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Published on April 09, 2023 15:18

8 people are missing after a building exploded and collapsed in Marseille, France

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Firefighters work after building collapsed early Sunday in Marseille, southern France. AP

MARSEILLE, France — Eight people remained missing after the building they lived in exploded and collapsed early Sunday near the port of Marseille, leaving mounds of burning debris hampering rescue operations, officials said.

More than 100 firefighters worked against a ticking clock to extinguish flames deep within the rubble of the five-story building, but more than 17 hours later “the situation is not yet stabilized,” Marseille Prosecutor Dominique Laurens said at an evening news conference.

Earlier in the day, officials had thought that between four and 10 people may have been trapped. Laurens said police have yet to confirm the apparent disappearance of a ninth person who lived in a next-door building. Five people suffered minor injuries from the collapse, which occurred shortly before 1 a.m.

Marseille Mayor Benoit Payan said two buildings that share walls with the one that collapsed were partially brought down before one later caved in, another complication in the search and rescue operation. The buildings were among evacuated structures.

Drones and probes have been used to examine the scene for signs of life. The burning debris was too hot for dogs in the firefighters’ canine team to work until Sunday afternoon, though smoke still bothered them, the prosecutor said.

“We cannot intervene in a very classic way,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said during a morning visit to the site. He said the fire was burning a few meters under the mounds of debris and that both water and foam represent a danger to victims’ survival.

An investigation has been opened for involuntary injury, at least initially sidestepping possible criminal intentions. A gas explosion was among the tracks to check, said Laurens, the prosecutor. But the start of the probe also was limited by the heat of the blaze.

“The flames weren’t pink. They were blue,” Payan said.

Firefighters, with the help of urban rescue experts, worked through the night and all day Sunday in a slow race against time. The delicate operation aimed to keep firefighters safe, prevent further harm to people potentially trapped in the rubble and not compromise vulnerable buildings nearby, already partially collapsed. Some 30 buildings in the area were evacuated, Darmanin said.

Lauren, the prosecutor, said that firefighters “are really in a complicated situation, dangerous for them.” Work is progressing but with safety precautions, she said.

“We heard an explosion … a very strong explosion which made us jump, and that’s it,” said Marie Ciret, who was among those evacuated. “We looked outside the window at what was happening. We saw smoke, stones, and people running.”

The building that collapsed is located on a narrow street less than a kilometer (a half-mile) from Marseille’s iconic old port, adding to an array of difficulties for firefighters and rescue workers. The prosecutor said the building and those next door “are not at all substandard buildings.”

Robots were reportedly being deployed. A crane was brought in to clear rubble and firefighters were at one point seen in TV video hosing parts of the debris from a window in a nearby apartment as plumes of smoke rose skyward.

“We’re trying to drown the fire while preserving the lives of eventual victims under the rubble,” Lionel Mathieu, commander of the Marseille fire brigade, said during a televised briefing.

“Firefighters are gauging minute by minute the best way to put out the fire,” Payan, the mayor, said.

“We must prepare ourselves to have victims,” he said grimly.

The collapsed building is located in an old quarter in the center of France’s second-largest city. The noise from the explosion resounded in other neighborhoods. Nearby streets were blocked off.

French President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne both tweeted their thoughts for people affected and thanks to the firefighters.

In 2018, two buildings in the center of Marseille collapsed, killing eight people. Those buildings were poorly maintained — not the case with the building that collapsed Sunday after an explosion, the interior minister said.

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Published on April 09, 2023 14:56

Phoenix woman searches for stolen service dog

PHOENIX – Lindsay Deyo has been hiking North Phoenix for months on a mission to locate her beloved service dog, Mya, a female American Bully who she says was stolen by a unknown during a visit to the park.

Deyo, 35, quit a part-time job as a waitress to pursue research, displaying signs of a missing dog in the area even as she staved off the seizures Mya warns her about.

“I just feel like I’m not myself without her,” Deyo said of the broken bond between her and Mya, whom she adopted as a seven-week-old puppy at the start of the pandemic. “She is my best friend.”

What happened to Mya?

The woman and dog were abruptly separated on the morning of Nov. 9 in the dog park of an apartment complex in Phoenix. Deyo momentarily looked away from Mya as she stood in the enclosed green space. Once she turned around, her four-legged friend was gone.

Calling out the dog’s name, Deyo scoured the apartment for Mya. Tears streamed down Deyo’s face as heavy rain rolled through the area as she realized Mya had been taken.

