The Jim Bakker Show

Syrian war monitor says 465,000 killed in six years of fighting

A graveyard is pictured at night in Aleppo, Syria

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said on Monday there are so far about 465,000 people killed and missing in Syria’s civil war.

The war began six years ago on Wednesday with protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s government. It has since dragged in global and regional powers, allowed Islamic State to grab huge tracts of territory and caused the biggest refugee crisis since the second world war.

The Observatory said it had documented the deaths of more than 321,000 people since the start of the war and more than 145,000 others had been reported as missing.

Among those killed are more than 96,000 civilians, said the Observatory, which has used a network of contacts across the country to maintain a count of casualties since near the start of the conflict.

It said government forces and their allies had killed more than 83,500 civilians, including more than 27,500 in air strikes and 14,600 under torture in prison.

Rebel shelling had killed more than 7,000 civilians, the Observatory said.

The Islamic State jihadist group has killed more than 3,700 civilians, air strikes by the U.S.-led coalition have killed 920 civilians and Turkey, which is backing rebels in northern Syria, has killed more than 500 civilians, it added.

Syria’s government and Russia both deny targeting civilians or using torture or extrajudicial killings. Most rebel groups and Turkey also deny targeting civilians. The U.S.-led coalition says it tries hard to avoid civilian casualties and always investigates reports that it has done so.

(Reporting By Angus McDowall; Editing by Julia Glover)

Storm dumps snow, rain on U.S. Northeast; search on for Georgia toddler

relief workers look at area that was struck by tornado

(Reuters) – A powerful storm that killed at least 21 people in the southern United States over the weekend brought snow, heavy rain and gusty winds to the Northeast on Tuesday as searchers combed Georgia tornado wreckage for a missing toddler.

The storm, known as a nor’easter, dumped from 6 to 8 inches (15 to 20 cm) of snow on New York’s Catskills as well as mountains in Pennsylvania and New England, along with a heavy mix of freezing rain and sleet, said Brian Hurley, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

“A lot of places are seeing snowfall in the 2- to 4-inch (5- to 10-cm) range because not all of it is snow,” he said. Much of the Northeast was under winter storm warnings or advisories.

Wind gusts of more than 60 miles per hour (97 km per hour) also were recorded all along the East Coast, Hurley said. The high winds caused scattered power outages, with Eversource Energy reporting about 4,400 customers in New England without power.

The snow and ice is expected to taper off through Wednesday morning as the storm system heads into Canada’s Maritime provinces, the National Weather Service said.

School districts across the region canceled or delayed the start of classes due to icy roads. Local news outlets showed footage of snow-covered roads and vehicles thickly glazed with ice.

In southern Georgia, police with dogs searched through the ruins of the Piney Woods Mobile Home Park and adjacent woods near Albany for a 2-year-old boy missing since a tornado flattened the area on Sunday.

Search teams had looked all day Monday and through the night for the toddler. Local media said the child had slipped away from his mother before their home was destroyed.

The storm was part of the system that killed at least 21 people, 16 of them in Georgia, before roaring up the East Coast.

Another winter storm plowing east out of the Rocky Mountains could drop from 6 to 15 inches (15 to 38 cm) of snow on parts of South Dakota and Nebraska before weakening as it reaches the upper Midwest on Wednesday, Hurley said.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington, Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee and Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Scott Malone and Lisa Shumaker)

Small plane with six aboard vanishes over Lake Erie in Ohio

By Kim Palmer

CLEVELAND (Reuters) – Rescue crews searched Lake Erie on Friday for signs of a twin-engine plane carrying six people that went missing on Thursday night soon after taking off from an Ohio airport, officials said.

The 11-seat aircraft dropped off radar just before 11 p.m. local time after leaving Burke Lakefront Airport on the shore of Lake Erie north of downtown Cleveland, U.S. Coast Guard Chief of Response Michael Mullen told a news conference on Friday.

The Cessna Citation 525, bound for Ohio State University Airport, disappeared after flying about two miles over the lake, Mullen said.

John Fleming, 46, the chief executive of Columbus-based beverage distributor Superior Beverage Group, is believed to have been piloting the plane, the Columbus Dispatch reported.

Also on board were Fleming’s wife, their two teenage sons and two of their neighbors, the newspaper reported, citing an interview with Fleming’s father, John W. Fleming.

The group was returning to Columbus after attending the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball game against the Boston Celtics, the Dispatch reported.

