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Severe storms pummel South after 7 hurt in Arkansas tornado
A line of severe storms packing isolated tornadoes and high winds ripped across the Deep South overnight, toppling trees and power lines and leaving homes and businesses damaged as the vast weather front raced across several states.
At least two confirmed tornadoes injured several people Wednesday, damaged homes and businesses and downed power lines in Mississippi and Tennessee after earlier storm damage in Arkansas, Missouri and Texas.
No deaths had been reported from the storms as of early Thursday, authorities said. But widespread damage was reported in the Jackson, Tennessee, area as a tornado warning was in effect. “Significant damage” occurred to a nursing home near Jackson-Madison County General Hospital and the Madison County Sheriff’s Office in Jackson, said Madison County Emergency Management Director Jason Moore.
Read:Tornado rips through New Orleans and its suburbs, killing 1
In Nashville, Tennessee, paneling fell five stories from the side of a downtown hotel Wednesday evening and onto a roof of a building below. The fire department warned the debris could become airborne as high winds continued, and some hotel guests were moved to other parts of the building due to concerns that the roof would become unstable. No injuries were immediately associated with the collapse.
Elsewhere, a warehouse roof collapsed as the storms moved through Southaven, Mississippi, near Memphis, police said. The building had been evacuated and no injuries were reported.
The Mississippi Senate suspended its work Wednesday as weather sirens blared during a tornado watch in downtown Jackson. Some employees took shelter in the Capitol basement.
Rander P. Adams said he and his wife, Janice Delores Adams, were in their home near downtown Jackson when severe weather blew through during a tornado warning Wednesday afternoon. He said their lights flashed and a large window exploded just feet from his wife as she tried to open their front door.
“The glass broke just as if someone threw a brick through it,” he said. “I advised her then, ‘Let’s go to the back of the house.’”
Adams said the storm toppled trees in a nearby park, and a large tree across the street from their house split in half. “We were blessed,” he said. “Instead of falling toward the house, it fell the other way.”
Earlier Wednesday, a tornado that struck Springdale, Arkansas, and the adjoining town of Johnson, about 145 miles (235 kilometers) northwest of Little Rock, about 4 a.m. injured seven people, two critically, said Washington County, Arkansas, Emergency Management Director John Luther.
The National Weather Service said that tornado would be rated “at least EF-2,” which would mean wind speeds reached 111-135 mph (178-217 kph).
“Search and rescue teams have been deployed, as there are significant damages and injuries,” Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said.
In northwest Missouri, an EF-1 tornado with wind speeds around 90 mph (145 kph) struck St. Joseph on Tuesday night, according to the weather service. That tornado damaged two homes, but no injuries were reported there. Another EF-1 tornado with wind speeds around 100 mph (160 kph) touched down briefly before dawn Wednesday in a rural subdivision 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Dallas, damaging two roofs, the weather service reported.
The storms come a week after a tornado in a New Orleans-area neighborhood carved a path of destruction during the overnight hours and killed a man.
More than 8,000 power outages were reported in Arkansas, while outages totaled about 44,000 in Mississippi, 26,000 each in Louisiana and Alabama and 24,000 in Tennessee.
Strong winds in Louisiana overturned semitrailers, peeled the roof from a mobile home, sent a tree crashing into a home and knocked down power lines, according to weather service forecasters, who didn’t immediately confirm any tornadoes in the state.
Read: 7 dead after tornadoes tore through central Iowa: Officials
Ahead of the storms, schools in Memphis and dozens in Mississippi closed early or conducted classes online as a precaution against having children in crowded buildings or on buses. Officials in various Mississippi counties opened safe locations for people worried about staying in their homes during the storm.
Firefighters, meanwhile, have been trying to get handle on a wildfire spreading near Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee, amid mandatory evacuations as winds whipped up ahead of the approaching storm front.
The fire, which was not contained, had expanded to about 250 acres (more than 100 hectares) as of Wednesday afternoon, and one person was injured, oficials said.
A plume of smoke rose above one community not far from where 2016 wildfires ravaged the tourism town of Gatlinburg, killing 14 people and damaging or destroying about 2,500 buildings.
Civilian Army leader led child porn ring, risked US security
David Frodsham was a top civilian commander at a U.S. air base in Afghanistan when he “jokingly” asked an IT technician for access to YouPorn, the video-sharing pornographic website.
During his time in the war zone, Frodsham told one woman that he hired her because he “wanted to be surrounded by pretty women,” and routinely called others “honey,” “babe,” and “cougar” before he was ordered home after the military verified multiple allegations of sexual harassment.
“I would not recommend placing him back into a position of authority but rather pursuing disciplinary actions at his home station,” wrote one commanding officer when recommending that the Army order Frodsham to leave his post at Bagram Airfield and return to Fort Huachuca, a major Army installation in Arizona, according to a U.S. Army investigative file obtained by The Associated Press.
But when Frodsham returned to his home station in fall 2015, he rejoined the Network Enterprise Technology Command, the Army’s information technology service provider, where he had served as director of personnel for a global command of 15,000 soldiers and civilians, according to his Army resume.
By spring of the following year, he was arrested in Arizona for leading a child sex abuse ring that included an Army sergeant who was posting child pornography to the internet. Among the victims was one of Frodsham’s adopted sons
Frodsham pleaded guilty to sex abuse charges in 2016 and is serving a 17-year sentence. But records reviewed by the AP show that the U.S. Army and the state of Arizona missed or ignored multiple red flags over more than a decade, which allowed Frodsham to allegedly abuse his adopted son and other children for years, all the while putting national security at risk.
