Month: April 2023

People living along the Mississippi River watched warily Sunday as water levels rose in southeast Iowa and northwest Illinois, awaiting spring crests as floodwaters began to slowly recede and reveal damage in areas further north.

The National Weather Service said many of the crests across the region this season will rank in the top 10 of all time but will remain several feet below the records set in past floods. Officials in many cities along the river are optimistic they’ll be able to either keep the floodwaters at bay through a combination of floodwalls and sandbags or contain it to low-lying park areas. But some homes close to the river have been damaged.

“Luckily, we’ve had relatively dry weather over the last week or so and not expecting much in the way of rainfall as well,” National Weather Service meteorologist Tom Philip said. “So it’s coming through as forecast for the most part.”

The river peaked in the Dubuque area Saturday at 7 meters — well below the 7.8 meters record — but officials there were grateful to have the floodwall the city built 50 years ago in place.

Without that floodwall, the city would be facing significant problems, said Deron Muehring, a civil engineer for the city of Dubuque.

“The floodwaters would be up to 6 feet deep (1.8 meters) in the Port of Dubuque and more than 7 feet deep in the south port,” Muehring told the Dubuque Telegraph-Herald.

The river is expected to crest at around 6.6 meters on Monday in the Quad-Cities area, where five neighboring cities sit along the Iowa-Illinois line. Some roads and parks near the river are closed. The record at that spot is 6.9 meters.

Once the river crests in an area, it may take up to two weeks for the floodwaters to fully recede.

In recent days the Mississippi flooded low-lying parks and trails in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and flooded streets and basements in the town of Campbell on French Island, which lies in the Mississippi and Black rivers just west of La Crosse.

The river crested at 4.8 meters on Thursday, almost 1.2 meters above flood stage and the third-highest level ever, but it has been receding by the hour since.

About 95 kilometers downstream, floodwaters covered streets in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. The river crested there at 7 meters on Friday, which also the third-highest crest ever. Officials posted guidelines for disposing of sandbags and other debris on the city’s website as the river levels started to fall.

The flooding is expected to ease as the spring surge of water from melting snow works its way further down the 3,700-kilometer length of the river on its way to the Gulf of Mexico. Most of the tributaries in Iowa, Illinois and other Midwest states are running lower than usual, so they won’t exacerbate the flooding by dumping large amounts of water into the river.

Minneapolis police arrested a man suspected of setting two fires that damaged mosques in the city last week as part of what the chief called “an attempt to inflict terror onto our Muslim community.”

Police Chief Brian O’Hara announced the arrest of 36-year-old Jackie Rahm Little early Sunday but didn’t provide details of how he was apprehended. He was charged with second-degree arson after the fires were set on April 23 and 24 and an arrest warrant was issued.

“Houses of worship should be safe places. Setting fire to a sacred facility, where families and children gather, is incredibly inhumane. And this level of blatant hatred will not be tolerated in our great city,” O’Hara said in a statement Sunday.

Leaders with the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations praised the arrest after the fires that had unnerved the Muslim community in the area.

“This arrest brings some relief to our community, which has been on edge for the past week,” said Jaylani Hussein, the group’s executive director. “We hope to learn more about the suspect’s motivations and any potential accomplices who may have incited these attacks on our houses of worship.”

One fire was set last Monday on the third floor of the Mercy Islamic Center. The center houses the Masjid Al Rahma mosque.

The criminal complaint against Little states that surveillance footage showed him entering the center carrying a bag with a gasoline can inside. A short time later, a staff member spotted a fire near offices. It was extinguished before it could spread very far.

The other fire was Sunday night in the bathroom of the mosque in the 24 Somali Mall. Worshippers extinguished the fire.

The two mosques are less than a mile apart. O’Hara had said earlier that the department suspected the same person was responsible for that blaze.

Uzbekistan votes on constitutional amendments Sunday that promise its citizens greater social protections in exchange for resetting President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s term count to zero, which could allow him to run for two more seven-year terms.

Mirziyoyev, 65, has been praised at home and abroad as a liberal reformer for abandoning the previous leadership’s isolationist policies and police state approach.

And while Tashkent’s Western partners are unlikely to approve of the attempt to extend presidential powers, Uzbekistan risks little given the West is seeking support from all ex-Soviet nations in its efforts to isolate Russia over its war in Ukraine.

