Smoking materials likely caused ’14 fire

Smoking materials likely caused ’14 fire

SHANKSVILLE, PA.

Discarded smoking material is strongly suspected as the cause of a 2014 fire that struck the Flight 93 National Memorial, according to a report released Saturday.

The National Park Service report also said landscaping mulch that was too close to the building and flammable decking material hastened the spread of the October 2014 fire, which destroyed three of four buildings at the former memorial headquarters.

Over 100 missing, 18 dead after quake

TAINAN, TAIWAN

Rescuers today found signs of life within the remains of a high-rise residential building that collapsed in a powerful, shallow earthquake in southern Taiwan that killed at least 18 people and injured hundreds.

The emergency center in Tainan, the worst-hit city, estimated that 132 people still were missing more than 24 hours after the magnitude-6.4 quake struck at dawn Saturday. Rescuers already had pulled out at least 247 survivors from the collapsed building.

Search suspended after midair crash

LOS ANGELES

Authorities on Saturday called off the search for survivors of a midair collision that sent at least one plane plunging into the ocean near the Port of Los Angeles and instead turned to hunting bodies and wreckage.

The active search for three missing people was suspended at 9:15 a.m., according to a U.S. Coast Guard statement. Two men, age 61 and 81, were aboard a plane that was seen on radar colliding with another aircraft flown by a 72-year-old woman around 3:30 p.m. Friday, officials said.

5 killed in avalanche

BERLIN

Five people were killed Saturday when a “massive” avalanche in the Austrian Alps struck skiers from the Czech Republic taking part in a freeriding camp, police said.

Two other skiers were hurt and 10 were rescued unharmed, Tirol police spokesman Helmut Schuetz said.

Turkey faces pressure over Syrians at border

BEIRUT

Turkey came under mounting pressure to open its border Saturday as tens of thousands of Syrians fleeing a government onslaught sought entry and the European Union called on Ankara to grant them refuge.

As many as 35,000 Syrians have massed along the closed border, according to Suleyman Tapsiz, governor of the Turkish border province of Kilis. He said Turkey would provide aid to the displaced within Syria, but would only open the gates in the event of an “extraordinary crisis.”

The Norwegian Refugee Council said thousands of Syrians have arrived at seven of the main informal camps close to the Turkish border. The group said the camps were already at capacity before the latest influx.

Officials: Bomber may have blown hole in jet

MOGADISHU, SOMALIA

A suicide bomber is suspected to have set off the explosive that blew a hole in a jetliner, sucked the man out of the plane and forced the aircraft to make an emergency landing on Tuesday in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, Somali officials said Saturday.

“Experts who were investigating the cause of the blast in the plane concluded that a bomb was the cause,” said Ali Jama Jangali, Somalia’s transport minister at a press conference in Mogadishu.

“The bomb aimed to kill all onboard the plane. Al-Shabab [Somalia’s Islamic extremist rebel group] was behind it,” he said of the explosion on a Daallo Airlines Airbus 321. The man killed in the incident is suspected to have been a suicide bomber, The Associated Press was told.

Associated Press