Investigators probing vandalism at electricity substations in Washington state on Tuesday appealed for public help in tracking down those responsible for attacks that have fueled concerns of a right-wing extremist campaign.
Local police gave no information on who they suspected was behind the vandalism, which knocked out power on Christmas Day for about 14,000 in Tacoma, a port city area south of Seattle.
Tacoma Public Utilities, which owns two of the facilities targeted on Sunday, said in a statement that it was alerted by federal law enforcement early this month about threats to its grid.
Photo: AP
The Pierce County Sheriff’s office on Tuesday appealed for those near damaged substations to look at “surveillance video at your home or business ... and let us know if you find anything that could help our detectives identify the suspect(s) responsible.”
On the day of the attacks, the office said it was investigating, but had made no arrests and did not know if it was a coordinated attack.
“It could be any number of reasons at this point... We have to investigate and not just jump to conclusions,” it said, adding that it was aware of similar incidents in Washington, Oregon and North Carolina.
The vandalism follows warnings by US officials that neo-Nazis who say they want to spark a race war are targeting electricity infrastructure.
Violent extremists “have developed credible, specific plans to attack electricity infrastructure since at least 2020, identifying the electric grid as a particularly attractive target given its interdependency with other infrastructure sectors,” the US Department of Homeland Security said in a intelligence memo in January, according to US media.
Early this month, 45,000 homes and businesses in Moore County, North Carolina, were left without power after someone used a high-powered rifle to damage two electricity substations.
In February, three men with neo-Nazi ties pleaded guilty in Columbus, Ohio, to plotting to use rifles and explosives to damage power infrastructure in various locations.
They pursued “a disturbing plot, in furtherance of white supremacist ideology, to attack energy facilities in order to damage the economy and stoke division in our country,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen said at the time.
Last year, five men who allegedly belonged to white supremacist and neo-Nazi online discussion groups were charged in North Carolina with planning attacks on power infrastructure.
They planned the attack to create “general chaos” as part of their “goal of creating a white ethno-state,” the indictment said.
Jon Wellinghoff, the former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said on CNN early this month that the Moore County attack resembled one on an electricity network substation near San Jose, California, in 2013.
In that case, which has never been solved, one or more people fired close to 100 rounds at the substation, damaging 17 high-voltage transformers at a cost of US$15 million.
A ship that appears to be taking on the identity of a scrapped gas carrier exited the Strait of Hormuz on Friday, showing how strategies to get through the waterway are evolving as the Middle East war progresses. The vessel identifying as liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier Jamal left the Strait on Friday morning, ship-tracking data show. However, the same tanker was also recorded as having beached at an Indian demolition yard in October last year, where it is being broken up, according to market participants and port agent’s reports. The ship claiming to be Jamal is likely a zombie vessel that
Cannabis-based medicines have shown little evidence of effectiveness for treating most mental health and substance-use disorders, according to a large review of past studies published in a major medical journal on Monday. Medical use of cannabinoids has been expanding, including in the US, Canada and Australia, where many patients report using cannabis products to manage conditions such as anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and sleep problems. Researchers reviewed data from 54 randomized clinical trials conducted between 1980 and May last year involving 2,477 participants for their analysis published in The Lancet. The studies assessed cannabinoids as a primary treatment for mental disorders or substance-use
NATIONWIDE BLACKOUT: US President Donald Trump cut off Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba, strangling the Caribbean island’s already antiquated grid Cuba’s national electric grid collapsed on Monday, the nation’s grid operator said, leaving about 10 million people without power amid a US-imposed oil blockade that has crippled the already obsolete generation system. Grid operator UNE on social media said that it is investigating the causes of the blackout, the latest in a series of widespread outages that last for hours or days and that this weekend sparked a rare violent protest in the communist-run nation. Officials ruled out a major power plant failure, but had still not pinpointed the root cause of the grid collapse, suggesting a problem with transmission. Officials said that
‘HEALTH ISSUE’: More than 250 women are hospitalized every day due to complications from unsafe abortions, and about three die, a study showed Jane had been bleeding heavily for days before finally seeking help, not from a hospital, but from the man who sold her the pills meant to end her six-week pregnancy. Abortions are strictly outlawed in the mainly Catholic Philippines, forcing women to turn to a patchwork of providers operating in the online shadows. While rare in practice, Philippine law allows for prison terms of up to six years for abortion patients and providers, leaving thousands of Filipinas to search for solutions in online forums where unlicensed sellers promote abortifacients. “It was very painful, as if my abdomen was being twisted,” said Jane, whose
RSS