Day: May 6, 2025

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Crews have been fighting at least 16 wildfires throughout North Dakota in the last several days, including several large fires still burning Tuesday across wooded areas and grasslands on the Turtle Mountain Reservation near the Canadian border.

Dry and breezy conditions before the spring green-up haven’t helped the situation. Much of the state is in some level of drought, including a swath of western North Dakota in severe or extreme drought, according to a recent map by the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Numerous agencies including the North Dakota Forest Service and fire departments have responded to the fires. National Guard Black Hawk helicopters have dropped water, saving homes. Officials requested fire engines from as far as Montana and South Dakota. Tribal members with buckets and hoses sprang into action to fight the flames.

“It’s inspiring that our people can rise up and help each other out like that,” Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Tribal Chair Jamie Azure said Tuesday.

Three distinct fires that have been joining and separating have burned about 4,200 acres (1,700 hectares) in the Turtle Mountain area, according to the state Department of Emergency Services.

Most of the fires have been north of Belcourt, in the northern part of the Turtle Mountain Reservation, said Jenna Parisien, recruitment and retention coordinator and spokesperson for the Belcourt Rural Fire Department.

“We have several locations where areas have burned, so places were lit up all at once, and with the unfavorable weather conditions that we have had, areas keep relighting, embers are causing spread to surrounding areas as well,” Parisien said.

The fires steadily kicked off on Friday, she said. It wasn’t clear how much of the fires were contained.

Three firefighters were treated for exhaustion, dehydration and smoke inhalation, but were doing well, Azure said. One vacant mobile home was believed to be lost, but there were no other injuries or homes lost despite fires in people’s yards, he said.

About 10 families evacuated from their homes, he said.

Crews were battling high winds with the fires on Monday, but rain overnight, moderate winds and firefighters’ great efforts have improved the situation, Azure said Tuesday.

Seventy-five to 100 firefighters responded on Sunday, the busiest day, Parisien said. Local businesses and tribal members have helped, Azure said.

Causes of the fires are thought to be accidental, potentially sparks escaping from residents’ trash-burning barrels, Parisien said.

But some people have been taken into custody in connection with intentionally starting a fire, she said. She declined to elaborate. The Associated Press emailed the Bureau of Indian Affairs for comment.

Nearly all of the 16 fires around the state are 100% contained. A fire in Rolla on Sunday led to evacuations.

Fires on the Fort Berthold Reservation burned at least 2,000 acres (810 hectares). An 1,800-acre (728 hectares) fire on the reservation is 40% contained. No structures are believed lost to it, state Department of Emergency Services spokesperson Alison Vetter said.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — Animal welfare officers faced the grisly task of euthanizing more than 350,000 chickens by hand after they were left starving and cannibalizing each other when a South African state-owned poultry company ran out of money to feed them, officials said Tuesday.

The National Council of Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, or NSPCA, said it wasn’t able to say for certain how many other chickens had already died by the time its officers reached several neglected poultry farming sites because of the “mass cannibalism” that took place among the birds.

The NSPCA managed to save more than 500,000 chickens, it said.

“It was a harrowing scene,” the NSPCA said in a statement. “Skeletal chickens huddled together, chickens eating one another, feeding lines stripped bare.”

The chickens were owned by Daybreak Foods, a major poultry supplier owned by South Africa’s state asset management company Public Investment Corp.

NSPCA officers were first alerted to a crisis at one farm on April 30. The organization uncovered at least five other farms in northern South Africa with multiple sites on each farm where birds had been left to starve, it said.

Daybreak Foods was denied permission to take the birds to a slaughterhouse because they were too small.

There was no immediate response to an email message seeking comment from Daybreak Foods late Tuesday.

Company spokesperson Nokwazi Ngcongo told the Daily Maverick news outlet that the birds went unfed for a period of time due to financial challenges affecting feed delivery. She said efforts had been made to limit animal suffering as much as possible.

Nazareth Appalsamy, the manager of the NSPCA’s farm animal protection unit, told The Associated Press that the mass culling began last Wednesday and was only completed on Monday. Around 75 animal protection officers were tasked with euthanizing the chickens that weren’t able to recover one by one, Appalsamy said.

“Culling took a real toll on the staff, being exposed to such extreme measures,” he said.

The NSPCA said the chickens hadn’t been fed for more than a week and pledged to file a court case against Daybreak Foods under animal protection laws for abandoning its responsibilities.

The South African government said it is in talks with Daybreak Foods leadership over its financial troubles.

