EAST SAN JOSE (CBS SF) — A 3.9 magnitude earthquake struck East San Jose just hours after a temblor hit elsewhere in Santa Clara County Tuesday night, reports CBS San Francisco.
The United States Geological Survey says the quake struck at 10:32 p.m.
The quake was felt throughout the Bay area, all the way in Oakland, San Francisco and Berkeley, the station says.
This was the second shaker Tuesday night on the Calaveras Fault, with one at 7:19 p.m. registering 3.1 near San Martin, also in Santa Clara County.
There were no early reports of injuries or damage.
Mike McCluskey, who lives in Saratoga, posted on the CBS San Francisco Facebook page that he felt “moderate shaking.”
Christine Hinsch reported feeling it in Morgan Hill, while Raymond Sinsley posted he “felt it in Los Gatos for about 2 seconds.”
Peggy Wolf posted that her home was shaken in Pleasanton, while Ana Rosas from Dublin posted that her “bed swayed for a second.”
Beate Boultinghouse posted he felt “a bit of swaying on Russian Hill” in San Francisco.
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said he felt it and urged people via Twitter “to ready your home kit be prepared” for earthquakes.
Four people were found dead Tuesday and may have been killed in a basement apartment in New York’s capital region, police said.
A property manager made the grisly discovery at a home in Troy, a city near Albany, police Capt. Daniel DeWolf said.
The deaths are “certainly suspicious,” he said. “Until something changes our mind, we’re looking at it as a homicide.”
“It’s horrible. Terrible. Sad — sad especially at this time of year,” DeWolf said. “We’re going to do everything we can to look into this and get to the bottom of what happened here.”
A phone call to one of the home’s apartments was answered by someone who declined to comment.
Officers swarmed the street and cordoned off the area around the home in the Lansingburgh neighborhood, which runs along the Hudson River in Troy, a city of about 50,000 people.
Jason Fenton has lived across from the home for about two decades. He told reporters that he was horrified by what had happened in what he called a quiet neighborhood of families who are “trying to make Troy better, and they’re trying to make this capital region better.”
Troy is home to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, though it’s miles away from the crime scene. The city also is known for the Louis Comfort Tiffany stained-glass windows that grace multiple churches and buildings from Troy’s industrial heyday in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
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This story has been corrected to show the Albany Times-Union says that the property manager discovered the dead, not that the property manager was among the dead.
It’s Christmas, and President Trump is celebrating by repeatedlytyping “MERRY CHRISTMAS!” — and by taking credit for having “led the charge against the assault of our cherished and beautiful phrase.”
Ah, the proverbial “war on Christmas,” in which the holiday is under attack — with even the “Merry Christmas” greeting frowned upon — and the faithful fight to defend it. And first among them: Trump.
But is Trump really the hero here? Or was he always more of a bystander — or worse?
It depends on how many Christmases we look at.
Christmas 1981: No trees allowed
In the 1980s, his political rise still decades away, Trump bought an old apartment building across the street from Central Park in New York that he hoped to tear down and rebuild as a high-rent tower.
When the longtime residents wouldn’t move out voluntarily, the New York Times wrote, Trump hired a management company that essentially ran the building into the ground.
And while Trump threatened to house homeless people in the building, the management company used creative tactics that included covering windows in tin and forbidding Christmas decorations in the lobby.
It was probably the least of residents’ concerns, but Trump allowed no Christmas tree in 1981, the Times wrote, nor in the next year.
After two years of what New York Magazine called a “cold war” between Trump’s tenants and his managers, the Central Park building was a mess of hostility and broken appliances.
A tenant representative finally wrote to Trump’s management company in 1983, asking for permission to at least put up a Christmas tree. Many of the residents “are very old and have nowhere to go,” she wrote, the magazine reported. “This will be their only chance to share in the holiday spirit.”
The company wrote back that in light of the tenants’ complaints, it was “quite difficult for Management to feel that a relaxed ‘holiday season spirit’ relationship exists at the building.”
Moreover, a Christmas tree might raise religious-liberty concerns, it said.
