Maine
Another odd ice disk forming in same river
An ice disk appears to be forming in the same Maine river where an unusually large one formed last winter and quickly gained international fame.
The City of Westbrook tweeted an aerial view of the disk in the Presumpscot River with the message: “ICE BREAKING NEWS: Ice Disk 2020 is making a run for it. … It’s not a perfect circle yet, but it is rotating … again & the seagulls are along for the ride.”
The ice formation is forming about a year after a disk measuring about 100 yards was spotted in the Presumpscot River. It eventually had a devoted webcam; social media users compared it to an alien spacecraft and the moon; and ducks used it as a raft.
A video of the disk shows a nascent ice blob that is thinner and less circular than the famous disk of 2019.
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Utah
Boy arrested after shooting that killed 4
A boy armed with a gun killed three children and a woman inside a Utah home, then accompanied a fifth victim to a hospital, where he was arrested, police said Saturday.
Police were still trying to piece together who’s who and what happened leading up to Friday night’s shooting in Grantsville. Investigators believe the victims are all related to one another, and officials declined to release information about the shooter other than he is a juvenile male.
“We’re trying to make certain that we verify people’s relationships among the deceased and the survivor,” Grantsville Police Cpl. Rhonda Fields told The Associated Press Saturday. “As for motive, we don’t have any of that.”
It appears to be the largest mass shooting in Utah since 2007, when a shotgun-wielding gunman killed five people and himself at Trolley Square mall in Salt Lake City. It’s also the first homicide in nearly 20 years in Grantsville, a town of 11,000 about 35 miles west of Salt Lake City.
District of Columbia
Housing construction jumps 16.9% in Dec.
WASHINGTON — Construction of new homes surged in December to the highest level in 13 years, capping a year in which falling mortgage rates and a strong labor market helped lift the prospects of the housing industry.
The Commerce Department reported Friday that builders started construction on 1.61 million homes at a seasonally adjusted annual rate in December, up 16.9% from the November pace of home building.
Housing construction has been rising since July, helped by falling mortgage rates and increased demand as the unemployment rate approached a half-century low. For the year, builders started work on a total of 1.29 million homes, the best showing since 2007.
Wire reports
