Summarize this article:

A

 Have more to add? News tip? Tell us

 People who think one of the bodies found at Johnson Family Mortuary might be a relative are asked to call the Tarrant County medical examiner’s office at 817-920-5700, ext. 5.

 Eight bodies were removed from an east Fort Worth funeral home Tuesday afternoon after police were called to investigate why bodies were left behind in the Johnson Family Mortuary after employees vacated the building.

 “A total of eight bodies — human remains, aged from infant to adult, were found in the building in varying stages of decomposition, some quite advanced,” Sgt Raymond Bush, a Fort Worth police spokesman, said in a news release Tuesday evening.

 Dondre Johnson, a co-owner of the mortuary, said a misunderstanding led to police being called.

 Johnson said the building’s landlord arrived at the mortuary Tuesday morning to kick him out, but he wasn’t there. The landlord found the bodies and called police.

 “This is a funeral home and when you go into a funeral home you can expect to find bodies,” Johnson said.

 Kyle Smith, counsel for the Texas Funeral Service Commission, said the mortuary’s state license expires this month, and that the business is the focus of five separate commission investigations.

 Johnson said that his business will eventually be vindicated and that misunderstandings with state and local officials have been worked out. The mortuary is still in business, he said.

 “We will continue to serve our families,” Johnson said. “Here, or maybe somewhere else.”

 No one arrested

 Johnson Family Mortuary is owned by Dondre Johnson and his wife, Rachel Johnson, who is listed on a Texas secretary of state’s franchise tax document as the registered agent for the limited liability corporation.

 They were asked to vacate the building at 1051 S. Handley Drive in east Fort Worth about two weeks ago, Bush said.

 The building owner found the unattended bodies shortly before 8 a.m. Tuesday and called police, Bush said.

 Homicide investigators executed a search warrant about noon on suspicion of abuse of a corpse, a felony, according to Bush’s news release.

 Johnson said some of the bodies had been embalmed and were ready to be interred. Others were in caskets and ready to be moved. One was ready to be shipped to Nairobi, Kenya, Johnson said.

 The bodies that had not been embalmed were covered in black garbage bags, Johnson said.

 The building does not have a refrigeration system for the bodies, Johnson said, explaining that refrigeration is not required under state law.

 “We are operating legally,” Johnson said. “If we had not been operating legally they would have taken me away in handcuffs.”

 No one had been arrested by late Tuesday, Bush said. The investigation is continuing.

 The medical examiner’s office is now responsible for identifying the bodies and notifying next of kin, Bush said.

 Dondre Johnson’s twin brother, Derrick Johnson said, he was a part-owner but had not been present at the business in weeks but helps out as needed.

 “All this caught me by surprise,” Derrick Johnson said. “I hate that the whole situation happened because it reflects on me, my family and the other family members who are involved, and our godfather who mentored us, Gregory Spencer.”

 The twin brothers began working in Fort Worth in the 1990s under the direction of the late Gregory W. Spencer, according to the mortuary’s website.

 The Johnson brothers will be back together in the funeral business soon and other business ventures are in the works, Derrick Johnson said.

 “We are praying for the families as well as ourselves and we hate that this has happened,” Derrick Johnson said. “No weapon formed against us shall prosper and we thank all the haters for the free advertising.”

 Mitch Mitchell, 817-390-7752 Twitter: @mitchmitchel3

 Looking for comments? ||||| The owner of a Fort Worth mortuary where police say they found several unattended and unidentified bodies Tuesday insists it’s all a misunderstanding.

 “We’ve done nothing wrong,” said Dondre Johnson, who runs the Johnson Family Mortuary. “This is a funeral home. This is where we keep bodies.”

 Johnson said his landlord called police this morning after finding seven bodies inside the building on Handley Drive in East Fort Worth. He said some of the dead are already embalmed and in caskets, one of them bound for Nairobi, Kenya.

 “Things happen in life,” he said of the investigation. “Pray for us.”

 Dondre’s brother Derrick, who says he runs a limousine business, said the bodies were well-preserved, but a foul odor emanated from the building.

 Police say the owner of the building asked the renters to leave two weeks ago. This morning, the owner checked on the property and found the business had been left unattended with multiple dead bodies inside, authorities say.

 Officers are still searching the funeral home, and officials from the medical examiner’s office began removing the bodies this afternoon. The charge on the search warrant is abuse of corpse, said Sgt. Raymond Bush, a Fort Worth police spokesman.

 Bush said it’s too early in the investigation to release the condition of the bodies or how long they were left unattended. The electricity and air conditioning were still on inside the building. The main concern at this point is to return the bodies to the families.

 “That’s our priority to find closure for the families,” Bush said.

 Any family members concerned about their loved ones’ remains should call the Tarrant County medical examiner’s office at 817-920-5700, Ext. 5.

 The Johnson Family Mortuary, started by twin brothers Derrick and Dondre, has had an active funeral director’s license with the state since July 2011 and is current through the end of this month. The funeral home has no previous disciplinary history with the Texas Funeral Service Commission.

 Benetha Johnson said she worked with the Johnson brothers previously. She described them as good people.

 “They are some good young men,” she said. “I just don’t know why this happened.”

 Johnson said she’d heard there were two funerals at the building Saturday.

 Another bystander said the Johnson family had always been helpful to grieving families. The brothers put on the funeral for one of Denise Horrice’s family members.

 “I’m surprised because they are really good people,” she said. “I can’t say nothing bad about them.”

 The Johnson twins began working in the business when they were 11, according to the business’s website. Later they were mentored by noted Fort Worth pastor and funeral director Gregory Spencer, who was found strangled at an Arlington motel in June 2003 (a Louisiana parolee was sentenced to life in prison for the murder).

 Three years later the twins struck out on their own, turning an abandoned casket store into the D & D Johnson Funeral Home, and later Johnson Family Mortuary.

 “Both locally and abroad, ‘The Twins,’ as they are fondly referred, have raised the bar of funeral service,” their website says. “Their presentation is unparalleled and their service is incomparable.”

 There are five complaints currently open against Johnson Family Mortuary, though officials with the commission can’t talk about them until they are closed. Two of three previous complaints were closed without findings of wrongdoing. The third, filed over a late death certificate, resulted in a probationary penalty.

 Staff writer Jon McClure contributed to this report.

  |||||

– Police who found at least seven corpses in a building in Fort Worth, Texas, yesterday quickly determined there was no serial killer at work—but there were funeral directors who had apparently moved out with work unfinished. Police say the building's owner evicted the Johnson Family Mortuary two weeks ago and he discovered the bodies when he went to check on the building, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports. The unattended bodies ranged in age from infants to adults and police say they were in "varying stages of decomposition, some quite advanced." The twin brothers who ran the business could face charges of abuse of a corpse, but they insist it is all a misunderstanding. "We've done nothing wrong," one of the brothers tells the Dallas Morning News. "This is a funeral home. This is where we keep bodies." The electricity and air conditioning in the building were still on, but it did not have a refrigeration system. A spokesman for the Texas Funeral Service Commission says the mortuary's license expires this month, and the business already is the focus of five separate investigations.


Article:
David Blankenhorn, founder of the Institute for American Values, has written a thoughtful short essay for the New York Times on why he has devoted considerable effort to defeating efforts to legalize same-sex civil marriage and why he has decided to embrace a new strategy. He notes that he had hoped that our national conversation about same-sex marriage would evolve into a broader conversation about the centrality of marriage and child-rearing, yet he sees no sign of that happening. So he concludes on the following note:

 Instead of fighting gay marriage, I’d like to help build new coalitions bringing together gays who want to strengthen marriage with straight people who want to do the same. For example, once we accept gay marriage, might we also agree that marrying before having children is a vital cultural value that all of us should do more to embrace? Can we agree that, for all lovers who want their love to last, marriage is preferable to cohabitation? Can we discuss whether both gays and straight people should think twice before denying children born through artificial reproductive technology the right to know and be known by their biological parents? Will this strategy work? I don’t know. But I hope to find out.

 Blankenhorn’s current position closely parallels my own. It is worth noting, however, that Blankenhorn’s new strategy actually represents a harder road than opposition to the legalization of same-sex civil marriage. Opponents of same-sex civil marriage will from time to time achieve concrete political victories. Those who want to reestablish the cultural centrality of marriage, in contrast, won’t have concrete victories to celebrate. Rather, they will have to navigate a fragmented cultural landscape in which it is crucially important to understand the difference between simple contagions and complex contagions, an idea a very good friend explained to me relatively recently.

 The following is the abstract of a paper by Damon Centola and Michael Macy:

 The strength of weak ties is that they tend to be long—they connect socially distant locations, allowing information to diffuse rapidly. The authors test whether this “strength of weak ties” generalizes from simple to complex contagions. Complex contagions require social afﬁrmation from multiple sources. Examples include the spread of high-risk social movements, avant garde fashions, and unproven technologies. Results show that as adoption thresholds increase, long ties can impede diffusion. Complex contagions depend primarily on the width of the bridges across a network, not just their length. Wide bridges are a characteristic feature of many spatial networks, which may account in part for the widely observed tendency for social movements to diffuse spatially.

 Crudely, it is interesting to think about “wide bridges” in the context of the diffusion of various social practices. In the United States, divorce levels have decreased among college-educated women since 1980, as Kay Hymowitz has observed. Yet this hasn’t translated to non-college-educated women, in part, presumably, because we don’t (to overgeneralize) have “wide bridges” in U.S. society between the college-educated and the non-college-educated.

