In Ghana, Kamala Harris ‘excited about the future of Africa’

ACCRA, Ghana (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris has arrived in Ghana to begin a weeklong trip to Africa.

Her stops in Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia are intended to deepen U.S. relationships on the continent.

Upon landing in Ghana’s capital on Sunday, Harris was greeted by schoolchildren, dancers and drummers.

Harris said she wanted to promote economic growth and food security, and she welcomed the chance to “witness firsthand the extraordinary innovation and creativity that is occurring on this continent.”

Ghana is known as one of Africa’s most stable democracies, but recently it’s been beset by economic and security challenges.

Factory or farm? Oregon may alter land use for chipmakers

NORTH PLAINS, Ore. (AP) — For exactly 50 years, Oregon’s farms and forests have been protected from urban sprawl by the nation’s first statewide law creating urban growth boundaries.

But now, a bill being considered in Oregon’s Legislature could authorize the governor to unilaterally expand boundaries as part of the state’s quest to lure chip companies and provide land for them to build their factories.

The measure would also provide $200 million in grants to chipmakers.

Farmers and conservationists are worried about the proposal and what it will mean for a state that cherishes its open spaces.

State officials and lawmakers are eager to bring more semiconductor factories to Oregon.

3 found shot to death in car on Portland’s north side

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Three people were found shot to death Saturday afternoon in a car in a neighborhood on Portland’s north side, police said.

Shortly after 12:23 p.m., police responding to a report of a shooting at North Foss Avenue and North Foss Court in the Portsmouth neighborhood found the three people dead in the car.

Rescue workers determined that all three died at the scene, police said.

No one has been arrested in connection to the shooting. Police did not release more details about the victims or the shooting.

After tornado, harrowing tales of survival in Mississippi

SILVER CITY, Miss. (AP) — Nothing remained of William Barnes’ home in the tiny western Mississippi town of Silver City after a killer tornado tore it off its foundations. He stood in disbelief Saturday as he surveyed the lot where he’d lived for 20 years, twisted debris of cinder blocks and mangled wood siding scattered across where his home once stood.

“We lost everything but got out alive,” he said, holding his young granddaughter in his arms.

Stories were similar throughout the town of just over 200 people, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) northwest of the state capital of Jackson. Devastating accounts of utter destruction, incredible survival and tragic deaths followed Friday’s twister that killed at least 25 in Mississippi and one in Alabama as it surged nearly 170 miles (274 kilometers) across the Deep South.

A child’s Shrek doll lay face down in the dirt next to a pile of broken plywood and branches, feet from a busted-up refrigerator with its back torn clean off. Limbs from several fallen trees blocked an abandoned school bus. Outside the wall of what used to be a house, a bike lay strewn upside down in another pile of debris.

Residents sat in folding chairs outside the mud-splattered ruins of beloved family homes as people came by in all-terrain vehicles and golf carts packed with bottles of water to distribute. A line of cars was parked on the road from first responders and family who had driven in to help with clean up and rescue efforts.

Christin George said her parents and grandmother narrowly escaped when the tornado blew out the windows and ripped off part of the roof of their home.

She said her parents huddled behind a door that hadn’t been hung yet and threw a blanket over her grandmother to shield themselves from the glass that “shot down the hallway and peppered everybody.”

“Everything else around them is just gone,” she said, at times clutching her hand to her chest. “They were lucky. That’s all there is to it.”

Lakeisha Clincy, Yaclyn James and Shaquetin Burnett had just returned to their Silver City home from an evening out in the nearby town of Belzoni when the tornado struck. They parked in their driveway and opened the car doors, but it was too late.

“I saw houses flying everywhere,” Burnett said. “The house on the corner was spinning.”

They closed the car doors and waited.

“It only lasted about three minutes, but it was the longest three minutes I’ve ever had,” Clincy said. “This I will never forget.”

They exited the car to find their house destroyed. Officials later transported them by bus to a hotel, where they fell asleep sometime after 4 a.m.

They didn’t know where they would sleep Saturday night.

