Tourists stranded by pilot strike

Tourists stranded by pilot strike

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.

A strike by Spirit Airlines pilots has shut down the discount carrier, stranding thousands of travelers.

The walkout, which began Saturday, forced the airline to cancel its flights Saturday and today. Its CEO said no talks were scheduled with picketing pilots.

Spirit carries 16,680 passengers per day — about 1 percent of the U.S. total — mostly between the eastern U.S. and the Caribbean and Latin America. But its shutdown is causing major problems for its flyers.

Spirit tickets are good only on a handful of other carriers.

Young sailor weary after 3 days adrift

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif.

A California teenager who spent three days adrift on the turbulent Indian Ocean described her ordeal as “crazy” as she started a long journey home aboard a French fishing boat that rescued her Saturday from her crippled sailboat.

Abby Sunderland was bumped and bruised but otherwise healthy, her parents said after hearing from the 16-year-old in a 20- minute phone call to their home northwest of Los Angeles.

US, Cuba to have immigration talks

HAVANA

The United States and Cuba have agreed to have immigration talks in Washington within days, a U.S. official said Saturday, the first since a similar meeting in Havana in February.

The talks scheduled for Friday are intended to monitor adherence to a 16-year-old agreement under which the United States issues 20,000 visas to Cubans a year, though in the past the sides have used the meeting to delve into more contentious issues.

In the last round of talks, U.S. diplomats pressed Cuba to release Alan Gross, a jailed American contractor whom Cuba has accused of spying.

UN reviews Taliban, al-Qaida blacklist

KABUL, Afghanistan

Fueling momentum for a political solution to the nearly 9-year-old Afghan war, a U.N. committee is reviewing whether certain people could be removed from a blacklist that freezes assets and limits travel of key Taliban and al-Qaida figures, the top U.N. representative said Saturday.

Delegates to a national conference, or peace jirga, this month in Kabul called on the government and its international partners to remove some of the 137 people from the list — a long-standing demand of the Taliban.

4 bodies found in plane wreckage

PHOENIX

Authorities searching through the wreckage of a small plane that nosedived into an Arizona high school and exploded say they have found four bodies — two more than expected.

Apache County sheriff’s Sgt. Richard Guinn says officials were working Saturday to identify the bodies.

Officials previously had thought only two people were aboard the single-engine Piper that crashed Friday afternoon into a building at the school Friday afternoon in the small eastern Arizona town of Eagar.

Guinn says no one was in the two-story building when the plane hit.

Oil spill coats geese, ducks in Utah creek

SALT LAKE CITY

A leaked pipeline sent oil spilling into a Salt Lake City creek, coating geese and ducks and closing a park, officials said Saturday as they started a cleanup effort expected to last weeks.

At least 400 to 500 barrels of oil spewed into Red Butte Creek before crews capped the leak site. Nearly 50 gallons of crude oil per minute initially had spilled into the creek, according to Scott Freitag, a Salt Lake City Fire Department spokesman.

Associated Press