U.S. Senator Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said Sunday that the bipartisan infrastructure deal can move forward, following President Joe Biden‘s clarification that he’ll sign the bill even if it comes without a reconciliation package.
The president had said last week that he’d refuse to sign the deal unless the two bills came in tandem, a remark that angered and surprised Republican lawmakers.
After backlash from Republicans including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Biden released a lengthy statement on Saturday walking back the comment and reiterating full support for the deal.
“We were all blindsided by the comments the previous day, which were that these two bills were connected,” Portman said during an interview with ABC’s “This Week.”
“I’m glad they’ve been de-linked and it’s very clear that we can move forward with a bipartisan bill that’s broadly popular not just among members of Congress, but the American people,” Portman said. He added there’s been “good faith” from both parties throughout negotiations.
The second bill, called the American Families Plan, would have spending for Democrat-backed issues like climate change, child care, health care and education. It would be passed through reconciliation, a process that doesn’t require Republican votes to pass through Congress.
Administration officials have called the issues in the reconciliation package “human infrastructure,” while the bipartisan infrastructure bill focuses primarily on improving roads, bridges and broadband.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that McConnell will likely favor the infrastructure deal, but that “he didn’t like the president throwing a wrench in there.”
In a statement, Biden said his remarks “created the impression that I was issuing a veto threat on the very plan I had just agreed to, which was certainly not my intent.”
The president also requested that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., schedule the bipartisan deal and reconciliation bill for Senate action and anticipates both bills to go to the House.
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, a key negotiator of the deal, said he believes enough Republicans will support the infrastructure bill to get it passed and he’s confident the president will sign it.
“A lot of my colleagues were very concerned about what the president was saying … but I think the waters have been calmed by what he said on Saturday,” Romney said during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Delta is now the variant of the coronavirus identified third most often in California, according to new data — underscoring that the variant is highly contagious, a danger to people who have not been vaccinated against COVID-19.
The Delta variant now makes up 14.5% of California coronavirus cases analyzed so far in June, up from 4.7% in May, when it was the fourth-most-identified variant in California, according to data released by the California Department of Public Health.
Experts say the Delta variant poses a greater chance of infection for unvaccinated people if they are exposed to this version of the virus. The variant, first identified in India, may be twice as transmissible as the conventional coronavirus strains. The Delta variant has been responsible for the rise in cases recently in India, the United Kingdom and elsewhere.
But vaccinated people are well protected against infection and illness from the Delta variant. One recent study found that the full course of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine (two doses) was 88% effective against symptomatic disease caused by the Delta variant and 96% protective against hospitalization.
There is no widespread scientific consensus on whether the Delta variant is more likely to cause more serious illness than other conventional strains.
Delta’s rise comes as California’s currently dominant strain, Alpha, first identified in the United Kingdom, may have peaked.
In May, the Alpha variant comprised 58.4% of coronavirus cases that were analyzed in California. In June, Alpha’s share fell, and now makes up 37.7% of analyzed cases — still the top variant but with a much smaller percentage among all variants sequenced.
The Gamma variant, first identified in Brazil, is also being seen more often in California. In May, the Gamma variant comprised 10.1% of analyzed cases. It now makes up 21.6% of analyzed cases in the state. But Delta is still growing at a more rapid rate.
Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous, has confirmed 123 Delta variant cases — 49 of them among residents of Palmdale and Lancaster. Fourteen cases of the Delta variant were among people from a single household.
L.A. County data suggest that vaccines are still overwhelmingly effective in protecting people against the Delta variant, as well as other known variants.
Of those 123 confirmed cases of the Delta variant in L.A. County, 89% of them occurred among people who were not vaccinated against COVID-19, and 2% among those who were partially vaccinated.
No one has died from the Delta variant in L.A. County.
The few fully vaccinated people who have been infected with the Delta variant “experienced relatively mild illness,” L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said.
Almost everyone who has died in L.A. County of COVID-19 in the last six months has been unvaccinated.
Data released by the county showed that 99.8% of COVID-19 deaths occurred among unvaccinated people between Dec. 7 and June 7.
“If you are fully vaccinated, you have a lot of protection,” Ferrer said, adding that for the “very small numbers” of people who contracted the Delta variant despite vaccination, “they really did not have serious illness. … This is a pandemic of unvaccinated people.”
The results of outbreaks of the Delta variant elsewhere also support the vaccines’ effectiveness. In Israel, there’s an outbreak of the Delta variant “driven primarily by the unvaccinated,” tweeted Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.
Yes, there are some vaccinated people in Israel who are still getting infected, “because no vaccine is 100%,” Jha wrote. But the infections that are breaking through the immunity provided by the vaccines are causing mild disease.
“What’s happening in Israel is vaccines working exactly as we all expected,” Jha wrote.
In South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa on Sunday announced a sweeping set of new coronavirus restrictions, including curfews and school closures, as the country faces another surge in cases that threatens to outpace two previous spikes. The Delta variant, first discovered in India, appears to be driving South Africa’s new increase, Ramaphosa said.
South Africa recorded more than 15,000 new coronavirus cases Sunday, including 122 deaths, bringing its total fatalities to nearly 60,000.
Meanwhile, data released by California show that the percentage of the tested population who have antibodies to the coronavirus — a sign of immunity to COVID-19 — is also increasing.
Between May 16 and June 12, 85.9% of Californians who were tested for coronavirus antibodies had them — a promising sign of growing immunity, either because of immunization or past exposure to the virus. That’s up from 76.6%, calculated during a four-week period in May.
Experts have estimated that 70% to 85% of a population needs to have immunity for a region to develop “herd immunity” to COVID-19, which interrupts the sustained transmission of the virus.
