Three killed, two missing after dropping over dam in inflatable rings – four rescued after 19 hours
Three people are dead and two are missing after a group of nine people, all believed to be from the same family, went missing after floating down a river on inflatable rings and dropping over the edge of a dam.
Four of the group were rescued and taken to hospital with non-life threatening injuries after the tragedy on the Dan River in North Carolina, Rockingham County emergency services director Rodney Cates said.
The nine people were tubing – an activity which involves travelling across water on inflatable rings.
They went over the Duke Energy dam in the city of Eden at around sunset on Wednesday, Mr Cates said.
He added said the dam is approximately 2.5m (8ft) high.
Mr Cates also said that a Duke Energy employee who saw some of the tubers called 911 to report what was happening.
Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page identified those rescued as Reuben Villano, 35 – and children Eric, 14, and Irene, 18.
The fourth person rescued was Karlos Villano of LaPorte, Indiana.
Rescue workers are seen near the Dan River on Friday
The sheriff’s office named those who died as Bridish Crawford, 27, Antonio Ramon, 30, and Sophie Wilson, 14.
The two missing are Teresa Villano, 35, and Isiah Crawford, 7.
Search teams were combing the Dan River on Friday to try and locate those who have not been found.
The search will resume on Saturday, Mr Cates said.
Boats and helicopters have been used in the search in Rockingham County, north of Greensboro along the Virginia state line.
Mr Cates said the rescued people spent the night floating in the water near the dam before they were found clinging to their tubes.
He said they managed to stay afloat for approximately 19 hours, describing them as “very, very fatigued” when they were found.
Rescue workers are seen near the Dan River on Friday
First responders indicated the survivors were caught in fast-moving water near the dam when they were found, according to recordings of scanner traffic on broadcastify.com.
The emergency workers could be heard over public safety radio ordering boats and other swift water rescue equipment to the area shortly after the 911 call came in at around 3:15pm on Thursday.
“We’re taking a call on the Dan River at the dam near the Duke Energy plant. Caller is advising five tubers … went over the dam,” one person says.
A rescuer says on the recording that some of the tubers were stuck near the dam because of the pull of water flowing over it.
“They’re on that side … at the abutment for the dam. And they’re all caught in the pull. If you can come over … we can probably pull them out pretty good, hopefully,” the rescuer can be heard saying.
Mr Cates told reporters that debris and rocks in the river can puncture tubes or rafts, so it’s important for people to wear life jackets. He said it wasn’t clear if any of the nine were wearing such a jacket.
Mr Cates said it is not unusual for people to float the river on tubes or rafts in the area, but most get out and walk around the dam, which is marked by signs.
Donald Trump has signalled his intention to send troops to Chicago to ramp up the deportation of illegal immigrants – by posting an AI-generated parody image from Apocalypse Now on social media.
There were protests in the city, the largest in Illinois, on Saturday night, with thousands of people marching past Trump Tower to demonstrate against possible immigration raids.
That came as the US president ramped up his threats to deploy federal authorities and military personnel in Chicago, as he has done in Los Angeles and Washington DC.
In a post on Truth Social, Mr Trump shared an AI-generated image of himself as a military officer in the movie Apocalypse Now, with the title changed to “Chipocalypse Now” over flames and the city skyline.
The post – a screenshot from X – said: “‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning…’. Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”
Pic: Truth Social
Mr Trump signed an executive order on Friday to rename the Pentagon as the Department of War.
“The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke,” Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, a Democrat, wrote in a post on X, responding to Mr Trump’s post.
“This is not normal. Donald Trump isn’t a strongman, he’s a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”
Mr Pritzker previously said that he believed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids would coincide with Mexican Independence Day festivals scheduled for this weekend and next weekend.
Some Mexican festivals in the Chicago area were postponed or cancelled over the threatened stings.
A protest against threatened immigration raids in Chicago on Saturday. Pic: AP
A military deployment in Chicago has long been reported. Last month, the Pentagon was said to be drafting plans to send the US Army to Illinois.
In a statement responding to that report, originally from The Washington Post, Mr Pritzker said the state had “made no requests for federal intervention” and accused Mr Trump of “attempting to manufacture a crisis”.
Vice president JD Vance said on Wednesday that there were “no immediate plans” to send the National Guard to Chicago.
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ICE arrests 475 Hyundai workers
On Thursday, ICE agents carried out a raid at a Hyundai car battery plant in Georgia, saying 475 people, mostly South Koreans, were found to be illegally working there.
It marked the largest single-site enforcement operation in the history of the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE.
The day after the raid, ICE posted a video and photos of workers shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles getting on a bus.
South Korean junior foreign minister Park Yoon-joo told a US government official in a phone call that the video release was regrettable.
Seoul’s foreign ministry added the post came “at a critical time, when the momentum of trust and cooperation” between the two countries, forged through their first summit, “must be maintained”.
Britain’s ambassador to the United States will use a keynote speech today to underline the UK-US special relationship – while also attempting to ‘Reform-proof’ his own struggling government.
Lord Mandelson, the architect of New Labour, master of political spin and now Britain’s man in Washington, will use the 2025 annual lecture at Ditchley Park to offer a positive spin on a presidency which has proudly upended norms and frayed alliances.
In the speech, parts of which have been released in advance, Mandelson will describe President Trump as a “risk taker” with an “iron-clad stomach”.