Christine Chinn, who’s lived in Silver City her whole life, said her roof was gone and cars were upended in her yard as she took stock of the destruction to her home of 20 years. She sought refuge with her husband and son in the hallway, covering themselves with a blanket as they desperately sought to protect themselves.

“It just got calm and all of sudden everything just — like a big old train or something coming through,” she said, adding that much of her belongings weren’t salvageable.

She said she was “very scared” and had never experienced anything like it.

That same fear gripped residents of Rolling Fork, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) away, as the twister flatted the town of just under 2,000 people.

Derrick Brady Jr., 9, said he tried to cover his 7-year-old sister Kylie Carter with his body as the tornado moved over their home. He had to dive in the bathtub as his mom pushed herself up against the bathroom door, trying to keep it closed. He described the sensation of feeling both pushed and pulled by the twister’s force.

“I was scared, but I was brave that time,” he said. “We had to say our own prayers in our heads.”

Wanda Barfield, grandmother of Derrick and Kylie, said she was running around the devastated town Friday night and Saturday trying to account for loved ones. After the storm hit, she kept calling family members’ cell phones, but no one answered. She found her sister-in-law dead amid the wreckage, she said.

She said her family is doing the best they can to survive.

“Our life is more important than anything else. You can get a job, money, car, clothes, shoes — you can get all that,” she said. “For me, and for my house, we’re going to serve the Lord.”

James Hancock was helping with search and rescue efforts in Rolling Fork late Friday as the storm tore through town.

He was part of a crew who forced open a John Deere store that community members started using as a home base to bring in injured people from the rain. It took two hours for ambulances to get to the store to start tending to the wounded because the “roads were so bad,” he said. As he moved from the ruins of one home to the next, he said he could hear people crying out in the dark.

“You could just hear people needing help, and it was just devastating last night,” he said. “Pitch black dark and just trying to get everybody out we could get out to a safe location.”

Many of the injured people he’s spoken to are just “thankful to be alive,” he said. Families with no wounded are sheltering at a National Guard armory in Rolling Fork.

“In 58 years, I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said. “I’ve seen tornados but none this bad.”

2 Cuban migrants fly into Florida on motorized hang glider

KEY WEST, Fla. (AP) — Two Cuban migrants used a motorized hang glider to fly the approximately 90 miles (145 kilometers) from the communist island to Key West on Saturday, Florida officials said.

The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office said the duo landed safely at Key West International Airport at about 10:30 a.m. and were turned over to the U.S. Border Patrol.

Border Patrol officials in South Florida did not answer a phone call Saturday seeking comment.

Overwhelmed by Cubans and other migrants arriving at the Mexican border and into Florida by boat, the Biden administration in early January implemented a policy change that makes them request a permit, or parole, online before arriving with the sponsorship of a relative or acquaintance in the U.S.

Those who arrive without doing that risk deportation.

Jet pitched wildly, killing 1, amid cockpit warnings: NTSB

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A business jet flying over New England violently pitched upward then downward, fatally injuring a passenger, after pilots responding to automated cockpit warnings switched off a system that helps keep the aircraft stable, U.S. transportation investigators reported Friday.

The National Transportation Safety Board didn’t reach any conclusions in its preliminary report on the main cause of the deadly March 3 accident, but it described a series of things that went wrong before and after the plane swooped out of control.

Confronted with several alerts in the cockpit of the Bombardier jet, pilots followed a checklist and turned off a switch that “trims” or adjusts the stabilizer on the plane’s tail, the report said.

The plane’s nose then swept upward, subjecting the people inside to forces about four times the force of gravity, then pointed lower before again turning upward before pilots could regain control, the report said.

Pilots told investigators they did not encounter turbulence, as the NTSB had said in an initial assessment the day after the incident.

The trim system of the Bombardier Challenger 300 twin-engine jet was the subject of a Federal Aviation Administration mandate last year that pilots conduct extra safety checks before flights.

Bombardier did not respond directly to the report’s contents, saying in a statement that it was “carefully studying” it. In a previous statement, the Canadian manufacturer said it stood behind its Challenger 300 jets and their airworthiness.

“We will continue to fully support and provide assistance to all authorities as needed,” the company said Friday.

