Instant Alert: People stock up, board up as hurricane hurtles toward Hawaii

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People stock up, board up as hurricane hurtles toward Hawaii

by Cathy Bussewitz on Aug 30, 2016, 7:59 PM

HONOLULU (AP) — Residents of Hawaii's Big Island were evacuating animals and stockpiling water Tuesday, bracing for what could be the first hurricane to make landfall in the state in decades.

The National Weather Service issued a hurricane warning as the major Category 3 storm dubbed Madeline hurtled west toward the island, urging residents to rush through preparations to protect themselves and their property and expect hurricane conditions within the next 36 hours.

"Hopefully our roofs stay on, and our houses don't float way or get blown away," said Big Island resident Mitzi Bettencourt, who boarded up walls of glass windows at her brother's oceanfront home. "It's like, 'Oh my God, are we going to get flattened or what?'"

Bettencourt, who lives in a subdivision called Kapoho Vacationland, manages several vacation rental properties and has her own home to worry about, which sits a few blocks from the ocean. She and her neighbors were stocking their pantries, stowing away lawn furniture and preparing for power outages.

"If they're not prepared now, they should get prepared fast," said Chevy Chevalier, a meteorologist with the weather service.

Hurricane Madeline is expected to weaken but likely will remain a hurricane as it passes the state, Chevalier said.

Forecasters are expecting Madeline to pass just south of the Big Island around 2 a.m. Thursday. But if the storm track shifts slightly to the north, the eye of the storm could pass over land.

The last hurricane to make landfall in Hawaii was Hurricane Iniki in 1992, which hit Kauai, Chevalier said.

A second Pacific hurricane, called Lester, is still far from Hawaii, and it is expected to weaken to a tropical storm as it passes the state, Chevalier said.

President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit Oahu this week. The White House is tracking the weather developments closely, but it doesn't anticipate changing Obama's schedule.

The islands of Maui, Molokai and Lanai were under a tropical storm watch, but there were no alerts for Oahu or Kauai.

On the Big Island, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park was closing some areas Tuesday, and park officials planned for the coastal lava viewing area to close by Wednesday morning. Some camping areas were closing, but guests staying at Kilauea Military Camp and Volcano House were allowed to shelter in place.

Hawaii County, which covers the Big Island, urged residents to restock their emergency kits with a flashlight, fresh batteries, cash and first-aid supplies. It recommended that residents create evacuation plans and secure outdoor furniture.

Hawaiian Airlines said customers holding tickets to or from Hawaii's Big Island from Aug. 31 to Sept. 1 would be allowed a one-time reservation change without a fee.

___

Associated Press writer Josh Lederman in Washington contributed to this report.


 
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Instant Alert: 911 calls: 'Gunshots going like crazy' in Pulse nightclub

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911 calls: 'Gunshots going like crazy' in Pulse nightclub

by Mike Schneider on Aug 30, 2016, 8:21 PM

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ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Friends and relatives of patrons trapped in a gay Florida nightclub where a mass shooting left 49 people dead asked police dispatchers why it was taking so long for their loved ones to be rescued.

Audio recordings of 911 calls released Tuesday by the Orange County Sheriff's Office show mounting frustration by friends and family members who were texting, calling and video-chatting with trapped patrons of the Pulse nightclub where Omar Mateen opened fire in June.

"My son was shot in the club. ... He is still in the bathroom. He is bleeding, and he got shot and nobody is going in for him," said one caller to 911, almost three hours after the shooting began. "Nobody is doing anything for him."

The dispatcher told him that a SWAT team was about to go inside the nightclub.

More than an hour and a half after the shooting started, another man called dispatchers a second time, clearly frustrated that his ex-girlfriend hadn't been rescued from a bathroom where she was trapped with almost 20 others, including two dead people.

"People are shot and dead. ... Are you guys sending anybody there?" the man said. "They are all scared to death, and they all think they are going to die."

The caller then said that his ex-girlfriend was texting that the gunman was there. The dispatcher told him to text back, asking if his ex-girlfriend meant in the bathroom or the club in general.

"She's not answering," he said. He waited for more than five minutes on the line with the dispatcher, getting no response from his ex-girlfriend, before the dispatcher told him she needed to free up the line.

The sheriff's office took overflow 911 calls when Orlando Police Department dispatchers were inundated. The recordings show sheriff's dispatchers mostly got busy signals when they tried to transfer calls back to police.

The Orlando Police Department has yet to release its 911 calls. About two dozen news media companies including The Associated Press are suing for access to these public records as well as the communications between Mateen and the Orlando Police Department, during which authorities say Mateen pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

The media groups argue that the recordings will help the public evaluate the police response, but the city of Orlando claims the recordings are exempt under Florida public records law, and that the FBI insists releasing them may disrupt the ongoing investigation.