The state permitted Frodsham and his wife, Barbara, to foster, adopt and retain custody of their many children despite nearly 20 complaints, and attempted complaints, of abuse, neglect, maltreatment and licensing violations. Meanwhile, the Army gave Frodsham security clearances and sensitive jobs at a time when his illicit sexual practices made him vulnerable to blackmail.
“He would have been an obvious target of foreign intelligence services because of his role and his location,” said Frank Figliuzzi, the former assistant director of counterintelligence for the FBI. “Fort Huachuca is one of the more sensitive installations in the continental United States. People with security issues should not be there.” In addition to NETCOM, where Frodsham worked, Fort Huachuca is home to the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command, according to its website.
Public relations officials at Fort Huachuca confirmed that Frodsham was a program manager for NETCOM before he was arrested on child sex abuse charges. They declined to say whether Frodsham was disciplined after returning from Afghanistan, or whether the Army ever considered him a security risk.
Frodsham, former Sgt. Randall Bischak and a third man not associated with the Army are all serving prison terms for the roles they played in the child sex abuse ring. But the investigation is continuing because Sierra Vista police believe additional men took part.
Now, the criminal investigation is spilling over into civil court, where two of Frodsham’s adopted sons have filed separate lawsuits against the state for licensing David and Barbara Frodsham as foster parents in a home where they say they were physically and sexually abused throughout their lives.
A third adopted son is expected to file suit Tuesday in Arizona state court in Cochise County, said attorney Lynne Cadigan, who represents all three. In the latest complaint, 19-year-old Trever Frodsham says case workers missed or overlooked numerous signs that David and Barbara Frodsham were unfit parents. These included a 2002 sex abuse complaint filed with local police by one of the Frodshams’ biological daughters against an older biological brother, and the fact that David and Barbara Frodsham were themselves victims of child sex abuse.
Trever’s allegations echo those featured in an earlier lawsuit filed by his older biological brother, Ryan Frodsham, and one filed by Neal Taylor, both of whom were also adopted into the Frodsham household.
In an interview with the AP, Ryan Frodsham said his adoptive father began sexually abusing him when he was 9 or 10 years old and the abuse continued into his teens, when David Frodsham began offering his son’s sexual services to other men. “Makes me throw up thinking about it,” Ryan said.
In his lawsuit, Ryan Frodsham said the state was informed that David and Barbara Frodsham were physically abusing their children “by slapping them in the face, pinching them, hitting them with a wooden spoon, putting hot sauce in their mouths, pulling them by the hair, bending their fingers back to inflict pain, forcing them to hold cans with their arms extended for long periods time,” and refusing to let them use the bathroom unless the door remained open. In his AP interview, Ryan said Barbara never sexually abused him but walked into the room where David was abusing him at least twice.
“She knew what was going on,” he said.
The two lawsuits already filed by the adopted sons and related legal filings also say investigators with the Department of Child Safety and case workers with Catholic Community Services, which subcontracts foster and adoption work from the state, failed to effectively follow up on 19 complaints and attempted complaints regarding the Frodsham home spanning more than a decade.
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The complaints began in 2002, when the Frodshams applied for their foster care license, and continued until 2015, when David Frodsham was charged with disorderly conduct and driving drunk with children in his car, prompting the state to suspend their license indefinitely and remove all foster children from their home, although the charges were later dismissed.
Five months later, the Army deployed Frodsham to Afghanistan, where he was ordered back to Arizona after only four months of service.
REPORTS FELL ON DEAF EARS
The lawsuits say the Frodshams’ adopted children attempted to report their own physical and sexual abuse without success.
For instance, Neal Taylor’s lawsuit says he attempted to report that David Frodsham was sexually abusing him in two phone calls to his case manager, both of which he placed from school.
The first time, the case manager reported the call to Neal’s adoptive mother, who “interrogated” him and “proceeded to punish” him, according to his lawsuit. The second time, the case manager refused to meet with him unless he disclosed the reason for his call over the phone, because he would have had to drive 90 minutes from Tucson to Sierra Vista for a private meeting.
Ryan Frodsham’s lawsuit and the related legal filings say he reported repeated alleged physical abuse by Barbara Frodsham to Sierra Vista police when he was 12 years old after running away from home. Police photographed several bruises, returned him to Barbara Frodsham, and reported the incident to the state Department of Child Safety. Despite the photographs and a police report, a case worker who met with Ryan five weeks later found his allegations “unsubstantiated.”
Arizona Department of Child Safety spokesman Darren DaRonco declined to answer specific questions about the lawsuits. He instead sent an email outlining the state’s procedures for screening prospective foster and adoptive parents. “Despite all of these safeguards, people are sometimes able to avoid detection,” DaRonco said, “especially if a person has no prior criminal or child abuse history.”
Yet David and Barbara Frodsham have both said they were abused as minors.
In their written application to become foster parents, Barbara Frodsham indicated that neither she nor her husband had been sexually victimized. But in recent pretrial testimony for Ryan Frodsham’s lawsuit, she said she would have revealed her abuse if she had been asked by a state investigator as part of the licensing process.
