Residents of the Midwest cleared away wreckage on Saturday following a wave of powerful storms that splintered homes, knocked out power to thousands and killed six people.
Hundreds of homes and businesses were damaged or destroyed on Friday in Kansas, Illinois, Kentucky and Missouri and 150,000 Missouri utility customers lost power. Missouri Governor Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency.
In southern Illinois, more than 56,200 customers of the utility Ameren still had no electricity late on Saturday, the company said.
Illinois Governor Pat Quinn on Saturday declared three southern counties disaster areas.
Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear declared an emergency in central and southeastern sections of his state on Saturday and West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin made the same declaration for six counties in that state.
Trees were down and windows were broken on the campus of Southern Illinois University’s Carbondale campus, but the school said weekend commencement ceremonies would go on scheduled. Friday’s graduation ceremonies were canceled.
Two people were killed near Poplar Bluff, Montana, when wind knocked a tree onto their sport utility vehicle. In Missouri’s Dallas County, a man in his 70s had a fatal heart attack after he and his wife were sucked from their home by a tornado and thrown into a field up to 30m away, said county emergency management director Larry Highfill. The wife was hospitalized in fair condition.
A 54-year-old woman was killed in southeast Kansas in a mobile home that was blown off its foundation. And in central Kentucky, officials blamed a tornado with winds of 193kph for the deaths of two people whose bodies were found in a pond near a mobile home community.
On Saturday, a line of thunderstorms stretched from Arkansas and northern Mississippi across Tennessee and Kentucky.
Some homes were evacuated early Saturday in southern West Virginia because of flooding caused by more than 5cm of rain, state Homeland Security Operations Director Paul Howard said. High water also closed several main roads. No injuries were reported.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
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