Coast Guard locates life ring from ship lost off Bahamas

Coast Guard locates life ring from ship lost off Bahamas

NASSAU, Bahamas

The U.S. Coast Guard has located a life ring from a cargo ship that lost power and communications during Hurricane Joaquin and is now the subject of an intense search in the southeastern Bahamas.

Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Ryan Doss said the life ring was 120 miles northeast of Crooked Island. That’s about 70 miles northeast of the last known position of the El Faro before it lost contact with authorities with 33 people on board.

Doss said the crew of a C-130 airplane spotted the life ring Saturday, and a helicopter crew confirmed it was from the El Faro. It has not been retrieved.

The Coast Guard and U.S. Navy have halted the search because of darkness and will resume today.

Number of Chicago heroin overdoses hits 74 in 3 days

CHICAGO

Authorities in Chicago say a recent rise in heroin overdoses is continuing to climb.

Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford says there were 74 nonfatal overdoses between Tuesday night and Friday night.

The Chicago Tribune reported that some patients turned up at Mount Sinai Hospital with needles still stuck in their arms.

City health and fire officials suspect heroin laced with the powerful painkiller fentanyl is to blame for the sudden jump, as it was in 2006.

The Drug Enforcement Administration is helping to try to determine the source of the drugs.

Russia launches new wave of air raids in Syria

DAMASCUS, Syria

Russian warplanes have attacked the Islamic State group and other insurgents in central and northern Syria with a wave of new airstrikes, Syrian and Russian military officials said Saturday as an activist group said Russia’s air raids have killed 39 civilians over the past three days.

The new airstrikes came as residents of Syria’s central regions fear the Russians are paving the way for a ground offensive by the government on several towns in the central province of Hama and the northwestern region of Idlib – where the Syrian army suffered major setbacks over the past months, activists said.

Official: 25 hurt in collapse of concrete awning at school

OLIN, N.C.

A concrete canopy collapsed Saturday on a group of band students who had gathered outside a North Carolina high school shortly before a competition, leaving 25 people injured, authorities said.

Dr. Howard Bell of Iredell Emergency Medical Services confirmed the injury total to reporters after the awning collapse outside the entrance to North Iredell High School in Olin, about 55 miles north of Charlotte. At least one student was taken to a Winston-Salem hospital with potentially life-threatening injuries, authorities said, without elaborating.

1 dead, 3 injured in apparent gas blast

NEW YORK

Officials suspect a recently disconnected stove may have caused an apparent gas explosion Saturday that killed a woman and injured three others in Brooklyn.

City Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said firefighters received a call about 1 p.m. reporting an explosion at a building in the Borough Park neighborhood. When emergency crews arrived, they found the entire front of the three-story building blown into the street, he said at a news conference Saturday evening.

Associated Press