UN health chief: Zika virus is 'spreading explosively'

UN health chief: Zika virus is 'spreading explosively'

A doctor draw blood from Luana, who was born with microcephaly, at the Oswaldo Cruz Hospital in Recife, Brazil, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016. Brazilian officials still say they believe there's a sharp increase in cases of microcephaly and strongly suspect the Zika virus, which first appeared in the country last year, is to blame. The concern is strong enough that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this month warned pregnant women to reconsider visits to areas where Zika is present.

GENEVA (AP) -- The Zika virus is "spreading explosively" in the Americas, which could see up to 4 million cases over the next year, international health officials said Thursday, announcing a special meeting next week to decide if they should declare an international health emergency.

The warning from the World Health Organization came amid a call to arms by officials on both sides of the Atlantic over the mosquito-borne virus, which has been linked to a spike in a rare birth defect in Brazil.

Brazil's president - noting there is no medical defense against the infection - called for a crusade against the mosquitoes spreading it.

"As long as we don't have a vaccine against Zika virus, the war must be focused on exterminating the mosquito's breeding areas," said President Dilma Rousseff.

The U.N. health agency called the special session in part to convey its concern about an illness that has sown fear among many would-be mothers. It may also have acted quickly because the agency was criticized for its slow response to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.

Meanwhile, U.S. health officials said Thursday while they have not yet seen spread of the disease in the 50 states, the number of U.S. travelers infected over the last year in the Caribbean or Latin America has climbed to 31.

The Zika virus was first discovered in Africa in 1947. But until last year, when it was found in Brazil, it had never been a threat in the Western Hemisphere.

The virus causes no more than a mild illness in most people. But there is mounting evidence from Brazil suggesting infection in pregnant women is linked to abnormally small heads in their babies - a birth defect called microcephaly.

Earlier this month, U.S. health officials advised pregnant women to postpone visits to Brazil and other countries in the region with outbreaks.

"For the average American who's not traveling, this is not something they need to worry about," said Dr. Anne Schuchat, of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But "for people who are pregnant and considering travel to the affected areas, please take this seriously," she added. "It's very important for you to understand that we don't know as much as we want to know about this yet."

In Geneva, WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan noted it had been less than a year since the virus arrived in the Americas, "where it is now spreading explosively."

Although there is no definitive proof that the Zika virus is behind the spike in brain defects in Brazil, "the level of alarm is extremely high," she added.

"The possible links, only recently suspected, have rapidly changed the risk profile of Zika from a mild threat to one of alarming proportions," Chan said.

Researchers are also looking into a potential tie between Zika infections and cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome, which can cause temporary paralysis.

According to the CDC, the Zika virus is now in more than 20 countries, transmitted by the same mosquito that spreads other tropical illnesses such as dengue and yellow fever.

Sylvain Aldighieri, head of WHO's epidemic response team in the Americas, estimated there could be 3 million to 4 million Zika infections in the region over the next year. He said the agency expects "huge numbers" of infections because of the widespread presence of the Aedes mosquitoes that spread Zika and because people in the region have no natural immunity.

The same mosquito species spreading Zika in Latin America is also found in the southern United States. However, U.S. health officials reiterated Thursday they don't think the United States is vulnerable to a widespread outbreak of the Zika virus.

WHO warned China and all other countries that have dengue fever to be on the lookout for Zika infections. The agency said it could be many years before a vaccine is available and it might take six to nine months before there's any data showing a causal relationship between Zika and the babies born with malformed heads.

Monday's special session does not guarantee that a global emergency will be declared - WHO has held 10 such meetings to assess the Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome coronavirus and no emergency has been announced.

Declaring a global emergency is akin to an international SOS signal and usually brings more money and action to address an outbreak. The last such emergency was announced for the devastating 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, which eventually ending up killing over 11,000 people. Polio was declared a similar emergency the year before.

Marcos Espinal, WHO's director of infectious diseases in the Americas region, said Brazil is conducting studies to determine if there is scientific evidence that Zika virus causes birth defects and neurological problems. More than 4,000 suspected cases have been reported in Brazil since October. However, tests so far have shown hundreds of them were not microcephaly.

Brazilian authorities estimate the country could have up to 1 million Zika infections by now. Most infected people don't get sick and those who do mostly suffer mild symptoms such as fever, rash, joint pain and red eyes.

The outbreak has mostly been in the poor and underdeveloped northeast, but the prosperous southeast, where Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are located, is the nation's second hardest-hit region. Rio de Janeiro is of special concern, since it will host the Aug. 5-21 Summer Olympic games that are expected to be attended by millions from around the world.

International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach said the fact the Olympics will be held in August - during Brazil's winter - could limit Zika's impact on the games. Cooler weather tends to cut down mosquito populations.

Earlier this week, officials in Rio ramped up their fight against the mosquitoes that spread Zika, dispatching fumigators to the Sambadrome, where the city's Carnival parades will take place next month.

There is no treatment or vaccine for Zika, which is in the same family of viruses as dengue. Scientists have struggled for years to develop a dengue vaccine; the first such shot made by Sanofi Pasteur was licensed last year in Brazil.

Hopes of a turnaround in Flint jeopardized by water crisis

Hopes of a turnaround in Flint jeopardized by water crisis

FILE - Vehicles drive through downtown Flint, Mich., on Jan. 21, 2016. From its founding, Flint's fortunes essentially were entwined with a single industry. First it was the fur trade, which shifted to lumber, which gave way to the horse carriages that led to it being called Vehicle City. It was a fitting moniker for its next, most important role, as a powerhouse of auto manufacturing and the original home of General Motors.

FLINT, Mich. (AP) -- In a city long stereotyped for despair, some began seeing reasons for hope: A smattering of just-opened restaurants, students filling new college classrooms, fields of green growing where abandoned houses had stood.

The red-brick streets of downtown Flint became lined with once-unlikely businesses like a crepe shop and wine bar, and nearby, hundreds did the previously unthinkable, moving into new apartments at the city's core.

A sprawling new farmers market began drawing hundreds of thousands for everything from mango ginger stilton at a cheese shop to thick, fresh-cut pork loins at a butcher. New programs lured students from around the globe to the city's campuses, an ice-skating rink opened, the planetarium got a state-of-the-art upgrade and performances such as "Blue Man Group" put Flint on their schedule.

Even some signs of blight were beginning to fall, with hundreds of abandoned homes cleared away.

"It felt different," said Kimberly Roberson, a Flint native who directs grant-making in the city for the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, "until we hit lead."

A water crisis that has flooded homes with fear and poisonous toxins has taken a tandem swipe at the city's psyche, returning it to the negative headlines it was working hard to escape, drawing a new spotlight to poverty and other wounds it never was able to fix, and bringing a renewed sense of insecurity about what the future holds for a place that's been through so much.

From its founding, Flint's fortunes essentially were entwined with a single industry.

First it was the fur trade, which shifted to lumber, which gave way to the horse carriages, leading to its being called Vehicle City. It was a fitting moniker for its next, most important role, as a powerhouse of auto manufacturing and the original home of General Motors.

Chevrolets and Buicks and lesser-known cars rolled off Flint's production lines, making the city a magnet for workers and ancillary businesses. At its peak in the early 1970s, GM employed 80,000 people in Flint who cashed paychecks strengthened by the United Auto Workers union born in the city. Some 200,000 people lived within the city limits, alongside sprawling factories, booming commerce, model schools and thriving arts.

"This was the most beautiful place on earth," said Pamela Copeland, 72, who was a teenager when she arrived in Flint in its heyday.

No one says that anymore. The oil crisis of the 1970s and corporate cost-cutting in the 1980s and beyond led to the decimation of manufacturing jobs in the city. Its population plummeted; crime soared along with unemployment. The stately Tudors and colonials that were symbols of middle-class prosperity became run-down emblems of urban decline.