___

AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — India fired three missiles across the border into Pakistani-controlled territory early Wednesday, Pakistani security officials said, amid soaring tensions between the countries over last month’s militant attack in India’s portion of Kashmir.

The missiles struck locations in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and in the country’s eastern Punjab province, according to three security officials. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media on the record.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage, and no immediate announcement about the attack from the military or the government.

The long flight delays and cancellations plaguing Newark’s Liberty International Airport and spilling over to airports across the U.S. can be traced to a week ago when air traffic controllers temporarily lost communications with planes in the sky, according to the controllers union.

Crews in the Philadelphia air traffic control facility that lines up flights going in out and of Newark lost radar and communications with the planes on April 28, according to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. The outage left controllers “unable to see, hear, or talk to” planes under their control, union spokesperson Galen Munroe said.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed the brief problem and said traffic into the Newark airport was reduced afterward as a precaution to ensure safety. But that move led to the widespread delays and canceled flights.

After the breakdown, a number of controllers took leave under a contract provision that allows them to step away after experiencing a traumatic event on the job. Having those controllers on leave exacerbated staff shortages at the facility.

The flight disruptions that have trickled down to airports in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago and Dallas renewed calls to upgrade aviation technology and infrastructure, and address the nationwide air traffic controller shortage, a problem the Trump administration has pledged to solve.

“The whole system needs to be redone,” Duffy said Tuesday at the White House. On Thursday, he plans to detail the administration’s multibillion-dollar proposal to overhaul the nation’s air traffic control system that has been in the works since the aftermath of the deadly midair collision over Washington, D.C., in January. Congress will have to approve funding for that plan.

Controllers handling the planes in Newark lost communication for 30 seconds last week after the control center’s primary communication line went down and a backup line failed to kick-in, he said.

Backups when contact is lost

Former air traffic controllers said briefly losing contact with one plane was not uncommon but dropping communication with all of them would be unusual. Even then there are safeguards and backups. Duffy said that in this situation the backup line didn’t immediately come online.

“If the pilot doesn’t respond right away, you don’t have them set up where they could collide,” said Jordan Morales, who worked 12 years as a controller before leaving the job in 2022.

During a total outage, the control center would call an adjacent facility to take over the air space, he said. Airplanes also have built-in systems that allow pilots to know what’s around, he added.

“It’s a tense moment, particularly if it’s at critical point in the flight,” said Todd Yearly, who spent 13 years as a controller in Chicago.

Neither of the former controllers, though, said the latest trouble shook their confidence in flying. “Safety was maintained that should be the story. In the moment when it mattered, they did their job,” Yearly said.

Flight delays followed outage

After the communications outage, traffic was slowed in and out of the Newark airport, the nation’s 12th busiest.

United Airlines, which operates the most flights out of Newark by far, cut 35 daily Newark flights from its schedule beginning Saturday. United CEO Scott Kirby said the technology used to manage the planes failed more than once last week.

Kirby said it’s clear Newark won’t be able to handle the amount of planes currently operating there in the coming months. Last week, he called on the Federal Aviation Administration to limit arrival and departure slots at Newark — a practice used at three of the nation’s busiest airports where demand exceeds the airport’s capacity: Reagan National outside Washington and New York City’s LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy International airports.

The union representing 55,000 flight attendants also has voiced concern, asking the airlines to cut flights operating out of Newark until the situation improves.

The FAA moved the controllers responsible for the Newark airport from a facility in Long Island, New York, to Philadelphia last year partly to try to address chronic staffing shortages at the New York facility. But only 24 of the 33 controllers responsible for the Newark airspace made the transfer, leaving the Philadelphia facility shorthanded.

At the time of the move, controllers union questioned whether the FAA had the equipment and procedures to handle the complicated transfer. Last fall, The Air Current trade magazine reported on several radar failures in Philadelphia related to lines that send data from New York to Philadelphia.

The Trump administration has said it wants to “supercharge” the air traffic controller workforce and address the shortage of controllers. It announced a program last week to help recruit new controllers and give existing ones financial incentives not to retire early.

But it takes years to train new air traffic controllers and get them certified. Duffy has said he hopes that the new hiring efforts might be able to have the system fully staffed within three or four years.

“It is absolutely going get worse,” David Soucie, a former FAA safety inspector, said in an interview. “And something needs to be done about it because of the fact that, first of all, it takes a long time to hire controllers and get them in place. And you can’t just turn on a switch, you can just go to the closet and pull out a new air traffic controller and say, here you go, we got new people now.”

___

Associated Press reporter Darlene Superville contributed to this report.