KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Russian cruise missile strike on infrastructure in Ukraine’s western Lviv region killed one man, officials said Sunday.
The attack destroyed a building and sparked a fire, Gov. Maksym Kozytskyi wrote on social media app Telegram. He said that rescue operations were ongoing.
Meanwhile, thousands in Ukraine’s Odesa region were temporarily left without power Sunday after debris from a downed Russian drone caused a blaze at an energy facility, Gov. Oleh Kiper said. Some 170,000 homes were left with temporary power outages as a result of the attack, said Ukraine’s largest private electricity operator, DTEK.
The Ukrainian air force said that it shot down nine of the 11 Shahed-type drones launched by Russia overnight, as well as nine out of 14 cruise missiles.
Russia has escalated its attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure in recent days, causing significant damage in several regions.
Ukrainian energy company Centrenergo announced Saturday that the Zmiiv Thermal Power Plant, one of the largest thermal power plants in the eastern Kharkiv region, was completely destroyed following Russian shelling last week. Power outage schedules were still in place for around 120,000 people in the region, where 700,000 had lost electricity after the plant was hit on March 22.
Ten Czech-made Vampire rockets also landed in the Russian border region of Belgorod on Sunday, Russia’s Ministry of Defense said. One woman was injured when a fire broke out following the attack, said regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov.
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed orders heralding the start of the country’s annual spring recruitment season, officially drafting 150,000 conscripts.
Russia’s parliament raised the upper age limit for conscripts from 27 to 30 in July 2023, in a move that appeared to be part of efforts to expand the country’s military during the fighting in Ukraine. All Russian men are obliged to complete the yearlong national service, although many avoid the draft by using deferments granted to students, people with chronic illnesses and others.
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The family of a 26-year-old Black, pregnant mother of four found dead near a Kansas City, Missouri, park wants to know why the police investigation into her mysterious death has stalled.
Elaysha Gilliam was found in a field near Dunbar Park shortly before midnight on Feb. 19, according to the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department.
Details regarding her homicide are murky, and so far no arrests have been made.
The department hasn’t released many updates about the 5-week-old case, not even to Elaysha’s family.
“I want closure, we need answers,” said Clydetta Gilliam, 46, Elaysha’s stepmother who raised her since infancy. “The police are dragging their feet, but I need to go out here and solve the case myself. They aren’t giving us anything.”
Elaysha’s death comes as the city has struggled with homicides in recent years.
The city experienced its deadliest year on record last year, with 182 murders, according to police. The previous record of 176 homicides was set in 2020, police said. NBC affiliate KSHB reported last year that Missouri has the highest homicide rate in the country for Black women in recent years.
Elaysha Gilliam.Courtesy family
Officers were called to the scene on the night of Elaysha’s death and found her in a field near Dunbar Park. She appeared to be suffering from “bodily trauma,” and emergency crews pronounced her dead, police said.
She died from multiple gunshot wounds, according to a death certificate.
The lack of information from police has only frustrated Clydetta, who said many of her questions regarding the death are unanswered.
“Are there any fingerprints from shell cases? What was found around her? Did she have clothes on when she was found?” Elaysha’s stepmother asked.
Detectives said they are making progress toward identifying a person of interest but have also asked for the public’s help with gathering information, and are offering a reward of up to $25,000.
“That case remains under investigation as a homicide,” the department told NBC News in an email.
As the days move forward, family members say they’re trying their best to stay together.
Brandon Gilliam, 18, last saw his older sister two weeks before she was killed, when he changed her flat tire and filled up her gas tank.
He, too, questions what caused his sister’s death.
“We’re still at a loss for words. We don’t know what to think,” Brandon said. “Death happens, but the wrong person was taken from us.”
Life hadn’t been easy for Elaysha, a pregnant mother of four whose children range in age from 2 to 9.
One of her children has sickle cell anemia and another eats through a feeding tube, family said.
“She had a lot of stress trying to take care of a lot of people,” Clydetta said.
But at 12 weeks pregnant, family members said, Elaysha couldn’t wait to bring her fifth child into the world.
“She had been shopping for baby clothes,” her father, Ed Gilliam, said.