Although the current and the proposed new version of the constitution limit successive presidential terms to two, officials have said that if the revised constitution is adopted, Mirziyoyev’s term count would be reset to zero.

The reform also extends the presidential term to seven years from five, which could in theory allow Mirziyoyev to remain in charge of the country of 35 million people until 2040. His current term ends in 2026.

At the same time, the package of amendments proclaims Uzbekistan a “social state” with increased welfare obligations and allows non-farming land ownership.

It also abolishes the death penalty and establishes greater personal legal protection, for instance to a person’s rights when they are detained by police, and the concept of habeas corpus, or protection against unlawful and indefinite imprisonment.

“Our lives have been improving, and under this president it will continue, I hope,” said 62-year-old voter Nazira who declined to give her last name. “I don’t mind and approve (presidential) terms being extended. I thank the president for what he is doing for us.”

Some Uzbek commentators have called for more democratic principles to be included in the bill, and in stronger wording, but the general idea of reform — and extending presidential powers in particular— has met no opposition.

“What I see is that the new changes will boost our rights and the openness (of the state),” said another voter, Abdurashid Kadirov, 65.

Mirziyoyev cast his ballot at one of the polling stations in Tashkent, stopping to greet other voters on his way in and out.

“Every person should have a belief in tomorrow in their heart and support reforms. We are doing our best to ensure that, and God willing, your trust in reforms will be remain strong,” he said.

Patriotic music was played at many polling stations Sunday, some decorated with flowers and some handing out baseball caps and T-shirts with the referendum logo to first-time voters.

The Central Election Commission declared the referendum valid after turnout surpassed 50%; it reached 81.4% by 1700 local time. Preliminary vote results are expected Monday.

Babies born to opioid users had shorter hospital stays and needed less medication when their care emphasized parent involvement, skin-to-skin contact and a quiet environment, researchers reported Sunday.

Newborns were ready to go home about a week earlier compared to those getting standard care. Fewer received opioid medications to reduce withdrawal symptoms such as tremors and hard-to-soothe crying, about 20% compared to 52% of the standard-care babies.

Babies born to opioid users, including mothers in treatment with medications such as methadone, can develop withdrawal symptoms after exposure in the womb.

Typically, hospitals use a scoring system to decide which babies need medicine to ease withdrawal, which means treatment in newborn intensive care units.

“The mom is sitting there anxiously waiting for the score,” said the study’s lead author Dr. Leslie Young of the University of Vermont’s children’s hospital. “This would be really stressful for families.”

In the new approach — called Eat, Sleep, Console — nurses involve mothers as they evaluate together whether rocking, breastfeeding or swaddling can calm the baby, Young said. Medicine is an option, but the environment is considered too.

“Is the TV on in the room? Do we need to turn that off? Are the lights on? Do we need to turn those down?” Young said.

About 5,000 nurses were trained during the study, published Sunday by the New England Journal of Medicine.

Researchers studied the care of 1,300 newborns at 26 U.S. hospitals. Babies born before training were compared to babies born after.

The National Institutes of Health funded the work as part of an initiative to address the U.S. opioid addiction crisis.

“One of the great strengths of the study is its geographic diversity,” said Dr. Diana Bianchi, director of the branch that researches child health and human development. “We’ve had newborns enrolled from sites as varied as Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Kansas City, Missouri; and Spartanburg, South Carolina.”

Many U.S. hospitals have adopted the new approach, Bianchi said, adding she hopes the research will lead to recommendations from pediatrics groups.

Researchers followed the babies for three months and found no difference in urgent care or emergency room visits or hospitalizations — reassuring evidence about the safety of shorter hospital stays.

The new approach could yield “tremendous savings” in hospital resources, Young said, although the study didn’t estimate cost.

Researchers will follow the babies until age 2 to monitor their health.

Mothers want to be involved, Young said.

“For the first time, they feel like their role as a mom is valued and like they’re important,” she said. “We know that those first moments of a mom and a baby being together are really critical to bonding.”

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The powerful sister of North Korea’s leader says her country would stage more provocative displays of its military might in response to a new U.S.-South Korean agreement to intensify nuclear deterrence to counter the North’s nuclear threat, which she insists shows their “extreme” hostility toward Pyongyang.