David Frodsham, for his part, told a probation official after his guilty plea that he had been abused as a teenager.
Many child welfare experts believe people with a history of child sexual abuse are more likely to abuse children in their own households and should be questioned to ensure they’ve overcome their trauma before being allowed to provide foster care.
Arizona’s child welfare case workers “did not know how to interview and, therefore, they didn’t get candid answers from the Frodshams,” said Kathleen Faller, an expert witness retained in Ryan Frodsham’s lawsuit. In pretrial testimony, Faller also said the state should not have granted the Frodshams’ foster care license.
Barbara Frodsham, who divorced David following his guilty plea, did not return multiple telephone calls from the AP, and did not respond to detailed questions left on her voice mail. At the time of her husband’s sentencing, she was working at Fort Huachuca as a personnel specialist, according to law enforcement records. A spokeswoman at Fort Huachuca said she still holds the position.
Attorneys for the state and the other defendants are seeking to have the cases dismissed, based in part on state law that grants immunity to state employees for mistakes or misjudgments committed in the course of their work. The law does not provide immunity for “gross negligence,” which the Frodsham brothers and Neal Taylor are alleging.
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The state also says all the complaints about the Frodsham children and the Frodsham home were properly handled.
CHILD SEX ABUSE RING
The Frodsham case started as child sex abuse investigations often do: with an undercover Homeland Security agent lurking in a chat room favored by child pornographers. The Philadelphia-based agent, using the Kik messaging app, ran into someone calling himself “Pup Brass” who was posting videos and photos labeled “pedopicsandvidd.”
Kik offers users a degree of anonymity but it stores IP addresses, which help identify a device’s connection to the internet and can help identify the device’s owner. According to a Sierra Vista police probable cause statement, federal and local law enforcement agents using the IP address and other information — some gleaned from social media accounts — soon determined that “Pup Brass” was Sgt. Randall Bischak.
When they raided his home, seizing computers, cell phones, tablets and CDs holding child pornography, Bischak confessed that he’d been having sex with a 59-year-old man he called “Dave” and his teenage son. In at least one instance Bischak had secretly recorded the sex on video. He also told investigators that he and Frodsham discussed having sex with small children and that Frodsham had supplied him with at least one of the “little ones.”
Thomas Ransford, who specializes in child sex abuse cases for the Sierra Vista police, was no stranger to Frodsham. In the mid-2000s, he served as a military police officer at Fort Huachuca when Frodsham was director of Training, Plans, Mobilization and Security. “So, I knew him. I was familiar with him, attended meetings with him,” Ransford recalled. He also knew that Frodsham’s foster kids were always in trouble.
When Ransford first questioned Frodsham he denied everything. “He was pompous, like he was the smartest guy in the room,” Ransford recalled. Then Ransford played the video Bischak had secretly taken of himself having three-way sex with Frodsham and his adopted son, Ryan, and Frodsham began to acknowledge his crimes.
Ryan Frodsham also initially denied his father had abused him. “Ryan appeared very defensive of his father and did not want to implicate him in any misconduct,” Ransford wrote in a probable cause statement.
But when Ransford showed him a compromising photograph seized from Bischak’s cell phone, Ryan began to open up. Over the course of several months, Ransford said, Ryan identified others he said were part of his father’s child sex abuse ring, fueling the continuing investigation.
“There’s others we’re aware of,” Ransford said. “It’s open.”
The Frodsham child sex abuse ring is part of a cluster of sex abuse cases that have come to light in Cochise County, Arizona, over the last several years, including several involving U.S. Border Patrol agents, two of whom worked at the Naco, Arizona, Border Crossing. Among them:
— John Daly III. A year ago, authorities arrested the recently retired Border Patrol agent after DNA evidence led them to suspect him in at least eight rapes, and to consider whether he is the so-called East Valley rapist, who terrorized women outside Phoenix throughout the 1990s. Prosecutors in Maricopa and Cochise counties have charged him with multiple counts of sexual assault and kidnapping. Daly, who is being held without bail, has pleaded not guilty.
— Dana Thornhill. A year ago, Thornhill was sentenced to a 40-year prison term after pleading guilty to years of sexually abusing his two children. Thornhill was charged following a stand-off with police in which he holed up in a local church. At the time, Thornhill was the chaplain at the Naco Border Crossing.
— Paul Adams. In 2017, Adams was charged with raping his two daughters, one of whom was just 6 weeks old; taking videos of the sexual assaults; and posting them on the Internet. Adams, who took his own life before standing trial, was also stationed at the Naco Border Crossing.
Ransford believes the cluster of cases should be attributed to good police work and effective prosecution, which give victims and others the confidence to report child sex abuse. “People report because they know something’s going to be done about it,” he said.
But Cadigan, the attorney representing the Frodsham brothers and Neal Taylor, wonders whether child sex abuse in southern Arizona is on the rise. “Law enforcement has been very effective, and I appreciate their efforts, but I’ve been taking these cases for 30 years and I’ve never been so busy,” she said.
A SCANDAL-PLAGUED DEPARTMENT
The physical and sexual abuse allegedly endured by the Frodsham brothers and Neal Taylor occurred at a time when Arizona’s child welfare system was embroiled in scandal. In 2013, officials revealed that what was then the Department of Protective Services had a backlog of more than 6,500 abuse and neglect complaints it had never investigated.
