missing.
It will still take three-to-four days for the Australian navy ship, the Ocean Shield, to reach the search zone - an area roughly the size of Poland about 1,850 kilometers (1,150 miles) to the west of Australia.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which oversees the search, said the ship will be equipped with a black box detector - the U.S. Navy’s Towed Pinger Locator - and an unmanned underwater vehicle, as well as other acoustic detection equipment.
Ships from China and Australia on Saturday scooped up items described only as “objects from the ocean,” but none were “confirmed to be related” to Flight 370, AMSA said.
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Looking back: Before Flight 370 became a big story, it was a collection of individual ones
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) - One morning, many stories.
The three women woke before sunrise that day, leaving their hotel while it was still dark and boarding a small plane in Katmandu, Nepal, for a look at Mount Everest. They were Chinese retirees, avid photographers ending a two-week tour of the Himalayan nation. Late that night, after a stopover in Kuala Lumpur, they would head home to Beijing.
The Indonesian couple woke up at home, a tidy two-story concrete-walled house down a small alley in the city of Medan. A taxi arrived a few hours later to take them to the airport, starting them on a journey to a long-anticipated vacation without their children, a trip to China to see the Great Wall and Beijing’s Forbidden City.
In Kuala Lumpur’s Chinatown, the artists and calligraphers headed down to breakfast about 8 a.m. Some had been celebrating the night before, downing shots of the powerful Chinese liquor called Xifengjiu at the end of almost a week exhibiting their work. But they gathered early in the hotel restaurant, ready for a day of sightseeing and shopping before the late-night flight back to Beijing.
And in Perth, in western Australia, the 39-year-old mechanical engineer woke up early in his red-roofed bungalow, leaving his wife and their two young boys for a 28-day mining job in Mongolia. Just before he headed to the airport, on his way to connecting flights in Kuala Lumpur and Beijing, Paul Weeks gave his wife his wedding ring and watch for safekeeping. If anything happened to him, he said, he wanted the boys to have them someday. “Don’t be stupid!” she told him.
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Health law changes take hold but acceptance eludes “Obamacare” as sign-up season winds down
WASHINGTON (AP) - As a roller-coaster sign-up season winds down, President Barack Obama’s health care law has indeed managed to change the country.
Americans are unlikely to go back to a time when people with medical problems could be denied coverage.
But Obama’s overhaul needs major work of its own if it is to go down in history as a legacy achievement like Medicare or Social Security.
Major elements of the Affordable Care Act face an uncertain future:
-As a 6-month-long sign-up season comes to an end Monday the administration’s next big challenge is to make 2015 open enrollment more manageable for consumers unaccustomed to dealing with insurance jargon. There’s also concern premiums will rise next year.
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Washington authorities: Confirmed dead rises to 18; number of missing drops to 30 in mudslide
DARRINGTON, Wash. (AP) - The number of those believed missing following a deadly Washington state landslide has plummeted to 30 after many people were found safe, authorities said late Saturday.
Officials previously set the number of missing people at 90, but said they expected that figure to drop dramatically as they worked to find people and cross-referenced a list that included partial reports and duplicates.
The confirmed death toll rose by one, to 18, Jason Biermann, program manager at the Snohomish County Department of Emergency Management, said at a Saturday evening briefing.
The search by heavy equipment, dogs and bare hands for victims from the slide was going “all the way to the dirt” as crews looked for anything to provide answers for family and friends a week after a small mountainside community was destroyed.
All work on the debris field halted briefly Saturday for a moment of silence to honor those lost. Gov. Jay Inslee had asked people across Washington to pause at 10:37 a.m., the time the huge slide struck on March 22, destroying a neighborhood in the community of Oso north of Seattle.
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Moderate quake forces evacuations in Southern California; more than 100 aftershocks recorded
LOS ANGELES (AP) - A moderate earthquake that rattled a swath of Southern California forced several dozen people in one community out of their homes after firefighters discovered foundation problems that made the buildings unsafe to enter, authorities said Saturday.
Fire crews red-tagged 20 apartment units in a building in the Orange County city of Fullerton after finding a major foundation crack. Structural woes, including broken chimneys and leaning, were uncovered in half a dozen single-family houses, which were also deemed unsafe to occupy until building inspectors clear the structures. The damage displaced 83 residents.
Despite the evacuations and scattered damage, Friday night’s magnitude-5.1 earthquake centered about 25 miles south of downtown Los Angeles mostly frayed nerves.
The quake was preceded by two smaller foreshocks. More than 100 aftershocks followed, including a magnitude-4.1 that hit Saturday afternoon, the largest in the sequence so far that was felt over a wide region. No injuries were reported.