By the time filmmaker Michael Moore released his 1989 film "Roger & Me," excoriating GM's managers for the pain they caused their workers and the city, Flint's transition from boomtown to a drab, dangerous shell of its former self was sealed in the public consciousness. Moore was born in Flint and grew up in neighboring Davison, and his father worked at GM. What he didn't know while shooting the hard times in his hometown was it was just the start of the decline - tens of thousands more jobs would be lost, the exodus from the city would be exacerbated, and whole neighborhoods would be left virtually deserted.

"You look at that film now," Moore said in an interview, "it makes Flint look like paradise."

Staggering numbers of houses around Flint are burned out, boarded up or altogether razed. Holdout residents remain on blocks full of desertion and blight. Few neighborhoods are untouched by the devastation. 

The population, continuing its decades-long decline, has fallen below 100,000. Many schools have shuttered, and groceries are no easy find. But small liquor stores abound, advertising bottles of Olde English 800 for $1 and less.

Jeffery Carney, 48, had read of what was happening in his hometown, but didn't get his first glimpse until last February, when he was released from prison after 23 years for dealing drugs. On the ride to the downtown parole office for his formal release, he thought he was looking at a third-world country.

"I feel like I was in a nuclear holocaust," he said after picking up a case of water at a local firehouse recently. 

"Is it any hope anywhere?"

The water crisis, slow to gain widespread awareness outside the area, has brought a renewed, national look at the conditions in the city.

Under Michigan law, debt-plagued cities like Flint are put under the control of state-appointed emergency financial managers, who have immense latitude in decision-making. In efforts to get the city's finances in line, its water source was changed in April 2014, from a supply treated in Detroit and piped to Flint, to Flint River 

water treated and disseminated locally.

It wasn't long before residents began complaining of yellow and brown water from their taps, along with an unpleasant taste and smell. People began seeing rashes on their skin and hair falling from their heads. 

Workers at a remaining GM plant found their parts were corroding.

The City Council voted last March to reconnect to the Detroit water supply. The state's emergency manager refused.

"If we had access to democracy, we wouldn't be in this whole boat that we're in right now," said Nayyirah Shariff of the Flint Democracy Defense League.

And so the problems worsened even as officials insisted the water was safe. The water being used by families daily for everything from showers to preparing baby formula, had corroded the city's pipes, leaching lead, copper and other dangerous substances and carrying them through the taps. More people got sick. 

Many are suspicious a deadly outbreak of Legionnaires' disease is due to Flint's water, though the state has not yet announced such a link.

Long before the pipes leached, though, frustration with Flint's stagnation was bubbling. Though abandoned houses have been cleared in neighborhoods dotted around the city, many of the most noticeable signs of progress have all been focused on a tight cluster of downtown streets. Blacks, 57 percent of the population, frequently note the positive developments seem mostly to benefit whites.

Some 42 percent of residents live in poverty, according to census data, and across the city, the average per capita income is just $14,527.

Alfreda Harris, a 60-year-old substitute teacher, came to Flint as a high schooler, her parents drawn by the abundant opportunities. Even as she recognizes some progress in Flint in recent years, she says not all have enjoyed its fruits.

"The hope is there for one segment of society, but it's not for the other," she said. "On the one hand, I can see there is hope. But the reinvention for real people, for everyday people, is not happening."

Sisters Sharhonda Lay, 30, and Shiquise Triplett, 31, echoed those sentiments. What use are new businesses downtown, they wondered, when they don't even have the money to patronize them?

"We're already in poverty, people don't have jobs, they're barely making it," Lay said. "You can't afford to go out and do nothing."

The city is a study in contrasts: The renewal of downtown not far from beaten-down neighborhoods, and a sense of helplessness expressed by residents who in the same breath voice a stubborn optimism.

Melissa Mays, 37, a marketing consultant who started a community group, Water You Fighting For?, to call attention to the water problems, fell in love with Flint after moving to the city in 2001. She observed the toughness of locals, and looked with pride at what she believed was the city's upswing. But after she and her three sons began suffering a bevy of medical problems they believe are linked to the water, she is ready to bid Flint goodbye, if only anyone would want to buy her home.

"Trapped is a pretty decent word," she said.

Daily life has become a trial for many. Megan Crane, a 33-year-old who left work as a line cook to return to school at Mott Community College, hollers at her sons, ages 7 and 8, to be sure to put down the toilet seat before flushing, fearful something toxic from the water could make it into the air. Food is prepared with bottled water. On good weeks, when money isn't so short, the family bathes using bottled water. On bad weeks, they close their eyes and mouths and hope for the best.

She lost 60 pounds as she began feeling nauseated by food and crippled by migraines. Her fiance was hospitalized with pneumonia. Snatches of her cat's hair fell out. It was a painful turnaround for a city she saw making progress.

"It's been setback after setback after setback. And it looks like things are starting to come back," she said. "Things were finally starting to look up for us, instead of being on everybody's top-10 worst list, and then this happens."

AP INVESTIGATION: Feds' failures imperil migrant children

AP INVESTIGATION: Feds' failures imperil migrant children
 

Marvin Velasco, 15, poses at his new home in Los Angeles on Monday, Jan. 11, 2016. In September 2014, Velasco said he soon realized that nine other people lived in the apartment of his first sponsor in the United States, a distant relative whom he had never met. The sponsor told Velasco he would be punished if he left the apartment, and demanded rent payments. When Velasco told the sponsor he wanted to study, the man called the boy's parents in Guatemala, threatening to kick him out if they didn't pay. Then he started withholding food, Velasco said.

  

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- As tens of thousands of children fleeing violence in Central America crossed the border in search of safe harbor, overwhelmed U.S. officials weakened child protection policies, placing some young migrants in homes where they were sexually assaulted, starved or forced to work for little or no pay, an Associated Press investigation has found.

Without enough beds to house the record numbers of young arrivals, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services lowered its safety standards during border surges in the last three years to swiftly move children out of government shelters and into sponsors' homes. The procedures were increasingly relaxed as the number of young migrants rose in response to spiraling gang and drug violence in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, according to emails, agency memos and operations manuals obtained by AP, some under the Freedom of Information Act.

First, the government stopped fingerprinting most adults seeking to claim the children. In April 2014, the agency stopped requiring original copies of birth certificates to prove most sponsors' identities. The next month, it decided not to complete forms that request sponsors' personal and identifying information before sending many of the children to sponsors' homes. Then, it eliminated FBI criminal history checks for many sponsors.

Since the rule changes, the AP has identified more than two dozen children who were placed with sponsors who subjected them to sexual abuse, labor trafficking, or severe abuse and neglect.

"This is clearly the tip of the iceberg," said Jacqueline Bhabha, research director at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University. "We would never release domestic children to private settings with as little scrutiny."

Advocates say it is hard to gauge the total number of children exposed to dangerous conditions among the more than 89,000 placed with sponsors since October 2013 because many of the migrants designated for follow-up were nowhere to be found when social workers tried to reach them.

Federal officials won't disclose details of how the agency was stretched so thin, but say they are strengthening the procedures as the number of young migrants once again is on the rise, and recently signed a contract to open new shelters.

"We are not taking shortcuts," HHS spokesman Mark Weber said. "The program does an amazing job overall."

---

YOUNG VICTIMS

One of the cases reviewed by the AP involved a then-14-year-old from Guatemala who arrived in the U.S. in September 2014 and was sent to a sponsor's tiny apartment in Los Angeles, where he was held for three weeks. In an interview, Marvin Velasco said his sponsor, a distant relative who he had never met, deprived him of food, which left him weak and praying for his salvation.

"He told authorities that he was going to take me to school and help me with food and clothing, but it wasn't like that at all," said Velasco, who since has been granted special legal status for young immigrants. "The whole time, I was just praying and thinking about my family."

