One trapped, several hurt in Washington building collapse

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Search and rescue crews were attempting on Thursday to free a construction worker trapped inside a partially-built five-story building that collapsed during a rain storm in Washington.

Four other construction workers were removed from the debris shortly after the building in the U.S. capital came down at about 3:30 pm (1930 GMT), said John Donnelly, assistant chief of D.C. Fire and EMS.

The rescued workers were taken from the scene about 5 miles (8 km) north of the Capitol building to a local hospital. They had non-life-threatening injuries, Donnelly said.

The trapped worker was conscious and in contact with fire crews as they sought to free him from the rubble, Donnelly said, adding: “We are talking to him and I view that as a good thing.”

Images showed dozens of firefighters swarming over piles of wood left behind by the collapse, using saws and heavy equipment to move large pieces.

Last week, a condominium tower collapsed in Surfside, Florida as most residents slept. Searchers there have recovered 18 bodies and say another 145 people remain missing.

President Joe Biden traveled to the scene of the 12-story Champlain Towers South in Florida on Thursday.

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; editing by Rosalba O’Brien)

U.S. capital running out of gas, even as Colonial Pipeline recovers

By Stephanie Kelly and Jessica Resnick-Ault

NEW YORK (Reuters) -The U.S. capital was running out of gasoline on Friday even as the top U.S. fuel pipeline ramped up deliveries following a cyberattack and Washington officials assured motorists that supplies would return to normal soon.

The six-day Colonial Pipeline shutdown was the most disruptive cyberattack on record, which underscored the vulnerability of vital U.S. infrastructure to cybercriminals.

Widespread panic buying continued two days after the nation’s largest fuel pipeline network restarted, leaving filling stations across the U.S. Southeast out of gas even in areas far from the pipeline.

U.S. pump prices are at their highest in years, just two weeks before the peak summer driving season kicks off and as traffic continues to recover from mobility restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic. The average national gasoline price has climbed to almost $3.04, the most expensive since October 2014, the American Automobile Association said.

On Friday gas station outages in Washington, D.C., climbed to 87%, from 79% the day before, tracking firm GasBuddy said.

“Most of these states/areas with outages have continued to see panicked buying, which is likely a contributing factor to the slow-ish recovery thus far,” said GasBuddy’s Patrick De Haan. “It will take a few weeks.”

Colonial Pipeline announced late Thursday it had restarted its entire pipeline system linking refineries on the Gulf Coast to markets along the eastern seaboard.

President Joe Biden also reassured U.S. motorists that fuel supplies should start returning to normal by this weekend.

Some states experienced modest improvements in gas outages but still saw a high amount. About 70% of gas stations in North Carolina were without fuel, while around 50% of stations in Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia had outages.

The hacking group believed to be responsible for the attack, DarkSide, said it had hacked four other companies including a Toshiba subsidiary in Germany.

Colonial Pipeline, which is owned by pension funds, private equity and energy firms, has not determined how the initial breach occurred, a spokeswoman said on Thursday. The company has focused on cleaning its networks, restoring data and reopening the pipeline.

Colonial has not disclosed how much money the hackers were seeking or whether it paid. However, Bloomberg News reported that it paid nearly $5 million to hackers.

To stem fuel shortages, four states and federal regulators relaxed fuel driver restrictions to speed deliveries of fresh supplies. Washington also issued a waiver to U.S. refiner Valero Energy Corp <VLO.N> allowing it to transport gasoline and diesel from the U.S. Gulf Coast to East Coast ports on foreign-flagged vessels. The U.S. normally limits deliveries between domestic ports to U.S.-built and crewed vessels.

Gulf Coast refiners that send their fuel to market through the Colonial Pipeline have had to cut production because they have not been able to move their gasoline, diesel and jet fuel through the pipeline. A smaller, alternative pipeline filled to capacity quickly after Colonial announced its network was shut last Friday.

(Reporting by Stephanie Kelly and Jessica Resnick-Ault in New York; additional reporting by Joseph Menn; Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Simon Webb and Steve Orlofsky)

Floyd’s death spurs ‘Gen Z’ activists to set up new D.C. rights group

By Katanga Johnson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Jacqueline LaBayne and Kerrigan Williams met for the very first time in person on Wednesday, at a sit-in they organized in front of the U.S. Capitol over the death of George Floyd.