Kim Yo Jong also lobbed personal insults toward U.S. President Joe Biden, who after a summit Wednesday with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol stated that any North Korean nuclear attack on the U.S. or its allies would “result in the end of whatever regime” took such action.

Biden’s meeting with Yoon in Washington came amid heightened tensions in the Korean Peninsula as the pace of both the North Korean weapons demonstrations and the combined U.S.-South Korean military exercises have increased in a cycle of tit-for-tat.

Since the start of 2022, North Korea has test-fired around 100 missiles, including multiple demonstrations of intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to reach the U.S. mainland and a slew of short-range launches the North described as simulated nuclear strikes on South Korea.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is widely expected to up the ante in the coming weeks or months as he continues to accelerate a campaign aimed at cementing the North’s status as a nuclear power and eventually negotiating U.S. economic and security concessions from a position of strength.

During their summit, Biden and Yoon announced new nuclear deterrence efforts that call for periodically docking U.S. nuclear-armed submarines in South Korea for the first time in decades and bolstering training between the two countries. They also committed to plans for bilateral presidential consultations in the event of a North Korean nuclear attack, the establishment of a nuclear consultative group and improved sharing of information on nuclear and strategic weapons operation plans.

In her comments published on state media, Kim Yo Jong said the U.S.-South Korean agreement reflected the allies’ “most hostile and aggressive will of action” against the North and will push regional peace and security into “more serious danger.”

Kim Yo Jong, who is one of her brother’s top foreign policy officials, said the summit further strengthened the North’s conviction to enhance its nuclear arms capabilities. She said it would be especially important for the North to perfect the “second mission of the nuclear war deterrent,” in an apparent reference to the country’s escalatory nuclear doctrine that calls for preemptive nuclear strikes over a broad range of scenarios where it may perceive its leadership as under threat.

She lashed out at Biden over his blunt warning that North Korean nuclear aggression would result in the end of its regime, calling him senile and “too miscalculating and irresponsibly brave.” However, she said the North wouldn’t simply dismiss his words as a “nonsensical remark from the person in his dotage.”

“When we consider that this expression was personally used by the president of the U.S., our most hostile adversary, it is threatening rhetoric for which he should be prepared for far too great an after-storm,” she said.

She called Yoon a “fool” over his efforts to strengthen South Korea’s defense in conjunction with its alliance with the United States and bolster the South’s own conventional missile capabilities, saying he was putting his absolute trust in the U.S. despite getting only “nominal” promises in return.

South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, described her comments as “absurd” and insisted that they convey the North’s “nervousness and frustration” over the allies’ efforts to strengthen nuclear deterrence.

Kim Yo Jong did not specify the actions the North is planning to take in response to the outcome of the U.S.-South Korea summit.

Kim Dong-yub, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said the North will likely dial up military exercises involving its purported nuclear-capable missiles to demonstrate preemptive strike capabilities. The North may also stage tests of submarine-launched ballistic missile systems in response to the U.S. plans to send nuclear-armed submarines to the South, he said.

Kim Jong Un said this month that the country has built its first military spy satellite, which will be launched at an unspecified date. The launch would almost certainly be seen by its rivals as a banned test of long-range missile technology.

Facing growing North Korean threats, Yoon has been seeking stronger reassurances from the United States that it would swiftly and decisively use its nuclear weapons if the South comes under a North Korean nuclear attack.

His government has also been expanding military training with the U.S., which included the allies’ biggest field exercises in years last month and separate drills involving a U.S. aircraft carrier battle group and advanced warplanes, including nuclear-capable B-52 bombers and F-35 fighter jets. 

Law enforcement officers were going door-to-door Sunday searching for clues about a gunman who fled after killing five people in a rural Texas town after his neighbors asked him to stop firing off rounds in his yard.

The alleged shooter, Francisco Oropesa, 38, was considered armed and dangerous after fleeing the area Friday, likely on foot, San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers said late Saturday. He said authorities had widened the search to 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the scene of the shooting.

Investigators found clothes and a phone while combing a rural area that includes dense layers of forest, but tracking dogs lost the scent, Capers said. Authorities were able to identify Oropesa by an identity card issued by Mexican authorities to citizens who reside outside the country, as well as doorbell camera footage. He said police have also interviewed the suspect’s wife.

