About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 7, 2018)
8A Wednesday, November 7, 2018 The Times, Gainesville, Georgia | gainesvilletimes.com NATION/WORLD 1 dead, 2 injured as storms, tornadoes hit South ADAM ROBISON I Associated Press David Hassen and Hugh Foster, with Servicemaster in Tupelo, Miss., work on cleaning up debris in the residents rooms at Generations Senior Living, Tuesday morning, Nov. 6. Associated Press CHRISTIANA, Tenn. — Severe storms sweeping across the South with tor nadoes on Tuesday killed a person and injured at least two others, knocking down trees and leaving thousands without power, officials said. The weather disrupted Election Day voting in some places, forcing citizens to use paper ballots instead of electronic voting machines. In Tennessee, crews responded to a collapsed home where one person was confirmed dead, Rutherford County Emergency Medical Services spokesman Patrick Miller told news outlets. Two others were injured when a nearby mobile home rolled over, he said. An EF-2 tornado with winds of about 135 mph hit the area, the National Weather Service said after surveying the damage. At least three other twisters were confirmed, two in Ala bama and another in Ten nessee, the agency said, and teams were still assessing others sites. The Storm Predic tion Center said nine pos sible tornado strikes were reported. Tennessee Coordinator of Elections Mark Goins said the polling places that had electricity knocked out are operating on generators and have emergency ballots ready for voters. He said the paper ballots would be counted Tuesday. He said the largest area of power outages was in Knox County, where nearly 20,000 cus tomers were without power Tuesday morning. In West Virginia, storms caused two voting precincts to open a little late but didn’t cause any lasting problems. West Virginia Secre tary of State’s spokesman Michael Queen said 14 pre cincts were without power at 5 a.m., but the office worked with state and local agencies to put generators into place or move precinct locations. Polling places without power used gen erators until electricity was restored so no paper ballots were necessary, he said. Crews worked to restore power to thousands of resi dents from Louisiana to South Carolina. Parts of Tupelo, Missis sippi, were closed off late Monday as debris, downed trees blocked roadways, the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reported . Tupelo Communications Director Leesha Faulkner said there also was a gas leak in a resi dential area. In Rutherford County, Fire and Rescue spokes woman Lisa Sloan said crews responded to a house blaze early Tuesday that appeared to have started from a lightning strike. She said there was heavy dam age, but no injuries. Death penalty case hangs on Kavanaugh BY JESSICA GRESK0 Associated Press Iran mocks US sanctions list WASHINGTON - Hearing his first arguments in a death penalty case, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh seemed open Tuesday to the arguments of a Missouri inmate who says his rare medical condition could result in severe pain if he is executed by lethal injection. The court’s newest jus tice could hold the key vote in Russell Bucklew’s case. That’s because his eight col leagues split 4 to 4 earlier this year over whether to allow Bucklew’s execution to proceed. Justice Anthony Kennedy provided the fifth vote to spare Bucklew. Bucklew, on death row for a 1996 murder, has said a tumor in his throat is likely to burst during the lethal injection, causing him to choke on his blood. Bucklew argues that subjecting him to lethal injection would violate the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Among the questions Kavana ugh wanted answered was whether Bucklew would be lying flat dur ing the execution, which Bucklew’s attorneys have said would be prob lematic. Kavanaugh, who heard no death penalty cases in his 12 years as an appeals court judge, also asked whether there’s any legal limit on pain associated with an execution. The justice also aimed all his ques tions at the lawyer representing Missouri, which can be a sign at the Supreme Court that a justice is inclined to vote for the other side. “Are you saying even if the method creates gruesome and bru tal pain you can still do it because there’s no alternative?” Kavanaugh at one point asked Missouri’s attor ney, D. John Sauer. Bucklew is up against Supreme Court precedent. The court has previously ruled that inmates challeng ing a method of execution have to show that there’s an alternative that is likely to be less painful. Bucklew has proposed that Missouri execute him by having him breathe pure nitrogen