 This has important implications for cultural conservatives. Family disruption in the United States is increasingly pervasive, yet it remains concentrated in groups that tend not to see elite non-black and non-Latino conservatives as culturally credible. That is part why the message Blankenhorn is articulating isn’t resonating with the constituencies for whom it is (arguably) most relevant. There are, of course, many cultural conservatives in the communities most heavily impacted by family disruption, but it’s not clear that these individuals have the kind of cultural and spiritual authority they’d need to make a significant difference, partly because social uplift is seen as primarily state-driven and not community-driven. That is, I don’t turn to the pastor or deacon to weather a family crisis. I turn to the state for transfers or for other forms of care, as alternative social networks are too weak by comparison or too overburdened. So why would the pastor or deacon hold sway? I should stress that this is a serious oversimplication, but I do think it helps explain the larger landscape. ||||| David Blankenhorn, a national figure in the movement against same-sex marriage, has recanted his opposition, saying “the time has come for me to accept gay marriage and emphasize the good that it can do.”

 Mr. Blankenhorn, the founder and president of the Institute for American Values, wrote an influential book that argued against same-sex marriage in 2007, called “The Future of Marriage,” and served as an expert witness against the constitutional challenge to California’s Proposition 8, which limited marriage to heterosexuals. On Friday, he said in an opinion article for The New York Times, published online, and in an hour-long documentary on NPR that his concerns about same-sex marriage remained, but that “the time for denigrating or stigmatizing same-sex relationships is over.”

 “I opposed gay marriage believing that children have the right, insofar as society makes it possible, to know and to be cared for by the two parents who brought them into this world,” he wrote in the article. He said he still held that conviction. But he added, “Whatever one’s definition of marriage, legally recognizing gay and lesbian couples and their children is a victory for basic fairness.”

 Photo

 Mr. Blankenhorn’s onetime allies said they were troubled but unimpressed.

 “He’s dead wrong,” said the Rev. Jim Garlow, senior pastor of Skyline Wesleyan Church in La Mesa, Calif. “I am a student of history. Christianity has made clear that marriage is between one man and one woman. And what we have seen is that when you change marriage for some, you change marriage for all.”

 The focus on same-sex marriage has grown rapidly in recent years, both legislatively and legally. Two requests for review of same-sex marriage rulings in federal courts, including the Proposition 8 case, are headed to the Supreme Court this summer. Other cases are being argued in lower courts, and referendum initiatives will be on the ballots in November in four states — Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington.

 Last month, President Obama endorsed same-sex marriage after nearly two years of saying that his views on the topic had been evolving. Polls show public opinion has also been shifting rapidly toward acceptance of it, although about 30 states have passed constitutional amendments in recent years defining marriage as between only a man and a woman.

 Six states — Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Vermont — as well as the District of Columbia permit same-sex marriage. Nine others — California, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Oregon and Washington — allow comprehensive domestic partnerships or civil unions granting same-sex couples full rights except in name.

 Mr. Blankenhorn, who was raised in the South and attended Harvard, had long stood out among opponents of same-sex marriage because he did not invoke a biblical or religious justification and did not oppose civil unions for gay men and lesbians. Instead, he argued that marriage was society’s most important institution and had in recent decades come under attack, and that same-sex marriage was only adding to its decline.

 Advertisement Continue reading the main story

 Advertisement Continue reading the main story

 He said that he had long hoped the debate over same-sex marriage would center on parenthood, not private relationships, but that in the public’s mind today the issue was simply about equality for gay men and lesbians — in other words, civil rights.

 “And to my deep regret,” he wrote, “much of the opposition to gay marriage seems to stem, at least in part, from an underlying antigay animus. To me, a Southerner by birth whose formative moral experience was the civil rights movement, this fact is profoundly disturbing.”

 Mr. Blankenhorn has long had his fans in the pro-gay-rights community. Andrew Sullivan, who writes for The Daily Beast, wrote on Friday that Mr. Blankenhorn was “perhaps the most clearly decent, intellectually honest, nonhomophobic opponent of marriage equality.” He praised him for his switch.

 Peter S. Sprigg, the senior fellow for policy studies at the Family Research Council in Washington, which opposes same-sex marriage, said Mr. Blankenhorn’s new position was unfortunate but was, in his view, a result of social pressure and his eagerness not to be seen as antigay.

 “He has thrown marriage under the bus for the sake of the homosexual movement,” Mr. Sprigg said. ||||| IN my 2007 book, “The Future of Marriage,” and in my 2010 court testimony concerning Proposition 8 , the California ballot initiative that defined marriage as between a man and a woman, I took a stand against gay marriage. But as a marriage advocate, the time has come for me to accept gay marriage and emphasize the good that it can do. I’d like to explain why.

 I opposed gay marriage believing that children have the right, insofar as society makes it possible, to know and to be cared for by the two parents who brought them into this world. I didn’t just dream up this notion: the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which came into force in 1990, guarantees children this right.

 Marriage is how society recognizes and protects this right. Marriage is the planet’s only institution whose core purpose is to unite the biological, social and legal components of parenthood into one lasting bond. Marriage says to a child: The man and the woman whose sexual union made you will also be there to love and raise you. In this sense, marriage is a gift that society bestows on its children.

 At the level of first principles, gay marriage effaces that gift. No same-sex couple, married or not, can ever under any circumstances combine biological, social and legal parenthood into one bond. For this and other reasons, gay marriage has become a significant contributor to marriage’s continuing deinstitutionalization, by which I mean marriage’s steady transformation in both law and custom from a structured institution with clear public purposes to the state’s licensing of private relationships that are privately defined.

 I have written these things in my book and said them in my testimony, and I believe them today. I am not recanting any of it.

 But there are more good things under heaven than these beliefs. For me, the most important is the equal dignity of homosexual love. I don’t believe that opposite-sex and same-sex relationships are the same, but I do believe, with growing numbers of Americans, that the time for denigrating or stigmatizing same-sex relationships is over. Whatever one’s definition of marriage, legally recognizing gay and lesbian couples and their children is a victory for basic fairness.

 Another good thing is comity. Surely we must live together with some degree of mutual acceptance, even if doing so involves compromise. Sticking to one’s position no matter what can be a virtue. But bending the knee a bit, in the name of comity, is not always the same as weakness. As I look at what our society needs most today, I have no stomach for what we often too glibly call “culture wars.” Especially on this issue, I’m more interested in conciliation than in further fighting.

 A third good thing is respect for an emerging consensus. The population as a whole remains deeply divided, but most of our national elites, as well as most younger Americans, favor gay marriage. This emerging consensus may be wrong on the merits. But surely it matters.

 I had hoped that the gay marriage debate would be mostly about marriage’s relationship to parenthood. But it hasn’t been. Or perhaps it’s fairer to say that I and others have made that argument, and that we have largely failed to persuade. In the mind of today’s public, gay marriage is almost entirely about accepting lesbians and gay men as equal citizens. And to my deep regret, much of the opposition to gay marriage seems to stem, at least in part, from an underlying anti-gay animus. To me, a Southerner by birth whose formative moral experience was the civil rights movement, this fact is profoundly disturbing.

 I had also hoped that debating gay marriage might help to lead heterosexual America to a broader and more positive recommitment to marriage as an institution. But it hasn’t happened. With each passing year, we see higher and higher levels of unwed childbearing, nonmarital cohabitation and family fragmentation among heterosexuals. Perhaps some of this can be attributed to the reconceptualization of marriage as a private ordering that is so central to the idea of gay marriage. But either way, if fighting gay marriage was going to help marriage over all, I think we’d have seen some signs of it by now.

 So my intention is to try something new. Instead of fighting gay marriage, I’d like to help build new coalitions bringing together gays who want to strengthen marriage with straight people who want to do the same. For example, once we accept gay marriage, might we also agree that marrying before having children is a vital cultural value that all of us should do more to embrace? Can we agree that, for all lovers who want their love to last, marriage is preferable to cohabitation? Can we discuss whether both gays and straight people should think twice before denying children born through artificial reproductive technology the right to know and be known by their biological parents?

 Will this strategy work? I don’t know. But I hope to find out. ||||| If you've been immersed in the marriage equality debate, you'll know who David Blankenhorn is. He is perhaps the most clearly decent, intellectually honest, non-homophobic opponent of marriage equality. He has played a huge role in elevating the debate, in getting the right to take it more seriously, and in pioneering civil discussion. Along with Jon Rauch, he really tried to find common ground, rather than polarize or hyperbolize. And I think many involved in this intellectual combat can be proud of themselves for maintaining greater civility than exists in many other emotional, personal debates. In the grass roots it can get brutal, as it can online. But the arguments we've had in person have been usually civil. Jon Corvino's book with Maggie Gallagher is an example of this, as is their dog-and-pony show on the debate circuit.

 But I bury my lede. Blankenhorn has switched sides and is now in favor of marriage equality, and explains why on NPR right now. Click here for the audio. He has an essay in the NYT on the subject as well. Money quote:

 I had hoped that the gay marriage debate would be mostly about marriage’s relationship to parenthood. But it hasn’t been. Or perhaps it’s fairer to say that I and others have made that argument, and that we have largely failed to persuade. In the mind of today’s public, gay marriage is almost entirely about accepting lesbians and gay men as equal citizens. And to my deep regret, much of the opposition to gay marriage seems to stem, at least in part, from an underlying anti-gay animus. To me, a Southerner by birth whose formative moral experience was the civil rights movement, this fact is profoundly disturbing.