Police recovered the AR-15-style rifle that Oropesa allegedly used in the shootings, but authorities were not sure if he was carrying another weapon, the sheriff said. There were other weapons in the suspect’s home, he said.

“He could be anywhere now,” Capers said.

The attack happened near the town of Cleveland, north of Houston, on a street where some residents say neighbors often unwind by firing off guns.

It was a much quieter scene Sunday. Police crime scene tape had been removed from around the victims’ home. Some people stopped by to leave flowers.

An FBI agent, several Texas Department of Public Safety troopers and other officers could be seen walking around the neighborhood, going door-to-door and trying to speak with neighbors. The agent and officers declined to comment about what they were doing.

As the troopers were speaking to residents at one house, a red truck pulling a travel trailer drove through the neighborhood. One trooper stopped the truck and asked the driver, “Mind if I take a look inside the truck?”

The driver agreed and allowed the trooper to go inside the vehicle. After inspecting the trailer, the trooper let the driver continue on his way.

Veronica Pineda, 34, who lives across the street from the suspect’s home, said authorities asked if they could search her property to see if he might be hiding there.

“That’s good for them to do that,” said the mother of five, adding that she remained fearful because the gunman hasn’t yet been captured.

“It is kind of scary. You never know where he can be. I don’t think he will be here anymore,” she said.

She said she didn’t know Oropesa well but occasionally saw him, his wife and son ride their horses on the street and believes the family have lived there five or six years. Pineda said neighbors have called authorities in the past to complain about the firing of weapons.

The victims of Friday’s shooting were between the ages of 8 and 31 years old and all were believed to be from Honduras, Capers said. All were shot “from the neck up,” he said. A GoFundMe page was set up to repatriate the bodies of two victims, a mother and son, to their native country.

Enrique Reina, Honduras’ secretary of foreign affairs and international cooperation, said on Twitter that the Honduran Consulate in Houston was contacting the families in connection with the repatriation of remains as well as U.S. authorities to keep apprised of the investigation.

The suspect’s last name was originally given as Oropeza by authorities, but the FBI in Houston said in a Tweet on Sunday that it was now referring to him as Oropesa to “better reflect his identity in law enforcement systems.” The FBI said the case “remains a fluid investigation.”

The attack was the latest act of gun violence in what has been a record pace of mass shootings in the U.S. so far this year, some of which have also involved semiautomatic rifles.

Capers said there were 10 people in the house — some of whom had just moved there earlier in the week — but no one else was injured. He said two of the victims were found in a bedroom laying over two children in an apparent attempt to shield them.

A total of three children found covered in blood in the home were taken to a hospital but found to be uninjured, Capers said.

FBI spokesperson Christina Garza said investigators do not believe those at the home were members of a single family. The victims were identified as Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25; Diana Velazquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31; Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18; and Daniel Enrique Laso, 8.

The confrontation came after the neighbors walked up to a fence and asking the suspect to stop shooting rounds, Capers said. He said the suspect responded by telling them that it was his property. Doorbell video captured him walking up to the front door with a rifle.

The shooting took place on a rural pothole-riddled street where single-story homes sit on 1-acre lots and are surrounded by a thick canopy of trees. A horse could be seen behind the victims’ home, while in the front yard of Oropesa’s house a dog and chickens wandered about.

Rene Arevalo Sr., who lives a few houses down, said he heard gunshots around midnight but didn’t think anything of it.

“It’s a normal thing people do around here, especially on Fridays after work,” Arevalo said. “They get home and start drinking in their backyards and shooting out there.”

Pope Francis said Sunday the Vatican was willing to help facilitate the return of Ukrainian children taken to Russia during the war. He said, the Holy See had already helped mediate some prisoner exchanges and would do “all that is humanly possible” to reunite families.

“All human gestures help. Gestures of cruelty don’t help,” Francis said during an airborne news conference en route home from Hungary.

Francis also revealed a secret peace “mission” was underway. However, he gave no details when asked whether he spoke about peace initiatives during his talks in Budapest this weekend with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban or the representative of the Russian Orthodox Church in Hungary.

“I’m available to do anything,” Francis said. “There’s a mission that’s not public that’s underway; when it’s public I’ll talk about it.”

The International Criminal Court last month issued an arrest warrant for Russia President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s children’s commissioner, accusing them of war crimes for abducting children from Ukraine.