The two pilots and three passengers were traveling from Keene, New Hampshire, to Leesburg, Virginia, before diverting to Bradley International Airport in Connecticut. One passenger, Dana Hyde, 55, of Cabin John, Maryland, was brought to a hospital where she died from blunt-force injuries.

Hyde served in government positions during the Clinton and Obama administrations and was counsel for the 9/11 Commission, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

It was unclear if Hyde was belted in her seat or up and about, in the cabin of the jet owned by Conexon, based in Kansas City, Missouri. Her husband and their son, along with the pilot and co-pilot, were not injured in the incident, the report said.

A representative of Conexon, a company specializing in rural internet, declined to comment Friday.

The report indicated the pilots aborted their initial takeoff because no one removed a plastic cover from one of the exterior tubes that determine airspeed, and they took off with a rudder limiter fault alert on.

Another warning indicated autopilot stabilizer trim failure. The plane abruptly pitched upward as the pilots moved the stabilizer trim switch from primary to off while working through procedures on a checklist, the report said.

The plane violently oscillated up and down and the “stick pusher” activated, the report said, meaning the onboard computer thought the plane was in danger of an aerodynamic stall.

John Cox, a former airline pilot and now a safety consultant, said “there are definitely issues” with the pilots’ pre-flight actions, but he said they reacted correctly when they followed the checklist for responding to trim failure.

The flight crew was comprised of two experienced pilots with 5,000 and 8,000 hours of flying time, and held ratings needed to fly for an airline. But both were relatively new to the model of aircraft, earning their ratings last October.

The FAA issued its directive about Bombardier Challenger 300 jets last year after multiple instances in which the horizontal stabilizer on the aircrafts caused the nose of the plane to turn down after the pilot tried to make the aircraft climb.

Related: 1 killed when business jet encounters severe turbulence

Idaho governor signs firing squad execution bill into law

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Republican Idaho Gov. Brad Little has signed into law a bill allowing firing squads to execute death row inmates when lethal injection drugs are unavailable, making Idaho the fifth U.S. state to allow the execution method.

The new law, which takes effect in July, will give the Department of Correction up to five days after a death warrant is issued to determine whether lethal injection is available. If not, the department must carry out the execution by firing squad. Little signed the bill on Friday.

“While I am signing this bill, it is important to point out that fulfilling justice can and must be done by minimizing stress on corrections personnel,” Little wrote in a transmittal letter after signing the bill, as reported by the Idaho Statesman. “For the people on death row, a jury convicted them of their crimes, and they were lawfully sentenced to death. It is the responsibility of the state of Idaho to follow the law and ensure that lawful criminal sentences are carried out.”

The news outlet said that a corrections department spokesperson did not immediately respond to its request for comment Friday evening.

States have faced difficulties obtaining drugs required for longstanding lethal injection programs. Pharmaceutical companies increasingly have barred executioners from using their drugs, saying they were meant to save lives, not take them.

Idaho will join Mississippi, Utah, Oklahoma and South Carolina as the states that authorize death by firing squad, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. South Carolina’s law is on hold pending the outcome of a legal challenge.

The last inmate to be executed by firing squad in the U.S. was Ronnie Lee Gardner. He was executed at Utah State Prison on June 18, 2010, for killing an attorney during a courthouse escape attempt. Utah is the only state to have used firing squads in the past 50 years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Leo Morales, executive director of the ACLU of Idaho, called the firing squad an “archaic and particularly gruesome execution method” in a statement quoted by the Idaho Statesman. Morales criticized the law as “a step backward,” as public support for the death penalty reached an all-time low.

“Instead of trying to reinstate the death penalty with a gruesome execution method, Idaho lawmakers should have kept the firing squad in the dust bin of history, where it belongs,” he said.

Pennsylvania chocolate factory explodes; 5 dead, 6 missing

WEST READING, Pa. (AP) — An explosion at a chocolate factory in Pennsylvania on Friday killed five people and left six people missing, authorities said.

The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency confirmed the increase in the number of fatalities Saturday morning after the blast just before 5 p.m. Friday at the R.M. Palmer Co. plant in the borough of West Reading.