Velasco's perilous journey from Guatemala included crossing a river, even though he doesn't swim, and getting lost at night in a frigid desert. Once in the U.S., he was apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol agents, processed in Hidalgo, Texas, and sent to a shelter run by HHS' Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Unlike the extensive screenings required in the U.S. foster care system, the ORR had stopped requiring that social workers complete extensive background checks or fingerprint most sponsors when they placed Velasco with his brother-in-law's father. Social workers did not visit the sponsor's one-bedroom apartment before he arrived or check up on him afterward, said Gina Manciati, the boy's attorney.

Velasco said he soon realized that nine other people lived there. The sponsor told Velasco he would be punished if he left the apartment, and demanded rent payments. When Velasco told the sponsor he wanted to study, the man called the boy's parents in Guatemala, threatening to kick him out if they didn't pay. Then the sponsor started withholding food, Velasco said.

With help from the sponsor's son, Velasco escaped and sought sanctuary in a nearby church, where he met a parishioner who took him in and became his legal guardian. Now 15 and living with a Guatemalan immigrant family that is raising him as their son, he is thriving in school and leads the church's devotional band.

Other accounts uncovered by the AP include:

- A 14-year-old Honduran girl whose stepfather forced her to work over a period of several months at cantinas in central Florida where women drink, dance and sometimes have sex with patrons.

- A 17-year-old from Honduras sent to live with an aunt in Texas, who forced her to work in a restaurant at night and clean houses on weekends, and often locked her in the home.

- A 17-year-old Guatemalan placed with a friend's brother in Alabama who vowed to help him attend school, but instead was made to work in a restaurant for 12 hours a day to earn rent.

- A Central American teen placed with a family friend who forced her to cook, clean and care for a group of younger children in a Florida trailer park.

- A Honduran teen placed with a sponsor in New York City who was so physically abusive that she ran away and sought refuge in a shelter.

Experts who work with migrant children, including a psychologist and an attorney, cited cases in which unaccompanied children were raped by relatives or other people associated with their sponsors.

Weber said the ORR has added more home visits and background checks since July, when federal prosecutors charged sponsors and associates with running a trafficking ring in rural Ohio that forced six unaccompanied minors to work on egg farms. Lured north with the promise of an education, the teens instead were forced to work under threats of death for up to 12 hours a day.

"These tragic situations do happen when there are bad actors involved, and that makes it incredibly difficult for the government to ferret them out," Weber said. "I know we learn from lessons and keep trying to improve the system to ensure the child is placed in a safe place, and I'm confident the vast majority of the kids are."

---

HOW THE PROBLEM EVOLVED

Contractors and advocates say that, starting in 2012, they repeatedly warned HHS about the steady increase in children arriving at the border. The agency itself warned case management staff in 2013 that "fraudulent sponsors" in Colorado, Iowa and Minnesota had sought to claim multiple, unrelated minors. By the summer of 2014, the challenge of dealing with a sea of unaccompanied minors had become a full-blown crisis.

"So many kids were piling up at the Border Patrol stations that the agency had to start emptying their shelter beds," said Jennifer Podkul, senior program officer at the nonprofit Women's Refugee Commission. "They sped up reunification procedures that they had in place for years."

By law, child migrants traveling alone must be sent to an ORR facility within three days of being detained. The agency then is responsible for the children's care until they are united with a relative or sponsor in the community they can live with while awaiting immigration court hearings. Sponsors can be parents, grandparents, distant relatives or unrelated adults, such as family friends, and all are expected to enroll the children in school, help them get health care and attend court.

In 2012, caseworkers followed a stringent process before releasing children to sponsors, including background checks, fingerprints, 60-day home studies and signed agreements that the children would appear in immigration court. But in November 2013, overburdened by a sudden influx of unaccompanied children, the agency took the first of what would be a series of steps to lower its standards, stating in a manual that most parents and legal guardians would not be fingerprinted.

ORR said the relaxed rules on the front end were compensated on the back end by more children getting social services attention after being released into the community. Even now, though, most young migrants rarely see child welfare workers after landing at sponsors' homes.

Only a small group of at-risk children who the government believes need extra protection are visited by social workers contracted by ORR, and the services cease when the children turn 18. But sometimes, those vulnerable children vanish before social workers reach them. Federal contractor Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service has tracked 201 cases in which children ran away or the families couldn't be traced, which represents 11 percent of their closed cases since 2013.

Last year, a social worker visited an apartment complex in Fort Meyers, Florida, to see if it was suitable for a new placement. The government had sent more than a dozen other children to live there, but the social worker found nothing but an empty apartment, said Hilary Chester, associate director of anti-trafficking programs at U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops, another federal contractor.

"We were concerned that it could have been a front to have those kids released so that traffickers could get them into the workforce," Chester said. "No one knows where the kids are."

ORR bars releasing children to people who have been convicted of child abuse or neglect or violent felonies like homicide and rape. But in November, a whistleblower told Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, that federal authorities had placed unaccompanied children with convicted criminals. The whistleblower alleged that 3,400 sponsors listed in a government database had criminal histories including homicide, child molestation, sexual assault and human trafficking, according to Grassley's office.

Weber, the HHS spokesman, said the agency's inspector general is reviewing the claim.

At least 29 killed in snowstorm-related deaths

At least 29 killed in snowstorm-related deaths
 

Passers-by help push a stuck car out of the snow as another motorist tows it out in Richmond, Va., Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016. A winter storm has hit the East Coast, creating a blizzard with brutally high winds, dangerous inland flooding and white-out conditions.

 

At least 29 people have died as a result of the mammoth snowstorm that pounded the eastern U.S. The deaths occurred in car accidents, from carbon monoxide poisoning, and from heart attacks while shoveling snow:

WASHINGTON

-An 82-year-old man who died after going into cardiac arrest while shoveling snow in front of his home in Washington is the first person whose death is related to the snowstorm in the city.

The District of Columbia's Chief Medical Examiner, Roger A. Mitchell Jr., announced the man's death during a news conference Sunday evening.

Mitchell did not release the man's name or say when he died or where in the city he lived. He encouraged people shoveling to take breaks and make sure that they keep hydrated.

DELAWARE

- A U.S. Capitol Police officer died of a heart attack after shoveling snow at his home in Delaware. Nicole Alston says her husband, 44-year-old Officer Vernon Alston, collapsed Saturday afternoon outside their home in Magnolia after he'd been shoveling snow for about an hour. She says he died within seconds. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced Alston's death on Sunday, calling him "a fixture on the Capitol grounds." Capitol Police Chief Kim Dine says in a statement that Alston was a 20-year veteran of the force.

KENTUCKY

- A Kentucky transportation worker died Saturday while plowing snow-covered highways, officials said. The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet identified him in a statement as Christopher Adams. The statement says Adams called a supervisor about 5:50 a.m., saying his plow slid into a ditch. When the supervisor arrived, Adams was slumped over, unresponsive in his seat. A cause of death has not been released.

- A man died in southeastern Kentucky when his car collided with a salt truck Thursday, state police said. Billy R. Stevens, 59, of Williamsburg was pronounced dead at the scene on state Route 92 in Whitley County.

MARYLAND

- Two people have died from heart attacks while shoveling snow in Maryland. A 49-year-old man suffered cardiac arrest while shoveling in Abingdon on Saturday, County Executive Barry Glassman said Sunday. Officials in Prince George's County said a man collapsed and died Saturday while shoveling snow in Fort Washington. Bob Maloney, director of Baltimore's office of emergency management, said not one life was lost due to the storm in the city.

NEW JERSEY

- A 23-year-old New Jersey mom and her year-old son died of carbon monoxide poisoning while sitting in a running car that had its tailpipe covered in snow, The Record reported, citing Passaic police. The woman's 3-year-old daughter was also hurt and was hospitalized in "very critical condition," police said. Authorities believe they were watching other family members shovel snow and didn't realize what was happening.

