Arizona Family Attempts to Abandon USA for Religious Reasons, Gets Lost at Sea

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At Sea, Chile, God, Kiribati, Lost, Religious Freedom, U.S. Government

PHOENIX (AP) — A northern Arizona family that was lost at sea for weeks in an ill-fated attempt to leave the U.S. over what they consider government interference in religion will fly back home Sunday.

Hannah Gastonguay, 26, said Saturday that she and her husband “decided to take a leap of faith and see where God led us” when they took their two small children and her father-in-law and set sail from San Diego for the tiny island nation of Kiribati in May.

But just weeks into their journey, the Gastonguays hit a series of storms that damaged their small boat, leaving them adrift for weeks, unable to make progress. They were eventually picked up by a Venezuelan fishing vessel, transferred to a Japanese cargo ship and taken to Chile where they are resting in a hotel in the port city of San Antonio.

Their flights home were arranged by U.S. Embassy officials, Gastonguay said. The U.S. State Department was not immediately available for comment.

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MYSTERY NOW SOLVED? Amelia Earhart’s Plane Possibly Found Using Sonar Imaging

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Amelia Earhart, found, Imaging, Mystery, Solved, Sonar

Considered to be one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in American history, Amelia Earhart’s plane has possibly been found after 76 years

A grainy sonar image captured off an uninhabited tropical island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati might represent the remains of the Electra, the two-engine aircraft legendary aviator Amelia Earhart was piloting when she vanished on July 2, 1937 in a record attempt to fly around the world at the equator.

Released by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), which has long been investigating Earhart’s last, fateful flight, the images show an “anomaly” resting at the depth of about 600 feet in the waters off Nikumaroro island, some 350 miles southeast of Earhart’s target destination, Howland Island.

According to TIGHAR researchers, the sonar image shows a strong return from a narrow object roughly 22 feet long oriented southwest/northeast on the slope near the base of an underwater cliff. Shadows indicate that the object is higher on the southwest (downhill side). A lesser return extends northeastward for about 131 feet.

“What initially got our attention is that there is no other sonar return like it in the entire body of data collected,” Ric Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR, told Discovery News.

“It is truly an anomaly, and when you’re looking for man-made objects against a natural background, anomalies are good,” he added.

SHOCK: American Red Cross STILL Sitting on $110 MILLION Dollars Donated for Hurricane Sandy

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hurricane, Red Cross, sandy, Unspent

Seven months after Superstorm Sandy, the Red Cross still hasn’t spent more than a third of the $303 million it raised to assist victims of the storm, a strategy the organization says will help address needs that weren’t immediately apparent in the disaster’s wake.

Some disaster relief experts say that’s smart planning. But others question whether the Red Cross, an organization best known for rushing into disasters to distribute food and get people into shelter, should have acted with more urgency in the weeks after the storm and left long-haul recovery tasks to someone else.

“The Red Cross has never been a recovery operation. Their responsibility has always been mass care,” said Ben Smilowitz, executive director of the Disaster Accountability Project, a nonprofit group that monitors aid groups. “Stick with what you’re good at.”

Storm victims could have used more help this past winter, said Kathleen McCarthy, director of the Center for the Study of Philanthropy and Civil Society at the City University of New York.

“People were cold. Homes mildewed. There wasn’t enough decent housing,” she said. “Given the lingering despair, it’s hard to understand the argument that ‘We are setting that money aside.’”

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WHAT SCANDALS? Obama Refuses to Accept Responsibility for Scandals

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christie, disasters, fray, new jersey, Obama, responsibility, scandal

President Obama will gain one more day of respite from the controversies that have crowded in on his administration Tuesday, as he tours the New Jersey coast to inspect the recovery and rebuilding efforts in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

The Garden State visit follows a presidential speech Monday to mark Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery and a trip to tornado-stricken Oklahoma on Sunday.

Both weekend occasions permitted Obama to appear above the fray — the commander-in-chief and consoler-in-chief, respectively — rather than as a political figure pinned down in the Washington trenches.

The trip comes as his administration faces tough questions over a trio of controversies: the IRS political targeting scandal, the Justice Department’s leak probes and the handling of the Benghazi mission attack.

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HAHA: N.J. Gov. Christie Says ‘Obama Kept Every Promise’

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Chris, christie, devastated, governor, hurricane, new jersey, promise, recovery, sandy

HIGHLANDS, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Monday that President Barack Obama “has kept every promise he’s made” about helping the state recover from Superstorm Sandy.

Speaking on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program on the 6-month anniversary of the deadly storm, the Republican governor said presidential politics were the last thing on his mind as he toured storm-devastated areas with Obama last fall.

“The president has kept every promise he’s made,” said Christie, widely considered a potential candidate for the republican presidential nomination in 2016. “I think he’s done a good job. He kept his word.”

Christie’s warm embrace of Obama after the storm angered some Republicans, who said it helped tip a close presidential election to the Democrat and away from Mitt Romney, who Christie endorsed and for whom he campaigned last fall.