Obama: S. Korean deal is big victory

Obama: S. Korean deal is big victory

WASHINGTON

President Barack Obama says the newly sealed free- trade deal with South Korea is a big victory for American farmers and ranchers, the aerospace and electronics industries, and U.S. automakers.

The agreement, which requires congressional approval, is intended to help open the growing South Korean market to more American goods.

The president says the pact also further cements the strong alliance between Washington and Seoul, particularly at a time of heightened tension on the Korean peninsula.

Ivory Coast dispute leaves 2 presidents

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast

The two candidates in Ivory Coast’s disputed presidential election took dueling oaths of office Saturday after each claimed victory, as the political crisis spiraled out of control and renewed unrest in this country once split in two by civil war. Incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo defied calls from the United States, France and the United Nations to concede defeat, wrapping himself in the Ivorian flag as he was sworn in for another term. Hours later, opposition candidate Alassane Ouattara announced that he, too, had taken his own oath.

Villagers evacuated as volcano erupts

QUITO, Ecuador

The Tungurahua volcano in Ecuador is billowing ash into the sky and sending super-hot pyroclastic flows surging down its slopes, causing authorities to evacuate nearby villages. Hugo Yepez, director of Ecuador’s Geophysical Institute, says no one has been injured nor any village damaged. He says people within 8 miles of the volanco’s center were evacuated Saturday as a precaution.

4 rescued after plane ditches in gulf

NEW ORLEANs

With his engine failing, the pilot of a single-engine plane managed to maneuver the craft and three passengers to a safe splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Lynn Lunsford said the pilot of the Piper Malibu reported engine trouble around 2 p.m. Saturday, and the plane began to descend rapidly from about 26,000 feet. The flight had left Cozumel, Mexico, on its way to New Orleans.

About 25 minutes after reporting the emergency, the plane splashed down near an oil rig about 175 miles southeast of New Orleans. A boat from the rig picked them up, and they were later taken to shore by the U.S. Coast Guard.

Police: Father says 2 kids dead, buried

MOBILE, Ala.

A father told investigators that his two young children missing since the summer are dead and buried, prompting corpse-abuse charges for the man and a search by cadaver dogs for the youngsters’ bodies, police said.

The father, John DeBlase, and the children’s stepmother have also been charged with child abuse.

“We know that both of them are going to be responsible for the deaths of both children,” Mobile police spokesman Christopher Levy said Saturday. “But the exact details of how they died, it’s still too early to tell.”

Levy said about 20 officers and search-and-rescue workers were unable to find the children’s bodies after combing a wooded area north of Vancleave, Miss. — about 55 miles west of Mobile — from morning until dark Saturday.

He said police chose that area to search in part based on information the children’s father gave them about where he recalls burying the bodies of 5-year-old Natalie DeBlase and 3-year-old Chase DeBlase.

Associated Press