The revelation prompted then-Gov. Jan Brewer to dissolve the entire department and create a new Cabinet-level office called the Department of Child Safety. “It is evident that our child welfare system is broken, impeded by years of operational failures,” said Brewer, a Republican.
Underlying the scandal were deep budget cuts to family support services, leading to soaring abuse and neglect complaints and what an auditor general’s report would later refer to as “unmanageable workloads, staff turnover and the limited experience of some CPS supervisors and newly hired investigators.”
In 2014, an analysis produced for the state Legislature showed that the increase in workloads in Arizona during the decade that ended in 2012 was greater than in any other state but one. It also showed that the response time for abuse and neglect complaints ballooned from 63 hours to nearly 250 hours, between 2009 and 2012.
In its defense against Ryan Frodsham’s lawsuit, the state is trying to exclude any mention of the department’s troubled past. “There is no evidence that the types of problems that led to the dissolution of CPS has any relation to or impact on his case,” the state said in a pretrial motion.
But David and Barbara Frodsham were licensed as foster parents in 2002, at the dawn of what was perhaps the department’s most troubled period, and formally adopted the three men going to court about a decade later, shortly before the system collapsed. “The jury is entitled to the full picture,” lawyers for Ryan Frodsham said.
In his AP interview, Ryan Frodsham said he filed his lawsuit for one reason: “I want the state to admit what it did was wrong.”
Firefighters increase containment on Colorado wildfire
A wildfire south of Boulder that forced nearly 20,000 people to flee was listed at 35% contained by Sunday afternoon and most evacuations had been lifted, officials with Boulder Fire-Rescue said.
The fire, which ignited Saturday, burned to within 1,000 yards (914 meters) of homes on the west end of Boulder, said Mike Smith, incident commander. No homes were lost and no injuries were reported, he said.
A quick initial attack “combined with all of the fuels mitigation treatments that we've done in this area is one of the reasons that we've had such great success," Smith said Sunday.
Read:Colorado wildfires burn hundreds of homes, force evacuations
Fire crews were also able to use aircraft to fight the fire, laying down lines of fire retardant near homes in the rolling hills south of the college town, he said.
The evacuation area was reduced late Saturday to cover about 1,700 people and 700 residences, down from about 8,000 homes earlier in the day. Fire managers hoped to allow more people back into their homes Sunday as the area becomes safe, officials said. New information for those still evacuated was expected by Sunday evening, Smith said.
Work on Sunday focused on reinforcing the fire line and making sure the fire didn't burn toward the city of Boulder or down toward Eldorado Canyon, Smith said. Crews were working to corral the fire into an area of rocks and snow.
“Today was a good day,” Smith said during a Sunday afternoon briefing as a helicopter flew in the background. “This morning was a little bit cooler, the wind was a little bit calmer and as we moved through the day we were happy to see that some of the winds that were forecast didn't actually come to fruition.”
The containment level increased from 21% on Sunday morning to 35% on Sunday afternoon while the area burned remained the same — an estimated 189 acres (77 hectares), Smith said.
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The fire burned in dormant trees and dry grass not far from where a late December fire, pushed by strong winds, burned over 9 square miles (24 square kilometers) and destroyed more than 1,000 homes.
Fire crews are concerned about the upcoming fire season, Smith said.
“I think this is just a sign of the way things are going to go,” he said. “We continue to work on our planning processes. We continue to work on the team building and work with our partners to make sure that we're as dialed as we can be. We're feeling good, but we're a little nervous about the upcoming season.”
The fire burned protected wildland near the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder police said. Authorities have called it the NCAR fire and its cause is not yet known, although officials have found the spot where it was believed to have started, Smith said.
Driver crashes into Oregon homeless camp, killing 4
A driver crashed their car into a homeless encampment in Salem, Oregon, early Sunday morning, killing four people and injuring three more, including the driver, authorities said.
Police arrested Enrique Rodriguez Jr., 24, on Sunday evening. Rodriguez was charged with four counts of first-degree manslaughter, second and third-degree assault and six counts of reckless endangerment.
In a statement, authorities said the Salem Police Traffic Team believes “alcohol may have been a contributing factor” in the crash.
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It wasn’t immediately clear whether Rodriguez had retained an attorney.
Nathan Rose tells the Salem Statesman Journal that he and his girlfriend were in their tent when they heard two loud thuds. The car just missed their tent, Rose said.
Rose said he saw some of his friends pinned under the car and called 911. He said he helped pull one person from under the car but witnesses were unable to help the others.
“From there, it was just chaos,” Rose told the newspaper.
Police said in a statement Sunday afternoon that the driver was the only occupant of the two-door sports coupe.
The crash happened at about 2 a.m. Sunday near a new men’s shelter, which has beds for about 300 people, and a program that offers emergency housing assistance and other services for the homeless.
The camp is a small triangle of trees and grass, not far from the Willamette River.
Two people who were at the encampment died at the scene. Four others were taken to Salem Health with with life-threatening injuries and two died at the hospital. The driver was also taken to the hospital.
Officials have not released the victims’ names or the conditions of those who remain hospitalized.
Jimmy Jones, executive director of the Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action Agency, said homeless people spend much of their day trying to find a safe place to sleep and rest, “but events like this remind us that there is no safe space.”
The crash comes after Washington, D.C., police arrested a man earlier this month who is suspected of stalking and shooting homeless people asleep on the streets of New York City and the nation's capital.