Officials are continuing to urge everyone to be vaccinated against COVID-19, including people who survived the disease earlier in the pandemic. Experts say immunity provided by the vaccination is more robust and long-lasting than immunity from surviving an infection.
The highly infectious Delta variant is making the task of getting to herd immunity more difficult.
With conventional coronavirus strains, it could take perhaps 71% of the population to be immune for a region to reach “herd immunity” and interrupt the virus’ transmission, UC San Francisco epidemiologist Dr. George Rutherford said. But a variant such as Delta — because it is so transmissible — would increase that threshold to, say, 84%, he said.
The Delta variant is also spreading nationwide.
Between May 9 and May 22, the Delta variant comprised less than 3% of analyzed coronavirus samples nationwide. But from June 6 to June 19, that proportion rose to more than 20%.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious disease expert, called the strain “currently the greatest threat in the U.S. to our attempt to eliminate COVID-19.”
Both QAnon and longtime supporters of former President Donald Trump criticized his Saturday night speech in Wellington, Ohio, accusing him of the “same-old, same-old” grievances against Democrats and his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden.
QAnon supporters, some of whom are the former president’s most fanatical online backers, sent a barrage of messages through the Telegram app that expressed boredom and even anger at the speech Trump described as “the very first rally of the 2022 election.” They blasted Trump for not mentioning how his January 6 insurrection supporters are “rotting in jail.” And numerous others said Trump should be booed by the Ohio rallygoers for even “bringing up the word ‘vaccine,'” specifically because they believe COVID-19 was entirely a hoax.
But a majority of the top QAnon user comments simply expressed their outright boredom with Trump’s post-election stump speech, in which he baselessly claimed to have won in November 2020 and blasted any dissenting GOP members as “traitors.”
“I’m 100% with the dude, but literally switched from his speech 3 mins ago. Im [sic] done with his speeches,” wrote QAnon user Jacob.
“Judging by the Trump-supporting normies I live with, they were bored with his speech,” wrote another QAnon user. “I support Trump but this is getting ridiculous.”
“Love President Trump. But, if I’m being honest, it’s a lot of the ‘same old-same old,’ we’ve all heard a thousand times before,” wrote Annmarie Calabro.
Some of Trump’s more mainstream critics and former supporters also appeared to have grown tired of the former president using his rally platform to blast the same figures, such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Ohio GOP Congressman Anthony Gonzalez. Trump also painted a dire picture of the current state of America, claiming that the country is falling apart without his so-called leadership.
“Murders, rapes, rioting, looting, stolen elections happening everywhere, all the time, nonstop in America. Nothing but carnage. Everywhere you look,” Trump said Saturday night, prompting former Illinois GOP Congressman Joe Walsh to quote him, adding: “That’s about it. I’m gonna go play with the dogs.”
Several political pundits accused Trump of being unable to read off his teleprompter during the Ohio rally speech Saturday night. The Bulwark publication noted that Trump even attacked U.S. military leaders.
“In one of the only original passages in his Ohio speech, he criticized ‘woke generals’ and claimed that ‘our military will be incapable of fighting and incapable of taking orders.’ America’s ‘military brass have become weak and ineffective leaders,'” the publication noted.
Newsweek reached out to the former president’s “Save America” super PAC Sunday morning for comment.
Former President of United States Donald Trump speaks to crowd gathered at the Lorain County Fair Grounds in Wellington, Ohio, United States on June 26, 2021. Trump held a rally in Wellington for the first time since the January 6. ANADOLU AGENCY / Contributor/Getty Images
SEOUL (Reuters) – Everyone in North Korea is heartbroken over leader Kim Jong Un’s apparent weight loss, said an unidentified resident of Pyongyang quoted on the country’s tightly controlled state media, after watching recent video footage of Kim.
The rare public comment on Kim’s health come after foreign analysts noted in early June that the autocratic leader, who is believed to be 37, appeared to have lost a noticeable amount of weight.
“Seeing respected general secretary (Kim Jong Un) looking emaciated breaks our people’s heart so much,” the man said in an interview aired by state broadcaster KRT on Friday.
“Everyone is saying that their tears welled up,” he said.
In the clip, which Reuters could not independently verify, Pyongyang residents were seen watching a big screen on the street showing a concert attended by Kim and party officials after a plenary meeting of their Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK).
The broadcast did not provide any details on what had led to the weight loss.
When Kim reappeared in state media in June after not being seen in public for almost a month, analysts at NK News, a Seoul-based website that monitors North Korea, noted that his watch appeared to be fastened more tightly than before around an apparently slimmer wrist.
Given Kim’s tight grip on power in North Korea – and the uncertainty over any plans for a successor – international media, spy agencies, and specialists closely watch his health.
Early last year speculation about Kim’s health exploded after he missed the birth anniversary celebrations of state founder Kim Il Sung on April 15, only to reappear in public in early May.
In 2014, state media reported that Kim was suffering from “discomfort”, after a prolonged period out of the public eye.
(Reporting by Josh Smith; Additional reporting by Minwoo Park; Editing by Gareth Jones)
The death toll has risen to nine people after a 12-story condominium building collapsed in Florida, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said at a press conference Sunday morning.
“We’ve identified four of the victims and notified the next of kin…We are making every effort to identify those others who have been recovered and additionally contacting their family members as soon as we are able,” Levine Cava said.
Champlain Towers South collapsed suddenly early Thursday morning in Surfside, Florida, just north of Miami Beach.
Search and rescue teams created a 125-feet-long trench at the rescue site on Saturday, which allowed authorities to recover additional bodies and human remains, Levine Cava said.