But the company offered to allow the tree with some conditions — the company would be held “blameless in any claims related to the Christmas tree,” and all decorations had to comply with government regulations.
Here the accounts of Christmas 1983 somewhat diverge. New York Magazine wrote that the tenant leader signed the contract and “the Christmas tree went up, [and] the holiday spirit was saved.”
But the Times wrote that maintenance workers misunderstood the Christmas negotiations and put up a contract-less tree without permission and that Trump’s manager “fumed but could do nothing.”
Christmas 1999: The Trump Tower Millennium Holiday Tree
“The Trump Tower Millennium Holiday Tree” — as described in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and news releases — was a 45-foot perforated metal, gold-coated, fiber-optic-lighted treelike structure unveiled at Trump Tower a month before the turn of the century.
No pictures of the Millennium Holiday Tree can be found, and some references describe it as a traditional Christmas tree, which Trump Tower is now known for.
It’s important to note that this was several years before the “war on Christmas” joined the cultural lexicon — when Bill O’Reilly aired an exposé in 2004 on how the generic word “holiday” was supplanting traditional “Christmas” language.
It would be even longer before Trump demonstrated any real concern about the distinction.
Christmas 2009 to 2013 (as told by Trump)
From Donald Trump: Wishing everyone a wonderful holiday a happy, healthy, prosperous New Year. Let’s think like champions in 2010!
While Trump continued wishing “happy holidays” for years, his first use of the word “Christmas” on Twitter appears to have been in 2011 — shortly after he expressed interest in running for president.
Trump suggested buying his new book as a Christmas present that December, and a few days later he complained that President Barack Obama had “issued a statement for Kwanza [sic] but failed to issue one for Christmas.”
As the Associated Press noted, this was a false assertion. Obama had, like presidents before him, acknowledged the African heritage festival of Kwanzaa. But he had also wished Americans “Merry Christmas” — as he did every year during his presidency.
It is true that Obama changed the annual White House Christmas card to a more generic holiday card. But he publicly celebrated Christmas so frequently that many people have made video montages of him recognizing the holiday.
These would occasionally be shown to Trump in the 2015-2016 election, when he truly became a Christmas warrior.
Christmas present
President Trump speaks to a child on Christmas Eve as part of the NORAD Santa Tracker program at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida. (Nicholas Kamm/Getty Images)
Shortly after announcing his candidacy for president in 2015, Trump went to the Values Voter Summit, hoisted a Bible and said: “I believe in God. I believe in the Bible. I’m Christian. I love people.”
As The Washington Post wrote at the time, he had had some trouble convincing conservative Christian voters of this. So he elaborated in his speech:
“I love Christmas,” he said. “You go to stores now, and it doesn’t say Christmas. It says ‘Happy holidays.’ All over! I say, where’s Christmas? I tell my wife, ‘Don’t go to those stores.’ I want to see Christmas! Other people can have their holidays, but Christmas is Christmas. I want to see ‘Merry Christmas.’ Remember the expression ‘Merry Christmas’? You don’t see it. You’re going to see it if I’m elected.”
And sure enough, as president, Trump turned the holiday card back into a Christmas card. He retold the story of baby Jesus at the National Christmas Tree Lighting this year. His 11-year-old son appears in a red scarf in the White House’s official illustrated Christmas tour book, and you can buy an official “Merry Christmas” Trump hat for $45.
Media caption‘No to the pardon!’ shouted protesters in the capital Lima
Police in Peru have fired tear gas and clashed with thousands of protesters angry at the authorities’ decision to pardon ex-President Alberto Fujimori.
“No to the pardon!” chanted crowds in the capital Lima, during a second day of unrest that began on Christmas Eve.
President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski pardoned Fujimori on health grounds.
Mr Kuczynski acknowledged the anger at his decision but said he could not “allow Alberto Fujimori to die in prison”.
Fujimori, who is serving 25 years for human rights abuses and corruption, was last week moved from jail to hospital.
The former president has low blood pressure and an irregular heartbeat.