“I cried all day,” Deyo said. “It was horrible.”

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Help bring Mya home

Deyo thinks she managed to give a description about the dognapper after speaking with two people in the apartments.

Mya appears to have been robbed by someone who witnesses described as a medium-skinned black man in his 20s, about 6-foot-1, 180 pounds tall, with tattooed arms and sporting a faded haircut, red shirt and jeans.

One person even told Deyo that this man had Mya on a leash and bragged about paying thousands of dollars to buy her.

Deyo learned that the gate to the park through which Mya was allegedly seized is not in view of the apartments’ security cameras. She filed a police report but has no new leads.

The Black Coated Mya has white fur on its chest and left leg, and has a white C-shaped mark on the back of its neck. She is less than 3ft tall, weighs 80lbs and was taken with a light purple collar tagged with identifying information.

A $1,500 reward has been set up for Mya’s safe return.

Mya is microchipped, so Deyo begs the kidnapper to take the dog back to a vet or animal shelter who can then reconnect them. The dog can also be released anonymously by calling the nonprofit Humane Animal Rescue & Trapping Team at 602-601-2604.

Mya is an American Bully service dog who, in early November, was stolen from the dog park of a North Phoenix apartment complex.

I always think of Mya to control the seizures

Trained specifically as a service dog, Mya would alert Deyo to an impending seizure, help him get his medicine, and bark at people during an episode.

Seizures have plagued Deyo since she was young and occur when she has low blood sugar or when she is tired. Deyo managed to control his seizures by thinking about Mya.

But she has been hit by two serious crises since Mya left.

“Luckily I was with my mom and my family, actually both times,” she said.

No matter how tired Deyo was at the end of a busy day, she would make sure Mya took her night walk, said her boyfriend of seven years, Daniel Hill, 37. Deyo shared that worrying about Mya’s whereabouts recently caused a three-week pregnancy miscarriage. Along with losing a pregnancy due to the stress of having Mya ripped out of their lives, Hill sees how Deyo continues to agonize over the loss of his service dog.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Hill said. “She is still crying. Lately, at least once a day, if not more than that.

Deyo worries that Mya will be used for dogfights because of her race.

“I don’t really want to think the worst, but you never know,” she said, her voice shaking. “If they did that to her, for example, she wouldn’t fight back because she’s not trying to be aggressive.”

Follow José R. Gonzalez on Twitter: @jrgzztx .

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Published on April 09, 2023 13:03

Iowa won’t pay for abortions or contraceptives for rape victims

“As part of his top-down and bottom-up audit of victim assistance, Attorney General Bird is carefully assessing whether this is an appropriate use of public funds,” Bird’s press secretary Alyssa Brouillet said. , in a press release. “Until this review is complete, payment of these pending claims will be delayed.”

Advocates for victims were caught off guard by the hiatus. Ruth Richardson, CEO of Planned Parenthood North Central States, said in a statement that the decision was “deplorable and reprehensible.”

Bird’s decision comes as access to the most commonly used method of abortion in the United States is shrouded in uncertainty following conflicting court rulings on Friday on the legality of the abortion drug mifepristone. For now, the drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2000 appeared to remain at least immediately available following separate rulings in quick succession.

U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas, appointed by former President Donald Trump, ordered a halt to federal approval of mifepristone. But that decision came almost at the same time U.S. District Judge Thomas O. Rice of Washington state, appointed by former President Barack Obama, essentially ordered otherwise.

The extraordinary timing of the competing orders revealed the high stakes surrounding the drug nearly a year after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned it Roe vs. Wade and restricted access to abortion across the country. President Joe Biden has said his administration will fight the Texas decision.

In Iowa, money for the victims’ compensation fund comes from fines and penalties paid by convicted felons. For victims of sexual assault, state law requires the fund to pay “the cost of a medical examination of a victim for the purpose of gathering evidence and the cost of treating a victim for the purpose of to prevent venereal disease”, but makes no mention of contraception or risk of pregnancy.

Sandi Tibbetts Murphy, who served as director of the victim assistance division under Miller, said Iowa’s longstanding policy has been to include the cost of emergency contraception in expenses covered by the fund. She said that in rare cases, the fund has paid for abortions for rape victims.

“I am concerned for victims of sexual assault who, without notice, now find themselves either unable to access necessary treatment and services or are now forced to pay out of pocket for these services, when it has been done. through no fault of their own,” she said.

