Fort Mcmurray, Alberta
The fire destroyed 2,400 structures, or about 10 percent of the city, when it ripped through last month, forcing more than 80,000 residents to flee. Officials expected thousands of evacuees to return to the city Wednesday — the first day of a staged re-entry. Residents in areas that were not damaged have been asked to come first.
One of Mike Maloney’s first tasks was to mow the messy lawn in front of his home while his wife and three kids cleaned inside.
“It’s sad to see what did burn,” he said. “It’s tragic for those people. But I think, all in all, everybody will survive.”
Pilar Ramirez spent the night sleeping in the back of a truck in Anzac, Alberta, about 40 minutes southeast of Fort McMurray.
She got to work cleaning as soon as she got into her downtown house, which she shares with co-workers at a concrete company.
Her reaction when she first opened the door: “Oh, it’s so disgusting!”
“It smelled terrible, the food. Flies everywhere — and big ones. I said, ‘Oh, my God, what happened here?’ ”
People driving in on the only highway into the area found the forest on both sides blackened about half an hour out of town.
The devastation is apparent from the road just inside city limits and a strong smell of smoke hangs in the air.
Cairo
The discovery, announced Wednesday, could help guide search teams to the wreckage and the flight’s data and cockpit voice recorders, which if retrieved unharmed could reveal whether a mechanical fault or a hijacking or bomb caused the disaster.
In the two weeks since Flight 804 disappeared from radar en route to Cairo from Paris, only small pieces of debris and human remains have been retrieved from the crash site. No terrorist group has claimed responsibility, though Egypt’s civil aviation minister, Sherif Fathi, has said terrorism is a more likely cause than equipment failure or some other catastrophic event.
The flight recorders will be critical to determining whether the disaster was caused by an accident or a deliberate act.
The Justice Department is poised to approve Anheuser-Busch InBev’s takeover of SABMiller in an agreement that may include measures to keep the beer behemoth from edging craft brewers from shelves, according to people familiar with the matter.
U.S. clearance of the $107 billion combination is on track for later this month, according to three people familiar with the process. The accord could include limits on the combined company’s ownership of distributors, said one of the people.
U.S. antitrust approval would bring the maker of Budweiser a step closer to completing the industry’s biggest merger ever and redraw control of the global beer market. The merged company will be followed by Heineken and Molson Coors Brewing in the No. 2 and No. 3 spots by market capitalization.
Following divestitures to win regulatory approvals, the deal will keep Budweiser, Beck’s and Stella Artois under AB InBev’s roof, while selling brands including Miller in the U.S. and Peroni and Pilsner Urquell in Europe.
AB InBev erased earlier losses to rise as much as 1 percent in Brussels, while SABMiller shares gained 0.6 percent in London.
— Wire reports