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Last of flood-closed locks reopen
ST. LOUIS -- The last of the Mississippi River navigational locks that were closed to barges because of flooding are back in business.
Jennifer Godfrey of the Army Corps of Engineers says locks in Clarksville and Winfield have reopened.
Godfrey says commercial traffic at the St. Louis port is limited to the daytime.
Flooding on the Mississippi forced the corps to close the locks last month.
The locks use huge electric motors to open and close gates and valves. They raise and lower barges as they make their way up and down the river.
Man flies lawn chair lifted by balloons
BEND, Ore. -- Riding a green lawn chair supported by a rainbow array of more than 150 helium-filled party balloons, Kent Couch took off Saturday in a third bid to fly from central Oregon all the way to Idaho.
Couch kissed his wife and kids goodbye, and patted their shivering Chihuahua, Isabella, before his ground crew gave him a push so he could clear surrounding light poles and a coffee cart.
Then, clutching a big mug of coffee, Couch rose out of the parking lot of his gas station into the bright blue morning sky, cheered by a crowd of spectators.
"If I had the time and money and people, I'd do this every weekend," Couch said before getting into the chair. "Things just look different from up there. You're moving so slowly. The best thing is the peace, the serenity.
"You can hear a dog bark at 15,000 feet."
Couch hoped to ride the prevailing wind to the area of McCall, Idaho, about 230 miles east. He travels at about 20 mph.
Late Saturday morning, Couch reported via satellite phone that he had traveled about 100 miles, said Renee Sibley, manager of his gasoline station.
Iowa fireworks accident hurts 37
DES MOINES, Iowa -- A Fourth of July fireworks shell misfired in a northern Iowa town, sending a fireball skidding down a street into a crowd of spectators and injuring 37 people, officials said Saturday.
Most of the people treated after the Friday night accident in Charles City suffered minor injuries, city fire department spokesman Eric Whipple said.
It appears there was a misfire involving 13 racks of firework tubes during the finale of the city-sponsored show, Assistant Fire Chief Dave Boehmer said Saturday.
Officials didn't yet know why the fireworks malfunctioned, Boehmer said. Inspectors from the state fire marshal's office in Des Moines visited Charles City on Saturday.
"It appears they went horizontally across the ground, some of them," Boehmer said of the fireworks.
Witnesses told the Charles City Press that a large fireball veered toward the crowd gathered downtown on lawn chairs and blankets.
Mistaken delivery leads to drug bust
BALTIMORE -- FedEx prides itself on reliability. But a mistaken delivery tipped off police to a 200-pound shipment of marijuana that someone tried to send from Pembroke Pines, Florida to Baltimore via the shipping company.
Police tell The (Baltimore) Sun they learned about the shipment when it was delivered Tuesday to the wrong resident.
Authorities posed as FedEx employees and arrested the shipment's intended recipient, 30-year-old Richard Gwatidzo.
Officials say he was charged Thursday with possession of a large quantity of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to distribute along with other drug related charges.
Police say they also seized eight other FedEx boxes with nearly 400 pounds of the drug. Authorities are trying to determine the sender's identity.
Obama celebrates 'active faith' in Mo.
ST. LOUIS -- Barack Obama celebrated "active faith" as an obligation of religious Americans and a chief agent of societal change while speaking Saturday to a nearly all-black roomful of churchgoers, but hoping to reach far beyond them.
Making a less than two-hour stop in this battleground state, the Democratic presidential nominee implored the thousands attending a national meeting of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the nation's largest and most politically and civically active black denominations, to help fix national and local ills.
He preached individual responsibility, saying he knew he risked criticism for "blaming the victim" by talking of the need for parents to help children with homework and turn off the TV, to pass on a healthy self-image to daughters and teach boys both to respect women and "realize that responsibility does not end at conception." |