POLITICO

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Published on April 09, 2023 12:55

April 8, 2023

DC man allegedly raped two 12-year-old girls he met online

A Washington, DC man has been arrested after allegedly raping two 12-year-old girls he met on Instagram, police say.

Luis Quevedo, 19, has been taken into custody in connection with two sexual assaults that occurred months apart, detectives from the Metropolitan Police Department’s Youth and Family Services Division said Friday. , branch of physical and sexual abuse, according to Fox 5 DC.

In August, Quevedo, then 18, picked up one of the girls from her home in Maryland and drove her to her residence in the 1400 block of Columbia Road in northwest DC. Police say Quevedo raped the child inside his home.

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A Washington, DC man has been arrested after allegedly raping two 12-year-old girls he met on Instagram, police say.

A similar incident happened a few months later with another girl he met on Instagram.

Police accuse Quevedo of raping another 12-year-old girl he met on the app between December and January.

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Luis Quevedo, 19, was taken into custody for two separate sexual assaults.

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Quevedo had been 19 at the time of the second encounter.

He now faces two counts of first-degree child sexual abuse, according to police.

Fox Gt

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Published on April 08, 2023 22:56

Reviews | Northern Ireland is way too quiet

HOLYWOOD, Northern Ireland – In 1998, two diverging and conflicting philosophies agreed to end the violence known as The Troubles and create a power-sharing government in Stormont, the seat of Ireland’s devolved assembly North.

The Good Friday Agreement was a torturous thing to debate. Crowds of individuals – some on the world stage, others forever anonymous – took meetings in shady parlors and fields. People prayed in churches of all denominations. It failed and failed and failed until it wasn’t.

Saying there were compromises is one of those examples of the English language having little resemblance to reality. Those imprisoned for murder have been released. More than 1,000 murders have not been solved. People from all sides threw hopes on the road and completely abandoned others. Everyone stitched up their wounds, believing in a possible healed scar.

On Tuesday, President Biden will arrive in Northern Ireland to mark the anniversary of the deal. He will spend about a day here – the rest of the week he will be in the Republic of Ireland – and the excitement is high. Photos of the President’s security vehicles arriving at Belfast International Airport were in the newspapers, and videos of the motorcade swept across our landscape in scenes we usually only see in movies. The following week, the Clintons arrive.

The atmosphere should be festive, and it is. But perhaps the arrival of these public figures is as much about reassurance as a toast to a job well done.

I’m part of a generation that as a kid thought bomb threats and military patrols were normal. For 25 years there has been a largely absence of war, and we have never taken it for granted. But I think we have the mistaken impression here that this absence is peace. If only it was peace, everything would be fine. But it’s not.

Stormont has been inactive for nearly a year as one of the main parties refused to take its seats; the terrorist threat level was recently raised to ‘severe’ after an off-duty police officer was shot dead. Responsibility for the shooting was claimed by a dissident Republican group called the New IRA and the paramilitaries are estimated to still number thousands of members operating as organized crime gangs and handing out what are colloquially known as “punishment beatings”, such as balls in the kneecaps.

Peace in Northern Ireland is a match tower, and recently there has been a shift in the ground below.

One of the central principles of the agreement was that the border between Northern Ireland – or Northern Ireland, depending on your political belief – and the Republic of Ireland would no longer be a hard border. What we mean here by “hard border” can be characterized by its opposite: today I only notice that I have crossed it because the road signs change from miles to kilometers and my phone beeps for me. say that I have changed countries. . But throughout my childhood I crossed a harsh border at least eight times a year to visit family in the south of Cork. Back then there were watchtowers and helicopters, the north side was patrolled by the British army and soldiers with machine guns checked our passports. People told me that they always felt like the air at the border was tense; everyone was very aware of what a bad word and a trigger could do.

When the border was dismantled as part of the peace process, it felt like a bulwark against collectivism had been torn down. And since the north and the south were both part of the European Union, it even made good geopolitical sense.

Being part of the EU also had a metaphysical effect: citizens of Northern Ireland could then and still can choose to hold a British or Irish passport, or both. But we were also all Europeans, and our passports bore the little circle of stars that represented the EU. We could all formalize our national identity as we saw fit and still be part of something international.

But then England, Scotland and Wales left the EU and all Northern Irish people who held British passports went out with them, while those who held Irish passports remained European . Nobody moved a muscle.

Northern Ireland did not collapse into chaos overnight, but something deeper was brewing. Dormant identity insecurities have begun to reawaken.

