1 dead, 130 injured as twisters rip through Ohio and Indiana
BROOKVILLE, Ohio — A swarm of tornadoes so tightly packed that one may have crossed the path carved by another tore across Indiana and Ohio overnight, smashing homes, blowing out windows and ending the school year early for some students because of damage to buildings. One person was killed and at least 130 were injured.
The storms were among 55 twisters that forecasters said may have touched down Monday across eight states stretching eastward from Idaho and Colorado. The past couple of weeks have seen unusually high tornado activity in the U.S., with no immediate end to the pattern in sight.
The winds peeled away roofs — leaving homes looking like giant dollhouses — knocked houses off their foundations, toppled trees, brought down power lines and churned up so much debris that it was visible on radar. Highway crews had to use snowplows to clear an Ohio interstate.
Some of the heaviest damage was reported just outside Dayton, Ohio.
“I just got down on all fours and covered my head with my hands,” said Francis Dutmers, who with his wife headed for the basement of their home in Vandalia, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) outside Dayton, when the storm hit with a “very loud roar” Monday night. The winds blew out windows around his house, filled rooms with debris and took down most of his trees.
Disaster aid bill again blocked in House by GOP conservative
WASHINGTON — A second conservative Republican on Tuesday blocked another attempt to pass a long-overdue $19 billion disaster aid bill, delaying again a top priority for some of President Donald Trump’s most loyal allies on Capitol Hill.
Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky said that if Democratic leaders like Speaker Nancy Pelosi thought the measure was so important, they should have kept the House in session in Washington late last week to slate an up-or-down roll call vote.
“If the speaker of this House thought that this was must-pass legislation, the speaker … should have called a vote on this bill before sending every member of Congress on recess for 10 days,” Massie said as he blocked the measure.
“You can’t have bills passed in Congress with nobody voting on them,” Massie said. “That is the definition of the swamp, and that’s what people resent about this place.”
Massie’s move earned swift rebukes from top Democrats. Sanford Bishop of Georgia said that his agricultural district was but one part of the country suffering from hurricane damage and that aid won’t arrive until well after the start of planting season. “Many will not be able to plant this year,” Bishop said. Hurricane Michael struck Georgia in the middle of last fall’s harvest season.
Supreme Court signals more openness to state abortion rules
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court signaled Tuesday it is more open to state restrictions on abortion, upholding an Indiana law supported by abortion opponents that regulates the disposal of fetal remains.
At the same time, the justices declined to take on an issue closer to the core of abortion rights, rejecting the state’s appeal of a lower court ruling that blocked a ban on abortion based on gender, race or disability.
Both provisions were contained in a law signed by Vice President Mike Pence in 2016 when he was Indiana’s governor.
The court’s action keeps it out of an election-year review of the Indiana law amid a flurry of new state laws that go the very heart of abortion rights. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey this month signed a law that would ban virtually all abortions, even in cases of incest and rape, and subject doctors who perform them to criminal prosecution. That law has yet to take effect and is being challenged in court.
Other states have passed laws that would outlaw abortion once a fetal heartbeat has been detected, typically around six weeks of gestation.
Planned Parenthood: Missouri’s last abortion clinic may shut
ST. LOUIS — Missouri’s only abortion clinic could be closed by the end of the week because the state is threatening to not renew its license, Planned Parenthood officials said Tuesday.
Planned Parenthood officials said in a teleconference that the current license for the St. Louis facility expires Friday. If not renewed, the organization said Missouri would become the first state without a functioning abortion clinic since the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision.
“This is not a drill,” said Dr. Leana Wen, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “This is not a warning. This is real and it’s a public health crisis.”
Planned Parenthood said the state told officials it was investigating “a large number of possible deficiencies.” The state wanted to interview seven physicians, but the organization said only the two staff physicians agreed to be interviewed. Those interviews will take place later Tuesday.
Phone and email messages left for the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services and Gov. Mike Parson’s office haven’t been returned.
Jury deciding sentence of Tennessee church shooter
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A Tennessee man convicted of murder in a 2017 Nashville church shooting will spend at least 51 years in prison, but a jury was deciding on Tuesday whether he should have the possibility of parole.
During the sentencing phase of Emanuel Kidega Samson’s trial, a psychiatrist testified he suffered from severe mental illness. That evidence had been suppressed during the guilt phase of the trial because it did not meet the criteria for an insanity defense
Forensic psychiatrist Stephen Montgomery found Samson’s illness did not make him unable to premediate his actions or stop him from appreciating their wrongfulness.
According to earlier testimony, on Sept. 24, 2017, Samson left his motor running as he stepped into the parking lot of the Burnette Chapel Church of Christ wearing a motorcycle-style clown mask and a tactical vest.
He shot and killed Melanie Crow as she walked to her car for a cough drop, scattering her Bible and her notes from church. Samson then followed up with a blaze of bullets inside the church that he once attended, injuring another seven people.