They have been using social media, which they call a “tool of justice,” to rally a new, ethnically-diverse generation of young activists connecting online to protest Floyd’s May 25 death and push for civil rights reforms in the nation’s capital.

Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man, died after a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

The death, recorded on a bystander’s cellphone, sparked a storm of protests and civil strife, thrusting the highly charged debate over racial justice back to the forefront of the political agenda five months before the Nov. 3 U.S. presidential election.

“We spotted each other via a mutual friend’s thread on Twitter immediately following yet another police-executed murder,” said Williams, a 22-year-old black woman who moved to Washington from Houston, Texas and is pursuing graduate studies at Georgetown University.

“Now, we organize together in real life to help other first-time activists get involved in local responses to injustice.”

Within hours of Floyd’s death, they had founded Freedom Fighters DC, which now counts 10,000 Twitter followers, 20,000 Instagram followers, and brought hundreds of demonstrators to Washington in recent days, most of them “Generation Z-ers,” some of about 70 million Americans born after the mid-1990s.

“White allies need to become accomplices in the fight against racism toward black people,” said LaBayne, a 23-year-old white graduate student at Florida State University.

“Embracing this cause is the only way to have a meaningful impact in 2020 – the only way justice is served.”

Tens of thousands of demonstrators have gathered in Washington and other U.S. cities since Floyd’s death to demand an end to racism and brutality by U.S. law enforcement and push for justice in the Floyd case.

Derek Chauvin, the white officer who was seen with his knee on Floyd’s neck, has been arrested and charged with second-degree and third-degree murder as well as third-degree manslaughter. Three other officers who were involved in the incident were charged with aiding and abetting both second-degree murder and manslaughter. All four have been fired.

‘A CRY FOR JUSTICE’

Williams and LaBayne spent much of the week scrambling to take care of details mundane and profound ahead of the sit-in on Wednesday and a march from a U.S. Senate office building to Lafayette Park in front of the White House.

LaBayne solicited T-shirt donations for volunteers and fielded requests for media interviews. Williams got advice from the group’s five other board members on an intended route for Saturday’s march and reminded attendees to wear comfortable shoes.

“Sometimes we argue over priorities. Sometimes we make compromises. But in the end, we keep the main thing the main thing – a cry for justice for all brothers and sisters,” added LaBayne, who plans to become a civil rights lawyer.

Wednesday’s sit-in attracted a diverse group of about 500 protesters who sat in front of a line of police officers. One volunteer successfully convinced a white officer to kneel with her, drawing cheers from the protesters. Others passed out information on jail assistance for those who are arrested and promoted voter registration.

More than 2,000 people showed up for the Freedom Fighters’ march on Saturday, many of them first-time activists.

“Americans of different races saw the video of (Floyd’s) death on social media,” Williams said. “They also see our lives as regular people and were attracted to the cause. Like-minded, progressive people will always see themselves as stronger in large, diverse numbers. It makes the message of justice more compelling.”

LaBayne and Williams say they hope their efforts lead to substantial reforms, including de-funding Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department and an ending its contract with the District of Columbia’s Public Schools system.

“We do not seek to silence the wave of support by other movements for black lives, but we see an immediate need to use this as a springboard to specifically highlight the injustices of Washington natives,” LaBayne.

“This is the focus of Freedom Fighters DC beyond this current moment,” LaBayne said. “I just want people to take away that change is on the way, and we are here to usher it in.”

(Editing by Heather Timmons and Paul Simao)

War memorial or religious symbol? Cross fight reaches U.S. high court

A concrete cross commemorating servicemen killed in World War One, that is the subject of a religious rights case now before the U.S. Supreme Court, is seen in Bladensburg, Maryland, U.S., February 11, 2019. Picture taken on February 11, 2019. REUTERS/Lawrence Hurley

By Lawrence Hurley

BLADENSBURG, Md. (Reuters) – When Fred Edwords first drove by the 40-foot-tall (12 meters) concrete cross that has stood for nearly a century on a busy intersection in suburban Maryland outside the U.S. capital, his first reaction was, “What is that doing there?”

To Edwords, who believes there should be an impermeable wall separating church and state, the location of the so-called Peace Cross – a memorial to Americans killed in World War One situated on public land, with vehicles buzzing by on all sides – seemed to be a clear governmental endorsement of religion.