“No one deserves to have to live in unsheltered conditions and they damn sure do not deserve to die in them,” Jones said. “Tragedies like this will continue until this nation makes a serious commitment to the idea that housing is a human right, and that everyone deserves a warm, safe and dry place where they can live with dignity.”
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More than 1,000 people sleep outside in the Salem area on any given night, the newspaper reported. The city has a population of over 175,000, according to the 2020 U.S. census.
Mike Wade came to the camp after hearing one of his close friends had died. He helped others in the camp salvage their belongings and prayed for the victims.
“It gets me weaker every day hearing about us die one by one,” Wade said. “My friends are dead and I don’t know what to say.”
Biden pledges new Ukraine aid, warns Russia on chem weapons
President Joe Biden and Western allies pledged new sanctions and humanitarian aid on Thursday in response to Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine, but their offers fell short of the more robust military assistance that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pleaded for in a pair of live-video appearances.
Biden also announced the U.S. would welcome up to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees — though he said many probably prefer to stay closer to home — and provide an additional $1 billion in food, medicine, water and other supplies.
The Western leaders spent Thursday crafting next steps to counter Russia’s month-old invasion — and huddling over how they might respond should Putin deploy chemical, biological or even a nuclear weapon. They met in a trio of emergency summits that had them shuttling across Brussels for back-to-back-to-back meetings of NATO, the Group of Seven industrialized nations and the 27-member European Council.
Biden, in an early evening news conference after the meetings, warned that a chemical attack by Russia “would trigger a response in kind."
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“You’re asking whether NATO would cross. We’d make that decision at the time,” Biden said.
However, a White House official said later that did not imply any shift in the U.S. position against direct military action in Ukraine. Biden and NATO allies have stressed that the U.S. and NATO would not put troops on the ground in Ukraine.
The official was not authorized to comment publicly by name and spoke only on condition of anonymity.
Zelenskyy, while thankful for the newly promised help, made clear to the Western allies he needed far more than they're currently willing to give.
“One percent of all your planes, one percent of all your tanks,” Zelenskyy asked members of the NATO alliance. “We can’t just buy those. When we will have all this, it will give us, just like you, 100% security.”
Biden said more aid was on its way. But the Western leaders were treading carefully so as not to further escalate the conflict beyond the borders of Ukraine.
“NATO has made a choice to support Ukraine in this war without going to war with Russia," said French President Emmanuel Macron. "Therefore we have decided to intensify our ongoing work to prevent any escalation and to get organized in case there is an escalation.”
Poland and other eastern flank NATO countries are seeking clarity on how the U.S. and European nations can assist in dealing with their growing concerns about Russian aggression as well as the refugee crisis. More than 3.5 million refugees have fled Ukraine in recent weeks, including more than 2 million to Poland.
Biden is to visit Rzeszów, Poland, on Friday, where energy and refugee issues are expected to be at the center of talks with President Andrzej Duda. He'll get a briefing on humanitarian aid efforts to assist fleeing refugees and he'll meet with U.S. troops from the 82nd Airborne Division who have been deployed in recent weeks to bolster NATO's eastern flank.
Billions of dollars of military hardware have already been provided to Ukraine. A U.S. official, who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said Western nations were discussing the possibility of providing anti-ship weapons amid concerns that Russia will launch amphibious assaults along the Black Sea coast.
Biden said his top priority at Thursday's meetings was to make certain that the West stayed on the same page in its response to Russian aggression against Ukraine.
"The single most important thing is for us to stay unified," he said.
Finland announced Thursday it would send more military equipment to Ukraine, its second shipment in about three weeks. And Belgium announced it will add one billion euros to its defense budget in response to Russia’s invasion..
At the same time, Washington will expand its sanctions on Russia, targeting members of the country’s parliament along with defense contractors. The U.S. said it will also work with other Western nations to ensure gold reserves held by Russia's central bank are subject to existing sanctions.
With Russia facing increasing international isolation, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg also warned China against coming to Moscow's rescue. He called on Beijing “to join the rest of the world and clearly condemn the brutal war against Ukraine and not support Russia.”
But Stoltenberg, too, made clear that the West had a "responsibility to prevent this conflict from becoming a full-fledged war in Europe.”
The possibility that Russia will use chemical or even nuclear weapons has been a grim topic of conversation in Brussels.
Stoltenberg said that NATO leaders agreed Thursday to send equipment to Ukraine to help protect it against a chemical weapons attack.
White House officials said that both the U.S. and NATO have been working on contingency planning should Russia deploy nonconventional weaponry. NATO has specially trained and equipped forces if there should be such an attack against a member nation's population, territory or forces. Ukraine is not a member.
Stoltenberg said in an NBC News interview that if Russia deployed chemical weapons, that would make “an unpredictable, dangerous situation even more dangerous and even more unpredictable.” He declined to comment about how the alliance might respond.
The White House National Security Council launched efforts days after the invasion through its “Tiger Team,” which is tasked with planning three months out, and a second strategy group working on a longer term review of any geopolitical shift that may come, according to a senior administration official. The official was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
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Both teams are conducting contingency planning for scenarios including Russia’s potential use of chemical or biological weapons, targeting of U.S. security convoys in the region, disruptions to global food supply chains and the growing refugee crisis.
