In Brief: Nation & World: 12-5-16

Death toll hits 30 in inferno at art studio ‘horror house’

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — The death toll from a fire that tore through a warehouse hosting a late-night dance party jumped to 30 on Sunday as firefighters painstakingly combed through rubble for others believed to still be missing.

Only a fraction of the charred remains of the partly collapsed structure had been searched, and crews clearing debris were expected to find more bodies as they advanced, Alameda County Sheriff’s Sgt. Ray Kelly said.

Anxious family members who feared the worst gathered at the sheriff’s office to await word on their loved ones. They were told they may have to provide DNA samples to help identify remains.

The building known as the “Ghost Ship” had been carved into artist studios and was an illegal home for a rotating cast of a dozen or more people, according to former denizens who said it was a cluttered death trap with few exits, piles of wood and a mess of snaking electric cords.

“If you were going there for a party, you wouldn’t be aware of the maze that you have to go through to get out,” said Danielle Boudreaux, a former friend of the couple who ran the warehouse.

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Former tenant: Oakland warehouse was unsafe makeshift space

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Shelley Mack, a one-time tenant of the converted warehouse dubbed the “Ghost Ship,” found the rental in an ad on Facebook. She paid about $700 a month in rent, along with a security deposit of the same amount and a one-time contribution of about $700 to a fund meant to go toward improvements. She said none were ever made.

It was often freezing cold in the building. Water and power were sometimes stolen from neighbors, who would get angry and shut them off. Once, a generator blew up, and residents quickly doused the flames, she said.

Mack said she didn’t know the ramshackle dwelling was illegal until after she moved in. She was instructed to tell visitors it was a 24-hour workspace for artists. When inspectors or other outsiders came to visit, she and other residents scurried to hide clothes, bedding and other evidence anyone was living there.

“It’s a good example of people taking advantage of people because they had no other options,” said Mack, a 58-year-old tech sales worker and jewelry maker who lived there for four or five months about two years ago. “People make businesses off scamming people online when they’re looking for a place.”

Oakland officials say at least 30 people perished when a fire ripped through the cluttered space during a dance party Friday night, and the death toll is expected to rise. It was crammed with rugs, old sofas and a garage-sale-like collection of pianos, paintings, turntables, statues and other items that quickly fed the flames.

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Trump expands list of candidates to head State Dep’t

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump is expanding his pool of candidates for secretary of state, leaving unclear whether former CIA Director David Petraeus’ guilty plea for leaking classified information disqualifies him to serve as the nation’s top diplomat.

“There’s not a finite list of candidates” for secretary of state, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway told reporters on Sunday. “More than four. Who knows how many finalists there will be?”

The remark comes a week after Trump’s aides confirmed that the president-elect had settled on four finalists for the post. Two people close to the transition told The Associated Press that Trump is moving away from two of the four: former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee.

That would leave Petraeus as a contender, along with Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Both people close to the transition said Trump’s prolonged decision-making process has left the door open to other options. Among other possibilities, one official says is Jon Huntsman, a former Republican Utah governor who also served as the ambassador to China and speaks Mandarin.

The people close to the transition spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the private process publicly.

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Fidel Castro laid to rest in private ceremony in east Cuba

SANTIAGO, Cuba (AP) — A wooden box containing Fidel Castro’s ashes was placed by his brother and successor on Sunday into the side of a granite boulder that has become Cuba’s only official monument to the charismatic bearded rebel who seized control of a U.S.-allied Caribbean island and transformed it into a western outpost of Soviet-style communism that he ruled with absolute power for nearly half a century.

The private, early-morning ceremony was attended by members of Fidel Castro’s family, the ruling Politburo of the single-party system he founded, and Latin American leaders who installed closely allied leftist governments in Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Brazil.

After nine days of fervent national mourning and wall-to-wall homages to Castro on state-run media, the government barred independent coverage of the funeral, releasing a handful of photos and brief descriptions of the ceremony later in the day.

The ceremony began at 6:39 a.m. when the military caravan bearing Castro’s remains in a flag-draped cedar coffin left the Plaza of the Revolution in the eastern city of Santiago. Thousands of people lined the two-mile route to Santa Ifigenia cemetery, waving Cuban flags and shouting “Long live Fidel!”

