North Carolina

Town won’t stop ritual despite shooting death

A teenager was killed during a rural town’s New Year’s tradition of firing vintage black-powder muskets into the air, but town officials in Cherryville declared Monday that the centuries-old ritual would continue to be celebrated.

During the revelry early Saturday, a rifle exploded and pieces of the barrel struck 18-year-old Matthew K. Shook in the side of the head.

“There’s no effort in place here to end the practice,” Mayor Bob Austell said in a telephone interview. “This is something that’s been going on in Cherryville for more than 200 years. We have grandsons firing off muskets that once belonged to their grandfathers.”

The tradition has been traced to the mid-1700s, when German settlers would fire their weapons as a kind of good-luck wish. In Cherryville’s celebration, groups of shooters visit dozens of homes and fire black powder from their muskets at every stop.

Washington, D.C.

Visitors fingerprinted at border crossings

Foreign visitors at the 50 busiest land border crossings in 10 states are now being fingerprinted as part of the government’s new biometric screening system, the Homeland Security Department announced Monday.

The system, called US-VISIT, scans photographs into a computer of the visitor’s face and index fingers, which are matched with federal agencies’ criminal databases.

Homeland Security Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson told reporters that U.S. officials have arrested or denied admission to 372 criminals or immigration violators since the system began last year at 15 seaports and 115 airports. About 17 million people have been enrolled.

Though no known terrorists have been caught by US-Visit, Hutchinson said it’s possible that it kept out someone traveling on a forged passport who meant to do harm.

The system is actually speeding travelers through processing at ports of entry, he said. It now takes less than 5 minutes to process a visitor at Laredo, Texas; before the program was implemented, it took more than 10 minutes.

Arkansas

Residents return home after chemical fire

The last of the 1,500 people evacuated after a hazardous waste plant warehouse in El Dorado caught fire Sunday morning were allowed to return home Monday afternoon.

Employees of the Teris Inc. warehouse said Sunday morning’s fire started in a drum of highly explosive magnesium, Fire Chief Floyd McAdoo said.

“One of the employees discovered a drum smoking. By the time they got back with a fire extinguisher, it was too late,” he said.

The chief said he did not know what caused the drum to smolder and that an investigation into the exact cause of the blaze would continue.

Some of those displaced by the fire were treated for headaches, nausea and eye irritation, but environmental tests Monday showed conditions were safe, officials said