Russia has denied any wrongdoing, contending the children were moved for their safety.

Last week Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal met with Francis at the Vatican and asked him to help return Ukrainian children taken following the Russian invasion.

“I asked His Holiness to help us return home Ukrainians, Ukrainian children who are detained, arrested, and criminally deported to Russia,” Shmyhal told the Foreign Press Association after the audience.

Francis recalled that the Holy See had facilitated some prisoner exchanges, working through embassies, and was open to Ukraine’s request to reunite Ukrainian children with their families.

The prisoner exchanges “went well. I think it could go well also for this. It’s important,” he said of the family reunifications. “The Holy See is available to do it because it’s the right thing,” he added. “We have to do all that is humanly possible.” 

Relatives and friends cried next to coffins Sunday as they buried children and others killed in a Russian missile attack on this central Ukrainian city, while fighting claimed more lives elsewhere.

Almost all of the 23 victims of the attack Friday died when two missiles slammed into an apartment building in Uman. Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said six children were among the dead.

Mykhayl Shulha, 6, cried and hugged relatives next to the coffin of his 11-year-old sister Sofia Shulha during Sunday’s funeral, while others paid respects to a 17-year-old boy.

As mourners held candles, crossed themselves and sang, the priest at the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God “Quick to Hear” waved a vessel containing incense over the coffins. He said the deaths had hit the entire community hard.

“I live nearby,” said Father Fyodor Botsu. “I personally knew the children, the littlest, from when they were very young, and I personally baptized them in this church. I’m worried with everyone since I have children and I’m a citizen of this country and have been living in this city for 15 years.”

He said he prayed “that the war should end, and peace should come to our homes, city and country.”

At the damaged building in Uman, people brought flowers and photos of the victims.

Russia’s 14-month-long war brought more deaths elsewhere Sunday.

The governor of a Russian region bordering Ukraine said four people were killed in a Ukrainian rocket attack. The rockets hit homes in the village of Suzemka, nine kilometers from the Ukrainian border, said Bryansk regional governor Alexander Bogomaz. He said two other residents were injured and that defense systems had knocked down some of the incoming shells.

Bryansk and the neighboring Belgorod region have experienced sporadic cross-border shelling throughout the war. In March, two people were reported killed in what officials said was an incursion by Ukrainian saboteurs in the Bryansk region.

Also Sunday, Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin said his Kherson region in Ukraine came under Russian artillery fire 27 times in the past 24 hours, killing one civilian.

An expected spring counteroffensive by Ukraine could be concentrated in the Kherson region, a gateway to Crimea and other Russian-occupied territory in the southern Ukrainian mainland. Ukrainian forces drove Russian forces out of the regional capital Kherson last year, a significant defeat for Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymy Zelenskyy said the counteroffensive wouldn’t wait for the delivery of all promised military equipment.

“I would have really wanted to wait for everything that was promised,” Zelenskyy told Finnish, Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian journalists. “But it happens that the terms (of weapons deliveries and counteroffensive), unfortunately, do not coincide a little bit. And, I will say frankly, we pay attention to the weather.”

Ukraine is particularly hopeful that it will receive Western fighter jets, but Zelenskyy said his forces wouldn’t delay the counteroffensive for that, so as not to “reassure Russia that we still have a few months to train on the planes, and only then will we start.”

Zelenskyy said he spoke Sunday with French President Emmanuel Macron about the weapons supply and was pleased with its “speed and specificity.”

Macron’s office said he reiterated France’s commitment to provide Ukraine “all the aid necessary to restore its sovereignty and territorial integrity,” and discussed long-term European military aid.

The head of the Wagner mercenary group that is leading Russia’s battle in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut gave an even more precise timetable for the Ukrainian counteroffensive. The Ukrainian military will launch the counteroffensive by May 15 because by then strong rains will have stopped and the soil will be dry enough for tanks and artillery to move, Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a video interview with a Russian journalist posted Saturday.

In other battlefield developments, Ukraine’s northern command said the Sumy and Chernihiv regions, which border Bryansk and Belgorod, came under fire 11 times Sunday night.

In the Dnipropetrovsk region, a 48-year-old resident of Nikopol was killed, and two were injured, in Russian shelling, according to Gov. Serhii Lysak. He said six multi-story buildings and six private houses were damaged, as well as several other buildings, gas pipelines, and a power line.

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