Burial ground under the Alamo stirs a Texas feud
On a busy day, thousands of visitors explore the Alamo, site of an 1836 battle in the Texas Revolution. But long before that battle, Spanish missionaries used the site, known as Mission San Antonio de Valero, to spread Christianity among Native Americans. People from different tribes built the Alamo, and missionaries buried many converts, as well as colonists from Mexico and Spain, around or under the mission. Now, a new battle over the Alamo is brewing, as Native Americans and descendants of some of San Antonio’s founding families seek protections for the human remains while Texas officials press ahead with a $400 million renovation plan.
A parade returns to a city thankful for normal
Under the giant helium balloons bobbing across Manhattan during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on Thursday morning, people in the crowd called out to one another. Shouts of “Happy Thanksgiving!” echoed down Central Park West, all the way to Herald Square. A year after the virus forced the parade into a single, spectator-free block, the words felt powerful. And in a city reeling from the loss of so many New Yorkers over the past 20 months, no word encapsulated the emotion of those who were there better than “thankful.” The avenues were packed with 4,500 volunteers towing 15 giant helium balloons and tossing confetti.
GOP cements hold on legislatures in battleground states
Republicans are locking in newly gerrymandered maps for the legislatures in Texas, North Carolina, Ohio and Georgia that are set to secure the party’s control in the statehouse chambers over the next decade, fortifying the GOP against even the most sweeping potential Democratic wave elections. Although much of the attention on this year’s redistricting process has focused on gerrymandered congressional maps, the new maps being drafted in state legislatures have been just as distorted. With the federal government gridlocked, these legislatures now serve as the country’s policy laboratory, crafting bills on abortion, guns, voting restrictions and other issues that shape the national political debate.
Waukesha suspect’s previous release agitates efforts to reduce bail
In early November, prosecutors in the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office asked that bond for a 39-year-old repeat offender accused of brutalizing his girlfriend, then running over her with an SUV, be set at only $1,000. That call initiated a succession of events that ended, according to police, with that man, Darrell E. Brooks Jr., ramming his maroon Ford Escape through the barricades of a Christmas parade in nearby Waukesha, killing six people and injuring dozens more. The backlash raised fears that the fatal episode would set back efforts across the country geared at reducing the incarceration of poor defendants awaiting trial because they cannot afford bail.
Newark officer hit a pedestrian with his car, then took the body home, prosecutors say
Newark, New Jersey, police officer was charged with reckless vehicular homicide, prosecutors said on Wednesday, accusing the man of hitting a pedestrian with his personal car and briefly taking the body home, where he discussed with his mother what to do with it. The officer, Louis Santiago of the Newark Police Department, was off duty when his Honda Accord drifted into the northbound shoulder of the Garden State Parkway around 3 a.m. on Nov. 1, the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office said in a news release issued Wednesday. His car struck Damian Z. Dymka, 29, a nurse from Bergen County.
EU regulator approves Pfizer vaccine for children 5-11
The European Medicines Agency on Thursday approved the use of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine for children ages 5 to 11, bringing European governments one step closer to inoculating young children. The recommendation of the European Union’s drug regulator will now be sent to the European Commission, the bloc’s administrative arm, for final approval, which it is expected to do swiftly. It will then be up to the national health authorities to decide if and when they will start inoculating young children. The decision comes amid a COVID-19 spike across the bloc.
Explosion outside school kills 8 in Somalia’s capital
A large explosion outside a school in Somalia’s capital Thursday killed at least eight people and injured 17 others, police said. A vehicle packed with explosives detonated around 7:30 a.m., targeting a convoy belonging to a security firm that guards U.N. staff, according to Abdifatah Aden Hassan, a police spokesperson. No U.N. staff members were injured in the blast, he said. A news website affiliated with al-Shabab, an al-Qaida-linked extremist group, said the group took responsibility for the attack. The group has stepped up its attacks in recent weeks, carrying out suicide bombings, ambushes and assassinations in Somalia.
Climate change threatens the Smithsonian
Because of climate change, the Smithsonian’s buildings are vulnerable to flooding, and some could eventually be underwater. An assessment of the Smithsonian’s vulnerabilities, released last month, reveals the scale of the challenge: Not only are artifacts stored in basements in danger, but floods could knock out electrical and ventilation systems in the basements that keep the humidity at the right level. Smithsonian officials want to build floodgates and other defenses and move some collections to a proposed site in Maryland. But Congress has yet to fund many of those efforts, and the changes would take years to implement. Until then, the Smithsonian is protecting the nation’s treasures with sandbags.
Russian mine blast kills dozens
A gas buildup and explosion in a Siberian coal mine Thursday killed at least 52 people, Russian officials said. The accident occurred at the Listvyazhnaya mine in the Kemerovo region of Russia, about 2,200 miles east of Moscow, after a ventilation shaft began filling with gas, Russia’s Investigative Committee reported. Authorities said they had been forced to suspend rescue operations late Thursday because of a high concentration of methane in the mine. The committee said it had opened a criminal investigation into the disaster and had already arrested the mine’s director, his deputy and the head of the mine’s sector where the incident occurred.
Suspect is charged with murder in case of two vanished campers
Twenty months ago, Russell Hill and Carol Clay disappeared during a camping trip in the remote high country of Australia’s Victoria state. Their campsite was found burned to the ground, while deer carcasses were scattered around the valley. On Thursday, the mystery of what had happened to them came nearer to resolution when police announced that a suspect had been charged with their killings. The announcement came three days after police arrested Greg Lynn, 55. He will appear at a local court Friday morning, said Bob Hill, the Victoria police assistant commissioner. He said police had not located the bodies of Hill and Clay.