Famed climber killed near Mount Everest in Nepal

Famed climber killed near Mount Everest in Nepal

KATHMANDU, Nepal

A Swiss climber acclaimed for his rapid ascents – including scaling dozens of peaks in the Alps in a little more than two months – was killed Sunday in a mountaineering accident near Mount Everest in Nepal, expedition organizers said.

Ueli Steck was killed at Camp 1 of Mount Nuptse, Mingma Sherpa of Seven Summit Treks said. Steck’s body has been recovered from the site and has been taken to Lukla, where the only airport in the Mount Everest area is located.

Steck’s family said the exact circumstances of his death were still unclear.

2 dead as chartered bus with Texas athletes crashes

DELL CITY, Texas

Texas Department of Public Safety authorities said two people are dead after a head-on crash involving a pickup truck and a chartered bus carrying 34 coaches and athletes from seven El Paso high schools returning home from a regional track meet in Lubbock.

El Paso Independent School District officials identified one of the victims as a coach, 48-year-old Arcadio Duran Jr., from Irvin High School. Seventeen others aboard the bus were hospitalized with injuries considered not life threatening.

Troopers said the other person killed was the driver of the pickup truck, 51-year-old Gary Lawson, of Hobbs, N.M.

1st Cuban-American in Congress to retire at end of her term

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, the first Cuban-American elected to Congress, is retiring at the end of her term next year, saying it’s time to move on after 38 years in office.

The 64-year-old Republican was elected last November to Florida’s redrawn 27th district, a stretch of southeast Miami-Dade County that is heavily Democratic. Hillary Clinton won it over Donald Trump by 20 percentage points, and Ros-Lehtinen was able to win it by 10 percentage points.

Suspected US airstrike in Yemen kills 4 operatives

SANAA, Yemen

A suspected U.S. airstrike killed four al-Qaida operatives in Yemen’s eastern province of Marib on Sunday, Yemeni tribal and security officials said.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media, said the operatives killed were driving a car when an unmanned aircraft targeted their vehicle. Two of the men killed were identified as belonging to one of the local tribes; the others remain unidentified.

Turkey threatens further strikes on US-allied Kurds

BEIRUT

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday his country may take further action against Kurdish militants in Iraq and Syria, as U.S.-backed forces in Syria closed in on the last neighborhoods of a former stronghold of the Islamic State group.

The U.S. views the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces as the most effective partner to counter the Islamic State group in northern Syria, an assessment bolstered by the SDF’s steady advances against the jihadists. But it has complicated relations with Turkey, which views the group’s Kurdish component as an extension of a terror group operating inside its own borders.

Associated Press