Miami-Dade police on Saturday night identified four of the deceased as Stacie Dawn Fang, 54; Antonio Lozano, 83; Gladys Lozano, 79; and Manuel LaFont, 54.
Authorities said 156 people remained missing as of Saturday.
Levine Cava and Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett told press on Sunday morning that searchers contained fire in the rescue site on Saturday and are continuing rescue operations. Teams from Mexico and Israel are aiding rescue efforts, according to Levine Cava and Burkett.
“We don’t have a resource problem. We’ve had a luck problem. We just need to start to get a little more lucky right now,” Burkett said on ABC News’ “This Week” on Sunday morning.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said at the press conference Sunday that debris will be moved from the rescue site to a separate location for forensic analysis.
Authorities are still investigating the cause of Thursday’s collapse. An engineer in a 2018 report warned of “major structural damage” in the condo building that collapsed. The report identified issues with waterproofing below the pool deck and “abundant cracking” in the underground parking garage.
Levine Cava on Saturday ordered a 30-day audit of all residential properties, five stories or higher, that are 40 years or older and fall under the county’s jurisdiction. The mayor encouraged cities to do their own building reviews as well.
Surfside has authorized a voluntary evacuation of residents of Champlain Towers North, the sister property of the collapsed building built. The town’s building inspector did not find any immediate causes of concern in the sister property, Levine Cava told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” on Sunday morning.
Trump said military leaders were more concerned about being “woke” than “fighting enemies.”
In his first rally post-White House, Trump branded military leaders as “weak and ineffective.”
His comments come after top military officials voiced their support for critical race theory.
Donald Trump mocked “woke” military generals and critical race theory on Saturday as he addressed thousands of supporters at this first post-White House rally in Wellington, Ohio.
The former president accused the country’s “weak and ineffective” military of becoming more concerned about being politically correct than they are about “fighting their enemies,” the Telegraph reported.
“The Biden administration issued new rules pushing twisted critical race theory … into our military,” Trump said, according to the Telegraph. “Our generals and our admirals are now focused more on this nonsense than they are on our enemies.”
“You see these generals lately on television? They are woke,” he continued. “Our military will be incapable of fighting and incapable of taking orders.”
“I personally find it offensive that we are accusing the United States military … of being ‘woke’ or something else because we’re studying some theories that are out there,” Miley told the House armed service committee on Thursday, according to the Guardian. During the remarks, was joined by the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin.
In recent weeks, it has become a lightning-rod issue for some conservatives, who claim that it is divisive and presents a distorted picture of American history.
Trump made an appearance at Saturday night’s rally to show support for Max Miller, his former aide who is now challenging Republican incumbent Anthony Gonzalez in Ohio’s 16th congressional district.
But Graham said Wednesday it will not address the larger problem.
“We have a lack of prosecution and we’ve declared war on the police and that is backfiring on those who have done it,” Graham said in a Wednesday interview.
Richmond, a former member of Congress from Louisiana, said the senator “doesn’t have a clue,” when it comes to the issue, and pointed the finger back at Republicans for stifling crime intervention efforts in Congress.
“When we were in Congress last year trying to pass a rescue plan — I’m sorry, not the rescue plan — but an emergency relief plan for cities that were cash-strapped and laying off police and firefighters, it was the Republicans who objected to it and, in fact, they didn’t get funding until the American Rescue Plan,” he said.
Richmond added: “Republicans are very good at staying on talking points … but the truth is, they defunded the police, we funded crime intervention.”
A man whose grandparents are unaccounted for following the Florida building collapse says he has been getting bombarded with eerie and mysterious calls from the landline inside their sunken condo, according to a report.
Jake Samuelson told local outlet WBLG that he has received at least 16 calls from the number of his missing grandparents, Arnie and Myriam Notkin.
When he answered the phone, he heard nothing but static each time, the report said.
“We are trying to rationalize what is happening here, we are trying to get answers,” Samuelson told the TV station.
He said the first call came on Thursday night, hours after the early-morning disaster that has left at least five people dead and dozens unaccounted for.
“We were all sitting there in the living room, my whole family, Diane, my mother, and we were just shocked,” Samuelson told the outlet. “We kind of thought nothing of it because we answered, and it was static.”
His grandparents, both in their 80s, live in apartment 302 in the Champlain Towers South, and their landline phone usually sits right next to their bed, according to the report.
Over 150 people are reportedly missing following the collapse at Champlain Towers South in Florida.AP
On Friday, Samuelson said his family received 15 more unexplained calls from the number, the station reported.
The family is now waiting to hear from detectives about the bizarre and gut-wrenching calls, Samuelson added.
His grandfather Arnie, 87, is known as a beloved physical education teacher and Myriam, 81, is a banker and real estate agent, the outlet said.
North Miami Beach Commissioner Fortuna Smukler, who grew up with the Notkins’ three daughters, told the Miami Herald that she began losing hope when she learned that the couple lived in apartment No. 302.
“At this point it would be a miracle … we’re hoping for a miracle,” she said.
Segev is studying the effectiveness of a third dose, hoping “there’s something we will ultimately be able to do for transplant patients.”
He hopes to soon launch a formal interventional trial, providing a third shot in a clinical setting, where he can ensure safety and track participants’ response.
A handful of patients already have startedgetting extra shots – simply showing up at vaccination centers and not admitting that they’ve already been vaccinated. It would be far safer, Segev said, for them to get that third dose through a clinical trial. He is now looking for volunteers at transplantvaccine.org.
“It’s really important for this to be out there so people know this is happening,” he said.
Segev hoped that although transplant patients didn’t develop antibodies, they might still have some protection against COVID-19.