NEW YORK

- Three people died while shoveling snow in New York City, police said. The New York Police Department's Chief of Department Jim O'Neill told reporters Saturday one person on Staten Island and two people in Queens died. He released no further details on the deaths. A police spokesman said the medical examiner's office will determine exactly how they died.

NORTH CAROLINA

- Six people have died in car accidents during the storm, authorities have said, including a 4-year-old boy who died Friday afternoon after the pickup truck carrying his family on Interstate 77 near Troutman spun out of control and crashed.

OHIO

- A teenager sledding behind an all-terrain vehicle was hit by a truck and killed Friday, the State Highway Patrol said. The truck failed to yield at a traffic light and hit the sled, which the ATV was pulling in Wheelersburg, the highway patrol said.

PENNSYLVANIA

- Authorities in eastern Pennsylvania say a man died of carbon monoxide poisoning, apparently after his car was buried in snow by a passing plow. David Perrotto, 56, was pronounced dead less than an hour after he was found Saturday night in Muhlenberg Township, according to John Hollenbach of the Berks County coroner's office. Hollenbach says Perrotto was apparently trying to dig out his car. Investigators believe he either was in the car with the motor running to take a break or to try to get out of the space when a snow plow went by and buried the car, blocking the exhaust and preventing him from exiting. Another person trying to dig out their vehicle found the running car. Perrotto was pronounced dead at a hospital emergency room.

SOUTH CAROLINA

Three people have died in South Carolina:

- Authorities say an elderly couple in Greenville died of probable carbon monoxide poisoning. Ruby Bell, 86, and her husband, 87-year-old Robert Bell, were found dead at home by their son over the weekend, Greenville County Coroner Parks Evans said in an email. He said the time of death was believed to be Friday night. Russell Watson, the Duncan Chapel Fire District chief, told The Greenville News that the couple had lost power during the storm and a relative had set up a generator in their garage. Watson said the relative left the garage door propped open with a ladder, but it somehow closed and the generator filled the house with carbon monoxide.

- The South Carolina Highway Patrol says a 44-year-old man was killed after being struck by a vehicle that slid out of control after hitting a patch of ice. The crash happened Saturday afternoon in Greenville County, the highway patrol said in a news release.

TENNESSEE

- A car slid off the roadway due to speed and slick conditions, killing the driver and injuring a passenger, the Knox County sheriff's department said.

- A couple in a vehicle slid off an icy road and plummeted down a 300-foot embankment Wednesday night, killing the woman who was driving, said Carter County Sheriff Dexter Lunceford. Stacy Sherrill's husband, a passenger in the car, survived the crash. It took him several hours to climb the embankment and report the accident.

VIRGINIA

- The number of storm-related deaths in Virginia has risen to five. A man was killed on Saturday in a single-vehicle crash in Virginia Beach that police blamed on speed and icy road conditions, and Virginia Tech filmmaker Jerry Scheeler died Friday while shoveling snow outside his new house in Daleville, local news media reported Sunday. On Saturday, the state medical examiner's office confirmed three other storm deaths. They included a single-vehicle crash in Chesapeake and deaths in Hampton and southwest Virginia from hypothermia.

'Sleeping on the interstate': Hundreds stranded in Kentucky

'Sleeping on the interstate': Hundreds stranded in Kentucky

LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) -- What was supposed to be a relaxing weekend in Tennessee for Alexx and Kate Bragg turned into a grueling night of frozen gridlock along one of the country's busiest interstate highways.

Hundreds of drivers were stuck on I-75 overnight after a massive winter storm dumped more than a foot of snow in south central Kentucky, clogging cars and causing multiple crashes that created a 30-mile stretch of shivering passengers. By Saturday afternoon, I-75 was no longer closed, with lanes open both northbound and southbound. Traffic was moving - albeit slowly, and officials expected it to stay that way for a while. 

State police Trooper Lloyd Cochran said he couldn't give a figure for number of cars or people affected by the standstill but noted that no injuries were reported.

Kate Bragg was one of the stuck motorists, spending most of the night at mile marker 59 between Livingston and Mount Vernon. She and her husband, Alexx, are from Indiana and were on their way to Tennessee for a getaway weekend when they got stuck. For hours, the only people they saw were salt truck drivers begging motorists to move over so they could exit, refuel and hopefully help clear the roads. At one point, Alexx Bragg tucked in behind a salt truck and followed it on the shoulder, only to get stuck again.

"We are worried because we are from Indiana, have no concept of where we are and no idea when to anticipate getting out," Bragg told The Associated Press in an electronic message using Twitter.

Kentucky officials set up shelters for stranded motorists at churches and public schools along the Interstate, but the Braggs were too far away and could not make it to them.

"Emotional breaking point coupled with exhaustion has been met," Kate Bragg tweeted just after 11 p.m. after spending about eight hours on the highway, later adding: "Sleeping on the interstate... Don't they normally caution against this?"

Kate Bragg posted on Twitter that the couple finally got off the interstate at about 2:30 a.m., using online mapping services to find a way around the clogged interstate using side roads that had been plowed.

Traffic was slowly moving slowly Saturday along the 30-mile stretch, from Berea to London, according to Buddy Rogers, spokesman for Kentucky Emergency Management. All local hotels were booked, Cochran said. He described people still stuck on the road, some milling about at exits or leaving their cars to seek out the few stores and restaurants nearby.

About 65 people had taken shelter at the West London Baptist Church Saturday morning, according to Amanda Shotton, disaster program manager for the American Red Cross in Kentucky. She said local grocery stores and restaurants provided food for firefighters to take to stranded motorists who couldn't reach shelter.

Mariclare Lafferty and her family were on their way home to Hamburg, New York, when they stopped at a hotel in Knoxville to avoid the storm. But they had no heat after their hotel lost power, so they got back on the interstate, only to get stuck for five hours.

"I was very scared, very nervous," she said. "They don't plow their roads in Kentucky. We're from Buffalo, and we're used to a plow going down the road every 20 minutes. We're just not used to this here."

Lafferty said she and her family have been at the West London Baptist Church shelter since about 2 a.m. and plan to stay there for most of the day.

"They're treating us very well, but we're very tired," she said.

This is the second time in less than a year Kentucky drivers have seen major delays because of snow. Last March, thousands of drivers were stuck on I-65 in western Kentucky, some for up to 24 hours, after two feet of snow fell over several days.

Would Flint crisis happen in wealthier, whiter community?

Would Flint crisis happen in wealthier, whiter community?

Michigan National Guard Staff Sgt. James Green hands out a water test kit to be distributed to residents, Thursday, Jan. 21, 2016 in Flint, Mich.The National Guard, state employees, local authorities and volunteers have been distributing lead tests, filters and bottled water during the city's drinking water crisis.

  

FLINT, Mich. (AP) -- Ever since the full extent of the Flint water crisis emerged, one question has persisted: Would this have happened in a wealthier, whiter community?

Residents in the former auto-making hub - a poor, largely minority city - feel their complaints about lead-tainted water flowing through their taps have been slighted by the government or ignored altogether. For many, it echoes the lackluster federal response to New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

"Our voices were not heard, and that's part of the problem," Flint Mayor Karen Weaver said this week at the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Washington, D.C., where she also met with President Barack Obama to make her case for federal help for her city.

The frustration has mostly been directed at Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, who appointed an emergency manager to run Flint. That manager approved a plan in 2013 to begin drawing drinking water from the Flint River, and the city began doing so the next year. But officials failed to treat the corrosive water properly to prevent metal leaching from old pipes.

Snyder, a Republican in his second term, was blasted by Hillary Clinton in her remarks after the recent Democratic presidential debate.