 David was a good man when he was opposed to marriage equality and he is a good man now. We need more like him. |||||Summary:

– One of the most respected opponents of gay marriage has changed his mind, arguing that too many of his political comrades are simply prejudiced against gays and lesbians, the New York Times reports. David Blankenhorn, who wrote The Future of Marriage and argued for California's Proposition 8 as an expert witness, revealed his new opinion in the Times yesterday: "Whatever one's definition of marriage, legally recognizing gay and lesbian couples and their children is a victory for basic fairness," he wrote. He also hopes that by embracing gay marriage, he can "help build new coalitions bringing together gays who want to strengthen marriage with straight people who want to do the same." Reaction is, of course, mixed: "He has thrown marriage under the bus for the sake of the homosexual movement," said Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council. Sprigg blamed Blankenhorn's position on a desire not to be seen as anti-gay. "Blankenhorn's current position closely parallels my own," writes Reihan Salam in the National Review. But "Blankenhorn's new strategy actually represents a harder road than opposition to the legalization of same-sex civil marriage," because he "won't have concrete victories to celebrate." "David was a good man when he was opposed to marriage equality and he is a good man now," writes gay marriage advocate Andrew Sullivan at the Daily Beast. "We need more like him." Click for the full Times piece, or Blankenhorn's op-ed.


Write a summary based on this article:

Downtown Restaurant Shooting Claims Four Lives

 Eight people were shot, four fatally, outside City Grill on Main Street in downtown Buffalo. The father of one victim this morning told The News the shooting was a "senseless, random killing." ||||| A parolee released from prison just two and a half weeks ago was arrested Saturday in connection with the worst carnage the City of Buffalo has experienced in at least three decades.

 -----

 UPDATE: Charges against suspect dismissed this morning

 -----

 But before the day ended, law enforcement officials said they think they got the wrong man.

 "We are having serious second thoughts," said Erie County District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III. "I have serious reservations about whether we have the right guy here."

 Sedita said he planned this morning to move in City Court to dismiss charges against Keith D. Johnson, 25, of Buffalo, who was accused of murdering four people outside a downtown bar. Among those killed was a man who invited friends to the City Grill as part of his wedding anniversary celebration. The shooting also wounded four others, one critically.

 The extraordinary move by law enforcement to change course after a murder arrest occurred after reviewing video and photos from the scene, and interviews with additional witnesses, Sedita said.

 "What basically has happened," Sedita said, "is in the last eight hours ... we got additional video evidence. Investigators called me and said, Frank, you better come down here. We're having serious second thoughts.

 "I looked at the evidence, along with four or five detectives, and the commissioner is here as well. There are certain discrepancies of people and clothing."

 "I am going to probably ask the court to dismiss so we can continue the investigation, so we can be sure we have the right guy," he said.

 Sedita's announcement came about 12 hours after Johnson was arrested at his home at 141 Minnesota Ave., by members of the Buffalo Police SWAT team, which also confiscated bloody clothing from the home.

 Within hours of the arrest, relatives of one of the deceased, as well as one of the men wounded in the early morning shooting, disputed Johnson's arrest.

 "There was only one gunman," said shooting victim James Robbs, who was released from the hospital Saturday night. "I didn't get a good look at him, but it wasn't Keith."

 The sister of another of the victims said Johnson is a family friend. "He did not do this," said Shaneesha White, sister of Shawn-Tia McNeil, who died in the gunfire.

 White's family showed a Buffalo News reporter a photograph taken at the City Grill prior to the shooting. In the picture were Johnson, McNeil and Willie McCaa III, among other individuals.

 With Johnson no longer considered a suspect, police are looking at another suspect, but no arrests are imminent in connection with Saturday's shooting spree.

 Killed in the carnage were:

 Danyell Mackin, 30, a former Buffalo man who had been living in Texas and returned to Buffalo with his wife to have a wedding party in Buffalo. She was not wounded.

 Tiffany Wilhite, 32; of Buffalo.

 Shawn-Tia McNeil, 27, of Buffalo, Tiffany Wilhite's cousin.

 Willie McCaa III, 26, of Buffalo.

 The four who were wounded:

 Demario Vass, 30, who was in critical condition with a gunshot wound to his head.

 James Robbs Jr., 27, who was treated and released.

 Shamar Davis, 30, who is hospitalized in stable condition.

 Tillman Ward, 27, who was shot in the elbow and is listed in good condition.

 "I'll never understand what would possess an individual to shoot eight people," said Police Commissioner Daniel Derenda. "It makes no sense. It is mind-boggling."

 Authorities said a skirmish occurred in the early hours of Saturday morning inside City Grill, a popular Main Street bar and restaurant not far from the HSBC tower.

 The City Grill disc jockey stopped the music, the lights went on, and the patrons were told to leave.

 As the crowd was pouring outside, a gunman opened fire with a 9mm handgun, sources said. Some of the shots, they said, came from a parking lot across the street.

 When authorities were asked later Saturday how many shots were fired, Derenda declined to say, but Sedita responded: "a lot."

 It wasn't long after the shooting occurred that police had identified a suspect: Keith Johnson, 25, of 141 Minnesota Ave., who was released 2 1/2 weeks ago from state prison.

 The dramatic apprehension of Johnson began at 10:45 a.m., with police going door-to-door on either side of 141 Minnesota Ave., telling people to evacuate their homes, neighbors said.

 At about 10:50 a.m., two SWAT trucks arrived, and SWAT team members began taking tactical positions on the street. It became apparent the police were focused on a two-story house at 141 Minnesota. SWAT officers surrounded the house. One then got on a bull horn and shouted "come out with your hands up."

 First, two women and a child came out of the house. The SWAT team then approached the front door with shields up and knocked on the door. At 11 a.m., the SWAT team went inside; a few minutes later, the suspect -- wearing jeans and a white T-shirt -- was seen leaving the house, his hands cuffed behind his back. He was placed in the back of a patrol car.

 Some officers remained at the house and, armed with a search warrant, conducted a search of the home at about 1:45 p.m. Officers removed bloody clothing from the house, sources said.

 Johnson was one of two teenagers charged in 2002 with a drive-by shooting on Goodyear Avenue that left another teenager hospitalized in critical condition. Johnson was not the shooter but was driving the stolen car that the shot was fired from.

 Johnson was convicted of attempted first-degree assault, according to state Department of Corrections records. Johnson was originally incarcerated in September 2003 and again in August 2008 in connection with that case, records show. It was not known why his sentence was extended in 2008, but records show he was sentenced for up to 3 1/2 more years. He was paroled July 28.

 Some family members of the shooting victims said they were aware of Johnson's criminal past, but that had nothing to do with the fact that Johnson was not the City Grill shooter.

 "Keith was not the shooter," said Robbs, interviewed after he left the hospital Saturday night. "He was with us."

 Robbs said he and Johnson were at the Grill attending a friend's birthday party, not the Mackin wedding celebration.

 Robbs and others also said that everyone had blood on them that night, since they were caring for the wounded and dead. That Johnson had bloody clothes in his house was no surprise, since he was at the bloody scene, where his friends were wounded, Robbs and others said.

 In the initial hours after Johnson's arrest, Derenda said he was aware of the comments from McNeil's family members and others who know Johnson and proclaim his innocence.

 "I'm aware of what is being said," the commissioner said. "We sent detectives back out to interview people, and we're continuing the investigation."

 Word of Johnson's impending release came as welcome news to Robbs.

 "I feel good about it," he said early Sunday morning. "Nobody should go to jail for something they didn't do."

 Sedita agreed.

 Sedita said Johnson probably violated parole by going to a bar Saturday, but that pales in comparison to the crime that was committed that night.

 Related |||||

– Four people died and four more were injured in a flurry of gunfire outside a popular downtown Buffalo restaurant early this morning, reports the Buffalo News. (Earlier media reports of a fifth death were the result of confusion with another city homicide.) A private party—the celebration of an out-of-town couple's one-year anniversary—was one of several taking place at the City Grill when shots erupted around 2:30am. One of the victims was the newlywed husband. Later, police raided a city home and took an apparent suspect into custody but didn't provide any details. "It's just a senseless killing," the father of 32-year-old victim Tiffany Wilhite tells the News. "A senseless, random killing." The scene was chaos, one partygoer tells the AP: "A lot of people were real upset, just trying to get out of the way. Nobody knew where anything was coming from. Everyone was in a panic." The victims were in their 20s and 30s.


– President Trump on Sunday addressed the devastation wrought by the latest California wildfires, the Hill reports. "California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws which aren't allowing massive amount of readily available water to be properly utilized," he tweeted. "It is being diverted into the Pacific Ocean. Must also tree clear to stop fire spreading!" But MarketWatch says his tweet "befuddled experts," noting that the state's water supply and how it's used isn't to blame for worsening blazes. For one, the water isn't being dumped into the Pacific, and firefighters do appear to have plenty of water, per a California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection rep—but trees and brush have become more flammable due to the state's years-long drought. "We do manage all of our rivers in California, and all the water is allocated many times over," wildfire expert LeRoy Westerling tells the San Francisco Chronicle. "So I'm not sure what [Trump] was recommending. … It boggles the mind." Westerling points the blame for making the fires worse at "ongoing warming and accelerated climate change."

Expand this summary.

When President Trump sent his first tweet about the current California wildfires, which have killed nine people and destroyed more than 1,000 homes, he chose the moment to zero in on water policy — leaving some scratching their heads.

 “California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws which aren’t allowing massive amount of readily available water to be properly utilized,” he tweeted Sunday. “It is being diverted into the Pacific Ocean. Must also tree clear to stop fire spreading!”

 California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws which aren’t allowing massive amount of readily available water to be properly utilized. It is being diverted into the Pacific Ocean. Must also tree clear to stop fire spreading! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 5, 2018

 Asked whether firefighters at the Carr and Mendocino Complex fires are short on water, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokeswoman Lynette Round replied, “Not that I’m aware of. ... but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.”

 But the tweet had LeRoy Westerling, a UC Merced professor specializing in wildfire and climatology, chuckling.