Unfortunately, his and other hospitals are starting to admit transplant patients who contracted COVID-19 after being fully vaccinated. “That’s almost unheard of in the general population,” he said. “We’re seeing this at a much higher rate in transplantation.”
Segev, who recently examined 30 patients who’d had a third shot, said there were no safety issues except in one person who had a low-grade rejection event a week after the final dose. But that problem might have started before the shot. “We don’t see a strong signal for it now,” he said about possible rejection.
Segev also will look at whether transplant patients who failed to develop a response after two doses of mRNA vaccines – made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna – will fare any better after a booster. (His earlier research suggested that the single J&Jvaccine was even less protective for transplant patients than the two-shot vaccines.)
Data can’t come in fast enough for people who are worried vaccines may not keep them safe, Montgomery said.
“This is the No.1 problem in our field right now,” he said.
Building a ‘wall of protection’
Luckily, most other immunocompromised people will get better protection than transplant patients, experts say.
Vaccines appear to be just as safe for them, and most seem to get at least some protection.
The problem is, it’s impossible at this point to know how safe someone is. For the general population, which is more than 90% protected by the vaccines, there’s no need to worry, experts said.
For people who are immunocompromised, there’s no good way to tell if they’re protected. Antibody tests, which look for some types of protective antibodies, may not tell the whole story and are only a snapshot in time, said Dr. Gil Melmed, who directs inflammatory bowel disease clinical research at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The CDC has discouraged people from using the tests.
In everyone, antibodies are likely to decline over time, and it’s not clear what level is protective.
Vaccines also generate T cells, often called the soldiers of the immune system, which seem to provide longer-term protection, but there are no commercially available tests to look for them.
To ensure they are safe, people who are immunocompromised should “build a wall of protection” around themselves, by getting vaccinated and making sure everyone around them also is vaccinated said Dr. Rajesh Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital.
“I don’t think we’re quite ready to throw caution to the wind,” added Dr. Joshua Katz, a neurologist at the Tufts University School of Medicine, also in Boston. He recommends his patients continue to take precautions like masking, and ensuring that people around them are vaccinated.
Dr. Samir Parekh, a multiple myeloma specialist at The Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai in New York, says immunocompromised patients should talk with their doctor about using accurate antibody testing to identify if they’re at particular risk. “We are recommending testing for our myeloma patients who have immune suppression from their cancer as well as chemotherapy treatments,” he said.
For patients with irritable bowel syndrome, vaccines appear to be safe and to provide about 80% protection, which is lower than for totally healthy people but still good, Melmed said.
He runs a registry tracking 1,800 inflammatory bowel disease patients to understand how they react to vaccination. He said it’s too soon to know if IBD patients are getting more “breakthrough infections” after vaccination than the general population, but he hasn’t seen worse outcomes among his registry members.
Melmed hopes the registry will help teach researchers vaccine protection wanes over time, and whether it fades faster in people, like his IBD patients, who are immunocompromised.
COVID-19 vaccine protection varies
Multiple sclerosis patients have been on a “roller coaster ride” for the past year, Katz said, with worries and fears about COVID-19. It turns out they are not an increased risk for catching COVID-19, he said, and vaccination poses no extra risk for someone with the disease.
Whether vaccination is effective in MS patients seems to depend on which treatment they are on out of the 16-17 available, Katz said. Most people on the drug Mavenclad (cladribine), for instance, were well protected by COVID-19 vaccines, while only about 20% of those on Gilenya (fingolimod) and Ocrevus (ocrelizumab) made antibodies, he said.
Yet in a study of Ocrevus, even those who didn’t make antibodies still made extra white blood cells after vaccination, suggesting they got some protection, he said.
For cancer patients, the amount of protection varies by cancer type and where they are in their treatment.
About 98% of people with solid tumors developed protective antibodies after vaccination, according to one study published this month in the journal Cancer Cell. By comparison, only 85% of blood cancer patients and about 70% of those on strong immune system therapies developed antibodies.
People should get vaccinated before starting chemotherapy if possible, said Dr. John Zaia, who directs the Center for Gene Therapy at City of Hope, which runs cancer centers in California. If that’s not possible, they should delay vaccination until the end of their chemotherapy treatments to get the best response to the shots, he said.
Zaia is leading research into a COVID-19 vaccine developed at City of Hope specifically for cancer patients, using a platform designed for bone marrow transplant patients who lose protection from all vaccines during their transplant. Zaia said he has tested the vaccine so far in 60 healthy people and will next compare its effectiveness against the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
If cancer patients do catch COVID-19, they should consider getting monoclonal antibodies, drugs that help reduce the chances of a severe case of the disease, said Dr. Craig Bunnell, chief medical officer and a breast cancer specialist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
The same drugs may prove effective at preventing infection in people, like cancer patients, who can’t get protection from vaccines, he added. Studies to confirm this are underway.
Living at high risk in a maskless world
Unfortunately, Nadeem-Baker belongs to the group with the least protection from vaccines and the highest risk for catching COVID-19.
The CDC’s decision last month to lift the mask recommendation for those who had been vaccinated made her life worse. Even the unvaccinated took off their masks.
“Dropping the mask mandate heightened my sense of fear,” said Nadeem-Baker, a former corporate communications executive-turned blood cancer patient advocate. She’s particularly anxious about the variants, which seem to spread more quickly.
“I want to go back to living normally, just like everyone else,” she said. “I feel like I’m outside of life looking in.”
COURTESY MICHELE NADEEM-BAKER
Her college-student son moved out to protect her. Her husband strips just inside the front door, putting all his clothes into a garbage bag to be washed. Her sister, who was widowed last year, is going into quarantine soon to pay her first visit. “I have not been able to hug her,” she said.
