BATON ROUGE (Dispatches) - Six tornadoes tore through New Orleans and other parts of Louisiana on Tuesday, injuring at least 20 people as the storm roared across highways and streets, leveling trees, power lines and homes.
Governor John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency throughout Louisiana, while search and rescue teams scoured the landscape for survivors.
The Louisiana National Guard said it was conducting search-and-rescue operations, looking for injured people who may be stranded, and assessing damage.
The storm system battered New Orleans and suburban Baton Rouge, marking the fourth time in a year the state has been jolted by natural disasters.
******
VIENNA (AP) — The interior and defense ministers of 13 European nations were meeting in Vienna on ways to prepare for a possible uptick in refugee flows once winter is over.
Convened by Austria’s interior and defense ministers, Wednesday’s meeting included counterparts from the Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Macedonia, Serbia, Kosovo and Greece.
Some of the countries became arrival or transit points along the now-closed west Balkans route for the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees looking for better lives. Others oppose resettling refugees already in the EU on their territories.
Austria was instrumental in coordinating last year’s shutdown of the migrants’ path into prosperous EU countries that began in Greece and wound through the western Balkans.
******
EDINBURGH (AFP) - The battle over Scotland’s constitutional future is now "a virtual dead heat” with support rising for independence as Britain prepares to leave the European Union, according to a new poll released Wednesday.
Support has risen to 49 percent, excluding undecided voters, with 51 percent in favour of the British union, a BMG poll for the Herald newspaper said.
The poll was conducted after Prime Minister Theresa May confirmed her intention to take Britain out of the European single market.
Scotland rejected independence by 55 percent in 2014, and 20 months later it voted to remain in the European Union by 62 percent.
******
MOSCOW (AP) — A prominent rebel leader in eastern Ukraine has been killed in an explosion in his office, his associates said on Wednesday.
The rebels’ Donetsk News Agency said Mikhail Tolstykh, better known under his nom de guerre Givi, died early Wednesday morning in what it described as a terrorist attack. The agency said 35-year old Tolstykh was killed by a rocket fired from a portable launcher into his office.
Russian state television showed pictures of firefighters putting out flames in the building where Toltsykh’s headquarters is believed to be. The footage from the scene showed several rooms in the building gutted from an apparent explosion.