To avoid a hard border with the Republic, a post-Brexit trade deal called the Northern Ireland Protocol has allowed the north to remain, in effect, in the single European goods market. This gave some advantages to businesses here trading with Europe, but it also meant that some goods entering Northern Ireland from Britain would be subject to customs checks.

Unionists were frightened to see Northern Ireland treated differently from the rest of the UK. Quickly – we love a political sign here – posters declaring ‘NO BORDER IN THE IRISH SEA’ appeared on lampposts. For some, this statement is wishful thinking, since the sea itself is an immutable boundary. But Unionists, especially members of the Democratic Unionist Party, feared that each stamped form would erode British identity; each a de facto declaration that Northern Ireland is separate.

In an election last May, about a year after the protocol came into force, Sinn Fein, the main nationalist party, became Stormont’s largest party for the first time in the 100-year history of the ‘North Ireland. Members of the DUP, the second-largest, refused to take their seats until the British government renegotiated the protocol. (They were able to do this because, under the Good Friday Agreement, the government cannot sit in Stormont without both parties present.) Rishi Sunak, the British Prime Minister, negotiated a new agreement with the EU in February which simplifies customs arrangements but leaves some EU laws in force in Northern Ireland. The DUP said it still wasn’t good enough. The position of the British government, more or less, is that it’s the best it has.

Officials kept the lights on, as they did between 2017 and 2020 when Stormont collapsed due to a domestic scandal. But a budget for Northern Ireland has not been agreed for 2022-23 and the deficit is ballooning, and payments to help meet high energy bills over winter have been delayed.

The course of Brexit has shed light on several long-suspected facts, one of which is that the British government does not care too much about us. But it is remarkable to me that citizens who took part in a democratic election almost silently let the absence of government happen. There were posts, tweets and grunts, but mostly few protests.

As long as there is peace, this absence of dissent seems to say, anything is better than Trouble.

There are exceptions. The controversial Northern Ireland Inheritance Bill introduced by the UK government in May 2022 would grant amnesty to perpetrators of the unsolved Troubles murders. It is a rare thing in the north that has united all major political parties in opposition and brought people out into the streets in protest. At least we are talking about some of the silences that stifle democracy.

This month, we remember that a version of peace was given to us by a flimsy match tower built a quarter of a century ago. We can celebrate that, but we also have to deal with it.

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Published on April 08, 2023 22:53

Court sides with Justice Department on January 6 obstruction charge

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals court sided with the Justice Department on Friday in a case that could have overturned hundreds of charges brought in the Capitol Riot investigation.

The ruling, however, leaves open the possibility of further challenges to the obstruction of Congress charge, which was brought against more than 300 defendants in the massive federal prosecutions following the Jan. 6, 2021 riot.

In a 2-1 decision, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that a lower court judge erred in dismissing the charge in three cases in which the judge had concluded that it did not cover the defendants. conduct. These defendants can ask the full court of appeals or the United States Supreme Court to review the decision.

The obstruction of official process charge, which carries up to 20 years behind bars, is one of the most widely used felony charges in the Jan. 6 cases. It has been brought against extremists accused of plotting to prevent the transfer of presidential power from Republican Donald Trump to Democrat Joe Biden as well as in dozens of less serious cases.

Dozens of people have already pleaded guilty to the charge or been convicted at trial.

The Justice Department argued that the offense — punishing anyone who “corruptly” obstructs or interferes with “official process” — clearly aligns with the conduct of the rioters who disrupted Congress’ certification of election victory. Biden in 2020.

But U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols found prosecutors stretched the law beyond its scope to apply it inappropriately in these cases. Nichols ruled that a defendant must have taken “some action with respect to a document, record, or other thing” in order to obstruct an official proceeding under the law.

The Justice Department appealed, arguing that Nichols’ interpretation of the law was too limited.

In her appeals court ruling, Judge Florence Pan noted that Nichols — a Trump appointee — was the only lower court judge overseeing the Jan. 6 cases to rule that way; every other judge who reviewed it said it was used correctly.

The story continues

“While the opinions of these district judges are not binding on us, the near unanimity of the rulings is striking, as well as the thorough and persuasive reasoning in the decision,” wrote Pan, who was nominated by Biden.

Circuit Appeals Judge Gregory Katsas, however, sided with Nichols, writing that prosecutors’ interpretation of the law was too broad, especially for a crime that carries such a long potential sentence.

