Politics
Desperate search for two dozen missing girls from summer camp after Texas floods kill at least 24 – National TenX News
Crews searched through the dark early Saturday for two dozen children from a girls camp and many others still missing after a wall of water rushed down a river in the Texas Hill Country during a powerful storm that killed at least 24 people.
The destructive fast-moving waters along the Guadalupe River rose 26 feet (8 meters) in just 45 minutes before dawn Friday, washing away homes and vehicles. The danger was not over as more heavy rains were expected Saturday and flash flood warnings and flood watches remained in effect for parts of central Texas.
Searchers used helicopters and drones to look for victims and rescue people stranded. The total number of missing was not known but one sheriff said about 24 of them were girls who had been attending Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp along the river.
Frantic parents and families posted photos of missing loved ones and pleas for information.
“The camp was completely destroyed,” said Elinor Lester, 13, one of hundreds of campers at Camp Mystic. “A helicopter landed and started taking people away. It was really scary.”
A raging storm woke up her cabin just after midnight Friday, and when rescuers arrived, they tied a rope for the girls to hold as they walked across a bridge with floodwaters whipping around their legs, she said.
At a news conference late Friday, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said 24 people were confirmed dead.
Authorities said about 240 people had been rescued.
The flooding in the middle of the night on the Fourth of July holiday caught many residents, campers and officials by surprise.
Officials defended their preparations for severe weather and their response but said they had not expected such an intense downpour that was, in effect, the equivalent of months’ worth of rain for the area.
One National Weather Service forecast this week had called for only between three and six inches (76 to 152 millimeters) of rain, said Nim Kidd, the chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management.
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“It did not predict the amount of rain that we saw,” he said.
Helicopters, drones used in frantic search for missing
One river gauge near Camp Mystic recorded a 22 foot rise (6.7 meters) in about two hours, said Bob Fogarty, meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Austin/San Antonio office. The gauge failed after recording a level of 29 and a half feet (9 meters).
“The water’s moving so fast, you’re not going to recognize how bad it is until it’s on top of you,” Fogarty said.
On the Kerr County sheriff’s office Facebook page, people posted pictures of loved ones and begged for help finding them.
At least 400 people were on the ground helping in the response, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said. Rescue teams, helicopters and drones were being used, with some people being rescued from trees.
‘Pitch black wall of death’
In Ingram, Erin Burgess woke to thunder and rain in the middle of the night Friday. Just 20 minutes later, water was pouring into her home directly across from the river, she said. She described an agonizing hour clinging to a tree and waiting for the water to recede enough to walk up the hill to a neighbor’s home.
“My son and I floated to a tree where we hung onto it, and my boyfriend and my dog floated away. He was lost for a while, but we found them,” she said.
Of her 19-year-old son, Burgess said: “Thankfully he’s over 6 feet tall. That’s the only thing that saved me, was hanging on to him.”
Matthew Stone, 44, of Kerrville, said police came knocking on doors but that he had received no warning on his phone.
“We got no emergency alert. There was nothing,” Stone said. Then “a pitch black wall of death.”
‘I was scared to death’
At a reunification center set up in Ingram, families cried and cheered as loved ones got off vehicles loaded with evacuees. Two soldiers carried an older woman who could not get down a ladder. Behind her, a woman clutched a small white dog.
Later, a girl in a white “Camp Mystic” T-shirt and white socks stood in a puddle, sobbing in her mother’s arms.
Barry Adelman, 54, said water pushed everyone in his three-story house into the attic, including his 94-year-old grandmother and 9-year-old grandson. The water started coming through the attic floor before finally receding.
“I was horrified,” he said. “I was having to look at my grandson in the face and tell him everything was going to be OK, but inside I was scared to death.”
‘No one knew this kind of flood was coming’
The forecast had called for rain, with a flood watch upgraded to a warning overnight for at least 30,000 people.
The lieutenant governor noted that the potential for heavy rain and flooding covered a large area.
“Everything was done to give them a heads up that you could have heavy rain, and we’re not exactly sure where it’s going to land,” Patrick said. “Obviously as it got dark last night, we got into the wee morning of the hours, that’s when the storm started to zero in.”
Asked about how people were notified in Kerr County so that they could get to safety, Judge Rob Kelly, the county’s chief elected official, said: “We do not have a warning system.”
When reporters pushed on why more precautions weren’t taken, Kelly said: “Rest assured, no one knew this kind of flood was coming.”
A new flashflood warning was sent out early morning Saturday following the initial disaster, urging residents to seek higher ground. The National Weather Service in Austin/San Antonio issued a Flash Flood Warning for Burnet County in south central Texas, Northwestern Travis County in south central Texas and Northwestern Williamson County in south central Texas.