Mateen was killed by a police SWAT team after firing at the officers, ending a standoff that had lasted for more three hours. In addition to the fatalities, 53 club goers were hospitalized.

In explaining the timeline of the police response, Orlando Police Chief John Mina has said the shooting became a hostage situation, requiring officers to "re-evaluate, reassess what is happening and make sure all the pieces are in place."

The sheriff's dispatchers sound calm and sympathetic on the 911 calls. They took down names and identifying traits or clothes, and told callers to tell their relatives or friends to stay in place until officers and deputies at the scene could rescue them. The dispatchers also told callers that officers and deputies were pulling patrons out of the club.

"What I need him to do is just stay where he is and don't have him do anything or go anywhere until deputies or officers clear the area," a dispatcher told a mother who was texting her son in the bathroom, about 20 minutes after the shooting started.

Another dispatcher urged a caller not to call or return a text from his friend, who had been shot three times and was hiding in a bathroom.

"Because if he has the phone ringing, making noise or something, we don't know anything about anything, so at this point, we don't want any noise around," the dispatcher said.

___

This story has been corrected to reflect that about two dozen media companies, not a dozen, are suing for access to the Orlando Police Department's 911 calls. It has also been corrected to show that a 911 caller's son was shot in the club's bathroom, not a friend.

___

Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter: http://twitter.com/mikeschneiderap . His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/Mike-Schneider


 
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Instant Alert: Lawyer investigating lead at Indiana housing complex

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Lawyer investigating lead at Indiana housing complex

by on Aug 30, 2016, 7:55 PM

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EAST CHICAGO, Ind. (AP) — An attorney for families in an Indiana public housing complex slated to be demolished because of lead contamination says he's investigating whether public officials knew about the problem and allowed children to be "poisoned."

Officials in East Chicago notified some 1,000 residents about the soil contamination this summer.

The complex is on the former site of a plant that melted lead and copper. It was added to a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency list of priority cleanup sites in 2009.

City attorney Carla Morgan says East Chicago officials learned the extent of the problem at specific addresses in the complex in May.

Attorney Barry Rooth says blood tests have shown some of the 85 children he represents have unsafe lead levels. State officials previously said preliminary blood tests indicated 29 people with high lead levels.


 
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Instant Alert: Wasserman Schultz wins Florida Democratic nod in House race: Miami Herald

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Wasserman Schultz wins Florida Democratic nod in House race: Miami Herald

by on Aug 30, 2016, 9:32 PM

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, who last month lost her job as head of the Democratic National Committee, won a bid on Tuesday to be her party's nominee for a seventh term in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Miami Herald reported.

The newspaper projected that Wasserman Schultz defeated Tim Canova, a law professor who is an outspoken Wall Street critic. He is aligned with U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, who lost the Democratic presidential nomination to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Peter Cooney)


 
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Instant Alert: US evaluating Taliban video of captive couple in Afghanistan

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US evaluating Taliban video of captive couple in Afghanistan

by on Aug 30, 2016, 8:59 PM

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department said Tuesday it is evaluating a video released by the Afghan Taliban showing a Canadian man and his American wife warning that their Afghan captors will kill them and their children unless the Kabul government ends its executions of Taliban prisoners.

The video, which has not been independently verified by The AP, shows Canadian Joshua Boyle and American Caitlan Coleman, who were kidnapped in Afghanistan in 2012, calling on Canada and the United States to pressure the Afghan government into changing its policy on executing captured Taliban prisoners. Coleman has told her family that she gave birth to two children in captivity.

"I would tell you that the video is still being examined for its validity," State Department spokesman John Kirby said in response to a question at his daily briefing. "We remain concerned, obviously, about the welfare of Caitlan and her family, and we continue to urge for their immediate release on humanitarian grounds."

The video, which was uploaded Tuesday on YouTube, came to public attention through the Site Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist activity online.

In a statement Tuesday, Global Affairs Canada spokesman Michael O'Shaughnessy said the government was aware of the latest video. He said the government will not comment further or release any information that might risk endangering the safety of Canadian citizens abroad.

In the video, the scraggily bearded Boyle said the couple's captors "are terrified of the thought of their own mortality approaching, and are saying that they will take reprisals on our family. They will execute us, women and children included, if the policies of the Afghan government are not overturned, either by the Afghan government or by Canada, somehow, or the United States."

Coleman, wearing a black headscarf, added: "I know this must be very terrifying and horrifying for my family to hear that these men are willing to go to these lengths, but they are."

A phone message left at a number listed for Coleman's family in Stewartstown, Pennsylvania, was not immediately returned.