 Now Playing:

 “On the water side, it boggles the mind,” he said. “We do manage all of our rivers in California, and all the water is allocated many times over. So I’m not sure what he was recommending.

 “Even if we eliminated all habitat for riparian species and fish, and allowed saltwater intrusion into the delta and set up a sprinkler system over the state, that wouldn’t compensate for greater moisture loss from climate change.”

 Westerling said his version of a tweet explaining the severity of the wildfires would read: “Ongoing warming and accelerated climate change are driving unpredictable increases and extreme fire in California across a wide range of ecosystems.”

 Jonathan Kauffman is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jkauffman@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @jonkauffman ||||| President Trump Donald John TrumpSouth Korea urges Pyongyang to speed up denuclearization process More than a dozen arrested as protesters, counter-protesters clash in Berkeley Trump golfs with Graham at New Jersey club MORE appeared on Sunday to place blame for massive wildfires in California on the state's environmental laws, including its water and forest management policies, saying that such regulations have made the blazes "so much worse."

 "California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws which aren’t allowing massive amount of readily available water to be properly utilized," Trump tweeted. "It is being diverted into the Pacific Ocean. Must also tree clear to stop fire spreading!"

 California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws which aren’t allowing massive amount of readily available water to be properly utilized. It is being diverted into the Pacific Ocean. Must also tree clear to stop fire spreading! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 5, 2018

 ADVERTISEMENT

 The president's tweet comes as California continues to face a series of wildfires that have destroyed buildings, homes and left several people dead.

 California has seen a spate of highly destructive wildfires in recent years. Fueling those fires, in part, has been a buildup of vegetation in the state, along with long droughts that dried up that vegetation. ||||| Tweet with a location

 You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| As wildfires continued to scorch California, President Donald Trump on Sunday issued a tweet that befuddled experts, wrongly blaming the state’s water diversions for making the blazes worse.

 California’s environmental laws, he claimed, “aren’t allowing massive amount of readily available water to be properly utilized. It is being diverted into the Pacific Ocean. Must also tree clear to stop fire spreading!”

 While decades-old state and federal forest management strategies have been cited as exacerbating California’s wildfires in recent years, experts Sunday were quick to refute Trump’s claim that water policy was to blame.

 While California’s river water is tightly managed to account for drinking, agriculture and environmental needs, it is not being diverted into the ocean. And the problem is not that the state lacks the water to fight fires, but that years of drought have made forests and brush more flammable.

 “On the water side, it boggles the mind,” UC Merced professor and wildfire specialist LeRoy Westerling told the San Francisco Chronicle. “We do manage all of our rivers in California, and all the water is allocated many times over. So I’m not sure what he was recommending. . . . Even if we eliminated all habitat for riparian species and fish, and allowed saltwater intrusion into the delta and set up a sprinkler system over the state, that wouldn’t compensate for greater moisture loss from climate change.”

 Meanwhile, the Trump administration on Sunday approved a federal disaster declaration for the state. Nine people have been killed by the 18 wildfires currently burning across the state. The Mendocino Complex fire north of San Francisco has grown to the fifth-largest in state history, burning almost 400 square miles by Sunday. and threatening 15,000 homes. Meanwhile, the Ferguson fire entered Yosemite National Park, which remained largely closed to visitors, and the Carr fire near Redding claimed its seventh life, when a PG&E lineman crashed his vehicle while working with crews to fight the blaze. Overall, more than 470,000 acres have burned in the state, with more than 14,000 firefighters on the front lines. |||||


Summarize this article:

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Gudrun Burwitz pictured with her father Himmler - who led the SS

 The daughter of top Nazi Heinrich Himmler was hired by West Germany's foreign intelligence agency (BND) in the 1960s, officials have confirmed.

 The revelation about Gudrun Burwitz was first reported in the German newspaper Bild following her death aged 88.

 Her father was in Hitler's inner circle and is viewed as the chief architect of the Holocaust. He killed himself in custody in 1945.

 Burwitz never disavowed Nazism and defended her father's reputation.

 She was a teenager when the war ended and was released in 1946 after testifying at the Nuremberg trials.

 German Tabloid Bild reported on her post-war involvement with the BND on Friday, following her death in Munich last month.

 Image copyright Shutterstock Image caption Gudrun Burwitz continued to attend neo-Nazi events throughout her life, and died in May

 The head of the spy agency's history department then corroborated the newspaper report about Burwitz's activities in West Germany, which reunited with communist East Germany in 1990 to form the present German state.

 "The BND confirms that Ms Burwitz was a member of the BND for a few years until 1963 under an assumed name," Bodo Hechelhammer said.

 "The timing of her departure coincided with the onset of a change in the understanding and the handling of employees who were involved with the Nazis."

 She worked as a secretary at BND headquarters in Pullach, near Munich, from 1961 to 1963.

 At that time the organisation was under the control of Reinhard Gehlen, a former Nazi military intelligence commander who left the BND in 1968.

 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Himmer (left) pictured inspecting SS Guards with Adolf Hitler

 Mr Hechelhammer said the organisation did not ordinarily discuss current and former employees but was making an exemption because Burwitz had died.

 German organisations such as the BND have grappled with how to address their own Nazi links in the post-war era.

 Burwitz remained prominent in far-right politics throughout her life. She was reported to be a prominent member of Stille Hilfe (Silent Help), a secretive group known to provide legal and financial support to former SS members.

 She was also known to attend other neo-Nazi events and rallies before her death.

 Heinrich Himmler was in Adolf Hitler's elite circle. He commanded the SS (Schutzstaffel) - the organisation which played a major role in murdering millions of Jews, Poles, Soviet prisoners-of-war, Roma and others categorised as "racially inferior" during the Holocaust.

 After being taken into British custody in 1945 he killed himself, evading trial for war crimes. ||||| Gudrun Burwitz, the true-believing daughter of Heinrich Himmler, the architect of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany’s highest-ranking official after Adolf Hitler, died May 24 in or near Munich. She was 88.

 Her death was first reported by the German newspaper Bild, which also confirmed that Mrs. Burwitz had worked for two years in West Germany’s foreign intelligence agency. The agency’s chief historian, Bodo Hechelhammer, told the newspaper that Mrs. Burwitz worked as a secretary under an assumed name in the early 1960s. The agency does not comment on current or past employees until they have died.

 Mrs. Burwitz, who was sometimes called a “Nazi princess” by supporters and detractors alike, remained unrepentant and loyal to her father to the end. Although she had visited a concentration camp, she denied the existence of the Holocaust and, in later years, helped provide money and comfort to former Nazis convicted or suspected of war crimes.

 At the time of her birth in 1929, her father was consolidating power as leader of the elite Nazi paramilitary corps known as the SS. Himmler also commanded the German secret police, the Gestapo, and established the Nazi network of prison and death camps throughout Europe. Millions of people — primarily Jews but also Roma (or Gypsies), homosexuals, disabled people and others — would perish in the Holocaust.

 The only person who outranked Himmler in the Nazi hierarchy was Hitler himself.

 Gudrun, who was Himmler’s oldest child and only legitimate daughter, was exceptionally devoted to her father. Himmler and his wife later adopted a son, and Himmer had two other children with his mistress.

 Throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, the bespectacled, undistinguished-looking Himmler enjoyed having Gudrun at his side, as a blond, blue-eyed symbol of Aryan youth. In a diary later seized by Allied authorities, she noted that she liked to see her reflection in her father’s polished boots. She attended Christmas parties with Hitler, who gave her dolls and chocolates.

 When she was 12, Gudrun accompanied her father to the Dachau concentration camp, which was the site of Nazi medical experiments and the execution of tens of thousands of people.

 Gudrun recalled the visit in her diary: “Today we went to the SS concentration camp at Dachau. We saw everything we could. We saw the gardening work. We saw the pear trees. We saw all the pictures painted by the prisoners. Marvelous.

 “And afterward we had a lot to eat. It was very nice.”

 As the Third Reich was collapsing in May 1945, 15-year-old Gudrun and her mother fled to northern Italy, where they were arrested by American troops. Himmler was captured, and, while in British custody, killed himself on May 23, 1945, by biting on a cyanide capsule he had concealed.

 1 of 60 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Notable deaths in 2018: George H.W. Bush, Stan Lee, John McCain, Aretha Franklin and other famous faces we lost this year View Photos Remembering those who have died in 2018. Caption Remembering those who have died in 2018. Victoria Arocho/AP Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.

 Gudrun and her mother were held for four years in various detention facilities in Italy, France and Germany. She refused to believe that her father’s death was a suicide and maintained that he had been killed by his British captors.

 She was present at some of the war-crimes trials of her father’s associates in Nuremberg, Germany.

 “She did not weep, but went on hunger strikes,” Norbert and Stephan Lebert wrote in “My Father’s Keeper,” their 2002 book about the children of Nazi leaders. “She lost weight, fell sick, and stopped developing.”

 After their release, mother and daughter settled in the northern German town of Bielefeld, where Gudrun trained as a dressmaker and bookbinder. She found it hard to hold a steady job with her family history.

 In 1961, she joined the German intelligence service as a secretary under an assumed name at the agency’s headquarters near Munich. She was dismissed in 1963, when West German authorities were reviewing the presence of former Nazis in the government.

 In the late 1960s, she married Wulf-Dieter Burwitz, a writer who became an official in a right-wing political group, and settled in a Munich suburb. They had two children.

 Gudrun Margarete Elfriede Emma Anna Himmler was born Aug. 8, 1929, in Munich. Except for a brief interview in 1959, she is not known to have spoken in public about her father or her later life.

 She did, however, often wear a silver brooch given to her by her father, depicting the heads of four horses arranged in the shape of a swastika.