The law has been on the books for two decades and used thousands of times, but until the January 6 lawsuits it had only been used against people accused of damaging or tampering with evidence, the named person wrote. by Trump.

If the indictment covers anything that “obstructs, influences, or interferes with official process,” it could also potentially criminalize other common ways people try to convince lawmakers of their point of view, including advocacy, lobbying or protesting, he wrote.

“So while this approach would create an escape route for those who influence official process without committing any further crime, it would also turn a range of petty advocacy, lobbying and protest offenses into 20-year crimes. “, wrote Katsas.

The appeals court ruling suggests more legal wrangling over the law is likely. While he sided with Pan in overturning Nichols’ ruling, Judge Justin Walker said the court was wrong not to address what the law means by “corrupt.”

Walker, another Trump appointee, said “corrupt” means the defendants are only guilty if they act to “procure an unlawful advantage” for themselves or someone else. elites” and saw it as an “opportunity to display one’s bravado.

“Although likely guilty of other crimes, he did not act ‘corruptly’ ‘under the law’ as he did not intend to gain an advantage by obstructing the college’s vote count election,” he wrote.

“This rioter may not be representative of most January 6 rioters. But either way, the government will have to prove at trial whether each defendant acted ‘corruptly’ in a way that my hypothetical rioter didn’t,” he wrote.

About 1,000 people were charged with federal crimes in the attack, in which rioters smashed windows, fought with police and stormed the Capitol, sending lawmakers into hiding and injuring dozens of police officers.

More than 600 of them have pleaded guilty or been sentenced after trials decided by a jury or a judge. About 450 were sentenced, more than half of them to prison terms ranging from seven days to 10 years.

____

Richer reported from Boston.

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Published on April 08, 2023 22:48

2 Wisconsin police officers killed in traffic stop shooting

Two Wisconsin police officers were killed in a shooting during a traffic stop on Saturday, authorities said.

The Wisconsin Department of Justice said in a statement late Saturday that it was investigating the shooting in Cameron, Wisconsin.

An officer from the Chetek Police Department conducted a traffic stop around 3:38 p.m. and at some point gunfire was exchanged with the motorist, the state justice department said.

The Chetek officer and another officer from Cameron were pronounced dead at the scene. The suspect in the shooting was taken to a hospital and later died, the justice department said.

The names of the officers and the suspect were not immediately released.

“I am deeply saddened by the tragic loss today of two officers. I am thinking of their families and the Chetek and Cameron Police Departments at this incredibly difficult time,” Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul said in a tweet late Saturday.

The Division of Criminal Investigation within the Wisconsin Department of Justice is leading the investigation and will submit a report to the Barron County district attorney when the investigation concludes, the statement said.

The Wisconsin Department of Justice did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking additional information.

The village of Cameron in Barron County is 227 miles (365 kilometers) west of Green Bay, Wisconsin, and 96 miles (154 kilometers) northeast of Minneapolis. Chetek, Wisconsin, is about 9 miles (14 kilometers) southeast of Cameron.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with Cameron and Chetek Police Departments,” the Barron County Sheriff’s Department said on Facebook.

The Marinette County Deputy Sheriff’s Association said in a Facebook post: “Tonight our hearts are heavy as we send our thoughts and prayers to the Village of Cameron Police Department, the City of Chetek Police Department, the Barron County community, and the families (both blood and blue) of two officers lost in the line of duty today.”

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Published on April 08, 2023 22:29

Ben Ferencz, the last living Nuremberg prosecutor of Nazis, has died at 103

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Benjamin Ferencz, Romanian-born American lawyer and chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg war crimes trials, speaks during an opening ceremony for the exhibition commemorating the Nuremberg war crimes trials in Nuremberg, Germany, on Nov. 21, 2010. Armin Weigel/AP

Armin Weigel/AP

Ben Ferencz, the last living prosecutor from the Nuremberg trials, who tried Nazis for genocidal war crimes and was among the first outside witnesses to document the atrocities of Nazi labor and concentration camps, has died. He had just turned 103 in March.

Ferencz died Friday evening in Boynton Beach, Florida, according to St. John’s University law professor John Barrett, who runs a blog about the Nuremberg trials. The death also was confirmed by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

“Today the world lost a leader in the quest for justice for victims of genocide and related crimes,” the museum tweeted.

Born in Transylvania in 1920, Ferencz immigrated as a very young boy with his parents to New York to escape rampant antisemitism. After graduating from Harvard Law School, Ferencz joined the U.S. Army in time to take part in the Normandy invasion during World War II. Using his legal background, he became an investigator of Nazi war crimes against U.S. soldiers as part of a new War Crimes Section of the Judge Advocate’s Office.