The only things she feels comfortable doing, with her doctor’s blessing, are taking nature walks or rides with her dog, and dining in the backyard with vaccinated friends.
Nadeem-Baker wishes strangers would be more understanding of those like her, who have to keep wearing a mask. “We’re doing the best we can,” she said. “I’m tired of explaining it.”
She would consider joining a clinical trial to find out whether a third shot would be helpful for people like her.
“I hope something like that can help,” she said. “I just want something that works.”
Contact Karen Weintraub at kweintraub@usatoday.com.
Health and patient safety coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Masimo Foundation for Ethics, Innovation and Competition in Healthcare. The Masimo Foundation does not provide editorial input.
SEOUL, June 27 (Reuters) – Everyone in North Korea is heartbroken over leader Kim Jong Un’s apparent weight loss, said an unidentified resident of Pyongyang quoted on the country’s tightly controlled state media, after watching recent video footage of Kim.
The rare public comment on Kim’s health come after foreign analysts noted in early June that the autocratic leader, who is believed to be 37, appeared to have lost a noticeable amount of weight.
“Seeing respected general secretary (Kim Jong Un) looking emaciated breaks our people’s heart so much,” the man said in an interview aired by state broadcaster KRT on Friday.
“Everyone is saying that their tears welled up,” he said.
In the clip, which Reuters could not independently verify, Pyongyang residents were seen watching a big screen on the street showing a concert attended by Kim and party officials after a plenary meeting of their Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK).
The broadcast did not provide any details on what had led to the weight loss.
When Kim reappeared in state media in June after not being seen in public for almost a month, analysts at NK News, a Seoul-based website that monitors North Korea, noted that his watch appeared to be fastened more tightly than before around an apparently slimmer wrist.
Given Kim’s tight grip on power in North Korea – and the uncertainty over any plans for a successor – international media, spy agencies, and specialists closely watch his health.
Early last year speculation about Kim’s health exploded after he missed the birth anniversary celebrations of state founder Kim Il Sung on April 15, only to reappear in public in early May.
In 2014, state media reported that Kim was suffering from “discomfort”, after a prolonged period out of the public eye.
The death toll from the collapse of a condominium building in Surfside, near Miami, rose to five late on Saturday. Three days after the collapse, rescue crews raced to recover any survivors, fighting fire and smoke deep inside the concrete and metal remains.
The mayor of Miami-Dade, Daniella Levine Cava, announced the fifth death at an evening briefing, saying the number unaccounted for was down to 156. She said crews discovered other human remains.
Miami-Dade police said four of the five dead had been identified, with the apartments where they were. One was the mother of a boy rescued when the building toppled.
The four named victims were: Stacie Dawn Fang, 54; Antonio Lozano, 83; Gladys Lozano, 79; Manuel LaFont, 54.
A video posted online showed an official briefing families of the missing. When he said they had found remains, people began sobbing.
Throughout the day, workers scoured the debris with dogs and sonar. “Our top priority continues to be search and rescue and saving any lives that we can,” the mayor said. But crews had to fight fire. A bitter, sulfur-like smell hung in the air.
“The stench is very thick,” Florida governor Ron DeSantis said.
Aerial footage shows destruction after Miami building collapse – video
A crane removed debris from the 30ft pile and rescuers used big machines, small buckets, drones and their hands to pick through the rubble.
The atmosphere was tense in a hotel ballroom where around 200 family members were briefed, two people present said. The two said families frustrated with the pace of recovery efforts demanded permission to go to the scene and attempt a collective shout – an attempt as much to find survivors as a cathartic farewell.
Among those awaiting word was Rachel Spiegel, whose mother, 66-year-old Judy Spiegel, lived on the sixth floor. She said: “We’re trying to hold it together. I know my mom is a fighter. I know she loves us. I know she doesn’t want to give up. So, you know, it’s day three, so it’s hard.”
When Mike Noriega heard that part of the tower where his grandmother lived had collapsed, he rushed with his father to the scene. They arrived to find no sign of 92-year-old Hilda Noriega.
But they stumbled across mementos that bore witness to Hilda’s life on the sixth floor in Champlain Towers South: a picture with her late husband and their son and a birthday card her prayer group sent two weeks earlier with the acronym “ESM”, Spanish for “hand-delivered”, scrawled across the envelope.
“There was a message in the mess of all this,” Noriega said. “It means not to give up hope. To have faith.”
Days after the collapse in the early hours of Thursday, Hilda remains among those unaccounted for.
Authorities announced they were beginning an audit of buildings nearing their 40-year review – like Champlain Towers South. The mayor asked other cities to join the building review and said there would be state and federal funding to help.
Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) officials were at the site, DeSantis said. He said a “sister building” of the collapsed tower was being looked at because it was built at the same time and with the same designer.
Later on Saturday, Surfside mayor Charles Burkett said a city official had led a cursory review of Champlain Towers North and Champlain Towers East.
“They didn’t find anything out of the ordinary,” he said. “What we’re doing now is we’re saving lives and we’re bringing people out of the rubble. What we’re going to do in the next phase, after we address support for the families, is we are going to do a very deep dive into why this building fell down.”
Burkett said earlier he was working on a plan to temporarily relocate residents of Champlain Towers North, which was constructed the same year and sits about 100 yards away, and that Fema had agreed to pay for lodging. The mayor said he didn’t plan to order an evacuation, but if he lived there, “I’d be gone.”
Video shows collapse of Miami-area condo building
The news came after the release of a 2018 engineering report that showed the building had “major structural damage” to a concrete slab below its pool deck. Vice-mayor Tina Paul called the document “very alarming”.