ROUGH GOING

Mullen said a watercraft search for survivors had been halted on Thursday night due to 12 to 14 foot seas, but it resumed on Friday morning.

Lake Erie is the fourth-largest by surface area of North America’s five Great Lakes, and also the most shallow. It is 210 feet at its deepest point, which makes for rough and unpredictable waters.

“The seas have subsided a little bit,” Mullen said. “We also have better daylight at this particular time and better visibility.”

Coast guard crews searched with boats, a helicopter and fixed-wing plane over a section of Lake Erie that is about 50 feet deep, Mullen said, adding that there were no signs of debris.

He said there was no evidence of an emergency call before communications with the aircraft stopped. He declined to identify the people on board.

The water temperature was around 35 degrees F, according to the National Weather Service.

Asked about the chances of survival considering the water temperature and high seas, Mullen said “it comes down to a person’s will to survive.”

(Reporting by Kim Palmer; Additional reporting by Laila Kearney in New York; Editing by Bernadette Baum, Toni Reinhold)

Rescue operations near end in Indonesia’s quake-stricken Aceh

Indonesian soldiers help to secure an area where rescue and salvage operations take place at a collapsed building following this week's strong earthquake in Meureudu, Pidie Jaya, Aceh province, Indonesia

By Tommy Ardiansyah and Djohan Widjaya

PIDIE JAYA, Indonesia (Reuters) – Indonesian officials said on Friday search and rescue operations were nearing an end three days after a powerful earthquake hit the northern province of Aceh, killing 100 people and leaving thousands homeless.

Wednesday’s 6.5 magnitude earthquake, which toppled dozens of buildings and injured hundreds of people, was the worst disaster to hit the region since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

A Muslim man weeps as he arrives for Friday prayers at Jami Quba mosque which collapsed during this week’s earthquake in Pidie Jaya, Aceh province, Indonesia December 9, 2016. REUTERS/Darren Whiteside

“We believe we have found 99 percent of the victims,” said Sutopo Nugroho, spokesman of the national disaster management agency.

The agency revised the death toll down to 100 from 102.

Hundreds of people in Aceh’s Pidie Jaya regency held Friday prayers outside mosques that had been reduced to rubble.

Many residents of the town of 140,000 have been sleeping in shelters and relief workers have been handing out food, water, and blankets.

President Joko Widodo visited survivors, including many getting treatment for broken bones in hospitals and tent clinics.

The province of Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra island, has declared a two-week state of emergency and the central government has pledged aid for recovery efforts.

A Dec. 26, 2004, earthquake and tsunami killed more than 120,000 people in Aceh.

In all, the 2004 tsunami killed 226,000 people along Indian Ocean shorelines.

(Writing by Kanupriya Kapoor; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Nearly 100 killed, more than 500 injured as massive quake hits Indonesia

Rescue workers and police remove a victim from a collapsed building following an earthquake in Lueng Putu, Pidie Jaya in the northern province of Aceh, Indonesia

PIDIE JAYA, Indonesia (Reuters) – Nearly 100 people were killed and hundreds injured in Indonesia on Wednesday when a strong earthquake hit its Aceh province and rescuers used earth movers and bare hands to search for survivors in scores of toppled buildings.

Medical volunteers rushed in fading evening light to get people to hospitals, which were straining to cope with the influx of injured.

The Aceh provincial government said in a statement 93 people had died and more than 500 were injured, many seriously.

Sutopo Nugroho of Indonesia’s national disaster management agency, said a state of emergency had been declared in Aceh, which sits on the northern tip of Sumatra island.

“We are now focusing on searching for victims and possible survivors,” said Nugroho. His agency put the death toll at 94.

People walk near a collapsed mosque following an earthquake in Meuredu, Pidie Jaya in the northern province of Aceh, Indonesia December 7, 2016 in this photo taken by Antara Foto. Antara Foto/ Irwansyah Putra/via REUTERS

Aceh was devastated by a massive earthquake and tsunami centered on its western coast near the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, on Dec. 26, 2004. That tsunami killed 226,000 people along Indian Ocean shorelines.

Officials urged people to sleep outdoors as twilight fell, in case aftershocks caused more damage to already precarious buildings.

President Joko Widodo was expected to visit the area on Thursday, his deputy told media.

Wednesday’s quake hit the east coast of the province, about 170 km (105 miles) from Banda Aceh. Nugroho said Aceh’s Pidie Jaya regency, with a population of about 140,000, was worst hit.

Many victims had suffered broken bones and gashes and had to be treated in hospital corridors and hastily erected disaster tents, a Reuters witness said.

