Australian PM calls up reservists as fire threats escalate
SYDNEY — Australia’s prime minister called up about 3,000 reservists as the threat of wildfires escalated Saturday in at least three states with two more deaths, and strong winds and high temperatures were forecast to bring flames to populated areas including the suburbs of Sydney.
Scott Morrison said 23 deaths have been confirmed so far this summer, including the two in a blaze on a highway on Kangaroo Island off the coast of South Australia. “We are facing another extremely difficult next 24 hours,” he told a televised news conference.
“In recent times, particularly over the course of the balance of this week, we have seen this disaster escalate to an entirely new level,” Morrison said.
He also confirmed that his scheduled visits to India and Japan later this month have been postponed. He was due to visit India from Jan. 13-16 and Japan immediately afterwards. Morrison came under fire for taking a family vacation in Hawaii as the wildfire crisis unfolded in December.
“Just around half an hour ago the governor general signed off on the call-out of the Australian Defence Force Reserve to search and bring every possible capability to bear by deploying army brigades to fire-affected communities,” he said.
Ex-Nissan chief made escape to Beirut aboard charter flights
ANKARA, Turkey — Charter flights that spirited ex-Nissan chief Carlos Ghosn from Japan to Istanbul and from there to Beirut — an escape made possible with the help of an airline employee who falsified records. Security camera footage reportedly showing he simply walked out of his Tokyo home hours before fleeing the country.
Details emerged Friday of the bizarre path to freedom that allowed the ex-Nissan boss to jump $14 million bail, seemingly under the noses of Japanese authorities, and evade charges of financial misconduct that could carry a jail sentence of up to 15 years.
The improbable weekend escape has confounded and embarrassed Japanese authorities, even setting off wild speculation that Ghosn was carted off inside a musical instrument case from his home, which was under 24-hour surveillance.
But on Friday, Japanese public broadcaster NHK TV cited investigative sources as saying security footage showed he simply walked out of the house alone around noon on Sunday. Details also emerged about the route the fallen auto industry executive took to Lebanon, where he grew up and is considered something of a national hero.
Turkish airline company MNG Jet said that two of its planes were used illegally in Ghosn’s escape, first flying him from Osaka, Japan, to Istanbul, and then on to Beirut, where he arrived Monday and has not been seen since.
Methodists propose split in gay marriage, clergy impasse
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — United Methodist Church leaders from around the world and across ideological divides unveiled a plan Friday for a new conservative denomination that would split from the church in an attempt to resolve a decades-long dispute over gay marriage and gay clergy.
The proposal, called “A Protocol of Reconciliation &Grace Through Separation,” envisions an amicable separation in which conservative churches forming a new denomination would retain their assets. The new denomination also would receive $25 million.
The proposal was signed in December by a 16-member panel, who worked with a mediator and began meeting in October. The panel was formed after it became clear the impasse over LGBTQ issues was irreconcilable. The next step could come at the church’s General Conference in May.
Methodist Bishop Karen Oliveto, the denomination’s first openly gay bishop, said the United Methodist Church leadership “was clearly at a point in which we couldn’t agree to disagree” over same-sex relationships. “I’m actually really sad that we couldn’t build a bridge that could have provided a witness to the world of what unity amid diversity and disagreement could look like.” Oliveto was challenged by the denomination’s highest court, the Judicial Council, in 2017 when it declared that the bishop’s consecration “was incompatible with church law.”
From wire sources
However, Oliveto was allowed to remain as the resident bishop of the Mountain Sky Conference, which includes United Methodist churches in Colorado, Montana, Utah, Wyoming and a section of Idaho. Asked what a post-separation world looks like for the church to move forward, Oliveto said, “We are no longer using LGBTQ people as scapegoats.”
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AP Exclusive: Sierra skeleton ID’d as ‘ghost of Manzanar’
LOS ANGELES — A skeleton found by hikers this fall near California’s second-highest peak was identified Friday as a Japanese American artist who had left the Manzanar internment camp to paint in the mountains in the waning days of World War II.
The Inyo County sheriff used DNA to identify the remains of Giichi Matsumura, who succumbed to the elements during a freak summer snow storm while on a hiking trip with other members of the camp. Matsumura had apparently stopped to paint a watercolor while the other men, a group of anglers, continued toward a lake to fish.
His body wasn’t found for another month, and the tragedy was overshadowed in the immediate days after his Aug. 2, 1945 disappearance when the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb, hastening Japan’s surrender in the war. Matsumura was one of more than 1,800 detainees who died in the 10 prison camps in the West, though it’s one of the more unusual deaths.
While his burial in the mountains was well known among members of the camp and his family, the story faded over time and the location of the grave site in a remote boulder-strewn area 12,000 feet above sea level was lost to time.
Lori Matsumura, the granddaughter who provided the DNA sample, was surprised when Sgt. Nate Derr of the Inyo County sheriff’s office contacted her to say they believed her grandfather’s remains had been discovered. After all, he had been found nearly 75 years ago and buried.