He said Elaysha’s biological mother moved into her apartment the week she was killed, and that one of her sisters periodically stayed there as well.
He said Elaysha’s mother told him that Elaysha left home on the night of her death possibly to see her boyfriend. She left her kids at home with her mother, who was supposed to watch the children until Elaysha returned. But she never did. Elaysha’s mother couldn’t be reached for comment.
Relatives said Elaysha was in the midst of starting over. She had accepted a job at a car wash, which would serve as a temporary place of employment until she could open a hair salon.
Elaysha was also getting a new car and an apartment in a better part of town. She planned to put her kids in a different school, the family said.
Meanwhile, family members are looking back on Elaysha with fond memories.
Ed said his daughter brought joy and looked out for everyone, even at her own expense. She could be dramatic, but in a humorous way, family said. Her smile was part of her charm. And she had a knack for fashion.
“She could take a $4 outfit and make it seem like it costs $2,000,” Clydetta said. “You could see her smile all the way down the street.”
Those are just some of the traits her family will miss.
“I want my baby to get justice,” her father said. Other family members said they have to keep fighting.
“I’m not gonna let them sweep this under the rug. I want every single person charged,” Clydetta said, adding that she’s considered spending $2,000 on a billboard advertisement to drum up tips and interest in the case.
“People are starting to forget about her,” she said.
A child is dead, found in a torched vehicle near a New Jersey high school, and a man is charged with arson, authorities said Friday.
Cops initially received a 911 call about a fire near Sayreville High School around 10:45 p.m. Thursday. As they were responding, another call came in reporting a related domestic dispute. Police responded to Eisenhower Drive, where they encountered a woman who said a domestic dispute led to Manuel Rivera, 43, leaving the home with their son.
Authorities found Rivera alive, but with burns to his body and a self-inflicted wound at Washington Road, near the back of Sayreville High School, officials say. Next to him was a vehicle on fire; it had been doused in gasoline.
Rivera was taken to a hospital for treatment of his injuries. A preliminary investigation revealed the body of a child in the burned-out vehicle. Prosecutors haven’t definitively identified the body as that of the 9-year-old at this time.
Rivera has been charged with second-degree aggravated arson. Additional charges are pending to autopsy report from the Middlesex County medical examiner’s office. Anyone with information is asked to call the Sayreville Police Department at 732-727-444 or the Middlesex County prosecutor’s office at 732-745-3289.
It wasn’t immediately clear if Rivera had an attorney who could comment on the arson allegation.
SAN FRANCISCO — Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist who won a Nobel Prize in economics for his insights into how ingrained neurological biases influence decision making, died Wednesday at the age of 90.
Kahneman and his longtime collaborator Amos Tversky reshaped the field of economics, which prior to their work mostly assumed that people were “rational actors” capable of clearly evaluating choices such as which car to buy or which job to take. The pair’s research — which Kahneman described for lay audiences in his best-selling 2011 book “Thinking, Fast and Slow” — focused on how much decision-making is shaped by subterranean quirks and mental shortcuts that can distort our thoughts in irrational yet predictable ways.
Take, for instance, false confidence in predictions. In an excerpt from his book, Kahneman described a “leaderless group” challenge used by the Israeli army’s Psychology Branch to assess future leadership potential. Eight candidates, all unknowns to one another, had to cross a six-foot wall together using only a long log — without touching the wall or the ground with the log, or touching the wall themselves.
Observers of the test — including Kahneman himself, who was born in Tel Aviv and did his Israeli national service in the 1950s — confidently identified leaders-in-the-making from these challenges, only to learn later that their assessments bore little relation to how the same soldiers performed at officer training school. The kicker: This fact didn’t dent the group’s confidence in its own judgments, which seemed intuitively obvious — and yet also continued to fail at predicting leadership potential.
“It was the first cognitive illusion I discovered,” Kahneman later wrote. He coined the phrase “ the illusion of validity ” to describe the phenomenon.
Kahneman’s partner, Barbara Tversky — the widow of Amos Tversky — confirmed his death to The Associated Press. Tversky, herself a Stanford University emerita professor of psychology, said the family is not disclosing the location or cause of death.