gas through a mask instead of by injecting him with a lethal dose of pentobarbital. Bucklew says he would feel like he’s suffocating for several minutes during a lethal injection. But if the state uses nitrogen, he’d become unconscious within 20 to 30 seconds. Missouri says no state has ever carried out an execution as Buck- lew suggests, calling his proposal vague and untested. And the state says Bucklew would not suffer severe pain during a lethal injection because pentobarbital would make him unconscious in 20 to 30 seconds. BY NASSER KARIMI AND JON GAMBRELL Associated Press TEHRAN — The “largest- ever” U.S. sanctions list targeting Iran drew mockery from Iranian officials on Tuesday for including mothballed Boeing 747s, a bank that closed years earlier and a sunken oil tanker that exploded off China months ago. However, the new list of sanc tions, which also aims to cut Iran’s vital oil industry off from interna tional sales, also included for the first time its state airline and its atomic energy commission, fur ther highlighting the maximalist approach of President Donald Trump’s administration. Trump pulled America out of the 2015 nuclear deal Iran struck with world powers in May. United Nations monitors say Iran still abides by the deal, in which it agreed to limit its uranium enrichment in return for the lift ing of international sanctions. The U.S. Treasury Department imposed penalties on more than 700 Iranian and Iranian-linked individuals, entities, aircraft and vessels in the new sanctions. Among those are 50 Iranian banks and subsidiaries, and more than 200 people and ships. However, scattered among the list are surprising entries, like the crude oil tanker Sanchi. That ves sel collided with a bulk freighter and caught fire off China’s east coast in January, killing all 32 sailors aboard. Another entry was Iran’s Tat Bank, which closed in 2012. Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif took to Twitter to mock some of the targets of the sanctions, describing it as a “des perate” psychological ploy. “The U.S. designated a bank that was closed 6 years ago, and a ship that sank. in a widely tele vised saga,” he wrote, ending the tweet with “#USisIsolated.” But for the first time, the United States targeted Iran Air. It also sanc tioned the state carrier’s fleet of Boeing 747s, manufactured in the 1970s. It also appeared that the U.S., in another first, was directly sanctioning the Atomic Energy Orga nization of Iran, the gov ernment agency that oversees Iran’s nuclear program. Prior sanctions targeted specific sub sidiaries of the organization. Eshaq Jahangiri, President Hassan Rouhani’s senior vice president, also criticized the sanctions. “Americans think their list is more effective if it is longer,” Jahangiri said, according to the IRNA news agency. He said he had discussed the list with other officials, with many saying it was “less than what we expected.” Still, Jahangiri warned that “Americans intend to damage economy of the country” through psychological warfare. Zarif later issued an online video criticizing America’s “indiscriminate assault” on his country. “The U.S. administration appears to believe that imposing illegal draconian sanctions on Iran will bring about such pain to our nation that it will force us to submit to its will, no matter how absurd, unlawful or fundamen tally flawed its demands are. ” Iran is already in the grip of an economic cri sis. Its national currency, the rial, now trades at 150,000 to one U.S. dol lar; a year ago, it was about 40,500. The eco nomic chaos sparked mass anti-government protests at the end of last year, resulting in nearly 5,000 arrests and at least 25 deaths. Sporadic smaller demonstra tions still reportedly erupt from time to time. The new sanctions particu larly hurt Iran’s vital oil industry, which provides a source of hard currency. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the sanctions already cost Iran sales of over 1 million barrels of crude oil a day. Analysts feared in the run-up to the sanctions that global oil prices could spike on tight supply and increasing demand. Bucklew Zarif For your American Cancer Society contributions totaling $ 1362 and shredding 4500lbs of paper at The Times Shred Day event. A joint community effort by: She draws gainesvilletimes.com Document Destruction Services, Inc. "Your Security is our Business" gainesvilletimes.com Honestly local. Learn about the ghosts who inhabit Gainesville from two believers, Kathy Amos and Gail Hogan, who claim to have experiences with at least three of them. Listen to all Hall Tales Podcast episodes here: www.gainesvilletimes.com/halltales