 She was also known to be active in a group called “Stille Hilfe,” or silent help, which was formed in the 1940s to help Nazi fugitives flee Germany, particularly to South America, and to support their families.

 The organization is “closely linked to a number of outlawed neo-Nazi movements and actively promotes revisionism — the notion that the Holocaust never happened and Jews caused their own downfall,” Andrea Roepke, a German authority on neo-Nazis, told Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper in 1998.

 Among followers of the group, Mrs. Burwitz was “a dazzling Nazi princess, a deity among these believers in the old times,” according to German author Oliver Schrom, who wrote a book about Stille Hilfe.

 Mrs. Burwitz attended underground reunions of Nazi SS officers, often held in Austria, possibly as recently as 2014.

 “She was surrounded all the time by dozens of high-ranking former SS men,” Roepke said, after attending one such gathering. “They were hanging on her every word . . . It was all rather menacing.”

 Mrs. Burwitz also provided support, through Stille Hilfe, to convicted Nazi war criminals, including Klaus Barbie, an SS officer dubbed the “Butcher of Lyon,” and Anton “Beautiful Tony” Malloth, who was convicted of killing prisoners at the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

 Malloth was sentenced to death in absentia by a court in the Czech Republic, but Mrs. Burwitz reportedly helped arrange for him to stay at a retirement facility outside Munich on land once owned by Nazi official Rudolf Hess.

 “I never talk about my work,” she said in 2015 when British journalist Allan Hall confronted her at her home. “I just do what I can when I can.”

 “Go away,” her husband said. “You are not welcome.”

 An earlier version of this story stated that Heinrich Himmler was captured by Russian forces on May 20, 1945. Historical accounts differ on how and when he was captured. The story also incorrectly implied that all victims of the Holocaust died in concentration camps. |||||

– The daughter of the man seen as second only to Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany has died at age 88. Gudrun Burwitz, the oldest child of Heinrich Himmler, was famous in her own right, however. When she was a child, Himmler frequently brought her to public events "as a blond, blue-eyed symbol of Aryan youth," in the words of the Washington Post. In her later years, she was believed to have been a member of the group Stille Hilfe (Silent Help), which provides assistance to former SS members and their families. Gudrun, who was detained temporarily after the war and testified at the Nuremberg trials, never denounced her father or the Nazi regime, reports the BBC. With her death, the German newspaper Bild has uncovered a nugget that has caused a stir in Germany: For about two years in the 1960s, Gurdrun worked for what was then West Germany's spy agency. "The BND confirms that Ms Burwitz was a member of the BND for a few years until 1963 under an assumed name," says an official with the agency. She worked there while the agency was run by a former Nazi military intelligence commander. The BND still exists as the unified Germany's foreign intelligence agency, and Deutsche Welle notes that its use of former Nazis in Eastern Europe after the war remains controversial. One item in wide circulation in Gudrun's obituaries is a diary entry she wrote at the age of 12 after her father took her to the notorious Dachau concentration camp. "We saw everything we could," she wrote. "We saw the gardening work. We saw the pear trees. We saw all the pictures painted by the prisoners. Marvelous." (Himmler's own diaries were found a few years ago.)


News article:

Chiang Rai, Thailand (CNN) A medical assessment of the 12 boys and their football coach stuck in a cave in Northern Thailand concluded that it was too dangerous to try to move the group out Thursday, according to a member of the Thai Navy SEALs who is not authorized to speak to the media.

 The SEALs have started to pump oxygen into the chamber.

 Separately, a new doctor's report highlighted that two of the boys and the coach were suffering with exhaustion from malnutrition.

 Fresh details of the operation underway at the Tham Luang Nang Non to free the team were emerging, as rescuers pushed ahead with multiple plans to extricate the group trapped underground for almost two weeks.

 More rain is forecast this weekend, putting pressure on rescuers to formulate a plan to extract the boys before flood waters rise any higher.

 Huge volumes of water are being pumped out of the cave complex each day, but the narrow, winding passages inside are still flooded, meaning diving through the murky water is currently the only way in and out.

 Rescuers entering the cave complex located in northern Thailand have to navigate dark, flooded tunnels for six hours to reach the team. It takes another five hours to return to the entrance.

 An additional 30 SEALs arrived on site to reinforce rescue operations, according to Captain Supachai Thanasarnsakorn, deputy chief of the Thai Navy SEALs. They join the 80 already involved in the rescue operation comprising active, reserve and former SEALs.

 Around the camp which has sprung up near the cave entrance, Thai military divers have set up an encampment with diving gear and equipment, while people from the local community hand out food to rescuers, other volunteers and the small army of press on site.

 Trying to stop the water

 The boys were in good spirits despite spending almost two weeks underground, Chiang Rai governor Narongsak Osottanakorn said.

 "I confirm here again that they are in good health and they are smiling and playing around," he said.

 International rescue effort Thailand may be leading the search to free 12 boys and their coach from a cave in the country's north, but many other countries are contributing assistance. Australia -- Australian police divers are taking part in rescue efforts and helping with planning. China -- Six rescue specialists from NGO Beijing Peaceland Foundation are assisting Thai divers. Israel -- Israel's Maxtech Networks is providing radio and communication equipment. Laos and Myanmar -- Thailand's neighboring countries each sent rescue workers and divers. UK -- Two UK divers were first to discover the boys, earning one a commendation from the British Cave Rescue Council. US -- US Indo-Pacific Command (PACOM) sent 30 military personnel, including divers.

 The last images the world saw of the boys was on Wednesday in a video where they introduced themselves one-by-one, saying "I am healthy."

 Since they were found late Monday local time by a duo of British expert cave divers , Thai Navy SEALs have stayed with the team, tending minor wounds and giving them food to build up their strength.

 The boys remain weak after spending days in the darkness, barely moving from the small, muddy ledge, away from the water.

 While rescuers are trying to pump enough water out of the cave to allow the boys to simply walk out, Thai Navy SEALs are also teaching them how to scuba dive.

 The boys would need to wear full-face diving masks to enter the narrow tunnels in moving water, though many experts say this would be a dangerous option for novice divers.

 In an attempt to maintain the boys' morale, rescue teams have prioritized installing a line of communication between the boys and their parents.

 However, they were still attempting to connect them Thursday after earlier efforts failed when the line became damaged after falling into water. CNN saw an old-style military phone and loops of cable being carried into the cave by engineers.

 JUST WATCHED Ex-Navy SEAL predicts fatalities if Thai kids dive Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Ex-Navy SEAL predicts fatalities if Thai kids dive 02:20

 Search for other entrances continues

 As divers work in tunnels deep below ground, teams are also scouring the hillside above the caves, looking for possible entry points to the chamber where the boys are sheltering.

 "We are drawing our jungle trekking resources together. There are about 20 to 30 teams," Osottanakorn said.

 "Now we are going to walk around that area to search every inch, (to see if) there are chimneys or holes where we can climb down, and we may adjust our plan."

 The teams searching for another route through a natural chimney were dispatched following reports that the boys had told divers they heard dogs barking, a rooster crowing and children playing, possibly indicating a shaft leading up to the surface.

 "There has been reports that kids have heard sounds from chickens and birds," Ben Reymenants, a Belgian who owns a diving shop in Thailand and has been assisting with the rescue efforts, told CNN.

 "Were those hallucinations or did they really hear it? Because that would mean there is livestock nearby or at least a forest which would make an alternative entrance possible."

 Osottanakorn said that teams on the surface were no longer drilling into the rock to create new shafts, but are focusing efforts on finding existing chimneys.

 "We are no longer digging -- we will find a way that can give us access (without digging) direct to the area where the boys are," he said.

 Rains a constant concern

 Rescue coordinators are warily eying the skies for further downpours, which could imperil the rescue mission.

 "In the previous days we were fighting with time. And now we are working against water," Osottanakorn said.

 "We are draining out as much as our capacity allows. But water continues to flow in, no matter how many holes have been blocked, water still continues to pour in."

 Osottanakorn said rescuers were at the mercy of the rainy season, and may have to act quickly to beat fresh downpours.

 "If we must evacuate (the boys) out before they are ready due to the rain ... we will do so, but it will be the very last resort to do so," he said.

 CNN Weather reports that while rain can't be ruled out, there is a likelihood that the area will remain relatively dry until at least Saturday. The chance of rainfall increases from Sunday, and alongside the increased rainfall is the threat of heavier downpours.

 International efforts and support

 Thai Navy divers have brought in substantial supplies -- including food and water for at least two weeks along with aluminum blankets, with support from Australian and other international divers, according to a statement from the Australian Federal Police (AFP).

 The AFP's Specialist Response Group personnel are among the many divers and support staff who have been sent by a number of nations.

