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Search for mudslide missing comes down to shovels with other checks exhausted
• DARRINGTON, Wash. (AP) -- There is only one way searchers are narrowing the list of 90 people still missing seven days after a landslide obliterated the mountain community of Oso: by digging.
• There are no more phone calls being made out of the Snohomish County Emergency Operations Center to determine whether some on the list were away and just haven't checked in since Saturday morning's slide. No house checks in nearby neighborhoods to see if someone may have been missed.
• That left authorities to prepare the public for an announcement Friday morning that the official death toll was set to rise from 17. They previously acknowledged at least another nine bodies had been located but not yet recovered.
• Family members have reported additional fatalities but authorities were carefully coordinating with the National Guard and the county medical examiner's office to process the bodies that have been recovered.
• "We understand there has been confusion over the reported number of fatalities," Snohomish County District 21 Fire Chief Travis Hots said Thursday night in a statement. "This has been a challenging process for all of us."
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Critics vow to keep fighting after US appeals court upholds Texas' abortion restrictions
• AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- Dr. Lester Minto knows he won't be able to reopen his clinic after a federal appeals court upheld tough new abortion restrictions in Texas. But he insists he won't be silenced.
• Minto has been providing abortions for three decades, but he closed his clinic near the Mexico border earlier this month because of a law that imposes some of the nation's strictest limitations on the procedure. The law, which was overwhelmingly approved last summer by the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature, has helped force numerous clinics to close.
• "I'm not down and out," Minto said Thursday, shortly after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the law. "I just can't fight in the open."
• A lower court judge initially ruled that parts of the law were unconstitutional and served no medical purpose, but the 5th Circuit allowed some regulations to remain (Continued on page 39)
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