"We've had a city in the United States of America where the population, which is poor in many ways and majority African-American, has been drinking and bathing in lead-contaminated water. And the governor of that state acted as though he didn't really care," Clinton said.

Snyder "had requests for help that he had basically stone-walled. I'll tell you what: If the kids in a rich suburb of Detroit had been drinking contaminated water and being bathed in it, there would've been action."

Flint residents complained loudly and often about the water quality immediately after the switch but were repeatedly told it was safe. They didn't learn the water was tainted until the state issued warnings a year and a half later. Now families fear for their health and especially for the future of their children, who can develop learning disabilities and behavior problems from lead exposure.

Snyder, who has apologized for the mishandling of the situation, declined a request by The Associated Press for an interview Thursday. But in response to Clinton's remarks, he said the former secretary of state should not make Flint a political issue.

His staff issued a statement to AP that cited his efforts in urban areas such as Detroit, which also has a large black population. An emergency manager appointed by Snyder led that city through bankruptcy in 2013-14.

"Bringing Detroit back to a solid fiscal foundation has allowed the city to restore services, and we've watched its economy grow, creating jobs and better opportunities," the statement said. Snyder has also "focused on improving education in all our cities, knowing that students need to not just graduate, but graduate with in-demand skills as they compete in a global economy."

Snyder's staff also noted his signing of Medicaid expansion, which provided health care coverage to 600,000 low-income adults.

Flint, a city about 75 miles north of Detroit, is the birthplace of General Motors and once had 200,000 residents. In the early 1970s, the automaker employed 80,000 blue- and white-collar workers in the area. Fewer than 8,000 GM jobs remain, and the city's population has dropped to just below 100,000, with a corresponding rise in property abandonment and poverty.

The city is 57 percent black, and 42 percent of its people live in poverty.

The decline of GM jobs "left a lot of people destitute and desperate, and they feel like their voices aren't being heard. It just adds to the frustration," said Phil Rashead, 66, of Flint, who is white.

Paul Mohai, a professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, has studied environmental burdens and their disproportionate impact on low-income and minority communities since the late 1990s. He said Flint is a classic case of minority and low-income residents confronting an environmental issue and that "it may be one of the biggest environmental justice disasters we've seen in a long time."

"What's kind of clear is that they've been vocalizing their concerns and the response has been rather weak," he said.

Former Flint Mayor Dayne Walling, who lost his re-election bid in November amid the water crisis, said newly released emails by Snyder showed that the governor's staffers disregarded Flint's plight because of the city's demographics.

"There are a number of indications that concerns of Flint's elected leaders and faith and community leaders were being dismissed as political posturing instead of taken seriously as efforts to address very real problems," said Walling, who is white and was first elected mayor in 2009.

Frustrations boiled over at a weekend protest outside City Hall.

"They would never do this to Bloomfield. They would never do this to Ann Arbor. They would never do this to Farmington Hills," filmmaker and Flint native Michael Moore said, referring to much wealthier Michigan communities. He called for Snyder's ouster and arrest.

Moore also cited deaths from Legionnaires' disease recorded in the Flint area over the past two years and only announced publicly last week by Snyder. The state has not linked them to Flint's waters, but others disagree.

"Let's call this what it is," Moore said. "It's not just a water crisis. It's a racial crisis. It's a poverty crisis. That's what this is, and that's what created this."

UK judge: Putin 'probably approved' killing of ex-KGB agent

UK judge: Putin 'probably approved' killing of ex-KGB agent
 

Marina Litvinenko, widow of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, places her arm around her son Anatoly during a press conference in London, Thursday, Jan. 21, 2016. Judge Robert Owen said Thursday he is certain that Litvinenko was given tea laced with a fatal dose of polonium-210 at a London hotel in November 2006. He says there is a "strong probability" that the FSB directed the killing and the operation was "probably approved" by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

  

LONDON (AP) -- Almost a decade after former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko lay dying in a London hospital bed, a British judge has concluded who poisoned him: two Russian men, acting at the behest of Russia's security services, probably with approval from President Vladimir Putin.

That finding prompted sharp exchanges Thursday between London and Moscow, and a diplomatic dilemma for both countries. With Russia and the West inching closer together after years of strain, neither side wants a new feud - even over a state-sanctioned murder on British soil.

Judge Robert Owen, who led the public inquiry into the killing, said he was certain that two Russians with links to the security services had given Litvinenko green tea containing a fatal dose of radioactive polonium-210 during a meeting at a London hotel. He said there was a "strong probability" that Russia's FSB, the successor to the Soviet Union's KGB spy agency, directed the killing and that the operation was "probably approved" by Putin, then as now the president of Russia.

Before he died, Litvinenko accused Putin of ordering his killing, but Owen's report is the first public official statement linking the Russian president to the crime, and it sent a chilling jolt through U.K.-Russia relations.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said the evidence in the report of "state-sponsored" killing was "absolutely appalling." Britain summoned the Russian ambassador for a dressing-down and imposed an asset freeze on the two main suspects: Andrei Lugovoi, now a Russian lawmaker, and Dmitry Kovtun.

Home Secretary Theresa May said the involvement of the Russian state was "a blatant and unacceptable breach of the most fundamental tenets of international law and of civilized behavior."

Moscow has always strongly denied being involved in Litvinenko's death and accused Britain of conducting a secretive and politically motivated inquiry.

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the "quasi-investigation" would "further poison the atmosphere of our bilateral relations."

He said the report "cannot be accepted by us as a verdict."

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zhakarova said the British inquiry was neither public nor transparent, saying it had turned into a "shadow puppet theater."

"There was one goal from the beginning: slander Russia and slander its officials," she told reporters in Moscow.

Litvinenko fled to Britain in 2000 and became a critic of Russia's security services and of Putin, whom he accused of links to organized crime and other alleged transgressions including pedophilia, Owen said in the report. He was a very vocal annoyance, feeding inside information about Russia's secrets to Western intelligence services, and - the judge said - was widely regarded within the FSB as a traitor.

"There were powerful motives for organizations and individuals within the Russian state to take action against Mr. Litvinenko, including killing him," Owen wrote in the 326-page report.

The judge said the case for Russian state involvement was circumstantial but strong. Owen said Litvinenko had "personally targeted President Putin himself with highly personal public criticism," allied himself with Putin's opponents and was believed to be working for British intelligence.

Litvinenko had co-written a book in which he blamed former FSB superiors of carrying out bombings of Russian apartment buildings in 1999 that were blamed on Chechen militants. He also accused Putin of being behind the 2006 contract-style slaying of Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who exposed human rights abuses in Chechnya.

Owen said the method of killing, with radioactive poison, fit with the deaths of several other opponents of Putin and his government, and noted that Putin had "supported and protected" Lugovoi since the killing, even awarding him a medal for service to the nation.

"I am sure that Mr. Lugovoi and Mr. Kovtun placed the polonium-210 in the teapot at the Pine Bar on 1 November 2006," he wrote - probably under the direction of the FSB.

He said the operation to kill Litvinenko was "probably" approved by then-FSB head Nikolai Patrushev, now head of Putin's security council. He said it was "likely" the FSB chief would have sought Putin's approval for an operation to kill Litvinenko.

Marina Litvinenko, the spy's widow, said she was "very pleased that the words my husband spoke on his deathbed when he accused Mr. Putin have been proved by an English court."

She urged Cameron to expel Russian intelligence agents operating in Britain and impose economic sanctions and travel bans on Putin and other officials linked to what her lawyer, Ben Emmerson, called "a mini-act of nuclear terrorism on the streets of London."

"It's unthinkable that the prime minister would do nothing in the face of the damning findings," Marina Litvinenko told reporters.

Britain's scope for strong action is limited, however.

U.K.-Russian relations have remained chilly since the killing of Litvinenko, who was granted British citizenship shortly before his death, and worsened with Russia's involvement in the separatist fighting in Ukraine. But the inquiry's report comes as the two countries are cautiously trying to work together against the Islamic State group in Syria, and neither wants a major new rift.