 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave The rescued team attends a news conference in Chiang Rai, Thailand, after being discharged from the hospital on Wednesday, July 18. Hide Caption 1 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Members of the soccer team greet well-wishers as they arrive for the news conference on July 18. Hide Caption 2 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave The team poses with a sketched portrait of Saman Kunan, a former Thai Navy SEAL who died on July 6 while returning from an operation to deliver oxygen tanks to the cave. He ran out of air while underwater, an official said. Hide Caption 3 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Thai Navy SEALs pose for a photo after the rescue effort was finished on July 10. One of them was a doctor who stayed with the team for a week after the group was found alive on July 2. Hide Caption 4 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Rescuers carry one of the boys out of the cave. Hide Caption 5 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Divers wave through floodwaters in the cave. Each rescue took multiple hours. Hide Caption 6 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Chiang Rai Governor Narongsak Osotthanakorn speaks during a news conference held after the rescue was finished on July 10. Hide Caption 7 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave A helicopter transports rescued boys to the hospital on July 10. Hide Caption 8 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave People watch and cheer as a helicopter flies toward an airstrip to transport one of the rescued boys to a hospital. Four boys were rescued on July 8, another four were rescued on July 9, and the rest were rescued on July 10. Hide Caption 9 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Rescue workers leave after all members of the team had been saved. Hide Caption 10 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave This photo tweeted by tech entrepreneur Elon Musk shows rescue efforts during the three-day mission. Musk tweeted early July 10 that he had visited the cave and left a mini-submarine there for future use. Hide Caption 11 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Members of the Royal Thai Navy are pictured with the team inside the cave. Hide Caption 12 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave The boys received medical attention after being found alive on July 2. Hide Caption 13 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave An ambulance believed to be carrying one of the rescued boys heads to the hospital on July 10. Hide Caption 14 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Rescuers walk toward the entrance of the cave as rescue operations resumed on July 10. Hide Caption 15 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Hospital staff and a police officer are seen during a news conference that was held on July 10. The eight boys that had been rescued on July 8 and 9 were being treated in an isolation ward in a Chiang Rai hospital. Hide Caption 16 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Thai police and military officers use umbrellas to shield a rescued boy before he was transported to a hospital on July 9. Hide Caption 17 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave An ambulance exits the cave area on July 9. Hide Caption 18 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Emergency responders surround a helicopter on July 8. Hide Caption 19 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Rescue teams arrange a water-pumping system at the cave's entrance on July 7. Hide Caption 20 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Ambulances wait outside a hospital where the rescued boys were treated. Hide Caption 21 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Thai military personnel walk into a cave during rescue operations. Hide Caption 22 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Military personnel work inside a cave. Hide Caption 23 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave An ambulance leaves the scene of the rescue effort on July 8. Hide Caption 24 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave This undated photo, released via the Thailand Navy SEAL Facebook page, shows rescuers with their hands locked. The caption said, "We Thai and the international teams join forces to bring the young Wild Boars home." The Wild Boars is the name of the soccer team the boys play on. Hide Caption 25 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Family members pray in front of a Buddhist statue near the cave on July 8. Hide Caption 26 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Emergency workers carry oxygen tanks as rescue operations begin. Hide Caption 27 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Thai soldiers work to connect pipes that help water from entering a cave. Hide Caption 28 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Thai forest rangers examine a map as they review their rescue options on July 8. Hide Caption 29 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave This image, taken from video on July 2, shows the team trapped inside the cave. That was the day divers found them alive. Hide Caption 30 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Divers were able to bring food, blankets and other supplies to the boys while experts determined the best way to get them out safely. The team was found around two kilometers (1.24 miles) into the cave and somewhere between 800 meters to one kilometer below the surface, according to a British Cave Rescue Council briefing note. Hide Caption 31 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave The team was found alive by British divers. The search brought rescue teams from all over the world. Hide Caption 32 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave A Thai military medic provides first aid to one of the boys. Hide Caption 33 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave The body of Saman Kunan, a former Thai Navy SEAL, is carried during a repatriation and religious rites ceremony on July 6. Kunan died Friday as he returned from an operation to deliver oxygen tanks to the cave. He ran out of air while underwater, an official said. Hide Caption 34 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Thai police take a break for breakfast as rescue operations continue on July 4. Hide Caption 35 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Water is pumped out of the cave on July 3. Hide Caption 36 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Workers fix the road leading to the cave on July 3. Hide Caption 37 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Divers prepare a light to be used for the underwater search on July 2. Hide Caption 38 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Rescue workers wait at the entrance to the cave on July 2. Hide Caption 39 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Some of the team's family members celebrate after receiving news that the team was alive. Hide Caption 40 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Technicians lift water pumps to the drilling site on July 1. Hide Caption 41 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Soldiers and rescuers work outside the cave complex on July 1. Hide Caption 42 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Monks attend a Buddhist prayer for the team on July 1. Hide Caption 43 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Scuba tanks are delivered to the search site on July 1. Hide Caption 44 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Rescue workers carry water-pumping equipment into the cave on July 1. Hide Caption 45 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave A Thai Air Force worker drops near a possible cave opening on June 30. Hide Caption 46 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave British cave diver Robert Charles Harper explores an opening on June 29. Hide Caption 47 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Relatives of the trapped team members pray on June 27. Hide Caption 48 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Family members waited more than a week for news of their loved ones. Hide Caption 49 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Thai soldiers bring hoses and additional water pumps as the search for the team continued on June 27. Hide Caption 50 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Volunteer paramedics wait near the cave entrance on June 27. Hide Caption 51 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave A rescuer looks for a cave entrance on June 27. Hide Caption 52 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Rescuers search the cave on June 26. Hide Caption 53 of 54 Photos: Photos: Thai soccer team rescued from cave Thai soldiers relay cable at the search site on June 26. Hide Caption 54 of 54

 The Australians on the ground "remain closely engaged in efforts to support and sustain the group, as well as in planning. This includes supporting the Royal Thai Navy to transport food, water and first aid supplies into the cave system through to the group."

 They are part of an international contingent that includes teams from the US military, the UK, and China.

 The Thai people got moral support from one of the 33 Chilean rescued miners who were trapped for 69 days in 2010.

 "To the people in Thailand, I want to send you a message from a long distance, and also a lot of strength to the authorities and all the families of these 12 children who are trapped underground," Mario Sepulveda said in a video message.

 "I have no doubt that if we pray, I have no doubt that if the government in Thailand gives all it has and makes all possible human efforts, this rescue will be a success," he said. ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The boys can be seen introducing themselves next to a diver in a wetsuit

 A new video has been released of the 12 boys and their football coach trapped in a Thai cave, in which they say they are in good health.

 Smiling and at times laughing, they introduce themselves one by one.

 They were found on Monday after nine days trapped deep in the cave by rising water, and have since received food and medical treatment.

 But their rescue may take months as they must either be taught to dive or wait for the water to recede.

 The concern is that the rainy season has only just begun, so water levels in the Tham Luang cave will almost certainly continue to rise.

 The video posted on the Thai Navy special forces Facebook page shows the team draped in foil blankets to keep them warm.

 Image copyright AFP Image caption The boys all give their names, and a traditional Thai greeting

 Lit by torches and with divers sitting alongside, they each give their name and the traditional "wai" greeting, putting their palms together.

 Two other videos show the group having some light scratches treated by a military doctor. The boys are also again seen asking how soon food is coming.

 Written on a rock in the cave can be seen the name of the football team and of the navy unit involved in the rescue.

 Two Thai navy divers will be staying with the group underground from now on.

 Could the group swim out?

 "Now we are teaching the children to swim and dive," Thai Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan was quoted as saying by the Reuters news agency.

 A report in The Guardian says the boys are being trained to breathe through scuba masks.

 But a source inside the Thai navy diving team has told the BBC that taking the boys, few of whom can even swim, out through the narrow flooded passages is too risky.

 He said the journey in to where they were, deep in the caves, had exhausted even experienced divers. So they were seriously considering keeping the boys there for the full four or five months of the rainy season, he added.

 Some of the route involves squeezing through tight gaps underwater. In parts it is too narrow to wear an oxygen tank and the exits are not visible, so it would be easy for a child to panic.

 However, other Thai officials say they may need to bring the boys out quickly if water levels rise. Weather forecasts for the area are being closely monitored for heavy rain which could trigger further flooding.

 What are the trapped group having to endure?

 Before they were found, they would have lived in total darkness once any torch batteries had expired.

 However, the three basic conditions for survival were met:

 The temperature in the cave is thought to be around 26C (79F) so hypothermia was not an issue

 There was sufficient oxygen because air enters through porous limestone or cracks in the rocks.

 They had drinkable water

 Oxygen may yet become a problem should the water level rise and the air pocket they are in get smaller.

 Unknown factors include the possibility of dangerous animals like snakes in the cave or of contamination from bat droppings.

 What rescue efforts are being made?

 Rescuers are trying to work out how best to bring them all to safety, with officials stressing they do not intend to take any risks with the boys' safety.

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Families have been shown new footage of the 12 boys and their coach stuck in a cave in Thailand.

 At a news conference, officials said no rescue attempt would be made on Wednesday but conditions were perfect for a rehearsal.

 Water continues to be pumped out of the cave complex and officials have said they are confident they have been able to stop more water getting into the chamber the boys are in.

 Emergency teams are also trying to install a phone line so the group can talk to their families but attempts to do so failed on Tuesday.

 Outside the cave, medics are staging rehearsals in case the group can be brought out soon.

 Other teams are still scouring the mountainside in the hope of finding another way into - and out of - the cave.

 How did the group get trapped?

 The boys, aged between 11 and 16, and their 25-year-old coach went missing on 23 June. It is believed they entered the cave in northern Chiang Rai province when it was dry and that sudden heavy rains blocked the exit.

 It is thought they could at first move through parts of the cave in dry conditions but rushing waters clogged the narrow passages with mud and debris, blocking visibility and access.

 How were they found?

 They were finally reached by two British rescue divers late on Monday, nine days after they entered the caves.

 They were huddled on a rock shelf about 4km (2.5 miles) from the mouth of the cave.

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The moment divers discover the missing boys

 The video of that first contact was also posted on Facebook by Thai navy special forces.

 The boys are seen by torchlight sitting on a ledge above water, responding to the divers that all 13 are there and they are very hungry.

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Diver Ben Reymenants is assisting with the rescue mission and says none of the boys can swim ||||| Hundreds of pumps clearing water along 4km path in hope of avoiding need for scuba gear

 Thai rescuers say 12 boys trapped deep inside a cave complex may be able to walk out, provided the route can be drained before the monsoon showers predicted for the weekend.