Kahneman’s decades-long partnership with Tversky began in 1969 when the two collaborated on a paper analyzing researcher intuitions about statistical methods in their work. “The experience was magical,” Kahneman later wrote in his Nobel autobiography. “Amos was often described by people who knew him as the smartest person they knew. He was also very funny … and the result was that we could spend hours of solid work in continuous mirth.”
The two worked together so closely that they flipped a coin to determine which of them would be the lead author on their first paper, and thereafter simply alternated that honor for decades.
“Amos and I shared the wonder of together owning a goose that could lay golden eggs -– a joint mind that was better than our separate minds,” Kahneman wrote.
Kahneman and Tversky began studying decision making in 1974 and quickly hit upon the central insight that people react far more intensely to losses than to equivalent gains. This is the now-common notion of “loss aversion,” which among other things helps explain why many people prefer status quo choices when making decisions. Combined with other findings, the pair developed a theory of risky choice they eventually named “prospect theory.”
Kahneman received the Nobel Prize in economics in 2002 for these and other contributions that ended up underpinning the discipline now known as behavioral economics. Economists say Tversky would certainly have shared the prize had he not died in 1996. The Nobel is not awarded posthumously.
Lawsuit against Harvard for stolen body parts case dismissed
Lawsuit against Harvard for stolen body parts case dismissed
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Harvard Library says it has removed a book that’s been in its collection for nearly a century that is partially made with human skin that was taken from a deceased hospital patient without consent. The book’s space in the library has long been in question, as it was bound with a woman’s skin and included a handwritten note from its first owner saying, “a book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering.”
The library announced that it would remove the book, “Des Destinées de L’âme” (“Destinies of the Soul”), earlier this month. The book, published by Arsène Houssaye in 1879, was not originally made of skin. That part was added by the book’s first owner, French physician Dr. Ludovic Bouland, who, according to Harvard Library, “bound the book with skin he took without consent from the body of a deceased female patient in a hospital where he worked.”
Arsène Houssaye’s “Des destinées de l’âme” has been removed from the Houghton Library amid controversy over human skin from a deceased hospital patient being used in the binding.
Houghton Library, Harvard University
Bouland included a handwritten note in the volume that says, “a book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering,” Tom Hyry, associate university librarian for archives and special collections, said in a Harvard Library update.
“Evidence indicates that Bouland bound the book with skin, taken from a woman, which he had acquired as a medical student,” Hyry said. “A memo accompanying the book written by John Stetson, which has since been lost, told us that Bouland took this skin from the body of an unknown deceased woman patient from a French psychiatric hospital.”
Bouland died in 1933 and the book was added to Harvard’s collection in 1934 on deposit. That note also included a description of the process that was used to treat the skin so that it could be bound with the book. The book was formally donated to the university in 1954 and Harvard Library said that it tested the binding in 2014 to confirm that it was bound with human remains.
Until recently, the book had been available to “anyone who asked for it,” Harvard Library said, “regardless of their reason for wishing to consult it.”
“Library lore suggests that decades ago, students employed to page collections in Houghton’s stacks were hazed by being asked to retrieve the book without being told it included human remains,” the library states. “Harvard Library acknowledges past failures in its stewardship of the book that further objectified and compromised the dignity of the human being whose remains were used for its binding. We apologize to those adversely affected by these actions.”
Anne-Marie Eze, associate librarian of Harvard’s Houghton Library, said the book’s removal was the culmination of years-long efforts and “as part of the University’s larger project of addressing human remains in its collections.”
In 2022, the university published a report about human remains found in university collections. A committee found remains of 15 people who “may have been enslaved” in the Peabody Museum, which also holds “one of the nation’s largest collections of human remains of Native American individuals.” Most of the human remains found across the university collections system are rooted in archaeological context or are used for educational purposes.
The book was not included in that category – and it’s not the only piece of human remains believed to be in the library system.
“There is a bone fragment purportedly of Saint Sebastian (ca. 3rd century) in a medallion reliquary,” the report states.