May, the home secretary, announced asset freezes against Lugovoi and Kovtun, and said Interpol had issued notices calling for their arrest if they traveled abroad. Russia refuses to extradite them.

Lugovoi is now a member of the Russian parliament, which means he is immune from prosecution in his country. In an interview with The Associated Press, he called the British investigation a "spectacle."

"I think that - yet again - Great Britain has shown that anything that involves their political interests, they'll make a top priority," he said.

Lugovoi also claimed he would have liked to testify at the inquiry but "was not allowed." The judge said both Lugovoi and Kovtun declined to give evidence.

Kovtun, now described as a businessman, told the Tass news agency that the conclusions were based on "false evidence" presented in closed hearings.

Political figures in Russia have cast the political inquiry as politically driven by a hostile West, and have highlighted the fact that parts were held in private because Britain was unwilling to disclose intelligence material.

Vyacheslav Nikonov, a political analyst close to the Kremlin, called the case "a black box into which no one was allowed to look, except for the judge," and claimed "decisions were made for purely political reasons."

Dmitry Oreshkin, an opposition-minded Russian political analyst, said the findings meant "the relationship with the West will systematically get worse" - something that suited Putin's interests.

Owen, a retired High Court judge appointed by the government to head the inquiry, heard from dozens of witnesses during months of public hearings last year and also saw secret British intelligence evidence.

In his report, the judge laid out the overwhelming scientific evidence against Lugovoi and Kovtun, including a trail of radiation that stretched from the hotel teapot to the sink in Kovtun's room and even to Emirates Stadium, the home of the Arsenal soccer team where Lugovoi attended a game.

Litvinenko died after three agonizing weeks in which his hair fell out, he vomited blood and his organs failed. 

A urine test conducted by a doctor on a hunch shortly before Litvinenko's death revealed the presence of polonium-210, an isotope that is deadly if ingested in tiny quantities.

He lapsed into unconsciousness Nov. 22, after telling his wife he loved her and died of heart failure the next day. His body was so radioactive that he was buried in a lead-lined coffin in London's Highgate Cemetery.

Deadly Pakistani school attack raises security questions

Deadly Pakistani school attack raises security questions

Pakistani women light candles during a vigil for victims of the Bacha Khan University attack, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016 in Peshawar, Pakistan. Taliban gunmen stormed a university in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing many people and triggering an hours-long gun battle with the army and police before the military declared that the assault in a town near the city of Peshawar was over.

  

CHARSADDA, Pakistan (AP) -- Once again, Islamic militants stormed a school in northeastern Pakistan in a deadly attack that lasted for hours. And once again, the blood of students and teachers stained classrooms and hallways, raising questions about whether security forces are able to protect the country's educational institutions from extremists.

At least 20 people were killed and 23 were wounded Wednesday in the assault at Bacha Khan University in Charsadda before the four gunmen were slain and the military declared an end to the siege. Two teachers were among the dead, including a chemistry professor who was praised as a hero for shooting back at the attackers and allowing some students to escape.

The university attack was grimly reminiscent of the December 2014 massacre at an army public school in nearby Peshawar that killed 150, mostly children.

A breakaway faction of the Taliban took responsibility for the university attack, although a spokesman for the larger Taliban organization, led by Mullah Fazlullah, denied having anything to do with it and called it "un-Islamic."

The violence shows how vulnerable schools remain in Pakistan, where extremists have sought to prevent Western-style education, especially for girls.

Malala Yousafzai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after the teenager was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman in 2012 outside her school in the Swat Valley because of her vocal support for gender equality and education for girls. She said she was "heartbroken" by the latest attack.

Several schools were closed last weekend after intelligence suggested militants were planning an attack, according to Muhammed Amir Rana, director of the private Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies. A provincial government spokesman said they were closed as part of a security drill.

After the Peshawar attack, the government promised to set up a joint Intelligence Directorate, but that has not happened yet.

The military is one of Pakistan's most powerful institutions, as is the intelligence agency, known as the ISI. It is especially difficult for civilian governments to penetrate that authority and establish intelligence sharing with government-operated security forces such as the police.

"The government is trying to develop a response but is facing capacity issues," Rana said, particularly in the area of intelligence-sharing among the powerful intelligence agencies and the police.

The army has been pounding militant hideouts in the tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan since June 2014, disrupting operations for the Pakistani Taliban militants. Because of that campaign, analysts say the extremists have turned to attacking soft targets such as schools.

"We are determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland," Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said in a statement after the attack.

A breakaway Taliban faction led by Khalifa Umar Mansoor said it had carried out the attack.

But a statement emailed to news organizations by Muhammad Khorasani, the spokesman for the Tehrik-e-Taliban, the largest Taliban group, said: "We disown, condemn the attack and term it as un-Islamic."

After the 2014 Peshawar school massacre, Taliban militants were united in taking responsibility for the violence.

Rana, whose institute tracks militant movement, said the divisions in the Taliban over who carried out Wednesday's attack probably has more to do with a fear of retribution than a reflection of a deeply divided Taliban.

The backlash that followed the Peshawar attack was so severe that it probably left the Taliban "reluctant to take credit, he added, noting that Afghan security forces joined in operations against Pakistani Taliban hideouts afterward.

The four militants invaded the campus of Bacha Khan University shortly after classes began for the day in Charsadda, about 35 kilometers (21 miles) outside Peshawar, said Deputy Commissioner Tahir Zafar. Both men and women attend the school, which has about 3,000 students, said its vice chancellor, Fazle ur-Rahim Marwat.

The university is named for one of Pakistan's greatest secular leaders, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, known as Bacha Khan, who often espoused communist philosophy. The attack coincided with the 28th anniversary of Bacha Khan's death on Jan. 20, 1988.

As police and soldiers rushed to the scene, the attackers traded gunfire with the troops, and several explosions were heard. The attackers were later contained inside two university blocks where the troops killed them, the army said.

Among the 18 students and two teachers who were slain was Syed Hamid Hussain, a chemistry professor who witnesses said opened fire on the gunmen. Hussain fired as he moved backward, herding his class out behind him before being killed in the gunbattle, said student Bilal Khan.

The attackers carried mobile phones with Afghan numbers and "were in touch with their handlers in Afghanistan," said Pakistan military spokesman Lt. Gen Asim Bajwa. Pakistan maintains that its militants often find refuge in Afghanistan.

He told a news conference in Peshawar that the militants hate education because it is a symbol of progress.

In a statement on the Malala Fund's social media site, Yousafzai said: "This brutality must be stopped."

"I am heartbroken by the attack on students and staff at the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda and strongly condemn this brutal assault," she said. "My prayers are with the families of all the victims and all those who suffer as a result of extremist violence."

She also called for Pakistani authorities to ensure "that all schools and universities are safe. I urge all people with peace in their hearts to renew their resolve to stand up to terrorism and ignorance, and work together to protect life and learning."

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who also condemned the attack, reaffirmed that violence against students, teachers and schools can never be justified, and that "the right to education for all must be firmly protected," said U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq.

Ban called for those behind the attack be brought to justice, adding that there must be "proportionate and necessary measures to be taken to ensure that schools in areas of insecurity and conflict are adequately protected," Haq said.

Abdul Ghani, whose son fled the carnage by running into a nearby sugar cane field, decried that Pakistani students are "at risk of being killed."

Marwat, the vice chancellor, said security forces alone could not keep students safe, saying it required a move away from an extreme interpretation of Islam.

Since the start of the new year, Pakistan has been battered by five militant attacks, most of them targeting security forces. Such attacks decreased last year, with the military saying it made great strides in crushing the violence.

