Months after Maria, barely half of Puerto Rico has power

Months after Maria, barely half of Puerto Rico has power

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico authorities said Friday that nearly half of power customers in the U.S. territory still lack electricity more than three months after Hurricane Maria.

Officials said 55 percent of the nearly 1.5 million customers have power, marking the first time the government has provided that statistic since the Category 4 storm hit Sept. 20 with winds of up to 154 mph. Officials had previously reported power generation, which stands at nearly 70 percent of pre-storm levels.

“The damage was severe,” power company spokesman Geraldo Quinones told The Associated Press. “A lot of work remains.”

One of Puerto Rico 78 municipalities remains entirely without power, and it’s unclear when some electricity will be restored to the central mountain town of Ciales. Crews this week restored power for the first time to parts of the southeast coastal town of Yabucoa, which received the first hit from Maria.

Gunman opens fire on Cairo church; shootout kills at least 9

CAIRO

A gunman on a motorcycle opened fire Friday outside a church in a Cairo suburb and at a nearby store, sparking a shootout that killed at least nine people, including eight Coptic Christians, authorities said. It was the latest attack targeting Egypt’s embattled Christian minority.

The gunman was also killed, along with at least one police officer, officials said.

The local affiliate of the extremist Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack late Friday, saying it was carried out by a “security detail” and that one of its men was “martyred” in the strike. The claim was carried by the group’s Aamaq news agency.

The attack began when the gunman tried to break through the security cordon outside the Coptic Church of Mar Mina. It was not clear how many assailants were involved. Egypt’s Interior Ministry referred to only one, but the Coptic Orthodox church mentioned “gunmen.”

Five people were wounded, including another police officer, Health Ministry spokesman Khaled Megahed said.

Random drawing scheduled to break tie in disputed House race

RICHMOND, Va.

As Democrats and Republicans continued partisan sniping Friday over a House seat that could determine the balance of power in the Virginia House of Delegates, state elections officials moved to break the deadlock by scheduling a random drawing to pick the winner.

The Virginia Board of Elections said it will pick the winner’s name in the Newport News-based 94th District next Thursday, unless a recount court decides to intervene.

The race between Democrat Shelly Simonds and Republican Del. David Yancey has seesawed since the Nov. 7 election. Initially, it appeared that Yancey had won by 10 votes, but a recount put Simonds ahead by a single vote.

A three-judge recount court later declared the race a tie after agreeing with the Yancey campaign that a disputed ballot was a vote for him. On Wednesday, Simonds asked the court to reconsider, but the panel has not yet responded.

New technology aims to slow damage to O’Keeffe works

SANTA FE, N.M.

Chemical reactions are gradually darkening many of Georgia O’Keeffe’s famously vibrant paintings, and art conservation experts are hoping new digital- imaging tools can help them slow the damage.

Scientific experts in art conservation from Santa Fe, N.M., and the Chicago area announced plans this week to develop advanced 3-D imaging technology to detect destructive buildup in paintings by O’Keeffe and eventually other artists in museum collections around the world.

Dale Kronkright, art conservationist at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, said the project builds on efforts that began in 2011 to monitor the preservation of O’Keeffe paintings using high-grade images from multiple sources of light. That prevented taking physical samples that might damage the works.

To develop imaging technology that can assess the growth of the paint protrusions, the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded $350,000 to the O’Keeffe museum and a collaborative art-conservation center run by Northwestern University and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Police investigate if video game prank led to shooting death

KANSAS CITY, Mo.

Police and the FBI are investigating whether an argument over an online game prompted a prank call that led to a house where an officer shot and killed a Kansas man who apparently wasn’t involved in the dispute.

Police said the death Thursday in Wichita, Kan., may have been the result of a practice called “swatting,” in which a person makes up a false report to get a SWAT team to descend on an address.

Wichita Deputy Police Chief Troy Livingston said an officer responded to a report that a father had been shot in the head and that a shooter was holding his mother, brother and sister hostage, The Wichita Eagle reported.

When police arrived at the house, a 28-year-old man who came to the front door was shot and later, died, Livingston said. The man hasn’t been identified by police, but Lisa Finch told the newspaper that the victim was her son, Andrew Finch. She said he was unarmed and was not a gamer.

