Recovery of 6 climbers who fell at Mount Rainier not certain, area is dangerous
MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK, Wash. — Two Seattle-based climbing guides and four clients set out Monday to summit Mount Rainier in Washington state, following one of the most technical and physically grueling routes to the peak.
They were last heard from Wednesday at 6 p.m. when the guides checked in with their company, Alpine Ascents International, by satellite phone. The group failed to return Friday as planned.
Park officials believe the group fell 3,300 feet from their last known whereabouts at 12,800 feet on Liberty Ridge. They are presumed to be dead in one of the worst alpine accidents on the mountain in decades.
Glenn Kessler, the park’s acting aviation manager, said “they are most likely buried,” making recovery efforts even more challenging. They may be in an area too hazardous for rescuers to reach on the ground.
“We will likely fly over something this week if we have an aircraft,” to monitor the situation, he said.
Prosecutors: Suspect in Jewish museum killings was in Syria, tried to film shooting
PARIS — A suspected French jihadist who spent time in Syria has been arrested over the shooting deaths of three people at a Belgian Jewish museum, prosecutors said Sunday, crystalizing fears that European radicals will parlay their experiences in Syria into terrorism back home.
When Mehdi Nemmouche was arrested in southern France on Friday, he was in possession of firearms, a large quantity of ammunition and a video claiming responsibility for the May 24 attack at the Jewish Museum in Brussels, a Belgian prosecutor said.
In a one-minute rampage that deeply shook Europe’s Jewish community, a gunman opened fire at the Brussels museum. In addition to the fatalities, another person was gravely wounded.
Authorities raised anti-terror alert levels as they searched for the attacker. But it was ultimately a customs inspection in the French port city of Marseille that turned up Nemmouche, as he disembarked from a bus coming from Amsterdam, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said.
The suspect had a revolver and a retractable automatic weapon like those used in the Brussels attack, and ballistics analyses were underway to determine if they were the same weapons, Molins said.
At least one of the weapons was wrapped up in a white sheet scrawled with the name of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, an extremist group fighting in Syria, Molins said. The group has also waged attacks in Iraq.
Nemmouche, a French-born 29-year-old from the northern city of Roubaix, had a criminal record, with seven convictions for crimes like attempted robbery — but nothing related to terrorism, Molins said.
He said the suspect became radicalized in prison, and left for Syria just three weeks after his last prison stay in late 2012, going to Syria via Brussels, London and Istanbul. He said the suspect had spent about a year in Syria, though it is unclear why he went and what he did while there.
Rare ‘mono mono’ twins are gaining weight and could be home before Father’s Day
CINCINNATI — An Ohio couple is getting a taste of what it’s like to be celebrity parents.
The identical twins, born sharing the same amniotic sac and placenta, are making progress toward going home from the hospital, their parents say. A photo showing twins Jenna and Jillian holding hands taken shortly after birth May 9 at Akron General Medical Center went viral.
“It’s still been crazy,” father Bill Thistlethwaite said. “Everywhere we go, someone saw it. People are still talking about it.”
He said he and his wife, Sarah, were approached by people Saturday while having breakfast at a diner in their hometown of Orrville before going to visit the girls. They want to know how the twins are doing and express their good wishes, he said.
Both girls are taking full bottles and have gained weight, each now at 5 pounds or more.
By wire sources