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.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
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A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number