Biden before departing for Europe on Wednesday said that the possibility of a chemical attack was a “real threat.” In addition, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN this week that Russia could consider using its nuclear weapons if it felt there were “an existential threat for our country.”
Finland's Prime Minister Sanna Marin on Thursday warned, “Russia is capable of anything.”
"They don’t respect any rules,” Marin told reporters. “They don’t respect any international laws that they are actually committed to.”
The Russian invasion has spurred European nations to reconsider their military spending, and Stoltenberg opened the NATO summit by saying the alliance must “respond to a new security reality in Europe.”
The bolstering of forces along NATO's eastern flank will put pressure on national budgets.
The energy crisis exacerbated by the war is a particularly hot topic for the European Council summit, where leaders from Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece are hoping for an urgent, coordinated bloc-wide response. EU officials have said they will seek U.S. help on a plan to top up natural gas storage facilities for next winter, and they also want the bloc to jointly purchase gas.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has dismissed calls to boycott Russian energy supplies, saying it would cause significant damage to his country's economy. Scholz is facing pressure from environmental activists to quickly wean Germany off Russian energy, but he said the process will have to be gradual.
“To do so from one day to the next would mean plunging our country and all of Europe into recession," Scholz said Wednesday.
Ursula von der Leyen, head of the European Union’s executive arm, said before Biden’s visit that she wanted to discuss the possibility of securing extra deliveries of liquefied natural gas from the United States for the 27-nation bloc “for the next two winters.”
The EU imports 90% of the natural gas used to generate electricity, heat homes and supply industry, with Russia supplying almost 40% of EU gas and a quarter of its oil. The bloc is hoping to reduce its dependence on Russian gas by diversifying suppliers.
The U.S. is looking for ways to “surge” LNG supplies to Europe to help, said Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security adviser.
Four new NATO battlegroups, which usually number between 1,000-1,500 troops, are being set up in Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria.
6 students killed in Oklahoma crash were in car that seats 4
Six teenage girls on a high school lunch break were killed when their small car with only four seats collided with a large truck hauling rocks, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol said Wednesday.
The crash occurred shortly after noon Tuesday in Tishomingo, a rural city of about 3,000 located about 100 miles (160 kilometers) southeast of Oklahoma City, the patrol said. Those killed included the 16-year-old driver, three 15-year-olds, and two 17-year-old passengers, according to the patrol.
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While what led to the crash is unknown, it highlighted concerns of teenagers carrying other young passengers.
“Just adding a single passenger under age 21 increases the risk of crashing by 44%” when the driver is a teen," said William Van Tassel with AAA’s national office.
The crash report, released Wednesday morning, said the circumstances of the wreck remained under investigation. But Highway Patrol Trooper Shelby Humphrey said Tuesday night that the girls’ car was making a right turn when it collided with the truck, KXII-TV reported.
"One of the main concerns and risks of having multiple teenagers in a car is the distractions that come with that,” Van Tassel said.
“If one of the passengers is over 35 (the risk) goes down by 62%. That implies teens can drive safely when there’s an adult in the car," Van Tassel told The Associated Press.
Only the 16-year-old driver and front-seat passenger were wearing seat belts when the 2015 Chevrolet Spark collided with the truck, according to the Highway Patrol.
“The unbelted people put everyone at risk," Van Tessel said. "In a crash, the unbuckled people fly around all over the place,” injuring others inside the vehicle.
Oklahoma is the only state where passengers who are older than 7 years old and in the back seat of a car do not have to wear a seat belt, said Leslie Gamble, the manger of public and government relations for AAA-Oklahoma.
“A 41-member coalition of traffic safety advocates has pushed for a bill to be passed by our state legislators for the past three years without success,” Gamble said
The crash occurred about a mile (1.6 kilometers) from Tishomingo High School.
Students in the district of about 850 students were in class Wednesday, Tishomingo Public School Superintendent Bobby Waitman said.
“Academics are secondary, frankly, at this point to the students knowing that they belong, that they have a safe place,” Waitman said.
“You'll never fully understand, I don't think we'll ever fully understand a loss like this," Waitman added.
The girls' names weren't released because they are juveniles.
The Highway Patrol identified the driver of the truck as Valendon Burton, 51, of Burneyville, Oklahoma. The report said Burton was not injured.
The National Transportation Safety Board was sending a team, according to NTSB spokesman Peter Knudson.
Read:Tornado rips through New Orleans and its suburbs, killing 1
Waitman said funerals for the students were not yet scheduled and that the district would work with their families to potentially schedule a memorial service on campus.
The crash happened one week after nine people were killed — including six members of a New Mexico college’s golf team and their coach — died in a crash in West Texas. In that crash, the NTSB determined that a 13-year-old boy was behind the wheel of a truck when it blew a tire and struck the van carrying University of the Southwest students.
UN members urged to acknowledge Rohingya genocide, refer Myanmar to ICC
United Nations member states should publicly acknowledge the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar and ensure that the UN Security Council refers the situation to the International Criminal Court (ICC), said Fortify Rights Monday.
Today, the US announced that the Myanmar military is responsible for committing genocide against the Rohingya people.
"It is a signalling and remarkable milestone for Rohingya victims and survivors that the US has formally determined that the violence committed against Rohingya by the Myanmar military amounts to genocide and crimes against humanity," said Zaw Win, human rights specialist at Fortify Rights.