Image copyright Reuters
Image caption
Protesters tried to march to the hospital where Fujimori was being treated – but were stopped by police
Mr Kuczynski denies pardoning Fujimori as part of a deal with his party last week to avoid his own impeachment, for allegedly receiving illegal payments from the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht.
Two members of President Kuczynski’s party in the Peruvian Congress, Vicente Zeballos and Alberto de Belaunde, have resigned in protest at the pardon.
Image copyright Reuters
Image caption
Police fought running battles with protesters in Lima
Meanwhile, supporters of the man who led Peru from 1990 to 2000 celebrated outside the city hospital where he was being treated.
He is admired by some Peruvians for combating Maoist rebels – but his critics considered him a corrupt dictator.
On Monday, his son Kenji tweeted a video of himself breaking the news of the pardon to his father in his hospital bed and wishing him a Merry Christmas.
A statement from President Kuczynski’s office said he had decided to grant a “humanitarian pardon to Mr Alberto Fujimori and seven other people in similar condition”, without naming the others.
Doctors, the statement added, had “determined that Mr Fujimori suffers from a progressive, degenerative and incurable illness and that prison conditions represent a grave risk to his life”.
In a following statement, Mr Kuczynski said: “I am convinced that those of us who consider ourselves democrats cannot allow Alberto Fujimori to die in prison. Justice is not vengeance. All pardons are by nature controversial. There is an important number of Peruvians who are opposed [to the pardon].
“My decision is especially complex and difficult, but it is my decision. I can not only be the president of those that voted for me, I need to be it for all Peruvians.”
Was a deal done?
The conservative Popular Force (FP) party, led by the former president’s daughter Keiko Fujimori, controls Congress and on Thursday tried to impeach President Kuczynski over a corruption scandal.
However, her brother Kenji split the FP vote, allowing the president to stay in power and prompting the accusation that Fujimori’s release had been promised in exchange.
“To save his own skin he [President Kuczynski] cut a deal with Fujimori’s supporters,” said leftist politician Veronika Mendoza, labelling the president’s decision as treason.
What was Fujimori convicted of?
In 2007, he was sentenced to six years in jail for bribery and abuse of power, but two years later was sentenced to another 25 years in prison for human rights abuses committed during his time in office.
He was convicted of authorising killings carried out by death squads.
Protests erupted soon after news of the pardon came to light on Sunday, with many demonstrators waving pictures of victims of the counter-insurgency campaign.
“We believe the pardon was carried out in an illegal manner,” one unnamed protester told Reuters. “The medical report that supposedly sanctioned this was a fraud. The reality is that this sadly was a political agreement between the Fujimorists and the current government.”
Jose Miguel Vivanco, executive director of Human Rights Watch in the Americas, tweeted: “I regret Fujimori’s humanitarian pardon.
“Instead of reaffirming that in a state of law there is no special treatment for anyone, the idea that his liberation was a vulgar political negotiation in exchange for Pedro Pablo Kuczynski maintaining power will remain forever.”
HMS St Albans was sent on Saturday to “keep watch on the new Russian warship Admiral Gorshkov as it passed close to UK territorial waters”, the Royal Navy said.
Image copyright PA
Image caption
The UK Ministry of Defence released photos of HMS St Albans crew during the tracking operation
The British frigate remained at sea on Monday, monitoring the Russian vessel, and was due to return to Portsmouth on Tuesday.
“I will not hesitate in defending our waters or tolerate any form of aggression,” Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said.
“Britain will never be intimidated when it comes to protecting our country, our people, and our national interests.”
In other recent activity involving the two navies:
HMS Tyne, a patrol ship, was also called to shadow a Russian intelligence-gathering ship as it sailed through the North Sea and the English Channel on Sunday while a navy helicopter was scrambled to track two other Russian vessels
The Admiral Gorshkov, the first of a new class of multi-role blue-water frigates, has still to complete missile tests before entering service with the Russian navy next year, Russian media report.
It has reportedly been sailing regularly between the White Sea off Russia’s northern coast and the Baltic.
Reports on the latest interception do not make clear in what direction the Russian ship was heading.
Russian warships have used the international waters of the North Sea in recent times to sail to and from the Mediterranean for deployment off Syria.