Donna DiMaggio Berger, a lawyer who works with the condo association at Champlain Towers South, said the issues outlined in the 2018 report were typical for older buildings in the area and did not alarm board members, all of whom lived in the tower.
She added that the board had taken out a $12m line of credit to pay for repairs and asked owners to pay $80,000 each. Work had started on replacing the roof ahead of hurricane season and the board was gathering bids for the concrete work, but the pandemic slowed the project, she said.
Satellite data from the 1990s showed the building was sinking 1mm to 3mm per year while surrounding buildings were stable, according to Florida International University professor Shimon Wdowinski.
While officials said no cause for the collapse had been determined, DeSantis said a “definitive answer” was needed in a timely manner. Video showed the center of the building appearing to fall first, followed by a section nearer the beach.
The 2018 report was part of preliminary work by the engineering company conducting required inspections for a recertification due this year of structural integrity at 40 years. The tower was built in 1981.
A federal agency specializing in structure failures is sending scientists and engineers to determine whether to pursue a more thorough study. The first team members arrived on Friday, said Jason Averill, an official at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which also investigated the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11.
Israel said it was sending engineering and rescue specialists. Israeli media have reported that some 20 citizens were believed among the missing. Another 22 were from Argentina, Venezuela, Uruguay and Paraguay.
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Saturday walked back a threat to veto his bipartisan infrastructure deal amid intense pushback from Republicans that jeopardized the fragile agreement just one day after it was reached.
In a prepared statement, Biden said he “understandably upset some Republicans” when he said Thursday he would only sign the $1.2 trillion infrastructure deal into law if Congress also passes a multitrillion-dollar package focused on “human infrastructure” outlined in his American Families Plan and supported by only Democrats.
“My comments also created the impression that I was issuing a veto threat on the very plan I had just agreed to, which was certainly not my intent,” Biden said.
Republicans – including some of the 11 GOP senators who agreed to the bipartisan deal – fumed over the condition, arguing they never heard the president raise it during negotiations. Some threatened to pull their support. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., tweeted, “No deal by extortion!” And Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan, reportedly had second thoughts.
“To be clear,” Biden said Saturday, “our bipartisan agreement does not preclude Republicans from attempting to defeat my Families Plan; likewise, they should have no objections to my devoted efforts to pass that Families Plan and other proposals in tandem. We will let the American people – and the Congress – decide.
“The bottom line is this: I gave my word to support the infrastructure plan, and that’s what I intend to do.”
To appease Republican senators, Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure deal includes only spending on physical infrastructure such as roads, bridges, rail, broadband internet, water and sewer pipes, and electric vehicles. He faces pressure from progressives to also deliver on climate initiatives and “human infrastructure” – left out of the bipartisan deal – that includes expansion of home caregiving, subsidized child care, universal prekindergarten, national paid family leave and free community college.
Biden has made clear he’s pursuing a “dual track strategy” that involves seeking congressional approval of the infrastructure bill with Republicans and the “human infrastructure” with only Democrats.
To pass the latter, he’s relying on a legislative maneuver called reconciliation, which would allow Democrats to approve it with a simple majority in the 50-50 Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking a potential tie.
Biden has been open about this strategy for weeks. But until Thursday – immediately after he announced the deal – the president hadn’t made the passage of the reconciliation package a stipulation for him signing the infrastructure bill.
“If they don’t (both) come, I’m not signing it. Real simple,” Biden said Thursday.
His retreat comes one day after the White House was defiant the president’s stance had stayed the same all along. “That hasn’t been a secret,” press secretary Jen Psaki said at Friday’s White House briefing. “He hasn’t said it quietly. He hasn’t even whispered it. He’s said it very much out loud.”
To pass the infrastructure bill, Biden faces a dual challenge of keeping both Democrats and Republicans on board. With 11 Republicans and 10 Democrats backing the bipartisan agreement, the deal initially seemed to have strong odds to pass the 60 vote-threshold to defeat a filibuster. But then came criticism from Republicans that Biden blindsided them with his condition.
“Some other Democrats have said they might oppose the infrastructure plan because it omits items they think are important: that is a mistake, in my view,” Biden said. “Some Republicans now say that they might oppose the infrastructure plan because I am also trying to pass the American Families Plan: that is also a mistake, in my view.
“I intend to work hard to get both of them passed, because our country needs both. … Ultimately, I am confident that Congress will get both to my desk, so I can sign each bill promptly.”
Five people were killed when a hot-air balloon crashed into a power line in Albuquerque, N.M. Saturday morning — including the parents of a police officer, according to a report.
“This is tragedy that’s uniquely felt in Albuquerque,” Mayor Tim Keller said in a news conference Saturday afternoon.
The city boasts a vibrant ballooning culture and hosts the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta each year.
Martin Martinez, 59, and Mary Martinez, 62, the parents of an Albuquerque Police Department prison transport officer, were among the victims, officials said. Martin Martinez also is a former APD officer.
The passenger basket detached from the balloon and plummeted to the ground, Albuquerque police said.
Albuquerque Fire Rescue crews work on victims of the fatal balloon crash.Adolphe Pierre-Louis/The Albuquerque Journal via APThe parents of an Albuquerque Police Department prison transport officer were killed in the tragedy. Adolphe Pierre-Louis/The Albuquerque Journal via APPilot Ursula Richards, left, comforts fellow pilot Buzz Biernacki at the scene of the fatal hot-air balloon crash.dolphe Pierre-Louis/The Albuquerque Journal via AP
The names of the other victims were not released.
“To see a balloon go down like this, it’s heart-breaking,” witness Joshua Perez told KOB 4 TV.