Lord Mandelson was chosen as ambassador by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer late last year. He is a political appointee rather than a career diplomat.
And with intriguing language he will offer his take on the parallels between Trump and Starmer’s challenges and mandates.
He will say: “I credit President Trump’s political instincts in identifying the anxieties gripping not only millions of Americans, but also far more pervasive Western trends: economic stagnation for many, a sense of irreversible decline, the lost promise of meaningful work…
“These American concerns find their mirror image in British society, where Keir Starmer won an electoral mandate for national renewal which is similar to Donald Trump’s.”
Yet Mandelson delivers the speech at the end of a week when Nigel Farage was in town.
Screaming for his own form of Trump-like national renewal, the disruptive leader of the UK’s top-polling political party – Reform – was in Washington to hobnob in the Oval Office and to tell Congress that Keir Starmer is turning Blighty into North Korea.
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Farage likens UK to North Korea in Congress
Mr Farage enjoys lapping up the limelight in Washington, where he is an old-world conservative celebrity in the new MAGA White House.
His calculation is that the MAGA wave will reach the UK shores soon.
Reform‘s policy platform is a mirror of the Trump agenda in many respects, tweaked accordingly. The administration is happy to support him. There is a MAGA-Reform mutual respect.
And so it is politically savvy or unavoidably necessary for Lord Mandelson, New Labour‘s architect laying the foundations of the current UK government, to proclaim: ‘We respect Trump too.’
The truth is the government, like so many around the world, sees Donald Trump as an infuriating and unpredictable disrupter with the ability to upend norms at the stroke of a Sharpie. But they can’t articulate that publicly.
Instead, the ‘Prince of Darkness’ will cast Mr Trump as the consequence not the cause of the disruption to international systems, even if many argue that he can be both.
As a master of spin, strategy and ruthlessness, Mandelson clearly has an admiration for Trump’s political style and sheer chutzpah.
Lord Mandelson’s speech comes a week before Mr Trump’s UK state visit. Pic: AP
He will tell the Ditchley Park lecture: “The president may not follow the traditional rulebook or conventional practice, but he is a risk taker in a world where a ‘business as usual’ approach no longer works.”
At a time when the Labour government is struggling and feeling the heat from Farage and his disrupters, are these words to be read as a not-so-subtle message to Prime Minister Starmer?
Mandelson is an old-fashioned liberal. He hasn’t the stomach for ‘wokey’ politics or own goals like the arrest of Graham Linehan. Is there a frustration that the political party he built is now messing it all up?
“Indeed, he seems to have an iron-clad stomach for political risk…” he will say of Trump, decrying the tendency of previous presidents to descend “into an analysis paralysis and gradual incrementalism”.
Lord Mandelson may be Britain’s man in Washington now but, more than anyone else to hold the post, he is deeply integrated into the Downing Street machine.
He is tight with Number 10 chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and was inside Downing Street when Friday’s reshuffle took place. A total coincidence I am told.
A week before the president’s state visit to the UK, Lord Mandelson’s speech is designed to steady a special relationship put under pressure by the return of Trump.
“Do we always have identical views?” he will say. “Of course not, we never have. And we are not looking for special treatment. Our alliance exists because it serves both nations’ interests, because the core values of Britons and Americans remain aligned, as the world around us becomes more threatening.”
Lord Mandelson will say Brexit has freed the UK to pursue closer ties with the US. Pic Reuters
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And, in a shapeshifting manoeuvre that only the original spin doctor could manage, Lord Mandelson, a cheerleading remainer in the EU referendum campaign, now casts Brexit as a liberator.
“Brexit has freed us to pursue closer US ties,” he will say in his speech.
“Britain has the opportunity to use its regulatory freedom and independence from European law to deepen American investment opportunities. This is crucial as, post-Brexit, we need to leverage every advantage we can to spur UK growth and employment.”
The ambassador is expected to concede that pre-referendum warnings of the demise of Britain’s trans-Atlantic clout have not transpired, while maintaining that Brexit has hit the UK financially with a net-loss to its economy.
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They say the British ambassador is the custodian of the US-UK special relationship. This ambassador has seen what the relationship looks like under Trump.
With trademark political gymnastics, he seems now to be both admiring of the Trumpian movement but also anxious that if Britain under Labour doesn’t get its house in order, then it too will get its own Trumpian disrupter.
Former US president Joe Biden has had surgery for skin cancer, his spokesperson has said.
It’s unclear when he had the procedure, but video from late August showed him leaving church in Delaware with a large, fresh scar on his head.
The spokesperson told Sky’s US partner, NBC News, that he was recovering well.
Mr Biden had Mohs surgery, which involves removing a layer of tissue, examining it under a microscope to see if any cancer cells remain, and repeating if necessary.
The 82-year had a basal cell carcinoma, one of the two most common skin cancer types, removed from his chest in 2023.
His doctor said at the time that all the cancerous cells had been removed.
The same year, Mr Biden’s wife, Jill, had two basal cell carcinomas removed from near her eye and on her chest.
The former president also revealed this May that he had stage-four prostate cancer – with the disease having spread to his bones and having a Gleason score of nine.
Such a score means the disease is “likely to grow quickly”, according to Cancer Research UK.
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His office said the prostate cancer was discovered when Mr Biden visited a doctor for urinary symptoms and that he was considering “multiple treatment options”.
“While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management,” said a statement.
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