AP Exclusive: Video footage shows Burkina Faso attackers

AP Exclusive: Video footage shows Burkina Faso attackers

A soldier stands guard outside the Splendid Hotel in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Monday, Jan. 18 , 2016. In the wake of a weekend attack that killed up to 32 people, security was beefed up across Burkina Faso's capital Monday as businesses and banks reopened. The West African nation also announced a joint effort with neighboring Mali in the fight against Islamic extremists in the West African region.

  

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AP) -- Two jihadis can be seen on video standing next to burning cars a little more than an hour after an assault began on a hotel and cafe in Burkina Faso's capital, raising new questions Tuesday about why it took so long for security forces to find and kill the militants blamed for at least 30 deaths.

The video shot by The Associated Press shows one man wearing a tunic and turban, carrying what appears to be a Kalashnikov rifle around 8:45 p.m., a little over an hour after they first attacked the Cappuccino Cafe. A second armed man can be seen wearing a large vest, and they are later joined by a third man with a pale scarf on his head. Explosions can be heard in the distance.

On Tuesday, authorities in Burkina Faso also released new details on how they ultimately killed the three men who were part of the North Africa branch of al-Qaida, working in connection with Algerian jihadi Moktar Belmoktar and his forces. Officials acknowledged though that it was more than four hours after the attack began before security forces tried to enter the hotel.

In the darkness of night and panic amid gunfire, some witnesses late Friday mistakenly identified at least two of the jihadis as women, and some even said they believed there was a fourth attacker. Burkina Faso's Security Minister Simon Compaore said Tuesday that several people have been detained and questioned but he declined to give further details, citing the ongoing investigation.

In a statement published by SITE Intelligence Group, though, al-Qaida identified three "mujahedeen brothers" as the ones responsible: Al-Battar al-Ansari, Abu Muhammad al-Buqali al-Ansari and Ahmed al-Fulani al-Ansari.

Some of the victims openly expressed frustration Tuesday that it had taken authorities so long to find the attackers. Allassane Baguian, an American who was attending a meeting on the fourth floor of the hotel at the time of attack, was shot in the leg four times and another bullet just skimmed his head.

"No one was prepared for these attacks," he said. "So we were under gunfire from 7:45 p.m. until 3 a.m. It's God who saved us because these people had the time to carry out their crime," he said. "That three people could challenge a country, it's incomprehensible."

Witnesses said the assault began around 7:30 p.m. Friday as dozens of people gathered for dinner and drinks at the Cappuccino Cafe and its terrace. The attackers then ambushed the Splendid Hotel next door.

Natacha Ble, a 23-year-old waitress from Ivory Coast who had only been working for a few weeks at the restaurant Taxi Brousse across the street, said she saw the three men coming but never imagined they were jihadis, saying they looked more like traditional herders from the Peul ethnic group in their tunics than Islamic militants.

"I started wondering what these Peul herders were coming to do in a place like this?" she recalled. "Then one of them headed toward the Cappuccino restaurant and began opening fire."

Within 30 minutes the president of Burkina Faso had asked the French ambassador for help, according to a French official who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the media. It would be four more hours, though, before French special forces arrived at the scene to help flush out the attackers and Burkina Faso's military was awaiting their help.

The security forces initially thought that the attack on the cafe was meant to divert them from the hotel as the main target, said a Burkinabe security official, speaking on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to journalists. In the end, none of the 30 people who were killed were at the hotel.

Around 1 a.m., about 50 security forces including the French, Burkinabe and an American tried to enter the hotel but were fired upon and one French special forces member took a bullet in the leg.

Under the cover of an armored vehicle, the forces entered the hotel and began searching the rooms floor-by-floor but didn't find the jihadis inside.

Authorities now know that they had left the hotel and were holed up in the Taxi Brousse restaurant across the street after its employees had fled, the Burkinabe security official said. From there they continued to fire their weapons and security forces came under fire when leaving the hotel around 4:30 a.m.

"In leaving the Splendid Hotel, one armored vehicle came under fire from the direction of the Taxi Brousse across the street," the official said. "One attacker even came out of the restaurant to shoot at the vehicle."

It was then that Burkinabe and French forces realized that the attackers had been hiding at the restaurant.

"Finally the other two attackers came out to fire upon us and it was around 7 a.m. that we killed the last two on the terrace of the Taxi Brousse," he added.

With Confederate flag gone, King Day rally shifts focus

With Confederate flag gone, King Day rally shifts focus
 

Cal Murrell, otherwise known as "The Happy Preacher," shouts out during during the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday commemorative service at Ebenezer Baptist Church where King preached, Monday, Jan. 18, 2016, in Atlanta.

 
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- For the first time in 17 years, civil rights leaders gathered Monday at the South Carolina Statehouse to pay homage to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. without the Confederate flag casting a long shadow over them.

The banner was taken down over the summer after police said a young white man who had posed for photos with a rebel flag shot nine black church members to death during a Bible study in Charleston. After the massacre at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Republican Gov. Nikki Haley reversed course and made it a priority for lawmakers to pass legislation to remove the flag.

"Isn't this a great day? It's so nice to be standing here and not looking at that flag," said Ezell Pittman, who attended most of the King Day anti-flag rallies since they started in 2000. "I always had faith it would come down. I hate it took what it did, but was real happy to see it go."

Across the country, the 30th anniversary of the holiday to honor the civil rights leader assassinated in 1968 was remembered in different ways. In Michigan, people delivered bottled water to residents of Flint amid the city's drinking water crisis. In Atlanta, an overflow crowd listened as to the nation's housing secretary talk about the 50th anniversary of King's visit to Chicago to launch a campaign for fair housing. Rallies against police brutality in Minnesota and California briefly shut down traffic on two bridges.

South Carolina NAACP President Lonnie Randolph said the flag's removal was tangible evidence the state cares about civil rights when pushed hard enough. But he warned there would be other fights ahead.

"I promise you, the people that gather in this building - your building - will do something this year to cause us to return to ensure freedom, justice and equality is made possible for all people," Randolph said, motioning toward the capitol behind him.

Randolph promised to keep coming to the Statehouse until King's dream comes to its full meaning in a state with wide gaps in education achievement between school districts in rich, white communities and poorer, black ones, and where the governor and Republican-dominated Legislature have refused to take federal money to expand Medicaid.

About 1,000 people gathered at the Statehouse on a clear, cold day, drawn in part by appearances by all three main Democratic presidential candidates - Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley.

Sanders reminded the crowd King was a dynamic leader who wanted to help the poor. O'Malley said King would be ashamed his county has made it harder to vote and easier to buy a gun.

Only Clinton dealt directly with the flag. She credited Haley and the Republicans with working with the NAACP after the church shooting and choosing King's legacy over hatred.

"We couldn't celebrate him and the Confederacy. We had to choose," Clinton said. "And South Carolina made the right choice."

In the nation's capital, President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama followed the King Day theme of community service by planting vegetable seeds at a District of Columbia elementary school to honor the civil rights leader and celebrate Mrs. Obama's anti-childhood obesity initiative.

They also stuffed bags with books for needy children along with young people who participate in a White House mentoring program and volunteers from the AmeriCorps national service program.

Elsewhere, an overflow crowd showed up at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta to celebrate its former pastor's legacy at an annual commemorative service. It capped more than a week of events under the theme: 

"Remember! Celebrate! Act! King's Legacy of Freedom for Our World."

While people have been distracted by TV reality shows and music "that tears down instead of uplifts," many injustices have occurred and "we're about to create right here in this civilized society the wild, wild west with guns," said King's daughter, the Rev. Bernice King.

"Y'all, we can't keep being distracted, because if you're not careful, we're about to allow a reality show host to bully himself into becoming president of the United States of America," she said.

U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro told the church audience that King moved into a Chicago apartment on the city's west side 50 years ago and described seeing "a daily battle against depression and hopelessness" as babies were attacked by rats and children wore clothes too thin to protect against the Midwest winter.