"It has been a long-term expectation for the Rohingya community. Declaring that what happened to the Rohingya is in fact genocide should spur international accountability efforts and make it more difficult for the Myanmar military to continue its atrocity crimes."
In November 2019, the Gambia filed a case against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the UN's highest court, for failing to prevent or punish genocide against Rohingya Muslims. The case is ongoing.
In September 2018, the ICC granted the chief prosecutor jurisdiction to investigate and possibly prosecute the crime against humanity of forced deportation of Rohingyas to Bangladesh, as well as persecution and other inhumane acts.
Last month, Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan concluded his first visit to Bangladesh as part of the ongoing investigation.
READ: Rohingya Crisis: KSA to keep supporting Bangladesh, The Gambia
While the ICC is investigating forced deportation, it is not yet investigating the crime of genocide against Rohingya.
The intergovernmental organisation and international tribunal has not yet accepted the National Unity Government of Myanmar's declaration delegating jurisdiction of the court.
The UN Security Council members should immediately put forward a resolution to refer the situation in Myanmar to the ICC, said Fortify Rights.
The UN members should also acknowledge the legitimacy of the National Unity Government of Myanmar and get fully behind its efforts to delegate jurisdiction to the court.
"Secretary Blinken's announcement is historic for the Rohingya and all people of Myanmar and also for wider efforts to prevent and remedy genocide," said Matthew Smith, chief executive officer at Fortify Rights.
"To prevent genocide, governments must at least acknowledge it when it happens, which is precisely what the US government did today."
US says Myanmar repression of Muslim Rohingya is genocide
Violent repression of the largely Muslim Rohingya population in Myanmar amounts to genocide, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday, a declaration intended to both generate international pressure and lay the groundwork for potential legal action.
Authorities made the determination based on confirmed accounts of mass atrocities on civilians by Myanmar's military in a widespread and systematic campaign against the ethnic minority, Blinken said in a speech at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
It is the eighth time since the Holocaust that the U.S. has concluded a genocide has occurred. The secretary of state noted the importance of calling attention to inhumanity even as horrific attacks occur elsewhere in the world, including Ukraine.
“Yes, we stand with the people of Ukraine," he said. "And we must also stand with people who are suffering atrocities in other places.”
The government of Myanmar, also known as Burma, is already under multiple layers of U.S. sanctions since a military coup ousted the democratically elected government in February 2021. Thousands of civilians throughout the country have been killed and imprisoned as part of ongoing repression of anyone opposed to the ruling junta.
The determination that a genocide has occurred could lead other nations to increase pressure on the government, which is already facing accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
“As we lay the foundation for future accountability, we’re also working to stop the military’s ongoing atrocities, and support the people of Burma as they strive to put the country back on the path to democracy,” Blinken said.
More than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled from Buddhist-majority Myanmar to refugee camps in Bangladesh since August 2017, when Myanmar's military launched an operation aimed at clearing them from the country following attacks by a rebel group.
The status of the plight of the Rohingya had been under extended review by U.S. government legal experts since the Trump administration, given potential legal ramifications of such a finding. The delay in the determination had drawn criticism from both inside and outside the government, which has been accused through successive administrations of being too slow in making such decisions on this and in other cases, most notable in Sudan’s Darfur region in the early 2000s.
Read: Rohingya case: Bangladesh assures continued support for The Gambia
Human rights groups and members of Congress welcomed the announcement despite the delay in a determination that has already been made by other countries, including Canada, France and Turkey.
“The U.S. determination of the crime of genocide against us is a momentous moment and must lead to concrete action to hold the Burmese military accountable for their crimes,” said Tun Khin, president of the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK.
Human Rights Watch said the U.S. and other governments should seek justice for crimes carried out by the military and impose stronger sanctions against its leadership.
“The U.S. government should couple its condemnations of Myanmar’s military with action,” said John Sifton, the group’s Asia advocacy director. “For too long, the U.S. and other countries have allowed Myanmar’s generals to commit atrocities with few real consequences.”
A 2018 State Department report documented instances of Myanmar's military razing villages and carrying out rapes, tortures and mass killings of civilians since at least 2016. Blinken said evidence showed the violence wasn't isolated, but part of a systematic program that amounts to crimes against humanity.
Read:Roving with Rohingyas: How feminine hearts can make a difference, from scare to care
“The evidence also points to a clear intent behind these mass atrocities, the intent to destroy Rohingya, in whole or in part, through killings, rape, and torture,” he said.
Previous determinations of genocide by the U.S. include campaigns against Uyghurs and other largely Muslim minorities in China as well as in Bosnia, Rwanda, Iraq and Darfur.
Gunfire at Arkansas car show leaves 1 dead, 27 wounded
One man was killed and 27 people were wounded when two people got into a gunfight during a car show that's part of an annual community event in a small southeast Arkansas town, authorities said Sunday.
A person who left the scene of the Saturday evening shooting has been arrested on unrelated charges and is being questioned about the shooting in Dumas, a city of about 4,000 located about 90 miles (144 kilometers) southeast of Little Rock, Arkansas State Police Col. Bill Bryant said.
“All we know at this time, there was two individuals that got in a gunfight,” Bryant said at a Sunday afternoon news conference.
Read:Car runs into Carnival revelers in Belgium, killing 6
He said several children were among the wounded, including two under the age of 2.