Injured people receive medical attention in an emergency tent at a hospital following an earthquake in Sigli, Pidie regency, in the northern province of Aceh, Indonesia December 7, 2016 in this photo taken by Antara Foto. Antara Foto/Irwansyah Putra/via REUTERS

Television showed footage of flattened mosques, fallen electricity poles and crushed cars.

A Red Crescent volunteer said health workers were struggling.

“There aren’t enough medical staff,” the Red Crescent’s Muklis, who like many Indonesians uses one name, told TVOne.

Nugroho said more than 1,000 personnel, including military officers and volunteers, had been deployed to help in disaster relief.

A medical officer checks the condition of an injured child at a hospital following an earthquake in Sigli, Pidie regency, in the northern province of Aceh, Indonesia December 7, 2016 in this photo taken by Antara Foto. Antara Foto/Irwansyah Putra/via REUTERS

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake struck just after 5 a.m. (2200 GMT Tuesday) at a depth of 17 km (11 miles). No tsunami warning was issued.

At least five aftershocks were felt after the initial quake, the disaster management agency said.

The region suffered massive destruction in 2004 when a 9.2 magnitude quake triggered a tsunami that wiped out entire communities in Indonesia and other countries around the Indian Ocean.

Indonesia was the hardest hit, with more than 120,000 people killed in Aceh.

(Additional reporting by Fergus Jensen in JAKARTA and Reuters stringer in PIDIE JAYA; Writing by Kanupriya Kapoor; Editing by Paul Tait, Robert Birsel)

Nine dead, many missing, in California party fire

Firefighters exit a warehouse where a fire broke out during an electronic dance party late Friday evening, resulting in at least nine deaths and many unaccounted for in the Fruitvale district of Oakland, California, U.S

By Peter Henderson

OAKLAND, Calif. (Reuters) – At least nine people were dead and about 25 were unaccounted for after a massive fire broke out during a late-night party in a warehouse in Oakland, California, the city’s fire chief said on Saturday.

Fire officials were still trying to determine how the blaze started at about 11:30 p.m. on Friday, said Chief Teresa Deloach-Reed.

The roof of the two-story warehouse in the city’s Fruitvale district collapsed during the fire, complicating efforts to recover bodies, she told a press briefing.

Officials did not know if any of the 25 missing people were among the nine confirmed victims.

“There is a large majority of that building that has not been searched,” Deloach-Reed said during a press briefing.

“We are hoping that the number nine is what there is and that there are no more,” the fire chief said, referring to the number of known fatalities.

A charred wall is seen outside a warehouse after a fire broke out during an electronic dance party late Friday evening, resulting in at least nine deaths and many unaccounted for in the Fruitvale district of Oakland, California, U.S. December 3, 2016. REUTERS/Stephen Lam

Deloach-Reed said some of those who were missing may have brought themselves to the hospital or elsewhere. She said she did not know how many people were at the party.

The warehouse housed units where people lived and worked – makeshift artist studios carved out with partitions, the fire chief said. “A flea market of items” were inside, she said.

A Facebook event page showed 176 people planned to attend the party, which featured a performance by the electronic music act Golden Donna. The page, which listed 355 others as interested in going, carried posts from people who were either missing or accounted for.

Video footage posted on social media showed the structure engulfed in flames and encircled by fire vehicles pumping water into the building.

“It’s going to hit the city, it’s going to hit our organization,” Reed said. “It’s just going to be hard on everyone.”

(Additional reporting by David Bailey in Minneapolis; Writing by Frank McGurty; Editing by Alistair Bell)

Rescuers pull 15 out from China landslide, 32 missing

A rescue worker is seen next to an overturned car at the site of a landslide caused by heavy rains brought by Typhoon Megi, in Sucun Village, Lishui

BEIJING, Sept 29 (Reuters) – Rescuers have pulled 15 people alive from a landslide that slammed into a village in China’s eastern Zhejiang province after a typhoon but 32 people are still missing, state media said on Thursday.

Heavy rains brought by the remnants of Typhoon Megi caused the landslide to crash into Sucun village on Wednesday.

The microblog of official provincial news portal Zhejiang Online showed pictures of survivors being carried out on the backs of rescuers, while others dug through rubble to locate survivors.

It gave no details of those still missing other than to say one was an official who had been in the village to organise evacuations.

A mass of debris rolled down a lush mountain towards the small village, according to images posted on Zhejiang Online.

