VISSO, Italy (AP) – Officials in central Italy began to assess the damage caused by a pair of strong earthquakes in the same region of central Italy hit by a deadly quake in August, as an appeal went out for temporary housing adequate for the cold mountain temperatures.
Thousands of people spent the night in their cars following the pair of quakes that struck late in the evening, sending residents into the streets into the pouring rain. A series of small shocks overnight, including two registering magnitudes above 4 before dawn, further unsettled residents.
BEIRUT (AP) – The U.N. Children’s agency called the airstrikes in Syria’s rebel-held northern Idlib province a day earlier an “outrage,” suggesting it may be the deadliest attack on a school since the country’s war began nearly six years ago.
The attack, according to UNICEF, killed 22 children and six of their teachers. A series of airstrikes in the village of Hass hit a residential compound that houses a school complex as children gathered outside. The Syrian Civil Defense first responder team and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights stated the airstrikes killed at least 35, most of them children.
CANNON BALL, N.D. (AP) – Protesters trying to stop construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline are bracing for a confrontation with police after the demonstrators refused to leave private land in the pipeline’s path. A months-long dispute over the four-state, $3.8 billion pipeline reached a crisis point when some 200 protesters set up camp on land owned by pipeline developer Energy Transfer Partners.
The disputed area is just to the north of a more permanent and larger encampment on federally owned land where hundreds of protesters have camped for months. Law enforcement officials demanded that the protesters leave the private land but the protesters refused.