Residents were inconvenienced and some lost valuables, but “thankfully the damage wasn’t greater,” said Chi-Chung Keung, a spokesman for the city of Fullerton.
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Govs. Chris Christie, Scott Walker court donors in Las Vegas ahead of 2016 presidential race
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Two of the nation’s highest-profile Republican governors on Saturday called for more aggressive leadership on America’s challenges abroad, emphasizing their support for Israel as they courted powerful Jewish donors.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker also stoked speculation about their own presidential ambitions as they gave frustrated Republicans advice on how to reclaim the White House in 2016 after losing two straight elections.
The Republican speakers at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual spring gathering largely avoided criticizing President Barack Obama by name in remarks that were thick with rhetoric faulting Obama’s foreign policy while offering few specifics.
“We cannot have a world where our friends are unsure of whether we will be with them and our enemies are unsure of whether we will be against them,” Christie said. “In New Jersey, nobody has to wonder whether I’m for them or against them.”
Walker declared that the nation needs a “swift and decisive” foreign policy, while insisting that the GOP must find a presidential nominee from “outside Washington.”
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Studies find new drugs greatly lower cholesterol; may aid people not helped enough by statins
WASHINGTON (AP) - A new class of experimental medicines can dramatically lower cholesterol, raising hopes of a fresh option for people who can’t tolerate or don’t get enough help from Lipitor and other statin drugs that have been used for this for decades.
The first large studies of these drugs were presented Saturday at an American College of Cardiology conference in Washington, and more will follow on Sunday.
Several companies are developing these drugs, which are aimed at 70 million Americans and millions more worldwide who have high LDL or “bad” cholesterol, a major risk for heart disease.
Three studies of Amgen Inc.’s version of these drugs, called evolocumab (ev-oh-LOKE-you-mab), found it lowered LDL or “bad” cholesterol by 55 to 66 percent from baseline levels compared to others who took a fake drug, and by nearly that much when compared to Merck’s Zetia, another cholesterol medication.
As impressive as that is, it’s still just part of the picture. Doctors want evidence that the way these drugs lower cholesterol also will lead to fewer heart attacks and deaths, because that proof already exists for statins. New studies are underway to test this, but Amgen said it will seek approval for its drug this year based on cholesterol-lowering alone.
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Salt Lake City boy digs trout pond in backyard, finds remains of ancient American Indian
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - A 14-year-old boy digging a trout pond in the backyard of his father’s Salt Lake City home stumbled across a surprise: the remains of an American Indian who lived about 1,000 years ago.
Experts from the Utah Department of Heritage and Arts spent Friday removing the remains, which were confirmed by medical examiners as those of a person from a millennium ago, and investigating the site for archaeological clues after ninth-grader Ali Erturk’s discovery earlier in the week.
“Humans have occupied this valley for up to 10,000 years,” department spokesman Geoffrey Fattah told The Salt Lake Tribune. “We do run into situations where progress runs into the ancient past.”
A forensic anthropologist will analyze the remains to try to learn more, including the person’s sex and cultural affiliation. A report will go to the state Division of Indian Affairs, which will try to determine whether the remains are linked to current tribes, Fattah said. A tribe may claim the remains and perform interment rites.
Other private property in Salt Lake City has occasionally yielded Native American graves. The department typically receives about six reports of ancient remains statewide each year, Fattah said.
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AP PHOTOS: Hindu festival draws Mormon crowds
Tens of thousands of revelers are gathering at a Sri Sri Radha Krishna Temple in Spanish Fork, Utah, for the annual two-day festival of colors.
However, the large majority of participants are not Hindus, but Mormons. Thousands of students from nearby Brigham Young University come to take part in a festival that is free of drugs and alcohol.
The event stems from a Hindu tradition celebrating the end of winter and the triumph of good over evil.
Revelers dance to music and partake in yoga during the all-day Holi Festival of Colors, throwing colored corn starch in the air once every hour.
Here are some images from the event:
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Florida ends regional final skid, 1st to advance to Final 4 beating Dayton 62-52 in South
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) - First yet again this season, the Florida Gators want more. Much more.
Try a national championship.
Scottie Wilbekin scored 23 points and Florida became the first team to advance to the Final Four with a 62-52 win Saturday night over the 11th-seeded Dayton Flyers in the South Region final.
The Gators reached their fifth Final Four after losing at this point in each of the past three NCAA tournaments. This time, they came in as the country’s top-ranked team and the overall No. 1 seed.
Florida won its 30th straight game and improved to 36-2, topping the 35 wins by the 2007 national championship squad.
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