The car show is part of a community event held each spring called Hood-Nic, which is short for neighborhood picnic. The Hood-Nic Foundation says on its website that its mission is to “rebuild, reunite, and respond to the needs of the youth in our communities.”
The event, which helps raise funds for scholarships and school supplies, also included a bonfire, a basketball tournament, musical performances, a teen party and a balloon release.
“The purpose of Hood-Nic has always been to bring the community together,” the foundation said on its Facebook page. “This senseless violence needs to end.”
“It’s always been a family-friendly event with a message of non-violence,” said Kris Love-Keys, the foundation's chief development officer.
Cameron Shaffer, 23, of Jacksonville, Arkansas, was killed in the gunfire, Bryant said. He said authorities have no indication that he was involved in the gunfight.
Earlier in the day, Gov. Asa Hutchinson said on Twitter that one of the two suspects had been arrested and was being held on unrelated charges. But state police later would only say the person who was arrested was being questioned.
“As the investigation continues I will examine details to see if there are any steps that could have been taken to prevent this type of tragedy,” Hutchinson said.
Read:Car crash kills 7 in southern Myanmar
Six people under the age of 18 who were wounded by gunfire were taken to Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock, according to a spokeswoman. Most had been released as of Sunday afternoon.
Wallace McGehee, the car show's organizer, told KARK that that when the bullets started flying, he began “running, ducking, getting down, trying to get kids out of the way.”
Candace McKinzie, who helped organize the event, told The New York Times that the gunfire seemed to come out of nowhere.
“You went from laughing and talking and eating and everything to random firing,” she said.
McKinzie said people started running and tripping over one another and older people were falling.
Those who were shot include McKinzie’s cousin and sister. She said both were expected to recover.
Chris Jones, a Democrat running for Arkansas governor, tweeted that he was at the event earlier Saturday, registering voters and enjoying “a positive family atmosphere.”
“I am deeply saddened (and honestly angered) by this tragedy,” Jones said in a statement.
American lost in Ukraine flew into war to help sick partner
Katya Hill tried to talk her brother out of it. She urged Jimmy Hill to postpone his trip to Ukraine as she saw reports of Russian tanks lining up at the border. But he needed to help his longtime partner, who has been suffering from progressive multiple sclerosis.
“He said, ‘I don’t know what I would do if I lost her, I have to try to do everything I can to try to stop the progression of MS,’” Katya said. “My brother sacrificed his life for her.”
James “Jimmy” Hill, 68, was killed in a Russian attack on the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv that was reported Thursday, as his partner Irina Teslenko received treatment at a local hospital. His family says she and her mother are trying to leave the city, but because of her condition they would need an ambulance to help and it was unclear when or if that could happen.
In an interview from Pittsburgh Saturday, Hill’s sister called her brother’s relationship with Irina a “beautiful love story, but unfortunately it has a tragic ending.”
Katya Hill said Irina’s illness had progressed to the point that she had lost the ability to walk and much of the use of her hands. She said her brother — a native of Eveleth, Minnesota, who was living in Driggs, Idaho — had spent months trying to secure treatments to stop the progression of the disease and had finally arranged for treatment in February.
Katya said the two met while her brother, who taught social work and forensic psychology at universities in various countries, was teaching a class in Ukraine. He knew instantly that he was in love and they spent years together, talking for hours every day on the phone when Jimmy was back in the Unites States.
READ: Russians push deeper into Mariupol as locals plead for help
Katya said in the last few weeks as the bombings grew more frequent and resources more scarce, her brother had been daydreaming of ways to get Ukrainian families to the U.S. to set up a “little Ukraine” at his Airbnb properties he owned in Idaho and Montana. She said her brother loved Ukraine and even on the day he was killed, friends had helped her piece together that he had decided to stay to be with Teslenko and her mother at the hospital.
It was initially reported that Jimmy was gunned down while waiting in a breadline, but Katya said the family had received new details through their senators and from Jimmy’s friends in Ukraine Saturday.
Katya said Jimmy and a friend who lives near the hospital had gone to an area where they had heard buses were waiting to evacuate people who wanted to leave the city via a safe corridor. There were more than a thousand people already waiting in line, and Jimmy told the friend he was going to return to the hospital. The friend told Katya that Russian shelling began as he was leaving, and the blast that killed her brother had caused the friend to lose hearing in one of her ears.
Katya said her family is still waiting to hear directly from the U.S. State Department to get details of where his body is.
Chernihiv police and the State Department confirmed the death of an American but did not identify him. The Associated Press reached out to the State Department to confirm details of Hill’s death, but had not received information as of early Saturday.
In poignant posts on Facebook in the weeks before his death, Hill described “indiscriminate bombing” in a city under siege. Katya said he had described increasing hardships in a Facebook Messenger group, starting each day by saying he was still alive.
But electricity and heat had been cut off, and food and supplies were becoming more scarce. Katya said he would go out to wait in line for food and supplies and bring back whatever he could for the hospital staff.
READ: Denied swift victory, Russian military maintains strong hand
Most patients at the hospital had moved to the basement bomb shelter, but Irina and her mother remained in the upper levels because of the cold and so she could continue the treatment.
Katya said Irina’s mother had been told about Jimmy’s death, but had not wanted to tell her daughter. She said they had hoped for help to evacuate back to their home village southeast of Kyiv, where Irina’s father was waiting, but it was unclear whether they could find an ambulance to take them or a safe route for the trip.