Rebels blow up historic hotel in Syria’s Aleppo as Homs evacuation completed
HOMS, Syria — With a gigantic explosion, Syrian rebels on Thursday leveled a historic hotel being used as an army base in the northern city of Aleppo by detonating bomb-packed tunnels beneath it, activists and militants said.
The blast near Aleppo’s medieval citadel, an imposing city landmark that was once swarming with tourists, killed an unknown number of soldiers. It turned the Carlton Hotel, known for its elegant architecture and proximity to the citadel, into a pile of rubble.
The attack was a powerful statement that the rebels could still deal heavy blows elsewhere in Syria even as they withdrew from Homs, surrendering that city to President Bashar Assad’s forces.
South Korean prosecutors seek to arrest president of sunken ferry’s owner
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean prosecutors are seeking to formally arrest the head of the company that owns a doomed ferry in part of their investigation into its sinking last month that left more than 300 people, mostly high school students, dead or missing, officials said Friday.
Prosecutors asked a court late Thursday to issue an arrest warrant for Kim Han-sik, president of Chonghaejin Marine Co. Ltd, over allegations of cargo overloading, according to a judge at the court in the southern port city of Mokpo.
The Mokpo court will review the request Friday to determine whether to approve Kim’s arrest.
Oklahoma appeals court agrees to 6-month stay of execution after botched lethal injection
OKLAHOMA CITY — The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals agreed Thursday to a six-month stay of execution for a death row inmate while an investigation is conducted into last week’s botched lethal injection.
The court reset the execution date of inmate Charles Warner to Nov. 13. Warner’s attorneys requested the delay, and state Attorney General Scott Pruitt said in a court filing Thursday he wouldn’t object.
While the stay only applies to Warner, the attorney general and governor have said Oklahoma will not carry out any executions until the investigation is finished, which is expected to take at least eight weeks.
“If the state is allowed to enforce the ultimate penalty of death, it is incumbent upon this court to allow the state the time necessary to ensure that the penalty is carried out in a constitutionally sound manner,” Justice Charles Johnson wrote in a specially concurring opinion.
Warner was scheduled to be executed the same night as Clayton Lockett last week in what would have been the state’s first double execution since 1937. But Lockett’s vein collapsed during his lethal injection, prompting prison officials to halt the execution. He later died of a heart attack.
Authorities: 4 people found dead in burned Florida home were shot; gun registered to father
TAMPA, Fla. — A man, his wife and their two teenage children were shot before the million-dollar home they were renting burned down in what investigators called arson, a fire perhaps exacerbated by fireworks and gasoline, authorities said Thursday.
Autopsies were still being completed to determine how they died, but investigators have said they are looking into the possibility of a murder-suicide. Authorities recovered a gun at the home registered to Darrin Campbell and he bought an “exceedingly large amount” of fireworks and gas cans days before the fire, Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Col. Donna Lusczynski said.
Authorities still have not positively identified the bodies, but the family has not been accounted for and a relative said they were inside the home when it burned.
By wire sources