 A military operation in the Tham Luang Nang Non cave complex is employing hundreds of industrial pumps to drain the water along the 2.5-mile (4km) path from the entrance to the area where the children and their football coach have been sheltering for 12 days.

 Poonsak Woongsatngiem, a rescue official with Thailand’s interior ministry, told the Guardian the water had been reduced by 40% in the past few days, clearing a 1.5km stretch of dark, jagged and muddy cave channels that the boys would need to traverse.

 The focus of Thursday’s operations is a third major basin along the route, Woongsatngiem said. The boys, who are not strong swimmers, are being trained in how to dive using scuba equipment. But forcing them to exit through the water is considered very risky.

 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Soldiers and rescue workers walk past water pumped out of the cave complex. Photograph: Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters

 “We [are] target[ing] the water in the third chamber to reduce to the point that no diving equipment is needed, like to the waistline, so one can wear just life jackets and walk out,” Woongsatngiem said on Thursday.

 Clearing the third basin would leave another 2.5km of path to the boys, whose ages range from 11 to 16. A Chinese diver at the site, Wang Ying Jie, said about half that remaining path would be walkable in the right conditions; the maximum water depth they would need to cross is about six metres.

 It is unclear how long the remaining area would take to drain, but monsoon rains are predicted for Saturday and would quickly refill the cave complex, potentially cutting the boys off for months.

 Rain was the biggest worry, said Narongsak Osatanakorn, the governor of Chiang Rai province, who is coordinating the rescue efforts. “We were racing against time before we found them,” he said. “Now we’re racing against water. It keeps seeping through the cave.”

 A fibre-optic cable was being laid inside the cave and would reach the boys soon, he added, so the children would be able to speak to and possibly see their parents on video.

 Wang said most of the boys remained in good health but three had intestinal issues and were in some pain. Divers were positioned at the third basin waiting to ferry medicine to the children.

 With wet weather looming, authorities are also calculating how long they are willing to allow rescuers to remain in the cave before they order an evacuation.

 Updates on the condition of the boys and the water levels were being slowed by the length of the journey to reach the children. “It’s about 11 hours – six on the way from the entrance to where the kids are and five on the way back,” he said.

 Play Video 1:00 Chilean miner has message of hope for trapped Thai boys – video

 He said the boys and their 25-year-old coach had started practising diving but did not confirm whether they would try to bring any out on Thursday. Those considered strong enough to go could do so first, he said. “They don’t need to be brought out as a team,” Osatanakorn said. “Whosoever is ready can come out first.”

 Thailand cave rescue: where were the boys found and how can they be rescued? Read more

 Officials were also scouring the jungle above the complex to find new openings that could be drilled to extract the boys more easily. The children were breathing, he said, so there was very likely a shaft somewhere to the top.

 “We have around 20 to 30 teams surveying on top to find the closest and most precise spot,” he said.

 One Thai navy Seal member who spent time with the boys said they “were always asking about the World Cup. I told them that all the big teams had gone home.”

 Additional reporting by Veena Thoopkrajae in Mae Sai and the Associated Press ||||| Image: AP

 As 12 boys and their soccer coach wait to be rescued from a submerged cave in northern Thailand, officials may be forced into action due to expected heavy rains in the coming days. The situation is grave, given a medical assessment claiming the boys and coach are too weak to attempt such a physically demanding escape.

 It’s monsoon season in Thailand, but cave rescuers have been blessed with a brief dry spell, making the next 24 hours all the more critical. The rains are expected to start on Friday, turning into a deluge by Sunday. Earlier today, the Chiang Rai provincial governor said the mission is now in a “race against the water,” AFP reports.

 Advertisement

 “Our biggest concern is the weather,” he told reporters. “We are calculating how much time we have if it rains, how many hours and days.”

 Water levels have dropped appreciably over the last several days, thanks to the weather and the herculean efforts of rescue officials, who have managed to pump out 34 million gallons (128 million liters) of water from the submerged cave complex. Water levels are currently falling at a rate of 1.5 cm (0.6 inches) per hour, and rescuers can now walk through a 0.9 mile (1.5 km) stretch from the entrance to an area known as the Third Chamber, the BBC reports.

 Image: AP

 Advertisement

 Twelve members of the youth soccer team, ranging in age from 11 to 16, and their 25-year-old coach, ventured deep into the Tham Luang Nang Non cave system on June 23, but heavy rains flooded the caves, trapping them inside. The “Wild Boar” team was discovered by expert divers nine days after they went missing, and they’re currently huddled on a steep, muddy rock some 2.5 miles (4 km) from the mouth of the cave. Medical teams are now attending to the boys, handing out food, medicine, and foil blankets, along with providing emotional care.

 Ideally, enough water could be pumped out from the cave such that the boys could wade through or swim out (or at least be “floated”) from the cave complex. Reducing water levels in the cave could also minimize the amount of time the boys would have to spend underwater. Most of the boys don’t know how to swim, and they have no experience with scuba diving. But given the grim weather forecast, and concerns that the space where boys are located could become inundated with water, rescuers may be forced into action.

 Image: AP

 Advertisement

 This added urgency is unfortunate. Some members of the Thai Navy SEALS, who spoke to the media without authorization, said the plan is far too risky, CNN reports. Expert divers require around six hours to reach the boys, and around five hours to get back to the entrance. There are several air pockets along the route, but there’s virtually no visibility, the water is rushing in some places, and some regions are so narrow that scuba gear has to be removed from the divers’ backs so they can squeeze through. At the same time, an updated doctor’s report claims the boys are suffering from exhaustion and malnutrition, and that they’re in no shape for such an arduous escape attempt, according to CNN.

 Thirteen sets of diving equipment have already been assembled should it come to that, and the boys are already being taught the rudiments of scuba diving. In addition to a helmet, wetsuit, and boots, the boys would be equipped with a full-face mask fitted specially for children. Should the boys and coach have to be evacuated in a hurry, they’d be guided through the water along a static line that’s already been installed. The boys would be led to safety by a team of expert divers who would be positioned at strategic points along the route.

 Advertisement

 As officials weigh their options, other plans have been set into motion. Oxygen is now being pumped into the air pocket where the boys are huddled, and a communication line is being built to connect the team to the outside world—including to their parents. Outside of the cave, hundreds of workers, many of whom are volunteers, have assembled to help, handing out water bottles in the summer heat, preparing food, and doing whatever they can to help.

 Image: AP

 Plans to drill into the rock to create new shafts have been abandoned. Instead, around 20 to 30 teams are currently scouring the mountainside in search of alternative natural entrances, called chimneys, into the cave complex. They’ve also enlisted bird-watchers, who may be able to spot birds entering or exiting hidden holes, according to AFP.

 Advertisement

 The Tham Luang Nang Non cave system is normally flooded during this time of year, and it doesn’t fully drain until September or October. One extreme possibility is that the boys and their coach will have to wait it out until then. But this presents a slew of new considerations, such as the psychological well-being of the children, issues of hygiene, and the ongoing threat of further flooding.

 All eyes will be on northern Thailand over the next day or two as the heavy rains approach. The time for a tough decision is looming.

 [CNN, BBC, AFP] |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– Reports on the 12 boys trapped in a cave in Thailand along with their soccer coach have generally quoted officials as describing the group as in good health. CNN is changing that narrative somewhat, referencing a new doctor's report that described the coach and two boys as experiencing exhaustion from malnutrition and quoting an unnamed Thai Navy SEALs member who says that based on the group's health, no extraction effort will be made on Thursday. And the timeline may be tight, with CNN reporting the area is expected to be dry until Saturday, at which point the chance of rain—and rising cave waters—spikes. It notes that the current round-trip time for the divers who have reached the boys is 11 hours. But the Guardian reports hundreds of industrial pumps continue to suck water from the cave system in hopes of draining the levels to the point where the group can don life vests and cover the 2.5-mile distance out largely on foot. A rescue official says they're currently focusing on draining the third chamber to waist height; of the remaining chambers, which measure about 1.5 miles, a diver at the scene speculates about half would be walkable, with the water reaching a maximum depth of about 20 feet. Gizmodo reports the "herculean efforts" at the site have seen 34 million gallons of water pumped out, at a current rate of about 0.6 inches per hour.


Write an article based on this summary:

– A fundamentalist Mormon church faces legal action from the Department of Labor after allegedly using young children to harvest pecans. Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints members Dale Barlow and Brian Jessop, and Paragon Contractors were fined $1.9 million yesterday for violating federal child labor laws, reports the Hill. Bishop Lyle Jeffs and Barlow also face a lawsuit for back wages, and Jessop and Paragon face contempt of court charges after violating a 2007 order regarding the use of child laborers. The men allegedly shut down schools in Utah and Arizona to supply workers on pecan farms. “For years, these employers have trampled on the rights of workers, both children and adults, and violated our child labor laws forcing minors to work for them,” says the Labor Department's David Weil. The feds say at least 175 kids under the age of 13 were put to work during the 2012-2013 harvest, as were about 1,200 adults, with no compensation, reports the Deseret News. The kids performed various jobs, "including but not limited to: pruning trees, mowing fields, maintenance duties, picking and bagging pecans, shaking trees, driving equipment, cleanup work, and preparing pecans for commerce," says the federal lawsuit.

SALT LAKE CITY — The U.S. Department of Labor has filed a set of lawsuits against the Fundamentalist LDS Church and some of its leaders after a multi-year investigation into the church's alleged use of child labor and other violations.

 The lawsuits filed Tuesday in federal court accuses top church leaders of pulling children in Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona, out of school for weeks to work during the 2012-13 pecan harvest, all while not paying members for their work.