The library says that it’s now conducting additional research into the book, Bouland and the female patient whose skin was removed, and that the skin itself is in “secure storage at Harvard Library.” They are also working with France to “determine a final respectful disposition of these human remains.”
Eze said that the book has been “fully digitized” – sans binding – and that those scans have been made publicly available. All images of the skin have been removed from the online catalog and blog posts, and the book itself will only be made available to researchers in the future without its cover.
“The core problem with the volume’s creation was a doctor who didn’t see a whole person in front of him and carried out an odious act of removing a piece of skin from a deceased patient, almost certainly without consent, and used it in a book binding that has been handled by many for more than a century,” Hyry said. “We believe it’s time the remains be put to rest.”
Li Cohen
Li Cohen is a social media producer and trending content writer for CBS News.
Slovakia’s government on Wednesday said the bear that attacked five people in the country earlier this month was shot dead, as Bratislava drafted plans to ease bear cull restrictions. But opposition politicians said that a much smaller bear that had nothing to do with the rampage was actually killed.
The bear attack that left five people, including a 10-year-old girl, injured occurred in the center of Liptovsky Mikulas, a town nestled in the foothills of the Tatra mountains near popular ski resorts, the BBC reported.
“A bear that injured five in Liptovsky Mikulas was successfully shot dead yesterday… A biometrics drone was used to identify it,” the environment minister Tomas Taraba said on social media on Wednesday.
Bear attacks have been on the rise in the Central European country, with 20 such incidents last year, up from only eight in 2021, according to data from the environment ministry.
This month, a woman from Belarus died following a separate bear attack in the Demanovska Dolina valley area in Liptovsky Mikulas district, falling to her death from a cliff after being chased by the animal.
On Wednesday, the government in Bratislava approved a draft law to address the bear attacks in urban areas.
The proposal stipulates the creation of a 500-metre safety zone in the vicinity of towns and villages.
Any bear entering this zone could be shot, Taraba told journalists.
“Not only members of the special bear response team will be able to shoot, but also hunters, police officers, and, in national parks, also their administrators,” Taraba said.
The Slovak populist government earlier this month published guidelines on the protective shooting of brown bears, prompting backlash from environmental groups and the opposition.
Opposition politicians also claimed authorities had shot the wrong bear, accusing the government of using the issue ahead of the presidential election on 6 April, the BBC reported.
“According to documents written by the bear intervention team that we found, a 67-kilogram female bear was caught and killed,” Progressive Slovakia opposition party member Michal Wiezik said. “It is not necessary to use high-end biometrics to make it clear that such a shooting cannot be in any way related to the 100-kilogram male they were looking for.”
“I’m certain it’s not the same bear. It’s obvious,” Wiezik told the BBC.
On Monday, the Slovak environment minister, together with his Romanian and Finnish counterparts, appealed to Brussels for an EU-wide solution to the issue of bears threatening people, according to the local TASR news agency.
Four people were killed and five others were wounded in and near Rockford, Illinois, Tuesday in what the city’s mayor called a “random and senseless act of violence.”
Some of the victims, including a woman who fled a home invasion in Winnebago County and a man who tried to help her, were stabbed, officials said.
A suspect has been taken into custody, and police are not looking for anyone else involved in the violence at “multiple scenes” in Rockford and an area of the county shortly after 1 p.m., authorities said.
“Words can’t even express my thoughts right now,” Rockford Police Chief Carla Redd told reporters. She said the suspect committed “heinous crimes.”
One person was injured and in critical condition, and four others were stable after an adult man “attacked and stabbed multiple individuals,” the police department said on X.
The causes of death and injury for all victims was not clear. Not all of the victims were stabbed, Redd said, and none were shot.
A report came into Rockford’s dispatch center at 1:14 p.m. about a medical call, Redd said, and other calls followed asking for police help.
In a neighborhood in the Rockford area that is part of Winnebago County, there was a home invasion and a woman fled but was stabbed in the hands and face, Sheriff Gary Caruana said.
She was taken to a hospital with serious injuries and has been intubated, he said. A man who intervened to help her suffered stab wounds, but “he’s fine” and being evaluated, Caruana said.
A sheriff’s deputy took the suspect, who has not been identified, into custody, Caruana said.