Mountainous Zhejiang, along with its neighbouring provinces, are frequently hit by typhoons at this time of year and are also highly susceptible to landslides.

Megi had already killed four people and injured more than 523 in Taiwan since it had roared in from the Pacific Ocean.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Paul Tait)

China floods kill 128 , 1.3 million evacuated, 40,000 buildings collapse

An aerial view shows that houses are flooded in villages in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, China, July 4, 2016.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Severe flooding across central and southern China over the past week has killed almost 130 people, damaged more than 1.9 million hectares of crops and led to direct economic losses of more than 38 billion yuan ($5.70 billion), state media said on Tuesday.

Premier Li Keqiang traveled on Tuesday to Anhui, one of the hardest-hit provinces, where he met residents and encouraged officials to do everything they could to protect lives and livelihoods. Li was also to visit Hunan province.

Heavy rainfall had killed 128 people across 11 provinces and regions and 42 people are missing, state news agency Xinhua reported.

More than 1.3 million people have been forced out of their homes, it said.

Weather forecasts predicted more downpours during what is traditionally China’s flood season.

Xinhua said more than 1.9 million hectares (4.7 million acres) of cropland had been damaged and another 295,000 hectares had been destroyed, resulting in direct economic losses of 38.2 billion yuan.

More than 40,000 buildings have also collapsed, it added.

It was not clear how that would affect the summer grain harvest, which was expected to reach 140 million tonnes this year.

The stormy weather also took a toll on farm animals.

In Anhui, the flooding killed some 7,100 hogs, 215 bulls and 5.14 million fowl, the China News Service reported.

In the southern province of Hunan, torrential rain and flooding had forced more than 100 trains to stop or take detours since midnight on Sunday, Xinhua reported.

In one city, about 3 tonnes of gasoline and diesel leaked from a petrol station on Monday, contaminating floodwater that flowed into a river, it said.

Water in 43 rivers in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River had exceeded warning levels and patrols were monitoring dykes, Xinhua quoted Chen Guiya, an official with the Yangtze River Water Resources Commission, as saying.

(Reporting by John Ruwitch; Addititional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Editing by Paul Tait, Robert Birsel)

Three missing in fiery Texas freight train collision

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – Three railroad workers are missing after two freight trains they were on collided in northern Texas on Tuesday, causing a huge fire, officials said.

The accident near Panhandle, about 30 miles (50 km) northeast of Amarillo, happened when the lead locomotives of two Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway Co [BNISF.UL] trains crashed into each other, said company spokesman Joe Faust.

There was no information available as to what caused the accident or the fire, he said.

There were four workers aboard the two trains. One was found and taken to an area hospital. That person’s condition is unknown, he said.

“Rescue efforts are under way at the scene with respect to the three other railroad employees involved in the incident,” Faust said. Local rescue officials said the three were missing.

The Carson County Sheriff’s office issued a mandatory evacuation for an area near the accident.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz Editing by G Crosse and James Dalgleish)

Items from sailboat of missing family found off Florida coast

By Laila Kearney

(Reuters) – Crews searching waters off the Florida coast have found life vests and other items belonging to a man and his teenage children, who were reported missing after setting off on a sailboat three days ago, the U.S. Coast Guard said on Wednesday.

Ace Kimberly, 45, two sons aged 13 and 15, a 17-year-old daughter and their 29-foot-sailboat (9-meter) have not been located, Coast Guard Captain Gregory Case told reporters.

The Kimberly family was last seen on Sunday morning, when they set sail from Sarasota, Florida, and were headed to Fort Myers.

Later that day, Ace Kimberly phoned his brother from the boat and told him he was struggling with rough seas and thunderstorms off Englewood, a community about 30 miles south of Sarasota, Case said.

“That was the last that he heard from him,” Case said.

The family, who had lived on the vessel for about a year, was traveling to Fort Myers to have the boat repaired, the Coast Guard said.

At first light on Wednesday, the Coast Guard sent an HC-130 Hercules rescue aircrew to resume its search for the missing family.

The debris field spotted midday 33 miles offshore included six life vests, a basketball, propane tank, tennis shoes and several water bottles, which Kimberly’s brother identified as belonging to his relatives.

The brother said the group might have had an additional life vest and two kayaks that were not spotted by search crews, which has heartened searchers attempting to find the family alive, Case said.

“We’re always hopeful,” he said.

The search, which has also involved several state and local maritime emergency responders, will continue throughout the day.

(Reporting by Laila Kearney; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

Sign up for Jim Bakker Show