Other witnesses reported on social media watching the deflated balloon fall to the ground. It crashed into the yard of a local home.
The Federal Aviation Administration has taken over the investigation, and said the basket fell about 100 feet before crashing onto a street and catching fire.
Albuquerque mayor Tim Keller, second from left, is briefed by officials.Andres Leighton/APThe basket attached to the ballon came off and fell toward the ground.Gelacio Ramirez via ReutersThe FAA said the basket fell about 100 feet and then caught on fire.Andres Leighton/AP
“We know from experience here in Albuquerque that sometimes winds kick up or things happen that make it difficult for balloons to navigate,” police spokesman Gilbert Gallegos told reporters. “We’re not sure the cause of this at this point. Obviously, the FAA will look into this and determine what the cause was.”
About 13,000 customers lost power because of the crash, according to electricity provider PNM, but power was restored by Saturday afternoon.
Former President Donald Trump has offered a new explanation for his claims of voter fraud, saying his political opponents “used COVID” to change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
The former president, who has made frequent claims of widespread voter fraud despite federal and state election officials assuring that the votes were secure, said the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic afforded his foes the opportunity to cheat.
“They used COVID in order to cheat. They used COVID in order to rig the election and in order to steal the election. They used COVID,” he said during the Saturday night rally in Ohio. “That’s as simple as it gets.”
Several states took steps toward allowing for remote voting, such as vote-by-mail, in the 2020 election in an effort to curb the transmission of COVID-19, which the former president argued allowed for malfeasance because mail-in ballots are “treacherous.”
Trump praised the new moves taken by Republicans in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to reexamine the results of the 2020 presidential election, calling those leading the investigations “patriots.”
“I hear now that Wisconsin is looking very, very seriously [into the allegations of voter fraud], and I respect Wisconsin so much. It’s a great state. They’re looking very seriously. Pennsylvania is really starting to take this very seriously,” he said, thanking legislators in both states for their efforts.
Pennsylvania has signaled an openness to ordering an audit of its 2020 election results, with state Sen. David Argall, who heads a committee that oversees elections, telling local outlets last week that a forensic audit similar to the one being conducted in Arizona is now a “very real possibility.”
Wisconsin’s state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos announced in May that he would hire police officers and an attorney to investigate parts of the November 2020 general election. Contracts obtained by the Associated Press reported this week show that he has already hired some people to investigate “potential irregularities and/or illegalities” in the 2020 presidential election.
Trump’s support for the Wisconsin investigation was an apparent reversal from his position on Friday, when the former president chastised Vos by name for “working hard to cover up election corruption in Wisconsin.”
Trump contrasted his praise of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin with condemnation for other states, such as Michigan, where “the [Republicans in Name Only] in the Michigan Senate” recently released a report confirming Biden carried the state in 2020.
“Michigan is not [taking the allegations of voter fraud seriously]. You can’t get those Republicans. Some are great, by the way, but Michigan is not doing the job. … How do you win Ohio by so much, record numbers, and lose Michigan?” he said during the rally, suggesting that the only way would be through voter fraud.
Trump also singled out Georgia for criticism, saying Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s decision to remove 100,000 “out of date” names from the state’s voter rolls came too little, too late.
“Now, they’re saying they’re going to delete over 100,000 names. I said, ‘Why the hell didn’t you delete them before the election, not after the election?'” he said of Georgia.
The former president accused his political adversaries of a double standard, saying former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Georgia’s Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams did not attract the same criticism for failing to accept their electoral losses.
“Stacey Abrams goes around saying she won the election. Nobody says anything. Hillary Clinton says she won the election. Nobody says anything. I say we won the election. ‘That’s terrible. That’s terrible,’ [they say],” he said. “Isn’t it a terrible situation?”
Both Clinton and Abrams contested their respective losses, with Clinton calling for recounts in several swing states after her 2016 loss and Abrams refusing to use the word “concede” when acknowledging that Brian Kemp would become the governor of Georgia following the state’s 2018 election.
Trump, who continues to assert there are “mountains of evidence” of widespread cheating in the 2020 presidential contest, filed several claims alleging massive voter fraud, most of which were tossed by federal courts.
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Former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin ‘s conviction and lengthy prison sentence in George Floyd‘s murder could lead to better police hiring and training, law enforcement experts say. It could spur more effort to build trust among officers and communities.
And it might have made the public — and future jurors — more receptive to longstanding complaints about police interactions with minorities.
Even so, the case was so unusual — from bystander video of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for 9 1/2 minutes to police department brass testifying against him — that it’s difficult to say it was a watershed moment for lasting change.
In this image taken from video, former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin listens as Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill sentences him to 22 1/2 years in prison, Friday, June 25, 2021, for the May 25, 2020, death of George Floyd, at the Hennepin County Courthouse in Minneapolis. (Court TV via AP, Pool)
” The conviction was critically important, in part, because of how blatant the violence was and because of the way in which the video couldn’t allow the lies that police often tell in these situations to dominate the narrative,” said Sheila A. Bedi, a professor at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law and director of the school’s Community Justice & Civil Rights Clinic.
But the outcome in Chauvin’s case — including his 22 1/2-year sentence — doesn’t address deep-rooted issues of race and violence affecting police interactions with minorities that don’t result in charges or convictions against officers, said Bedi, who has been involved in numerous use-of-force lawsuits against the Chicago Police Department.
“And until we get at that, I caution anyone to celebrate the conviction and sentence as a victory,” she said.