One of the victims was a mail carrier, Caruana said, without providing further details. The Postal Inspection Service said the victim was a letter carrier but released no other details, citing an active investigation.
Both law enforcement agencies are investigating and trying to piece together what happened. Redd asked residents to check surveillance cameras or doorbell cameras for any footage that might help investigators.
“Right now, we don’t have a clear motive in regards to what caused this individual to commit such heinous crimes,” Redd said.
Rockford Mayor Tom McNamara and other officials said their thoughts were with the victims and their families. The mayor said he was “just totally shaken by this act of violence and the impact that it’s having now on multiple families’ lives.”
“My prayers are with them as they’re just beginning to deal with what will be really difficult days and weeks ahead,” McNamara said.
Federal law enforcement officials are assisting in the investigation, police said.
The city announced emotional support and counseling services would be available at Flinn Middle School on Thursday and Friday.
Rockford is a city of around 150,000 about 60 miles northwest of Chicago.
CHICAGO (CBS) — Four people were killed and five others were injured in an attack on Wednesday afternoon in Rockford, Illinois. Police said some of the victims were stabbed.
Rockford Police Chief Carla Redd said the first call came in around 1:15 p.m. for a medical call in the 2300 block of Holmes. Soon after, there were additional calls for police and paramedics at multiple scenes in Rockford and surrounding parts of Winnebago County.
Winnebago County Sheriff Gary Caruana said there was a home invasion near the intersection of Florence and Eggleston. A young woman trying to get away was stabbed in the face and hands and seriously wounded. A Good Samaritan who tried to help her also was stabbed.
Redd said a total of four people were killed, one person was critically injured, and four other people were taken to hospitals, where their conditions were stabilized. Redd said not all of the victims were stabbed, but there were no gunshot victims. Caruana said one of the people killed was a postal worker.
A suspect was taken into custody by around 1:30 p.m., according to Caruana.
Rockford Mayor Tom McNamara said he was “totally shaken by this act of violence.”
Redd said police were questioning the suspect who was taken into custody, but there was no clear motive for the attack.
Todd Feurer
Todd Feurer is a web producer at CBS News Chicago. He has previously written for WBBM Newsradio, WUIS-FM, and the New City News Service.
Three people have been killed in Israeli army operations overnight in Jenin in the West Bank, the Israeli army reported.
Israel’s military said it conducted an anti-terrorist operation in the town on Tuesday night, during which Palestinians had thrown explosive devices. The soldiers responded with gunfire, killing one person. The 19-year-old who was killed was shot in the chest and thigh, the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah said.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) also said it had attacked and killed two other armed Palestinians in Jenin, with the health authority reporting that two people had died in an Israeli drone attack in the refugee camp there.
The IDF said its forces had destroyed a vehicle containing ready-to-use explosive devices. They also arrested two suspects who had previously been in the vehicle.
The health authority reported a total of four Palestinians injured in the course of the operations and confrontations with the IDF in Jenin. The town is considered a stronghold of Palestinian militants, and the Israeli army repeatedly carries out raids there.
Since the start of the Gaza war following the Hamas massacre on October 7 last year, the situation in the West Bank has become ever more tense.
More than 430 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli military operations, confrontations or their own attacks since then, the health authority said.
At the same time, there has also been an increase in violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians.
People take part in the funeral of Palestinians who were killed during an Israeli army operation in the Jenin camp in the West Bank. Three people have been killed, the Israeli army reported. Ayman Nobani/dpa
People look at a damaged car after an Israeli army operation in the Jenin camp in the West Bank. Three people have been killed, the Israeli army reported. Ayman Nobani/dpa
People look at the site of the bombing after an Israeli drone attack in the Jenin camp in the West Bank. Three people have been killed in Israeli army operations overnight in Jenin in the West Bank, the Israeli army reported. Ayman Nobani/dpa
Search continues for 6 people presumed dead in Baltimore bridge collapse – CBS News
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Divers resumed their search Wednesday for the six people who are presumed dead after the collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge. The National Transportation Safety Board is leading the investigation into the collapse. CBS News’ Jarred Hill reports.
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