Livingston didn’t say what caused the officer to shoot the man.

Lottery glitch makes everyone winner

COLUMBIA, S.C.

A Christmas Day lottery glitch in South Carolina has left officials trying to determine how to deal with hundreds of unexpected winners.

The Holiday Cash Add-A-Play game generates trees on a tic-tac-toe grid paying up to $500 when someone gets three in a line.

Lottery officials say that, for two hours Monday, trees were being printed in all nine grids, giving all players who paid $1 the maximum prize. In all, $19.6 million was won.

But when players went to cash their tickets, the computer wouldn’t pay. Dozens came Wednesday to the lottery’s office in Columbia.

The South Carolina Education Lottery commission voted Friday to set aside the money to possibly pay all winners, but also to investigate Intralot, the company that ran the game, and get legal advice.

Tracing of South Carolina killer’s hands advertised online

SPARTANBURG, S.C.

A listing purportedly selling a tracing of the hands of a South Carolina man convicted of killing seven people has been removed from a website, and he has been placed in solitary confinement.

The Herald-Journal of Spartanburg reports that a signed pencil tracing of the hands of Todd Kohlhepp was listed for sale online at Supernaught.com for $89.

State law prohibits South Carolina inmates from profiting from their crimes.

Prisons spokesman Jeffrey Taillon says Kohlhepp’s mail has been stopped during an investigation, and officials are seeing if he tried to sell anything else.

The tracing was removed Thursday after the Herald-Journal contacted the website. It wasn’t clear if the tracing had been sold.

Kohlhepp is serving life in prison after pleading guilty in May to seven counts of murder.

Chinese woman gets 22 years in prison for killing daughter

CANTON, Ohio

A Chinese woman accused of killing her 5-year-old daughter in a fit of anger has been sentenced to 22 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges in Ohio.

Thirty-year-old Ming Ming Chen was charged with murder, but Stark County prosecutors changed that to involuntary manslaughter under a plea deal. Chen also pleaded guilty Friday to evidence-tampering, corpse abuse, child endangerment and obstructing justice.

Her attorney says Chen lived in a violent household but takes responsibility for the death of Ashley Zhao.

The girl’s body was found hidden in the family’s North Canton restaurant after she was reported missing last January. Authorities alleged that Chen repeatedly hit the girl and that Chen’s husband helped to hide the body.

Chen’s husband earlier pleaded guilty to charges including obstructing justice and corpse abuse.

16 taken to hospitals after trolleys collide

BOSTON

Sixteen people were treated at area hospitals Friday after two trolleys collided on above-ground tracks.

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority said the accident in the city’s Dorchester neighborhood was under investigation but that the cold weather gripping the region had been ruled out as a cause.

An inbound trolley made contact with the back of the other trolley between two stops on the Mattapan line, said Joe Pesaturo, a spokesman for the MBTA.

Boston Emergency Medical Services said on Twitter it evaluated 17 people at the scene and transported 16 to hospitals.

Authorities said none of the injuries was considered serious. All but one of the injured passengers were able to walk on their own from the train to ambulances that took them to hospitals for further evaluation, a fire department spokesman said.

Some lawsuits can proceed over cigarettes touted as natural

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.

A U.S. judge in New Mexico has dismissed more than two dozen complaints against the maker of American Spirit cigarettes but is allowing others to move forward over a line of tobacco touted as natural.

Scores of plaintiffs from at least a dozen states sued Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co. and its parent company, Reynolds American Inc., after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found in 2015 that consumers were misled about risks associated with the products.

In a ruling last week, U.S. District Judge James Browning cited various state laws as he weeded out some complaints that were consolidated in his court, The Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper reported .

Among those were lawsuits filed in California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Washington state.

Some of the claims he rejected alleged that the company labeled cigarettes as “additive free” and “natural” to try to suggest its products were less processed than other cigarettes. The company still faces legal battles over marketing efforts.

Browning approved sending three lawsuits to a federal court in North Carolina, where operations for Reynolds American Inc. are based. He also ruled that the First Amendment does not shield the company from liability.

Associated Press