The couple set off in the summer of 2012 for a journey that took them to Russia, the central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and then to Afghanistan. Her parents, Jim and Lyn Coleman, last heard from their son-in-law on Oct. 8, 2012, from an internet cafe in what Josh described as an "unsafe" part of Afghanistan.

In 2013, the couple appeared in two videos asking the U.S. government to free them from the Taliban. The Colemans received a letter last November in which their daughter said she had given birth to a second child in captivity.

"I pray to hear from you again, to hear how everybody is doing," the letter said.

In July, Jim Coleman, speaking to the online news service Circa News, issued a plea to top Taliban commanders to be "kind and merciful" and let the couple go.

"As a man, father and now grandfather, I am asking you to show mercy and release my daughter, her husband, and our beautiful grandchildren," Jim Coleman said. "Please grant them an opportunity to continue their lives with us, and bring peace to their families."

___

Associated Press writer Charles J. Gans in New York contributed to this report.


 
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Instant Alert: 10 Things to Know for Today

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10 Things to Know for Today

by The Associated Press on Aug 30, 2016, 9:04 PM

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Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about Wednesday:

1. ISLAMIC STATE GROUP CHIEFTAN REPORTEDLY KILLED IN SYRIA

If confirmed, the death of chief strategist Abu Muhammed al-Adnani would be a major blow to the extremist group, which has been on the retreat in Syria and Iraq.

2. EU ORDERS APPLE TO PAY NEARLY $15B IN BACK TAXES TO IRELAND

The move dramatically escalates the fight over whether America's biggest corporations are paying their fair share around the world.

3. WHY VICTORY FOR HILLARY WOULD CARRY DOWNSIDE FOR BILL

If his wife wins the White House, Bill Clinton says he will have no choice but to step aside from the foundation that has shaped so much of his post-presidential legacy.

4. MARCO RUBIO WINS GOP PRIMARY

The senator earns the support of Florida's Republican voters to seek a second term. He got into the race at the last minute after his failed presidential bid.

5. WHERE APPROACHING STORMS ARE CAUSING ANXIETY

A tropical weather system threatens to bring strong winds and heavy rains to North Carolina's Outer Banks, while a powerful hurricane could pass "dangerously close" to Hawaii.

6. CLASHES SUBSIDE BETWEEN US-BACKED FORCES IN SYRIA

Western officials had expressed alarm that the fighting between Turkey's military and Kurdish-backed fighters has diverted their attention from the battle against the Islamic State group.

7. WHICH ONE-TIME BUSINESS ALLIES APPEAR HEADED DOWN DIFFERENT ROADS

Google is set to expand a San Francisco carpooling program that could morph into a showdown with popular ride-hailing service Uber.

8. CHRIS BROWN ARRESTED ON SUSPICION OF ASSAULT WITH DEADLY WEAPON

A woman alleges that the singer pointed a gun at her face in his home.

9. WHO'S DANCING HIS TROUBLES AWAY

Shamed Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte is among celebs named for the new season of ABC's "Dancing with the Stars."

10. VIKINGS QB SUFFERS FREAK INJURY IN PRACTICE

Teddy Bridgewater's torn ACL leaves a team that entered the season with designs on a Super Bowl run shaken to the core.


 
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Instant Alert: People stock up, board up as hurricane hurtles toward Hawaii

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People stock up, board up as hurricane hurtles toward Hawaii

by Cathy Bussewitz on Aug 30, 2016, 7:59 PM

HONOLULU (AP) — Residents of Hawaii's Big Island were evacuating animals and stockpiling water Tuesday, bracing for what could be the first hurricane to make landfall in the state in decades.

The National Weather Service issued a hurricane warning as the major Category 3 storm dubbed Madeline hurtled west toward the island, urging residents to rush through preparations to protect themselves and their property and expect hurricane conditions within the next 36 hours.

"Hopefully our roofs stay on, and our houses don't float way or get blown away," said Big Island resident Mitzi Bettencourt, who boarded up walls of glass windows at her brother's oceanfront home. "It's like, 'Oh my God, are we going to get flattened or what?'"

Bettencourt, who lives in a subdivision called Kapoho Vacationland, manages several vacation rental properties and has her own home to worry about, which sits a few blocks from the ocean. She and her neighbors were stocking their pantries, stowing away lawn furniture and preparing for power outages.

"If they're not prepared now, they should get prepared fast," said Chevy Chevalier, a meteorologist with the weather service.

Hurricane Madeline is expected to weaken but likely will remain a hurricane as it passes the state, Chevalier said.

Forecasters are expecting Madeline to pass just south of the Big Island around 2 a.m. Thursday. But if the storm track shifts slightly to the north, the eye of the storm could pass over land.