The ashes were delivered to Castro’s younger brother and successor, President Raul Castro, who wore his olive general’s uniform as he placed the remains into a niche in the enormous grey boulder that will serve as his tomb. The niche was sealed with a green marble plaque emblazed with the name “Fidel” in gold letters.

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Mainstream relief as leftist candidate wins in Austria

VIENNA (AP) — Left-leaning Alexander Van der Bellen triumphed over his right-wing rival Sunday in the vote for Austria’s presidency, a victory welcomed by moderate politicians across Europe as a blow against the populist forces looking to weaken the European Union.

While the Austrian presidency is a mostly symbolic post, it had attracted attention from across Europe as the next possible victory for populists after political outsider Donald Trump’s presidential win in the United States and the Brexit vote in Britain.

“What happens here today has relevance for all of Europe,” Van der Bellen said he cast his ballot, later noting that his win showed most voters backed his message of “freedom, equality, solidarity.”

With all votes except for absentee ballots counted, Van der Bellen had 51.68 percent of the vote to 48.32 percent for Norbert Hofer. But pollsters predicted a final result of 53.3 percent to 46.7 percent in favor of Van der Bellen once the approximately 500,000 absentee ballots were tallied. The final result of Sunday’s vote was expected by Tuesday at the latest.

Van der Bellen said the win sends a “message to the capitals of the European Union that one can win elections with high European positions.” He said he would work to unite a country deeply split between the moderate liberals who voted for him and supporters of Hofer’s anti-immigrant Freedom Party.

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Italians vote on reforms; PM Renzi vows to quit if he loses

ROME (AP) — Italians voted Sunday in a referendum on constitutional reforms that Premier Matteo Renzi has staked his political future on, hoping to survive the rising populist forces that have gained traction across Europe.

Renzi has said he will resign if the reforms, which he contends will modernize Italy and reduce its legendary bureaucracy, are rejected. Opposition politicians, ranging from the far-right to the far-left have vowed to press for a new government if voters reject Parliamentary legislation overhauling much of the post-war Constitution.

Even some figures in Renzi’s Democratic Party, including ex-Communists, said they’d vote against the reforms.

The premier made no comment as he voted Sunday in Pontassieve, a Tuscan town east of Florence, along with his wife, Agnese Landini. He was to return to Rome to watch the outcome of the vote.

Some of Renzi’s political opponents were hoping to tap into the populist sentiment that has been gaining ground with the U.K. vote in June to leave the European Union and the U.S. presidential victory last month by billionaire political outsider Donald Trump.

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No more room for the dead as Syria’s Aleppo is crushed

BEIRUT (AP) — The old Aleppo cemetery filled up a year ago. The new one filled up last week. Now the dead are left in the besieged enclave’s streets, buried in backyards and overwhelming the morgues.

Medical officials secured yet another plot for the dead. But they say they have no way to dig graves with government troops now crashing into opposition-held eastern Aleppo, shelling civilians as they flee and forcing thousands to squeeze into a chaotic, devastated and shrinking pocket of neighborhoods.

“We have no more room,” said Mohammed Abu Jaafar, the head of the local forensic authority. His department is so overwhelmed, the staff registering the dead pleaded with him not to take any more bodies.

“Even if I were to consider mass burials, I don’t have the machines to do the digging,” he said in a telephone interview.

Dignity in death has been lost as the rebel-held enclave that has held out for four years collapses.

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Experts warn of mental health woes as wildfires ravage South

ATLANTA (AP) — When U.S. Forest Ranger Jody Bandy confronted the man in the Pisgah National Forest, he said he’d been at the nearby wildfire and “couldn’t take it anymore.”

Then he ran from the officer, tumbling head-over-head down the mountainside, into the river below and slamming into boulders in the water, Bandy said in a court affidavit.

After an ambulance took the bleeding man to a hospital, Bandy peered through the front windshield of his pickup and saw what appeared to be a suicide note on the dash, the affidavit says.

The Nov. 19 encounter in western North Carolina underscores the toll these wildfires can take on people who live through them.

Many survivors need help to cope, and signs of problems such as nightmares, depression and anxiety might not show up for months, said Valerie Cole of the American Red Cross. In some ways, escaping a fire-filled forest as thousands did recently in and around Gatlinburg, Tennessee, can be more traumatic than hurricanes, floods or earthquakes, experts say. One reason: Flames spread so rapidly that people had no time to prepare.