"You see, Dr. King knew that housing was more than about just bricks and mortar," Castro said.

In Minneapolis, activists braved frigid temperatures as they marched onto a Mississippi River bridge that connects Minneapolis and St. Paul to protest the deaths of two black men shot by police last year in the Twin Cities. A St. Paul officer was placed on leave while the Police Department investigates allegations that he made a post on Facebook urging drivers to run over protesters.

In California, protesters from a Black Lives Matter offshoot group shut down one side of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge when they stopped vehicles in the westbound lanes and chained themselves and the cars together to form a line across the bridge.

Burkina Faso hotel attacked by al-Qaida catches fire

Burkina Faso hotel attacked by al-Qaida catches fire
 

In this image taken from video from AP Television, an armed policeman walks away near the Splendid Hotel, Friday, Jan. 15, 2016, in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The SITE Intelligence Group reports that an al-Qaida affiliate is claiming responsibility for the ongoing siege on an upscale hotel and cafe in Burkina Faso's capital where an unknown number of hostages are being held.

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AP) -- Witnesses say the upscale hotel in Burkina Faso's capital that has been attacked by al-Qaida militants has now caught fire. The blaze began after commandos trying to free an unknown number of hostages used explosives to enter the building.

Security forces stormed the building more than five hours after it was attacked by jihadists. A fire then broke out in the hall of the Splendid Hotel, and the flames then began spreading inside and out.

Several cars outside the hotel also were engulfed in flames after the attackers set them on fire when they launched their assault.

It was not immediately known how many people may have been killed during the siege, though a survivor told hospital director Robert Sangare he estimated the toll could be as high as 20.

 

Islamic State militants claim deadly attack in Jakarta

Islamic State militants claim deadly attack in Jakarta
 

People, including unarmed police officers, flee from the scene after a gun battle broke out following an explosion in Jakarta, Indonesia Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. Attackers set off bombs and exchanged gunfire outside a Starbucks cafe in Indonesia's capital in a brazen assault Thursday that police said "imitated" the recent Paris attacks.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- The scene had echoes of the Paris attacks: A bustling shopping area shaken by the blasts of suicide bombers and gunfire as onlookers fled in terror.

But when Thursday's assault in central Jakarta was over, the death toll was far lower. Of the seven killed, five were the attackers themselves and only two were civilians - a Canadian and an Indonesian. Another 20 people were wounded.

Still, authorities and analysts believe the violence that left the city of 10 million on edge for hours was a loud announcement of the Islamic State group's presence in the world's largest Muslim-majority nation.

Supporters of the Islamic State group circulated a claim of responsibility on social media resembling the militants' previous messages.

The attackers carried handguns, grenades and homemade bombs and struck a Starbucks cafe and a traffic police booth in the Indonesian capital's highest-profile attack in six years.

Authorities said they found a large, undetonated bomb and five smaller devices in a building near the cafe.

"So we think ... their plan was to attack people and follow it up with a larger explosion when more people gathered," said Maj. Gen. Anton Charliyan, the spokesman of Indonesia's national police. "But thank God it didn't happen."

Jakarta police chief Maj. Gen. Tito Karnavian said the attackers had links with IS and were part of a group led by Bahrum Naim, an Indonesian militant who is now in Syria.

"We have identified all attackers," Charliyan said. "We can say that the attackers were affiliated with the ISIS group," he added, using an acronym for the Islamic State group.

The claim was shared on Twitter late Thursday, and the U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group said it also was circulated among pro-IS groups on other media.

The message said attackers carried out the Jakarta assault and had planted several bombs with timers. It differed from Indonesian police on the number of attackers, saying there were four. It said they wore suicide belts and carried light weaponry.

The statement could not be independently verified by The Associated Press, though it resembled previous claims made by the group, which controls territory in both Iraq and Syria.

Jakarta is no stranger to terrorism, with the 2009 bombings of two hotels that killed seven people and injured more than 50. The bloodiest attack by Islamic extremists in Indonesia - and in all of Asia - was in 2002, when a nightclub bombing on the resort island of Bali killed 202 people, mostly foreigners.

Those and others were blamed on the al-Qaida-inspired Jemaah Islamiyah. Following a crackdown by security forces, militant strikes in recent years have been smaller and less deadly, and have targeted government authorities, mainly police and anti-terrorism forces. Terrorism experts say IS supporters in Indonesia are drawn from the remnants of Jemaah Islamiyah.

Charliyan said police had received information in late November about a warning from the Islamic State group that "there will be a concert" in Indonesia, meaning an attack. Last month, anti-terror police arrested nine suspected militants and said they had planned attacks "to attract international news coverage of their existence here."

Indonesian authorities deployed 150,000 security personnel, made arrests and said they foiled a plot to kill government officials, law enforcement officers and others. The heightened security ended Jan. 6.

Southeast Asian terrorism expert Sidney Jones wrote in November that Bahrum Naim has been urging his Indonesian audience to study the Paris attacks.

"While the police and army have been focused on going after Indonesia's most wanted terrorist, Santoso, in the hills of Central Sulawesi, ISIS has succeeded in building a network of supporters in the suburbs of Jakarta," Jones wrote.

Taufik Andri, a terrorist analyst, said although the attack ended swiftly and badly for the attackers, their aim was to show their presence and ability.

"Their main aim was just to give impression that ISIS' supporters here are able to do what was done in Paris. It was just a Paris-inspired attack without being well prepared," he told The Associated Press. Those attacks in November killed 130 people.

Thursday's first suicide bomb went off about 10:50 a.m. at the Starbucks, which is near to some U.N. offices, a shopping center and other Western restaurants, including McDonald's, Pizza Hut and Burger King. 

The neighborhood is home to many luxury hotels, high-rise buildings and diplomatic offices, including the French Embassy.

Karnavian told reporters that after customers ran out of the cafe, two gunmen outside opened fire, killing the Canadian and wounding an Indonesian.

At about the same time, two other suicide bombers struck a traffic police post nearby, killing an Indonesian man. Minutes later, a group of police were attacked by the remaining two gunmen, using homemade bombs, Karnavian said. This led to an exchange of fire that lasted 15 minutes and ended with both attackers dead.

Guruh Purwanto heard the initial explosion as he met with co-workers at an agricultural company next to the shopping center. He rushed out and saw white smoke billowing from the Starbucks and people running in panic.

"I was shocked when I saw two men with handguns shoot a foreigner," Purwanto said. "He tried to hide behind a car."

He heard another blast and saw three bodies on the street near a wrecked traffic police booth, with more white smoke.

The two gunmen ran into a movie theater but were eventually cornered by police in the Starbucks parking lot, Purwanto said.

"There was gunfire between police officers and the two attackers, like in a movie ... and suddenly the two blew themselves up," he said. "It was scary."

A Dutch man who was seriously wounded underwent surgery, according to Foreign Ministry spokeswoman in the Netherlands.

The man, who was not identified, is an expert in forestry and ecosystems management for the U.N. Environment Program and is "fighting for his life," said UNEP chief Achim Steiner.

About five hours after the first explosions, police announced the area was secure.

"This act is clearly aimed at disturbing public order and spreading terror among people," said President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo, who visited the attack site. "The state, the nation and the people should not be afraid of, and be defeated by, such terror acts."

In condemning the violence during a visit to London, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said "these acts of terror are not going to intimidate nation-states from protecting their citizens and continuing to provide real opportunity, education, jobs, possibilities of a future."

The attack prompted a security lockdown in central Jakarta and enhanced checks all over the city.

By evening, a large screen atop the building that houses the Starbucks displayed messages that said "#prayforjakarta" and "Indonesia Unite." Some people left flowers near the stricken traffic police post, along with a wreath that read "Deep condolences. We are not afraid."