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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

In brief: Short, powerful storm kills 1 in NYC

Residents in the Park Slope neighborhood in Brooklyn  gather around a car crushed by a fallen tree Thursday.  (Associated Press)

NEW YORK – A fast-moving storm packing winds of up to 100 mph ripped through the city Thursday, knocking down trees and power lines, tearing off roofs in one Brooklyn neighborhood and leaving one person dead.

The person was killed when a tree fell on a car in Queens, fire officials said. Numerous minor injuries were reported elsewhere.

The storm hit just after 5 p.m., when the National Weather Service issued a tornado warning for Staten Island.

“A huge tree limb, like 25 feet long, flew right up the street, up the hill and stopped in the middle of the air 50 feet up in this intersection and started spinning,” said Steve Carlisle, 54. “It was like a poltergeist.”

“All of a sudden, we saw this dark cloud, and it was moving. I said ‘Let’s go in!’ ” said Stephen Wylie, who was working in a backyard in Brooklyn.

Within seconds, the front door started lashing back and forth. Tree branches were falling and trees came flying from other yards, Wylie said.

The Long Island Rail Road said service was temporarily suspended between Penn Station and Jamaica because of fallen trees. Amtrak and New Jersey Transit were running with delays.

WASHINGTON – Evidence is building that the Obama administration’s surge strategy is working in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday, citing recent assessments from the new top U.S. and NATO commander and Gates’ personal impressions from a recent trip to Afghan battlefields.

“I was encouraged,” Gates said, predicting that a critical year-end U.S. review of its own war plan would show that the strategy President Barack Obama put in place a year before is taking hold.

Gates’ upbeat assessment of the Afghan war comes as the Obama administration faces growing skepticism with the progress and direction of the war.

Despite his overall optimism, Gates cautioned that the United States won’t make the mistake in Afghanistan of predicting success too soon.

“Most of us try to err on the side of caution because of previous experiences, particularly in Iraq, of people perhaps being too optimistic, and certainly too optimistic prematurely,” Gates said.

Whooping cough cases soaring

LOS ANGELES – State health officials say California’s whooping cough epidemic is on track to break a 55-year record, with just over 4,000 infections and nine deaths this year.

Whooping cough is a highly contagious, cyclical illness that peaks in number of infections every five years. This is a peak year, on track to exceed the record 4,949 cases reported in 1955.

All of the dead were babies too young to be fully immunized against the illness. Health officials are urging parents and caregivers to get booster shots.