Chief of Police Wayne Holben said the blast destroyed one building and damaged a neighboring building.

“It’s pretty leveled,” Mayor Samantha Kaag said of the explosion site. “The building in the front, with the church and the apartments, the explosion was so big that it moved that building four feet forward.”

The cause of the blast in the community about 60 miles (96 kilometers) northwest of Philadelphia was under investigation, Holden told reporters. Authorities are investigating the possibility that a gas leak may have been responsible, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency said.

Eight people were taken to Reading Hospital Friday evening, Tower Health spokeswoman Jessica Bezler said.

Two people were admitted in fair condition and five were being treated and would be released, she said in an email. One patient was transferred to another facility, but Bezler provided no further details.

Kaag said people were asked to move back about a block in each direction from the site of the explosion but no evacuations were ordered.

Dean Murray, the borough manager of West Reading Borough, said some residents were displaced from the damaged apartment building.

Kagg said borough officials were not in immediate contact with officials from R.M. Palmer, which Murray described as “a staple of the borough.”

The company’s website says it has been making “chocolate novelties” since 1948 and now has 850 employees at its West Reading headquarters.

Intel co-founder, philanthropist Gordon Moore dies at 94

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Gordon Moore, the Intel Corp. co-founder who set the breakneck pace of progress in the digital age with a simple 1965 prediction of how quickly engineers would boost the capacity of computer chips, has died. He was 94.

Moore died Friday at his home in Hawaii, according to Intel and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Moore, who held a Ph.D. in chemistry and physics, made his famous observation — now known as “Moore’s Law” — three years before he helped start Intel in 1968. It appeared among a number of articles about the future written for the now-defunct Electronics magazine by experts in various fields.

The prediction, which Moore said he plotted out on graph paper based on what had been happening with chips at the time, said the capacity and complexity of integrated circuits would double every year.

Strictly speaking, Moore’s observation referred to the doubling of transistors on a semiconductor. But over the years, it has been applied to hard drives, computer monitors and other electronic devices, holding that roughly every 18 months a new generation of products makes their predecessors obsolete.

It became a standard for the tech industry’s progress and innovation.

“It’s the human spirit. It’s what made Silicon Valley,” Carver Mead, a retired California Institute of Technology computer scientist who coined the term “Moore’s Law” in the early 1970s, said in 2005. “It’s the real thing.”

Moore later became known for his philanthropy when he and his wife established the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, which focuses on environmental conservation, science, patient care and projects in the San Francisco Bay area. It has donated more than $5.1 billion to charitable causes since its founding in 2000.

“Those of us who have met and worked with Gordon will forever be inspired by his wisdom, humility and generosity,” foundation president Harvey Fineberg said in a statement.

Intel Chairman Frank Yeary called Moore a brilliant scientist and a leading American entrepreneur.

“It is impossible to imagine the world we live in today, with computing so essential to our lives, without the contributions of Gordon Moore,” he said.

In his book “Moore’s Law: The Life of Gordon Moore, Silicon Valley’s Quiet Revolutionary,” author David Brock called him “the most important thinker and doer in the story of silicon electronics.”

Moore was born in San Francisco on Jan. 3, 1929, and grew up in the tiny nearby coastal town of Pescadero. As a boy, he took a liking to chemistry sets. He attended San Jose State University, then transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, where he graduated with a degree in chemistry.

After getting his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1954, he worked briefly as a researcher at Johns Hopkins University.

His entry into microchips began when he went to work for William Shockley, who in 1956 shared the Nobel Prize for physics for his work inventing the transistor. Less than two years later, Moore and seven colleagues left Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory after growing tired of its namesake’s management practices.

The defection by the “traitorous eight,” as the group came to be called, planted the seeds for Silicon Valley’s renegade culture, in which engineers who disagreed with their colleagues didn’t hesitate to become competitors.

The Shockley defectors in 1957 created Fairchild Semiconductor, which became one of the first companies to manufacture the integrated circuit, a refinement of the transistor.