The last hurricane to make landfall in Hawaii was Hurricane Iniki in 1992, which hit Kauai, Chevalier said.

A second Pacific hurricane, called Lester, is still far from Hawaii, and it is expected to weaken to a tropical storm as it passes the state, Chevalier said.

President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit Oahu this week. The White House is tracking the weather developments closely, but it doesn't anticipate changing Obama's schedule.

The islands of Maui, Molokai and Lanai were under a tropical storm watch, but there were no alerts for Oahu or Kauai.

On the Big Island, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park was closing some areas Tuesday, and park officials planned for the coastal lava viewing area to close by Wednesday morning. Some camping areas were closing, but guests staying at Kilauea Military Camp and Volcano House were allowed to shelter in place.

Hawaii County, which covers the Big Island, urged residents to restock their emergency kits with a flashlight, fresh batteries, cash and first-aid supplies. It recommended that residents create evacuation plans and secure outdoor furniture.

Hawaiian Airlines said customers holding tickets to or from Hawaii's Big Island from Aug. 31 to Sept. 1 would be allowed a one-time reservation change without a fee.

___

Associated Press writer Josh Lederman in Washington contributed to this report.


 
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Instant Alert: 911 calls: 'Gunshots going like crazy' in Pulse nightclub

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911 calls: 'Gunshots going like crazy' in Pulse nightclub

by Mike Schneider on Aug 30, 2016, 8:21 PM

Advertisement

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Friends and relatives of patrons trapped in a gay Florida nightclub where a mass shooting left 49 people dead asked police dispatchers why it was taking so long for their loved ones to be rescued.

Audio recordings of 911 calls released Tuesday by the Orange County Sheriff's Office show mounting frustration by friends and family members who were texting, calling and video-chatting with trapped patrons of the Pulse nightclub where Omar Mateen opened fire in June.

"My son was shot in the club. ... He is still in the bathroom. He is bleeding, and he got shot and nobody is going in for him," said one caller to 911, almost three hours after the shooting began. "Nobody is doing anything for him."

The dispatcher told him that a SWAT team was about to go inside the nightclub.

More than an hour and a half after the shooting started, another man called dispatchers a second time, clearly frustrated that his ex-girlfriend hadn't been rescued from a bathroom where she was trapped with almost 20 others, including two dead people.

"People are shot and dead. ... Are you guys sending anybody there?" the man said. "They are all scared to death, and they all think they are going to die."

The caller then said that his ex-girlfriend was texting that the gunman was there. The dispatcher told him to text back, asking if his ex-girlfriend meant in the bathroom or the club in general.

"She's not answering," he said. He waited for more than five minutes on the line with the dispatcher, getting no response from his ex-girlfriend, before the dispatcher told him she needed to free up the line.

The sheriff's office took overflow 911 calls when Orlando Police Department dispatchers were inundated. The recordings show sheriff's dispatchers mostly got busy signals when they tried to transfer calls back to police.

The Orlando Police Department has yet to release its 911 calls. About two dozen news media companies including The Associated Press are suing for access to these public records as well as the communications between Mateen and the Orlando Police Department, during which authorities say Mateen pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

The media groups argue that the recordings will help the public evaluate the police response, but the city of Orlando claims the recordings are exempt under Florida public records law, and that the FBI insists releasing them may disrupt the ongoing investigation.

Mateen was killed by a police SWAT team after firing at the officers, ending a standoff that had lasted for more three hours. In addition to the fatalities, 53 club goers were hospitalized.

In explaining the timeline of the police response, Orlando Police Chief John Mina has said the shooting became a hostage situation, requiring officers to "re-evaluate, reassess what is happening and make sure all the pieces are in place."

The sheriff's dispatchers sound calm and sympathetic on the 911 calls. They took down names and identifying traits or clothes, and told callers to tell their relatives or friends to stay in place until officers and deputies at the scene could rescue them. The dispatchers also told callers that officers and deputies were pulling patrons out of the club.

"What I need him to do is just stay where he is and don't have him do anything or go anywhere until deputies or officers clear the area," a dispatcher told a mother who was texting her son in the bathroom, about 20 minutes after the shooting started.

Another dispatcher urged a caller not to call or return a text from his friend, who had been shot three times and was hiding in a bathroom.

"Because if he has the phone ringing, making noise or something, we don't know anything about anything, so at this point, we don't want any noise around," the dispatcher said.

___

This story has been corrected to reflect that about two dozen media companies, not a dozen, are suing for access to the Orlando Police Department's 911 calls. It has also been corrected to show that a 911 caller's son was shot in the club's bathroom, not a friend.

___

Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter: http://twitter.com/mikeschneiderap . His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/Mike-Schneider


 
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