 An administrative action filed within the Department of Labor is also seeking $1.9 million in penalties for the alleged child labor violations.

 As many as 175 children under the age of 13 were found among the 1,400 children and adults who harvested pecans at the Southern Utah Pecan Ranch in Hurricane but were not paid, according to one of the lawsuits.

 "These children worked for the defendants in agriculture performing various job duties, including but not limited to: pruning trees, mowing fields, maintenance duties, picking and bagging pecans, shaking trees, driving equipment, cleanup work, and preparing pecans for commerce," the lawsuit states. "Defendants knew that they were employing these children during school hours without pay."

 The lawsuit naming FLDS Bishop Lyle Jeffs; member Dale Barlow, who supervised the ranch; and the two operating branches of the church, the Corporation of the President and Corporation of the Presiding Bishop, is seeking back wages for the 1,400 workers. Because no record of the work was kept, it is unclear just how much is owed, the lawsuit notes.

 Another federal court filing accuses Paragon Contractors Corporation, a Hildale construction company that manages the pecan groves, and the company's owner, FLDS member Dan Jessop, of violating a 2007 injunction handed down when child labor violations were discovered at the pecan ranch.

 In the filing, a stepdaughter of Jessop's brother claims that she began working for the pecan ranch when she was 15 years old, working up to 15 hours with other young girls shelling pecans in a "sorting shed." She later worked in a Paragon office, including managing the sign-in sheets used for children working at the ranch.

 The young woman confirmed that the FLDS members were not paid for their work, according to court documents.

 David Weil, the department's Wage and Hour Division administrator, said in a prepared statement Wednesday that church leaders' suspected ongoing violations of labor laws, especially concerning children, cannot be tolerated.

 "The legal actions taken today send a clear message that the Wage and Hour Division will take any and all actions necessary to protect the rights of the most vulnerable. Today we speak up for those who could not or would not speak up for themselves," Weil said.

 Email: mromero@deseretnews.com

 Twitter: McKenzieRomero ||||| The Department of Labor (DOL) is fining one of the largest fundamentalist Mormon churches $1.9 million for allegedly violating child labor laws.

 ADVERTISEMENT

 The agency says its wage and hour division conducted a multiyear investigation and found that leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) illegally hired young children in Southern Utah and northern Arizona to harvest pecans by hand for commercial sale.

 On Wednesday, DOL took administrative action to collect $1.9 million from FLDS Church members Dale Barlow and Brian Jessop, and Paragon Contractors Corp. for child labor violations that occurred during the 2012-2013 pecan harvest.

 The department has also filed a lawsuit against the FLDS Church Bishop Lyle Jeffs and Barlow to claim back wages and initiated a contempt of court action against Jessop and Paragon for violating a 2007 court order that restrained them from violating child labor laws.

 FLDS leaders are accused of directing schools in Hildale, Utah, and nearby Colorado City, Ariz., to close so children and adult laborers could collect pecans. DOL investigators said they found that at least 175 children under the age of 13 were harvesting pecans.

 At least 1,400 FLDS children and adults allegedly worked in the fields for no compensation.

 “For years, these employers have trampled on the rights of workers, both children and adults, and violated our child labor laws forcing minors to work for them,” David Weil, administrator of DOL’s Wage and Hour Division. “Such disregard for the rights of all workers, especially children, will not be tolerated.” |||||


Workers upgrading century-old water mains under Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village this week made a surprising and grisly discovery: a burial vault dating back to the 19th century with a large pile of skeletal remains.

 The vault, which is about 8 feet deep, 15 feet wide and 20 feet long, contained the remains of more than a dozen people, according to officials of the city's Department of Design and Construction. A contractor excavated the site, and archaeologists and anthropologists will be working there to gather more information, officials said Wednesday.

 advertisement | advertise on newsday

 Among the questions are the identities of the remains.

 Department of Design and Construction Commissioner Feniosky Peña-Mora said that his agency with working with the Landmarks Preservation Commission to "evaluate the extent and significance of the vault and its contents."

 Excavation will continue south of the burial vault, which is at Washington Square Park East near Waverly Place, officials said. Access by vehicles and pedestrians near the area will be restricted, officials said. ||||| Please enable Javascript to watch this video

 GREENWICH VILLAGE — Archeologists believe two centuries-old burial vaults discovered beneath a New York City street this week were likely part of a Presbyterian church cemetery.

 Principal investigator Alyssa Loorya says Thursday the roughly 15-by-18-foot crypts near Manhattan's Washington Square Park were found Tuesday.

 She says they probably were built in the late 18th or early 19th centuries.

 Workers starting a years-long water main replacement project happened upon the tombs' brick roofs just 3 ½ feet beneath the street.

 Archeologists from Chrysalis were on site because the nearby Greenwich Village park was a Potter's Field for yellow fever victims in the early 1800s.

 Loorya says skeletons and skulls are visible in one of the vaults. She says more than a dozen of stacked coffins are visible in the other.

 Commissioner Peña-Mora issued the following statement: ||||| Workers upgrading old water mains under Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village have discovered a second burial vault with skeletal remains. Natalie Pasquarella reports. (Published Thursday, Nov. 5, 2015)

 Workers upgrading old water mains under Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village have discovered two centuries-old burial vaults that likely were part of a Presbyterian church cemetery and contained more than a dozen sets of remains, according to archaeologists and officials.

 One of the roughly 15-by-18-foot crypts was clearly disturbed, with the skeletons and skulls of between nine and 12 people pushed into a corner while more than a dozen stacked wooden coffins can be seen in the second one, said Chrysalis' Alyssa Loorya, the project's principal investigator.

 The vaults were probably built in the late 18th century or early 19th century and belonged to one of two area Presbyterian churches, Loorya said. Members of her team will search old newspapers, death records and church archives to identify the buried — if possible.

 "You never know what you can find beneath the city's streets," she said at the site in Greenwich Village. "You bury people to memorialize them and these people were forgotten."

 Anthropologists and archaeologists have hung lights in the excavated area and will use digital cameras with zoom lenses to take pictures of the coffin plates in the hopes of identifying the buried. And because New York City policy is to leave burial grounds undisturbed if possible, project engineers are planning a new route for the water main.

 "We knew we could be encountering remains or other items in this area," said Thomas Foley, an associate commissioner with the city's Department of Design and Construction. "We'll do some exploring to discover what other lanes we might have."

 Loorya's firm was contracted to work on the three-year, $9 million project because Washington Square Park adjacent to the excavation work was a Potter's Field for yellow fever victims in the early 1800s, officials said. The tombs' brick roofs were discovered Tuesday by workers just 3 ½ feet under the street with utility cables running on top of them.

 The discovery is not the first time officials have discovered historical artifacts in the course of planned upkeep projects to replace old pipes and water mains.

 Eighteenth century houses and wells along with Revolutionary War buttons worn by soldiers who marched in the Battle of Brooklyn were found during construction work beginning in 2005 in lower Manhattan's South Street Seaport area, Loorya said.

 "It's definitely a wonderful find," she said.

 Weird News Photos: Man Shoves Snake in Pants

 Copyright Associated Press / NBC New York |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– Workers were just trying to fix an old water main this week in New York's Greenwich Village and ended up with their hands full of old bones instead, Newsday reports. According to WPIX-TV, workers found the roofs of two burial vaults less than 4 feet below the street. The tombs, which are approximately 18 feet by 15 feet, were likely built in the late 18th century or early 19th century and contained the bones of at least 12 people, NBC New York reports. A pile of skulls was found in a corner in one of the vaults, while the other had a stack of a dozen wooden coffins. "You never know what you can find beneath the city's streets," one of the project heads tells NBC. "You bury people to memorialize them and these people were forgotten." Newsday reports archaeologists and anthropologists will be checking out the tombs to find out more information. But right now officials believe they're probably part of a Presbyterian church cemetery, according to NBC. Experts will be examining old documents and records in an attempt to figure out who is buried there. Meanwhile, workers are planning a new route for the water main, as it's city policy to leave burial sites be whenever possible. (Elsewhere, Israeli archaeologists just found a "dream come true" under a parking lot.)


Write a summary based on this article:

The Ford logo is pictured on the rooftop of Austria's Ford head branch in Vienna March 19, 2013.

 SYDNEY |

 SYDNEY (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co (F.N) said on Thursday it is closing its two Australian auto plants and will cease production in the country in October 2016.

 Ford Australia Chief Executive Bob Graziano said the company will close its engine plant in Geelong and its assembly plant in Broadmeadows, both in the state of Victoria.

 The car manufacturer has struggled with sliding sales, high costs and a strong Australian dollar.

 (Reporting By Jane Wardell; Editing by Michael Perry) ||||| Article Excerpt

 GEELONG, Australia—Ford Motor Co. said it would stop producing cars in Australia in three years, foreshadowing hefty job losses in a setback for a government that has invested heavily in propping up the country's automobile industry.

 The U.S.-based auto maker said it would end more than 90 years of car production in Australia in October 2016, resulting in 1,200 job losses. It cited unsustainably high business costs, with wages singled out as a particular concern.

 "The business case simply didn't stack up," Ford Australia's Chief Executive Bob Graziano said. "Our costs are double that of Europe and nearly four times ... |||||

– Starting in October 2016, Ford will no longer produce vehicles in Australia, the company says. "Our costs are double that of Europe and nearly four times Ford in Asia," says Ford Australia CEO Bob Graziano. Facing struggling sales and citing high wages, the firm will close its two plants in Victoria state, Reuters reports. The move will cut 1,200 jobs, the Wall Street Journal adds, noting that the company has made cars in the country since 1925. Last month, a strong Australian dollar pushed General Motors' Aussie operation to announce it would slash 500 jobs.