When U.S. intelligence reports described soldiers encountering large groups of starving people in Nazi camps watched over by SS guards, Ferencz followed up with visits, first at the Ohrdruf labor camp in Germany and then at the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp. At those camps and later others, he found bodies “piled up like cordwood” and “helpless skeletons with diarrhea, dysentery, typhus, TB, pneumonia, and other ailments, retching in their louse ridden bunks or on the ground with only their pathetic eyes pleading for help,” Ferencz wrote in an account of his life.

“The Buchenwald concentration camp was a charnel house of indescribable horrors,” Ferencz wrote. “There is no doubt that I was indelibly traumatized by my experiences as a war crimes investigator of Nazi extermination centers. I still try not to talk or think about the details.”

At one point toward the end of the war, Ferencz was sent to Adolf Hitler’s mountain retreat in the Bavarian Alps to search for incriminating documents but came back empty-handed.

After the war, Ferencz was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army and returned to New York to begin practicing law. But that was short-lived. Because of his experiences as a war crimes investigator, he was recruited to help prosecute Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials, which had begun under the leadership of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson. Before leaving for Germany, he married his childhood sweetheart, Gertrude.

At the age of 27, with no previous trial experience, Ferencz became chief prosecutor for a 1947 case in which 22 former commanders were charged with murdering over 1 million Jews, Romani and other enemies of the Third Reich in Eastern Europe. Rather than depending on witnesses, Ferencz mostly relied on official German documents to make his case. All the defendants were convicted, and more than a dozen were sentenced to death by hanging even though Ferencz hadn’t asked for the death penalty.

“At the beginning of April 1948, when the long legal judgment was read, I felt vindicated,” he wrote. “Our pleas to protect humanity by the rule of law had been upheld.”

With the war crimes trials winding down, Ferencz went to work for a consortium of Jewish charitable groups to help Holocaust survivors regain properties, homes, businesses, art works, Torah scrolls, and other Jewish religious items that had been confiscated from them by the Nazis. He also later assisted in negotiations that would lead to compensation to the Nazi victims.

In later decades, Ferencz championed the creation of an international court which could prosecute any government’s leaders for war crimes. Those dreams were realized in 2002 with establishment of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, though its effectiveness has been limited by the failure of countries like the United States to participate.

Ferencz is survived by a son and three daughters. His wife died in 2019.

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Published on April 08, 2023 21:13

L.A. school district workers have approved a labor deal following a 3-day strike

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Union leaders address thousands of Los Angeles Unified School District teachers and Service Employees International Union 99 members during a rally outside the LAUSD headquarters in Los Angeles on March 21, 2023. Damian Dovarganes/AP

Damian Dovarganes/AP

LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles Unified School District workers have approved a labor deal following a three-day strike over wages and staffing that halted education for students in one of the nation’s largest school systems.

The agreement, which was voted on this week, would increase wages by 30% for workers who are paid an average of $25,000 a year, the Local 99 chapter of the Service Employees International Union said Saturday. It also includes a $1,000 bonus for employees who worked during the COVID-19 pandemic and expanded family health care benefits.

The contract still needs to be approved by the school district’s Board of Education. The school district said the board could take it up for a vote at a meeting on April 18.

Thousands of workers backed by teachers went on strike last month and rallied outside the school district’s headquarters in downtown Los Angeles amid stalled contract talks. The goal was to demand better pay and increased staffing for the bus drivers, cafeteria workers, teachers’ aides and other employees represented by the union.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass thanked the school district and union for coming to an agreement in late March following the strike.

“We must continue working together to address our city’s high cost of living, to grow opportunity and to support more funding for LA’s public schools, which are the most powerful determinant of our city’s future,” the Democrat said in a statement.

The SEIU said many district support staffers live in poverty because of low pay or limited work hours while struggling with inflation and the high cost of housing in Los Angeles County.

The school district serves more than half a million students in the area, an enrollment size that is second only to the New York City Public Schools system.

Max Arias, the union’s executive director, touted the deal as “a major step” to improve pay, hours and benefits for workers who “have been left behind for far too long.”

“This contract recognizes the essential work of those who work hard to ensure students can learn in a clean, safe, and supportive environment,” Arias said in a statement.

At the time of the strike, Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho had accused the union of refusing to negotiate.