Massive blasts rock Fla. propane plant
Massive blasts rock Fla. propane plant
TAVARES, Fla.
After hearing two explosions, maintenance worker Gene Williams looked outside to see a 20-by-20-foot fireball rising above an outdoor storage area at the Blue Rhino propane plant.
Moments later, a forklift worker stumbled into the building with flesh hanging off his hands. His legs and face were burned. Exploding 20-pound canisters of propane began raining down around them during the series of explosions late Monday night.
Bright orange flames would grow as high as 200 feet, fueled by the exploding canisters that shot through the air like fireworks. Houses nearby shook, and residents awakened to the sound of “boom after boom after boom.”
No one died, but eight workers were injured.
Ex-Sen. Harry Byrd of Va. dies at 98
RICHMOND, Va.
Harry F. Byrd Jr., a 20th-century champion of racial segregation and fiscal restraint who followed his father into the U.S. Senate but left his father’s Democratic Party, died Tuesday. He was 98.
Byrd, whose genteel demeanor masked thundering political clout, was the archetypal Southern senator during his 17 years in Washington. His 1983 retirement amounted to an epilogue for the “Byrd Machine,” which once dominated Virginia politics from courthouses to the statehouse.
Obama asks two to go to Egypt
WASHINGTON
Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and John McCain have been asked by President Barack Obama to travel to Egypt next week to urge the military to move ahead on new elections, the senators said Tuesday.
Egypt has been roiled by deadly protests since President Mohammed Morsi was toppled in a military coup July 3, developments that have threatened the $1.5 billion in annual U.S. military and economic aid to the Arab world’s most- populous country.
24 die in blasts in Christian area
KANO, Nigeria
Multiple explosions at a bar and entertainment area in a Christian quarter of Nigeria’s northern and mainly Muslim city of Kano killed at least 24 people, a hospital official said Tuesday.
Lt. Ikedichi Iweha, a spokesman for the Military Joint Task Force, said earlier Tuesday that 12 people died at the scene and “a couple” of people were wounded in Monday night’s attack, which he blamed on suspected members of the Islamic extremist Boko Haram network.
But the spokesman for Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital said its mortuary had 24 bodies brought from the scene and another hospital. The teaching hospital also was treating nine people wounded in the blasts, said spokesman Aminu Inuwa.
Prepackaged salad causes outbreak
LINCOLN, Neb.
Health officials in Iowa and Nebraska on Tuesday identified prepackaged salad mix as the source of a severe stomach bug that sickened hundreds of people in both states, but federal authorities said it’s not clear whether cyclospora outbreaks elsewhere in the U.S. are also linked to that produce.
Cyclospora is a rare parasite that causes a lengthy gastrointestinal illness, and outbreaks of the illness have been reported in 15 states. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday that it’s not clear whether all of the illnesses are linked to a single source. The outbreak has sickened at least 145 residents in Iowa and 78 in Nebraska.
Associated Press