Fairchild supplied the chips that went into the first computers that astronauts used aboard spacecraft.

In 1968, Moore and Robert Noyce, one of the eight engineers who left Shockley, again struck out on their own. With $500,000 of their own money and the backing of venture capitalist Arthur Rock, they founded Intel, a name based on joining the words “integrated” and “electronics.”

Moore became Intel’s chief executive in 1975. His tenure as CEO ended in 1987, thought he remained chairman for another 10 years. He was chairman emeritus from 1997 to 2006.

He received the National Medal of Technology from President George H.W. Bush in 1990 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush in 2002.

Despite his wealth and acclaim, Moore remained known for his modesty. In 2005, he referred to Moore’s Law as “a lucky guess that got a lot more publicity than it deserved.”

He is survived by his wife of 50 years, Betty, sons Kenneth and Steven, and four grandchildren.

LaVine scores 33, Bulls rout the Trail Blazers 124-96

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Zach LaVine scored 33 points and the Chicago Bulls dominated the short-handed Portland Trail Blazers 124-96 on Friday night.

Nikola Vucevic added 23 points and 15 rebounds for the Bulls, who have won six of their last eight games and sit in 10th place in the Eastern Conference standings with nine regular-season games remaining.

Chicago finished with 17 3-pointers and 33 assists, just one shy of their season high. They were playing without DeMar DeRozan because of a right quadriceps strain.

“I think guys were aggressive. I definitely tried to be aggressive from the beginning, trying to set the tone, and then react from there,” LaVine said. “We settled into the game, the ball is moving around, we’re getting a lot more open shots, and I think that leads to a lot more 3s.”

Portland, which has lost seven of its last eight games, was led by rookie Shaedon Sharpe, who matched his career high with 24 points. The Blazers’ lone win during the recent stretch came against the Utah Jazz 127-115 on Wednesday. Portland was at 13th in the Western Conference standings, well out of the playoff picture.

Regular Portland starters Damian Lillard (calf tightness), Jusuf Nurkic (sore right knee), Jerami Grant (quad contusion) and Anfernee Simons (sore right foot) did not play against the Bulls. Instead, the Blazers started Ryan Arcidiacono, Matisse Thybulle, Trendon Watford, Drew Eubanks and Sharpe.

“I thought offensively he was pretty good, defensively he wasn’t bad, but tough matchup for him,” Blazers coach Chauncey Billups said about Sharpe. “That’s the reason I wanted to put him on Zach, he needs to see what it’s like in the fire. Zach is a tough matchup for anybody.”

DeRozan aggravated his injury in the third quarter of Chicago’s loss to Philadelphia on Wednesday. He missed five games in January and February because of the injury.

“It’s not at a point where he can’t do anything, he’s just trying to work through it right now and just manage it,” Bulls coach Billy Donovan said.

Even without DeRozan, Chicago led by as many as 30 points.

The Bulls went on a 9-0 run to start the second quarter to go up 35-26. LaVine capped the first half with a 3-pointer to put Chicago up 61-45.

The Bulls pushed the lead to 70-49 in the third quarter. LaVine was pulled at the start of the third quarter and didn’t return.

“It was great. A little bit extra rest, those guys were out there playing great, I didn’t have any worries about it,” LaVine said. “So I’m glad that Billy trusts them to go out there and finish the game off, and that’s what we needed.”

TIP INS

Bulls: Chicago won the first game between the two teams, 129-121, last month. … Bulls assistant Maurice Cheeks was Portland’s coach from 2001-05. … Alex Caruso started after missing the last two games with left foot soreness.

Trail Blazers: It was the first of a five-game homestand for the Blazers, who also have nine games left in the season. … Billups finds himself in the same position he was last season, juggling lineups and absences as the playoffs appear out of reach. “Unfortunately it is familiar. It’s not the best, it’s not the greatest, but it is what it is. Whoever is available, I’m going to coach them, I’m going to do the best I I can to help them, to help them to help us,” Billups said.

UP NEXT

Bulls: Visit the Los Angeles Lakers on Sunday.

Trail Blazers: Host the Oklahoma City Thunder on Sunday.