US military focusing on Islamic State cell behind attack at Kabul airport
Four months after a suicide bomber killed scores of people, including 13 American service members, outside the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, U.S. and foreign intelligence officials have pieced together a profile of the assailant. Military commanders say they are using that information to focus on an Islamic State cell that they believe was involved in the attack. The Islamic State group identified the suicide bomber as Abdul Rahman al-Logari. U.S. officials said he was a former engineering student who was one of several thousand militants freed from at least two high-security prisons after the Taliban seized control of Kabul on Aug. 15.
Official: Nearly 1K homes destroyed in Colorado wildfire
A Colorado official says nearly 1,000 homes were destroyed, hundreds more were damaged, and that three people are missing after a wildfire charred numerous neighborhoods in a suburban area at the base of the Rocky Mountains northwest of Denver. Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle also said Saturday that investigators are still trying to find the cause of the blaze that erupted Thursday. Officials had previously estimated that at least 500 homes — and possibly 1,000 — were destroyed. They also announced earlier Saturday that two people were missing.
Beaches closed after 7M gallons of sewage spill in Los Angeles County
About 7 million gallons of untreated sewage have spilled into a flood-control waterway in Los Angeles County since Thursday afternoon, prompting at least five beaches to close, an official with the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts said. The spill began after a concrete pipe 48 inches in diameter in Carson collapsed, an agency spokesperson said. The sewage leaked out of a maintenance hole on 212th Street on Thursday evening and much of Friday. From there, the waste traveled through storm drain pipes and toward the Dominguez Channel, a flood-control waterway that discharges into Los Angeles Harbor. Officials are investigating what caused the pipe, built in the 1960s, to collapse.
At least 12 dead in stampede at Hindu shrine in Kashmir
At least 12 people were killed and more than a dozen were injured in a stampede early Saturday near the city of Jammu in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir as thousands of devotees were paying obeisance at a famous Hindu shrine to mark the beginning of the new year. Hundreds of people were packed inside a corridor of the shrine, Mata Vaishno Devi, in the hilly town of Katra, when at about 2:30 a.m., a clash broke out outside, leading to the stampede, police officials said. Deadly stampedes during religious pilgrimages and festivals are common in India, where public-safety measures are often flouted by temple authorities.
S. Africa bids farewell to Desmond Tutu
In an almost empty cathedral, South Africa said farewell Saturday to Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Tutu’s death last Sunday at age 90 was followed by a week of mourning as the world remembered his powerful role both in opposing apartheid and in promoting unity and reconciliation after its defeat. But his funeral in a rain-soaked Cape Town, where pandemic regulations limited attendance to 100 and discouraged crowds outside, was far more subdued than the packed stadiums and parade of dignitaries that mourned South Africa’s other Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Nelson Mandela. It was exactly what the archbishop had wanted.
Kim Jong Un’s New Year resolution: More food for North Korea
Kim Jong Un has begun his second decade as North Korea’s leader with a vow to alleviate the country’s chronic food shortages, state media reported Saturday — a problem he inherited from his late father 10 years ago and has yet to fix. Kim, 37, presided over a five-day meeting of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party, which drew more attention than usual because it came at the end of his first decade in power. On New Year’s Day, the North’s state media carried reports on the meeting. They mentioned no diplomatic overtures from Kim toward the United States or South Korea. But space was devoted to the subject of food shortages.