Georgia stops voting by felons using broadest reading of law
SAVANNAH, Ga. — Leon Brown is trusted enough to drive a tractor-trailer inside one of the nation’s busiest seaports more than six years after being released from prison. But he’s not allowed to vote in Georgia because of a law rooted in the years after the Civil War, when whites sought to keep blacks from the ballot box.
With a criminal history dating back decades, 53-year-old Brown has more than three years left on probation after serving behind bars for theft and credit-card fraud. Enough time has passed that he qualifies for a federal government credential to deliver cargo to and from the Port of Savannah, but Brown can’t take part in elections.
“I would like to vote,” Brown said. “I go off and do the time, come back out and they hold me hostage again because I’m on probation.”
Brown and tens of thousands of other Georgia residents are cut off from voting due to a vaguely worded law that state election officials interpret in the strictest possible manner.
Georgia strips voting rights from people convicted of all felonies, from murder to drug possession, even though a straightforward reading of the law suggests not all felons deserve such punishment.
Pope says Argentine bishop now facing Vatican abuse trial
VATICAN CITY — An Argentine bishop close to Pope Francis is now on trial at the Vatican, accused of sexually abusing seminarians.
Francis revealed the development in an interview with Mexico’s Televisa Tuesday. He said he received the results of a preliminary investigation into Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta two weeks ago and ordered the case be handed over for trial by a Vatican tribunal.
Zanchetta resigned suddenly as bishop of Oran, Argentina in 2017 and within a few months, Francis named him to a senior Vatican administration position.
Through documents and interviews, The Associated Press and Argentina’s Tribune of Salta have reported that the Vatican was aware of inappropriate sexual behavior by Zanchetta two years before he resigned.
The Vatican had insisted Zanchetta was only facing governance problems at the time, and that the first accusation of abuse only came in late 2018.
A wake for a Venezuelan boy, and a nation’s anguish
CARACAS, Venezuela — The family of an 11-year-old Venezuelan boy who died of cancer while waiting for a bone marrow transplant held an open-casket wake on Tuesday, giving visitors a chance to see him for the last time as they wondered whether the death could have been avoided.
Erick Altuve lay in an eggshell white coffin with gold-colored trimming. Toys lay on the glass top, framing his face: a couple of stuffed penguins, a tiny flatbed truck, drawing pencils. There were two plastic bottles of the vanilla and chocolate milkshakes he used to drink to try to build strength.
Behind him were a kite with his name on it and a wooden crucifix.
“Sharing with him was the best,” said the boy’s tearful father, Gilberto Altuve. “It’s hard to know he’s not here anymore.”
The intimate occasion in the Caracas slum of Petare was also part of a nation’s anguish over the humanitarian disaster that has gutted the ability of Venezuela’s health system to adequately treat the sick. Erick Altuve was among several cancer-stricken children whose deaths have ignited a bitter dispute between the government and opponents over who is to blame.
EU divided over top jobs after polls redraw political map
BRUSSELS — European Union leaders stood divided Tuesday over who to name to the bloc’s top jobs, after elections shredded comfortable old political alliances and raised troubling questions about the future of the European project.
At a summit in Brussels, major powers France, Germany and Spain all differed over who is best suited to lead the EU’s powerful executive arm, the European Commission, for the next five years. Former Luxembourg Premier Jean-Claude heads the commission, which proposes EU laws and ensures they are respected, until Oct. 31.
After voters turned out for last week’s European Parliament elections in numbers not seen in 20 years, the leaders want to show they can respond quickly to people’s concerns. The aim is to name all four top jobs — the commission chief, a replacement for Donald Tusk as European Council president, a new foreign policy chief and head of the European Central Bank — at a summit June 21-22.
Avoiding any mention of the differences or candidate names, Tusk said the leaders hope “we can provide clarity on all these posts already in June,” but he said that “this depends not only my good will but also on the good will of everyone involved.”
French President Emmanuel Macron, whose party is joining forces with a new pro-business liberal group in the EU parliament for the first time, insisted the choices should represent the new political project that European voters are demanding.
Police say DNA links uncle to disappearance of Utah child
LOGAN, Utah — DNA has provided further evidence that the 21-year-old uncle of a missing 5-year-old girl in Utah is behind her disappearance, police said Tuesday.
Evidence also indicates the girl, Elizabeth “Lizzy” Shelley, is hurt, authorities said, though they did not elaborate. She was reported missing Saturday morning by her family after they woke up.
“We would never dash the hope that we would find her alive,” Logan Police Chief Gary Jensen said at a news conference. “But it’s certainly a concern for us at this point; Lizzy’s safety.”
Jensen said police have “strong evidence,” including the DNA, linking Alex Whipple to the disappearance of Shelley.
He was denied bail Tuesday during a court hearing in Logan in which he appeared via video in a dark blue jail uniform. He slumped back slightly in his chair, eyes cast downward.