Officers accused of brutality or other misconduct against Black people rarely go to trial, and among those who have, the list of acquittals and mistrials is longer than the list of sentencings after conviction. That includes acquittals in recent years of officers tried in the deaths of Philando Castile in suburban Minneapolis and Terence Crutcher in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Eleven non-federal law officers, including Chauvin, have been convicted of murder for on-duty deaths since 2005. Of those, the nine who were sentenced before Chauvin received sentences ranging from six years, nine months, to life behind bars, with the median being 15 years, said Philip Stinson, a criminal justice professor at Bowling Green State University.
Still, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said Friday that the outcome was a step toward accountability, even if not total justice. And he urged federal, state and local lawmakers to pass laws to improve policing, saying Chauvin’s sentencing was “by itself not enough.”
Chauvin’s high-profile case likely led more people to believe longstanding complaints about police interactions with Black people, even if his actions were blatantly wrong, experts said. And that could make jurors less likely to simply believe police versions of events in the future.
“Extreme cases by their nature open up public awareness … but it doesn’t necessarily result in across-the-board reform because the situation was so unique,” said former federal prosecutor Jeffrey Cramer, senior managing director of the consulting firm Guidepost Solutions. “What would be the reform? Don’t put your knee on someone’s neck for 9 1/2 minutes?”
Still, the testimony of Minneapolis Police Department officers, including the chief, that Chauvin violated his training — though highly unusual — could make officers think twice about using force.
“And if it does, it’s a good thing,” Cramer said. “Anyone that’s been in this game long enough knows that it comes down to hiring practices and training, but at the end of the day it’s a certain officer in a certain situation. And I don’t see these situations ending anytime soon.”
Knowing that their encounters could be captured on cellphone video also could give officers pause, experts said. Minneapolis police originally said Floyd died in a medical incident. But video shot by 17-year-old Darnella Frazier showed Chauvin ignoring Floyd’s pleas that he couldn’t breath and continuing to press his knee into Floyd’s neck even after the Black man was dead.
But Kirk Burkhalter, a criminal law professor at New York Law School and a former 20-year New York Police Department detective, said police are being asked to do too much, especially in situations involving people with mental health issues or minor crimes. Floyd was suspected of trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill at a corner store.
“In a lot of these situations, we see poor decisions (by police), but they’re often situations we should have never put cops in,” said Burkhalter, who leads the law school’s 21st Century Policing Project, which addresses relationships between police and communities.
Ellison, the attorney general, said he hoped Chauvin’s conviction and sentence was a “moment for change” when it comes to trust between minority communities and police officers.
“I want to say I’m optimistic but … pick any city: The mutual distrust is at a level I don’t think I’ve seen since I’ve been doing this,” Cramer said. But if good people on both sides want to solve the problem, then we’ve got a fighting chance.”
Tony Buscemi, 61, a small-business owner from West Bloomfield, Mich., who stood with his daughter, Natalie, in the sun-baked field where Mr. Trump spoke, said he had been at the Capitol on Jan. 6, and he claimed falsely that it had been a “mostly peaceful” gathering.
“People were praying. People were singing,” Mr. Buscemi said, adding that he might have gone inside the building himself had his daughter not persuaded him that it was a bad idea. “There was no insurrection,” he insisted. “I didn’t see anything wrong with it.”
Polling suggests that most Republicans remain skeptical of President Biden’s election victory. Thirty-six percent of Republicans said in a Monmouth University poll released on Monday that Mr. Biden had won the election fairly, while 57 percent said his victory was the result of fraud.
Still, there is evidence that Mr. Trump’s influence over Republican voters is waning — though only slightly.
In late April, 44 percent of Republicans and G.O.P.-leaning independents said in an NBC News poll that they were more supportive of Mr. Trump than of the party itself. A slightly higher share, 50 percent, said they were more apt to support the party.
It was the first time since NBC pollsters began asking the question in early 2019 that as many as half of Republicans said they were more supportive of the party than of the man.
Members of the South Florida Urban Search and Rescue team look for possible survivors in the partially collapsed 12-story Champlain Towers South condo building on Saturday. Rescuers found an additional body Saturday.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
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Members of the South Florida Urban Search and Rescue team look for possible survivors in the partially collapsed 12-story Champlain Towers South condo building on Saturday. Rescuers found an additional body Saturday.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Rescue workers in Surfside, Fla., recovered a body amongst the rubble of the partially collapsed Champlain Towers South on Saturday, bringing the death toll to five.
Authorities also notified the families of three previously unidentified victims, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said Saturday evening, changing the total to 156 missing and 130 accounted for.
The Miami-Dade Police Department identified four of the five victims in a tweet on Saturday night. They are: Stacie Dawn Fang, 54; Antonio Lozano, 83; Gladys Lozano, 79; Manuel LaFont, 54.
Mayor Levine Cava told reporters that rescue efforts had made some headway. A deep-seated fire in the rubble that had been hindering rescuers had been mostly extinguished, allowing personnel to more effectively search through the debris.
Miami-Dade Fire Chief Alan Cominsky said rescuers were continuing an “aggressive search and rescue strategy.” He said responders were able to contain the fire and minimize smoke Saturday morning. They were continuing to search for people using sonar, canines and video equipment, he said.
Authorities are collecting DNA samples from family members of the missing people to help identify potential victims.
Meanwhile, residents of the building a block over, Champlain Towers North, are also anxious about the soundness of their building. Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett told reporters the North building was built at about the same time, by the same developer and, “probably built with the same plans, it was probably built with the same materials.”
Burkett said a Surfside building official inspected the Champlain Towers North and a “cursory review” did not find anything out of order. But it wasn’t a “deep dive.” He said that would likely take a couple weeks to complete and the Federal Emergency Management Agency would be able to assist residents with housing if they want to evacuate. But at the moment there is no mandatory evacuation order for the north building.
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