Why is the UK worried about undersea cables?
Relations between Britain and Russia have remained tense since Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Stuart Peach, the chief of the UK’s defence staff, said earlier this month that Britain and Nato needed to prioritise protecting the lines of communication.
Media captionEarlier this month, Sir Stuart Peach outlined the need to protect lines of communication under the seabed
He said it would “immediately and potentially catastrophically” hit the economy if they were cut or disrupted.
The cables criss-cross the seabed, connecting up countries and continents.
“What I did, I would like to compare to what Jesus did when he went into the temple and overturned the tables of the moneychangers, who were exploiting the people financially in the name of religion. I feel like that’s what the GOP has done to the American people,” he told KPCC.
Apparently Mnuchin, who has not yet responded to BuzzFeed News’ request for comment, was at home when the package arrived, and it was so suspicious that the bomb squad was called in to investigate.
Once police opened it and saw the horse poop, investigators deemed the package non-threatening, KTLA reported Saturday. KPCC noted that the Secret Service is now handling the investigation.
As for Strong, who is still waiting to potentially get arrested or fired, he told KPCC that he has seen an “intense increase in homelessness” and believes Trump’s economic policies are exacerbating the problem and someone needs to stand up and do something.
“In the long run, if we don’t do stuff like this, what are we going to have left?” he asked.
A Florida lawyer and four others were killed at sunrise Christmas Eve in a plane crash in dense fog. USA TODAY
BARTOW, Fla. — A Florida lawyer and four others were killed at sunrise Christmas Eve in a plane crash in dense fog.
John Shannon, 70, of Lakeland, Fla., was piloting a twin-engine Cessna 340 that went down just after takeoff around 7:15 a.m. ET Sunday from Bartow Municipal Airport about 50 miles southwest of Orlando, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said.
The plane caught fire after the crash and was fully involved by the time rescue crews arrived, Tina Mann, Polk County Fire Rescue spokeswoman, said in a statement.
“There was no chance of survival,” Judd said. “When you look at the crash, the only thing that you say is, ‘Nobody suffered.’ “
Shannon was making a 45- to 60-minute flight for day trip to the Florida Keys, the sheriff said. Also killed were his two daughters, Olivia Shannon, 24, a student at Southeastern University in Lakeland, and Victoria Shannon Worthington, 26, a Baltimore teacher; his son-in-law, Peter Worthington, 27, a University of Maryland law student; and a family friend, Krista Clayton, 32, a teacher in Lakeland.
The Worthingtons had arrived Saturday in Florida for the Christmas holiday, and John Shannon had filed a flight plan to go to Key West, said Carrie Horstman, a sheriff’s office spokeswoman. No family members were able to be reached for comment.
“This is a tragedy at any time, but it is so much worse because it happened on Christmas Eve,” Judd said.
John Shannon, who graduated in 1975 from Samford University school of law in Homewood, Ala., had been a member of the Florida Bar since 1975, according to state records. The Republican ran for state representative in 2014, but lost in the primary to Colleen Burton, who still holds the office.
He had a private pilot’s license since Oct. 4, 2010, with an instrument rating that allows a pilot to fly solely by referring to flight instruments in clouds or low visibility, according to Federal Aviation Administration records.
Around the time of the crash, a National Weather Service observer reported visibility at the Bartow airport to be less than a quarter mile because of fog.
A photographer who was trying to capture the fog at sunrise was recording video that shows the crash, Judd said.
“He said, ‘I couldn’t believe that they were taking off in this fog,’ ” the sheriff said. “There was not one sign of the aircraft that was, obviously, was soaked in a very dense, very heavy fog at the airbase.” Barstow airport is the former Barstow U.S. Air Force base that closed in 1961.
The private plane crashed just north of the airport toward the end of a runway. It left the hangar at 6:30 a.m., before the sun rose, and took off east into heavy fog, Judd said.
► Oct. 10: 2 pilots killed in Navy training jet crash in Tennessee ► Sept. 25:Funeral held for NASCAR driver Ted Christopher killed in plane crash
“Our heart breaks,” Judd said. “You know, certainly, we wish we could rewind this and if we could, I would wrestle him to the floor to keep him from getting into this airplane this morning,” Judd said.
