10 hurt after item on crane falls in NYC

10 hurt after item on crane falls in NYC

NEW YORK

A massive air-conditioning unit being lifted by a crane to the top of a Manhattan office building broke free Sunday, fell 28 stories and landed in the middle of Madison Avenue, injuring 10 people, officials said.

Two were construction workers, while the others were pedestrians and occupants of passing cars, Mayor Bill de Blasio said. All were struck by debris that caused minor injuries; they were treated at hospitals.

Authorities said a full investigation is underway. Streets were closed in the surrounding area, but officials hoped to have them open again by this morning’s rush hour.

Hurricane Andres grows to Category 4

MIAMI

Andres has strengthened to a Category 4 hurricane far out to sea in the eastern Pacific, and is generating swells that are likely to cause dangerous surf and rip currents on parts of the west coast of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula.

The first named storm of the season had maximum sustained winds of 140 mph Sunday night. The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami is forecasting that the storm will slowly weaken over the next 48 hours. Other than strong surf, the storm posed no threats to land.

Oldest US synagogue is subject of struggle

NEWPORT, R.I.

A bitter struggle for control over the nation’s oldest synagogue goes to trial this week, with lawyers saying they may use more than 1,000 exhibits dating as far back as 1733.

The congregation that worships at the 250-year-old Touro Synagogue in Newport says its very existence is at stake. The congregation that owns it accuses the Newport congregation of lawlessness for agreeing to sell a pair of ceremonial bells valued at more than $7 million.

The lawsuit and countersuit, brought by the nation’s first Jewish congregation, are being heard in a bench trial beginning today in U.S. District Court in Providence and rely on centuries of history.

Bomb injures 4

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria

A bomb wounded four people Sunday in a market in Maiduguri, a day after 30 people were killed in the northeastern Nigerian city by a suicide bomber and attackers firing rocket- propelled grenades.

The Boko Haram militant group is suspected in the attacks which followed Friday’s inauguration of President Muhammadu Buhari, who said he is moving the headquarters for the Nigerian military’s fight against the extremists to Maiduguri from the capital of Abuja.

Sunday’s blast came from explosives concealed in bags of charcoal at the Gamboru market, said trader Jafar Aminu.

Smithsonian to show slave-ship artifacts

WASHINGTON

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture will display objects from a slave ship that sank off the coast of Cape Town in 1794.

The museum was to make the announcement today.

The artifacts were retrieved this year from the wreck site of a Portuguese slave ship that sank on its way to Brazil while carrying more than 400 enslaved Africans from Mozambique. Objects recovered from the ship, called the Sco Josi-Paquete de Africa, include iron ballasts used to weigh the ship down and copper fastenings that held the structure of the ship together.

Lonnie G. Bunch III, the director of the African American history museum, said in a statement that the ship “represents one of the earliest attempts to bring East Africans into the trans-Atlantic slave trade.”

Associated Press