The alert warned residents of dangerous conditions from 5am until 10am CDT.
“The expected rainfall rate is 3 to 6 inches in 1 hour. Additional rainfall amounts of 2 to 5 inches are possible in the warned area. Flash flooding is ongoing or expected to begin shortly,” stated the issued alert.
– With files from Prisha Dev
German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius is set to discuss the possibility of Germany paying for American Patriot air defence systems for Ukraine, as he heads to Washington to meet with U.S. Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth.
On Sunday, U.S. President Donald Trump said the U.S. would send an undisclosed number of Patriots to Ukraine, and that the European Union would pay for them.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has asked for more defensive capabilities, among them Patriot systems and missiles, to fend off daily missile and drone attacks from Russia.
Here is some key information about the Patriot:
What is the Patriot system?
The Patriot, short for Phased Array Tracking Radar for Intercept on Target, is a mobile surface-to-air missile defense system developed by Raytheon Technologies RTX.N.
It is considered one of the most advanced air defence systems in the U.S. arsenal and has been in service since the 1980s.
A typical battery includes radar and control systems, a power unit, launchers, and support vehicles. The system can intercept aircraft, tactical ballistic missiles and cruise missiles, depending on the interceptor used.
How does the Patriot work?
The system has different capabilities depending on the type of interceptor used.
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The earlier PAC-2 interceptor uses a blast-fragmentation warhead that detonates in the vicinity of a target, while the PAC-3 family of missiles uses more accurate technology that hits the target directly.
It is not clear what kind of Patriot systems have been donated to Ukraine, but it is likely that Kyiv has at least some of the newer PAC-3 CRI interceptors.
The system’s radar has a range of over 150 km (93 miles), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) said in 2015.
Although the Patriot was not originally designed to intercept hypersonic weapons and Raytheon has not yet confirmed if it is able to do so, in May 2023 the U.S. confirmed Ukraine had used it to shoot down a Russian Kinzhal missile, which Moscow claims is hypersonic.
Since January 2015, the Patriot has intercepted more than 150 ballistic missiles in combat operations, Raytheon says on its website.
Raytheon has built and delivered over 240 Patriot fire units, according to its website.
These have been shipped to 19 countries, according to Raytheon, including the U.S., Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Japan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
In January, Axios reported the U.S. had transferred about 90 Patriot interceptors from Israel to Ukraine.
A newly produced single Patriot battery costs over US$1 billion, including US$400 million for the system and $690 million for the missiles in a battery, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Patriot interceptors are estimated at around US$4 million per missile, CSIS says.
Why does Ukraine want more Patriots?
Kyiv has consistently asked Western allies for more air defences to protect critical infrastructure and civilian areas from frequent Russian missile and drone attacks.
While effective at intercepting missiles and aircraft, Patriots are a costly way to shoot down low-budget drones.
Still, Ukrainian officials say they are essential to defending key targets from Russia’s escalating long-range attacks.
Russia says it sees the Patriots as a direct escalation. Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in May that supplying more systems to Ukraine would delay the chances of peace.
—Reporting by Isabel Demetz and Jesus Calero; Editing by Matt Scuffham
Politics
Over 1,400 tarantulas found hidden in cake boxes in German smuggling bust – National TenX News
Arachnophobes beware: Customs officials on Monday released photos from a seizure of roughly 1,500 young tarantulas found inside plastic containers that had been hidden in chocolate spongecake boxes shipped to an airport in western Germany.
Customs officials found the shipment at Cologne Bonn airport in a package that had arrived from Vietnam, tipped off by a “noticeable smell” that didn’t resemble the expected aroma of the seven kilograms (about 15 pounds) of the confectionery treats, Cologne customs office spokesman Jens Ahland said.
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“My colleagues at the airport are regularly surprised by the contents of prohibited packages from all over the world, but the fact that they found around 1,500 small plastic containers containing young tarantulas in this package left even the most experienced among them speechless,” Ahland said in a statement.
Ahland hailed an “extraordinary seizure,” but one that “saddens us to see what some people do to animals purely for profit.”
Many of the eight-legged creatures didn’t survive the trip, in a suspected violation of German animal-welfare rules, while survivors were given to the care of an expert handler, the office said. Reached by phone, Ahland said that the estimated value of the shipment was being assessed.
Criminal proceedings are underway against the intended recipient in the Sauerland region, east of the airport, in part for alleged violations of failure to pay the proper import duties and make the proper customs declarations, the office said.
The tarantulas were discovered about three weeks ago, but the customs office only made the images public on Monday.
