Feared drowning of 400 migrants raises alarms in Europe
MILAN — The feared drowning of 400 migrants in a shipwreck this week in the Mediterranean Sea — one of the deadliest such tragedies in the last decade — raised alarms Wednesday amid an unprecedented wave of migration toward Europe from Africa and the Middle East.
The U.N. refugee agency expressed shock at the scale of the deaths in Monday’s capsizing and renewed calls on European governments to redouble search and rescue efforts, while the International Organization for Migration maintained that the situation had reached “crisis proportions.”
The Italian Coast Guard rescued some 140 people of the coast of Libya on Monday and recovered nine bodies, but could see immediately from the size of the capsized smuggler’s boat that there had likely been hundreds more on board.
The rescue was made during a five-day surge that saw Italian ships save nearly 10,000 people at sea since Friday — an unprecedented rate in such a short period, according to Cmdr. Filippo Marini, a Coast Guard spokesman. The number is only likely to grow, with summer weather encouraging even more people fleeing poverty and conflict to make the perilous crossing.
Small copter lands on West Lawn of Capitol
WASHINGTON — Police arrested a man who steered his tiny aircraft onto the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol after flying through restricted airspace around the National Mall Wednesday.
One congressional official identified the pilot as Doug Hughes, a Florida Postal Service worker who took responsibility for the stunt on a website where he said he was delivering letters to all 535 members of Congress in order to draw attention to campaign finance corruption.
The Senate aide said Capitol Police knew of the plan shortly before Hughes took off, and said he had previously been interviewed by the U.S. Secret Service. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the investigation. Capitol Police declined to confirm the man’s identity.
Capitol Police identified the open-air aircraft, which sported the U.S. Postal Service logo and landed about half a city block from the Capitol building, as a “gyrocopter with a single occupant.” About two hours after the device had landed, police announced that a bomb squad had cleared it and nothing hazardous had been found. The authorities then moved it off the Capitol lawn to a secure location.
3,000-pound bullet
TUCSON, Ariz. — Dramatic dash-cam videos of an arrest in Arizona put the public in the driver’s seat as an officer plows his cruiser into a rifle-toting robbery suspect at high speed. Policing experts on Wednesday called the officer’s tactics unconventional and even outrageous, but justified, given the circumstances.
The images police released Tuesday provoked intense responses among tens of thousands of people after they were posted on the Internet, providing a new angle to the national debate over policing.
Prosecutors cleared Marana Police Officer Michael Rapiejko of any wrongdoing after he swerved around another officer who had been cautiously tailing the robbery suspect, then accelerated and rammed into the man’s back on Feb. 19.
The videos show Mario Valencia, 36, cart-wheeling through the air in the instant before the cruiser breaks through a retaining wall, shattering its windshield. Rapiejko, 34, and other officers then jump out from all over, guns drawn, to make sure Valencia stays down.
By wire sources