Last year 386 people were killed in 213 fatal general aviation accidents, an average of fewer than two per crash, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. Fewer than 10% of these types of plane crashes result in four or more deaths.
General aviation excludes commercial flights and civilian air transport for hire and often involves planes with fewer than 10 seats.
► July 21: Plane crash victim survives horrific burns, vows to create change ► July 14: 15 Marines, 1 sailor identified in Mississippi plane crash ► July 4:2 father-son pairs among dead after pilot talked of ‘weather phenomenon’
More than 9 in 10 plane-crash deaths occur in general-aviation accidents, according to the NTSB. Although the number of general-aviation deaths increased slightly from 2015 to 2016, the number of fatal accidents was down by nearly 20, so the fatal accident rate fell lower than 1 per 100,000 flight hours for the first time in 50 years.
But traffic accidents account for far more transportation deaths, 95% of total transportation deaths, the agency said. In 2016, highway deaths totaled 39,339, up more than 5% from the previous year.
In Florida, the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration will be investigating Sunday’s plane crash.
Contributing: The Associated Press. Follow Andrew Krietz on Twitter: @akrietz
I have received a text message stating my father was the one flying the plane. How do I confirm this. Can someone get in touch with me
A tropical storm in the southern Philippines unleashed flash floods that swept away people and houses and set off landslides, reportedly leaving more than 120 people dead and 160 others missing, officials said.
Most of the deaths from Tropical Storm Tembin, which strengthened into a typhoon Sunday, were in the hard-hit provinces of Lanao del Norte and Lanao del Sur and on the Zamboanga Peninsula, according to an initial government report.
It was the latest disaster to hit the Philippines, which is battered by about 20 typhoons and storms each year, making the archipelago that lies on the Pacific typhoon belt one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries.
A search and rescue operation was underway for more than 30 people swept away by flash floods in the fishing village of Anungan, Mayor Bong Edding of Zamboanga del Norte province’s Sibuco town said by phone. Five bodies have been recovered so far in the village.
“The floodwaters from the mountain came down so fast and swept away people and houses,” Edding said. “It’s really sad because Christmas is just a few days away, but these things happen beyond our control.”
Edding blamed years of logging in the mountains near Anungan for the tragedy that unfolded Friday, adding that he and other officials would move to halt the logging operations.
The rest of the deaths were reported in Lanao del Norte, where floodwaters from a mountain also swept away several riverside houses and villagers, and Lanao del Sur, police and officials said.
Lanao del Norte officials reported the highest death toll at 64 with 139 missing followed by Zamboanga del Norte province, where officials reported at least 29 storm deaths with 19 others missing. The storm left 21 dead and one missing in the lakeside province of Lanao del Sur, according to the Department of Interior and Local Government.
Thousands of villagers moved to emergency shelters and thousands more were stranded in airports and seaports after the coast guard prohibited ferries from venturing out in the rough seas and several flights were canceled.
An inter-island ferry sank off northeastern Quezon province Thursday after being lashed by fierce winds and big waves, leaving at least five people dead. More than 250 passengers and crewmen were rescued.
The storm, known locally as Vinta, strengthened into a typhoon and picked up speed late Saturday, packing maximum sustained winds of 120 kilometers (75 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 145 kph (90 mph). It struck the southern section of western Palawan province and is forecast to blow away from the southern Philippines on Sunday toward the South China Sea.
“It is unfortunate that another tropical cyclone, Vinta, made its presence felt so near Christmas,” presidential spokesman Harry Roque Jr. said, adding that food packs and other aid were being distributed in storm-hit communities.
Earlier in the week, a tropical storm left more than 50 people dead and 31 others missing, mostly due to landslides, and damaged more than 10,000 houses in the central Philippines before weakening and blowing into the South China Sea.
Among the areas battered by the latest storm was Marawi, a lakeside city in Lanao del Sur that is still recovering from a five-month siege by pro-Islamic State group extremists that left more than 1,000 people dead.