© 2025 The Canadian Press
Politics
Trump set to make announcement on Russia as U.S. envoy arrives in Ukraine – National TenX News
U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, was in Kyiv on Monday, a senior Ukrainian official said, as anticipation grew over a possible shift in the Trump administration’s policy on the three-year war.
Trump last week said he would make a “major statement” on Russia on Monday. Trump made quickly stopping the war one of his diplomatic priorities, and he has increasingly expressed frustration about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unbudging stance on U.S-led peace efforts.
Trump has long boasted of his friendly relationship with Putin, and after taking office in January repeatedly said that Russia was more willing than Ukraine to reach a peace deal. At the same time, Trump accused Zelenskyy of prolonging the war and called him a “dictator without elections.”
But Russia’s relentless onslaught against civilian areas of Ukraine wore down Trump’s patience. In April, Trump urged Putin to “STOP!” launching deadly barrages on Kyiv, and the following month said in a social media post that the Russian leader “ has gone absolutely CRAZY!” as the bombardments continued.
“I am very disappointed with President Putin, I thought he was somebody that meant what he said,” Trump said late Sunday. “He’ll talk so beautifully and then he’ll bomb people at night. We don’t like that.”
The European Union can’t buy Patriot missiles
Russia has pounded Ukrainian cities, including the capital, Kyiv, with hundreds of drones and cruise and ballistic missiles that Ukraine’s air defences are struggling to counter. June brought the highest monthly civilian casualties of the past three years, with 232 people killed and 1,343 wounded, the U.N. human rights mission in Ukraine said. Russia launched 10 times more drones and missiles in June than in the same month last year, it said.
At the same time, Russia’s bigger army is making a new effort to drive back Ukrainian defenders on parts of the 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line.
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Trump confirmed the U.S. is sending Ukraine more badly needed Patriot air defence missiles and that the European Union will pay the U.S. for the “various pieces of very sophisticated” weaponry.
While the EU is not allowed under its treaties to buy weapons, EU member countries can and are, just as NATO member countries are buying and sending weapons.
Germany has offered to finance two new Patriot systems and is awaiting official talks on the possibility of more, government spokesperson Stefan Kornelius said Monday in Berlin.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius was traveling to Washington on Monday to meet with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Germany has already given three of its own Patriot systems to Ukraine, and Pistorius was quoted as saying in an interview with the Financial Times that it now has only six.
Trump ally says war at inflection point
A top ally of Trump, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said Sunday that the conflict is nearing an inflection point as Trump shows growing interest in helping Ukraine fight back against Russia’s full-scale invasion. It’s a cause that Trump had previously dismissed as being a waste of U.S. taxpayer money.
“In the coming days, you’ll see weapons flowing at a record level to help Ukraine defend themselves,” Graham said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” He added: “One of the biggest miscalculations Putin has made is to play Trump. And you just watch, in the coming days and weeks, there’s going to be a massive effort to get Putin to the table.”
Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s envoy for international investment who took part in talks with U.S. officials in Saudi Arabia in February, dismissed what he said were efforts to drive a wedge between Moscow and Washington.
“Constructive dialogue between Russia and the United States is more effective than doomed-to-fail attempts at pressure,” Dmitriev said in a post on Telegram. “This dialogue will continue, despite titanic efforts to disrupt it by all possible means.”
NATO chief visits Washington
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte was due in Washington on Monday and Tuesday. He planned to hold talks with Trump, Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as well as members of Congress.
Talks during Kellogg’s visit to Kyiv will cover “defense, strengthening security, weapons, sanctions, protection of our people and enhancing cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” said the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andrii Yermak.
“Russia does not want a cease fire. Peace through strength is President Donald Trump’s principle, and we support this approach,” Yermak said.
Russian troops conducted a combined aerial strike at Shostka, in the northern Sumy region of Ukraine, using glide bombs and drones early Monday morning, killing two people, the regional prosecutor’s office said. Four others were injured, including a seven-year-old, it said.
Overnight from Sunday to Monday, Russia fired four S-300/400 missiles and 136 Shahed and decoy drones at Ukraine, the air force said. It said that 61 drones were intercepted and 47 more were either jammed or lost from radars mid-flight.
The Russian Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said its air defences downed 11 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions on the border with Ukraine, as well as over the annexed Crimea and the Black Sea.
—Associated Press writers Lorne Cook in Brussels and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.
© 2025 The Canadian Press
What is the Patriot missile system the U.S. plans to send to Ukraine? – National TenX News
Over 1,400 tarantulas found hidden in cake boxes in German smuggling bust – National TenX News
Trump set to make announcement on Russia as U.S. envoy arrives in Ukraine – National TenX News
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