1. Indiana begins adopting 911-texting service
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Indiana residents with Verizon Wireless service are now able to text 911 dispatchers in nearly a third of the state’s counties.
Other cellphone companies are looking to add the service for the state.
Statewide 911 Board Executive Director Barry Ritter says emergency dispatchers in 28 Indiana counties had been equipped and trained to handle text-to-911 calls as of Wednesday. The goal is to expand the service statewide by year’s end.
Verizon Wireless is the first carrier providing the 911-texting service. T-Mobile, Sprint and AT&T also are moving ahead to provide the texting option across Indiana.
Ritter said 911-texting will aid people who are deaf, hearing- or speech-impaired by allowing them to alert dispatchers in the event of emergencies.
He said 911-texting would also help people who are unable to speak due to injuries or are afraid to speak in hostage situations.
2. 274 dead in Turkey’s worst-ever mine disaster
SOMA, Turkey (AP) — In a relentless procession that ignited wails of grief, rescue workers coated in grime lumbered out of a mine in western Turkey again and again Wednesday, struggling to carry stretchers laden with bodies covered in blankets.
The corpses’ faces were as black as the coal they worked on daily. There were 274 of them — and the fate of up to 150 other miners remained unclear in Turkey’s deadliest-ever mining disaster.
While emergency workers battled a toxic mix of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide in deep underground tunnels to try to find survivors, anger and despair engulfed the town of Soma, where Turkish officials said at least 274 miners died in Tuesday’s coal mine explosion and fire.
Tensions were high as hundreds of relatives and miners jostled outside the mine’s entrance Wednesday, waiting for news. They were countered by a heavy police presence.
Rows of women wailed uncontrollably and men knelt sobbing or just stared in disbelief as rescue workers removed body after body. To let off steam, some heckled Turkish officials, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as they passed by.
Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said 787 people had been inside the coal mine at the time of Tuesday’s explosion: 274 had died, 363 had been rescued and scores of them were injured.
The death toll topped a 1992 gas explosion that killed 263 workers near Turkey’s Black Sea port of Zonguldak.
3. Sept. 11 museum is called a monument to unity
NEW YORK (AP) — Leaders of the soon-to-open Sept. 11 museum portrayed it as a monument to unity and resilience ahead of its dedication today, saying that the struggles to build it and conflicts over its content would be trumped by its tribute to both loss and survival.
“It tells how in the aftermath of the attacks, our city, our nation and people across the world came together,” former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the memorial foundation’s chairman, said at a news conference Wednesday. “This museum, more than any history book, will keep that spirit of unity alive.”
After today’s dedication, the museum will be open for six days around-the-clock to Sept. 11 survivors, victims’ relatives, first responders and lower Manhattan residents. Then the National September 11 Memorial & Museum opens to the public May 21. It is a testament to how the terrorist attacks that day shaped history, from its heart-wrenching artifacts to the underground space that houses them amid the remnants of the fallen twin towers’ foundations.
As museum leaders see it, it is both a site of remembrance and a palpably physical forum for examining the post-Sept. 11 world. To museum Director Alice Greenwald, “it is about understanding our shared humanity”; to Bloomberg, a reminder “that freedom is not free.”
Yet the memorial also reflects the complexity of crafting a public understanding of the terrorist attacks and reconceiving ground zero.
Over the years, the museum faced financing squabbles and construction challenges. The museum and the memorial plaza above it cost a total of $700 million to build and will cost $60 million a year to run, more than Arlington National Cemetery and more than 15 times as much as the museum that memorializes the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Sept. 11 museum organizers have noted that security alone costs about $10 million a year.
4. Nigeria vigilantes kill Islamic militants
BAUCHI, Nigeria (AP) — The villagers knew an attack was coming, so they used the dark of night to ambush the suspected Boko Haram militants, killing scores and arresting at least 10 in a move to deter the extremists and make future attacks “impossible.”
Vigilante groups have been springing up in north Nigeria over the past year amid accusations the military is not acting fast enough against the Islamic extremists who are holding captive more than 270 schoolgirls.
In Kalabalge, a village about 155 miles from the Borno state capital of Maiduguri, where the terrorist network was born, residents said they took matters into their own hands.
On Tuesday morning, after learning about an impending attack by the militants, villagers ambushed two trucks with gunmen, residents and a security official told The Associated Press. At least 10 militants were detained, and scores were killed, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to give interviews to journalists. It was not immediately clear where the detainees were being held.
Kalabalge trader Ajid Musa said after residents organized the vigilante group, “it is impossible” for militants to successfully stage attacks there.
“That is why most attacks by the Boko Haram on our village continued [to] fail because they cannot come in here and start shooting and killing people,” he said.
Earlier this year in other parts of Borno, extremists launched more attacks in what some feared was retaliation over the vigilante groups.
5. Judge strikes down Idaho’s same-sex marriage ban
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Gay and lesbian couples in Idaho could start getting married as soon as Friday after a judge ruled the western state’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional.
U.S. District Magistrate Judge Candy Dale wrote in her decision Tuesday evening that Idaho’s laws barring same-sex marriage unconstitutionally deny gay and lesbian citizens their fundamental right to marry. Ten other federal district courts have issued similar rulings supporting gay marriage rights, many in conservative states.
Dale said the state must issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples starting at 9 a.m. Friday. Idaho, which has a large Mormon and evangelical Christian population, is one of the most conservative states in the U.S.
On Wednesday, the judge refused to put gay marriages on hold pending an appeal from the state’s governor, saying Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter’s appeal isn’t likely to succeed.
Gay marriage is legal in 17 states and the District of Columbia.
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