“It’s so obviously part of the town and a centerpiece. It just popped out at me. There was nothing about it that made me think it was anything other than a Christian cross,” Edwords, 70, said in an interview.

Edwords and two other plaintiffs filed a 2014 lawsuit challenging the cross as a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Establishment Clause, which prohibits the government from establishing an official religion and bars governmental actions favoring one religion over another.

A concrete cross commemorating servicemen killed in World War One, that is the subject of a religious rights case now before the U.S. Supreme Court, is seen in Bladensburg, Maryland, U.S., February 11, 2019. Picture taken on February 11, 2019. REUTERS/Lawrence Hurley

A concrete cross commemorating servicemen killed in World War One, that is the subject of a religious rights case now before the U.S. Supreme Court, is seen in Bladensburg, Maryland, U.S., February 11, 2019. Picture taken on February 11, 2019. REUTERS/Lawrence Hurley

The conservative-majority court will hear arguments in the case next Wednesday, with a ruling due by the end of June.

While the Establishment Clause’s scope is a matter of dispute, most Supreme Court experts predict the challenge to the Peace Cross will fail, with the justices potentially setting a new precedent allowing greater government involvement in religious expression.

The Peace Cross, now aging and crumbling a bit, was funded privately and built in Bladensburg in 1925 to honor 49 men from Maryland’s Prince George’s County killed in World War One. The property where it stands was in private hands when it was erected, but later became public land.

Its supporters include President Donald Trump’s administration and members of the American Legion veterans’ group, who hold memorial events at the cross. At a recent gathering at a nearby American Legion post, veterans and their relatives said the monument has no religious meaning despite being in the shape of a Christian cross, calling the lawsuit misguided and painful.

To Mary Ann Fenwick LaQuay, 80, the cross respectfully chronicles the war sacrifice of her uncle Thomas Notley Fenwick, one of 49 honored.

“It hurts people who have family members there. Every time I go by there, I think of my uncle. It hurts to think people would take it away,” she said.

Stan Shaw, 64, a U.S. Army veteran, said it appeared the challengers were going out of their way to take offense.

“If you don’t want to see it, take another route,” Shaw added.

Aside from its shape, the cross has no other religious themes or imagery. At its base is a barely legible plaque listing the names of the dead. Every year, ceremonies with no religious content are held at the site, lawyers defending the cross said.

Edwords, who is retired, is a long-time member and previous employee of the American Humanist Association, which advocates for the separation of church and state. He and his fellow challengers said they support veterans and that the lawsuit concerns only the symbolism of the cross, not the fact that it honors war dead.

The Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the cross was unconstitutional, reversing a Maryland-based federal judge’s decision allowing the monument.

The Supreme Court will hear appeals by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, the public agency that owns the cross, and the American Legion, which is represented by the conservative religious rights group First Liberty Institute.

TEN COMMANDMENTS

The Supreme Court has sent mixed messages about the extent to which there can be government-approved religious expression, including in two rulings issued on the same day in 2005.

In one case, it ruled that a monument on the grounds of the Texas state capitol building depicting the biblical Ten Commandments did not violate the Constitution. But in the other, it decided that Ten Commandments displays in Kentucky courthouses and schools were unlawful.

More recently, the court in 2014 ruled that government entities do not automatically violate the Constitution when they hold a prayer before legislative meetings.

In some other recent cases, the court has taken an expansive view of religious rights. In 2014, it ruled that owners of private companies could object on religious grounds to a federal requirement to provide health insurance that included coverage for women’s birth control.

It ruled in 2017 that churches and other religious entities cannot be flatly denied public money even in states whose constitutions ban such funding. In a narrow 2018 ruling, the court sided with a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple, citing his Christian beliefs.

The American Legion’s lawyers are asking the court to decide that government endorsement of religion is not the appropriate test in the Peace Cross case. Instead, they said, courts should conclude that the government violates the Constitution only when it actively coerces people into practicing religion.

Such a ruling would give public officials “carte blanche to have symbols anywhere,” said Marci Hamilton, a University of Pennsylvania expert on law and religion who joined a legal brief supporting Edwords.

Edwords conceded that the lawsuit could end up backfiring on his side with a ruling against him but stands by his decision to challenge the cross.

“We are not trying to be revolutionary here,” Edwords said.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)