Prime Minister Justin Trudeau released a statement shortly after the announcement saying he is “terribly saddened” by the news. “My heart breaks for the Cowessess First Nation, and for all Indigenous communities across Canada,” he said.
The news comes after Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation announced in May that the remains of 215 children were found on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. Researchers say hundreds of unmarked graves are also believed to be located in Manitoba related to the residential school system in that province.
There has been considerable political pressure in recent years on federal party leaders to accept the past treatment of Indigenous peoples in Canada as genocide, including the nationwide residential school system removed children from their families to enroll them in a system that strove to “take the Indian out of the child.”
A 2019 inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women concluded what has happened was genocide.
“This genocide has been empowered by colonial structures, evidenced notably by the Indian Act, the Sixties Scoop, residential schools, and breaches of human and Inuit, Métis and First Nations rights, leading directly to the current increased rates of violence, death, and suicide in Indigenous populations,” read the report.
Following the discovery in Kamloops, Trudeau said earlier this month he accepted the conclusion of a 2019 inquiry that “what happened amounts to genocide.”
“The Pope needs to apologize for what happened to the Marieval Indian Residential School impact on Cowessess First Nation survivors and descendants,” said the community’s chief, Cadmus Delorme.
“Removing headstones is a crime in this country,” he said. “We are treating this like a crime scene.” Delorme suggested through the oral history of community members, the headstones were removed by representatives of the Catholic Church in the 1960s.
Small flags, 751 of them, now dot the site of the former Marieval Indian Residential School, each marking the remains of a body. Delorme said both adults and children are believed to be buried in the graves.
Citing a 10 percent margin of error with the technology used to identify the remains, Delorme said he can say with certainty at least 600 people are buried on the grounds. The First Nation will continue its investigation.
The Marieval Indian Residential School opened in 1899 and was operated by the Roman Catholic Church until 1979. The school closed in 1996 and was demolished three years later.
It is one institution that once existed in Canada’s countrywide residential school system. The federal government purchased the site in the 1920s, according to the University of Regina. In 1949, parents of students at the time tried to reassert their rights under Treaty 4 and pressed Ottawa to turn the school into a nonsectarian day school. Their petition was tossed.
Residential school survivors have previously given witness testimony about the existence of unmarked graves on the site of residential schools. Some of these testimonies were documented in a landmark 2015 report with the permission of survivors.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its report in 2015 describing the impact of Canada’s residential school system as tantamount to cultural genocide.
TRC commissioners traveled across the country for six years and spoke to more than 6,500 people about their experience with residential school and its impact on families and communities.
Their investigation identified at least 3,200 deaths related to residential schools, but commissioners said inadequate records mean the total number of students who died in the system will “not likely ever to be known in full.”
Because of poor record keeping, it’s hard to pinpoint what the cause of death was for many students who disappeared at residential schools. Survivors have said some students who were hospitalized never returned, inadequate food supply left some children more vulnerable to disease, and others were threatened with death if they reported physical and sexual abuse.
“The most serious gap in information arises from the incompleteness of the documentary record,” the TRC’s report read. “Many records have simply been destroyed.”
The announcement of the discoveries of mass unmarked graves of Indigenous children in close succession has renewed attention over the Liberal government’s commitment to reconciliation.
Trudeau’s Liberals have been in power since 2015. His government has faced criticism for making slow progress on reconciling the oppression, inequality, and intergenerational trauma Indigenous people have experienced — and continue to experience — since the country’s founding.
Canada’s residential school system has also seeped into foreign policy.
Trudeau traded barbs with China earlier this week, acknowledging “terrible” mistakes of the past have present-day impacts. He suggested what differentiates Canada’s response is recognizing the problem.
“Where is China’s truth and reconciliation commission,” the prime minister said Monday. “Where is their truth?”
In the U.S., Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced this week the federal government is launching a review of boarding schools that, like Canada’s residential school system, attempted to force cultural assimilation onto Indigenous peoples.
Haaland said Tuesday she was “deeply impacted” by the discovery of mass graves in Canada.
Forty percent of 820,000 Status First Nations people live on reserve in Canada, according to Statistics Canada. First Nations people on reserve experience disproportionately high levels of low income compared with the off-reserve and non-Indigenous population.
There are First Nation communities in Canada that do not have access to clean drinking water. Trudeau’s Liberals had campaigned on a promise to end all long-term boil water advisories by March 2021.
Delorme said his community would rather spend their energy on economic self-sustainability and political sovereignty, but the reality is on-reserve resources are spent addressing infrastructure, lack of services and mitigating the effects of intergenerational trauma, addictions, and child welfare.
“What we don’t enjoy is that life is better off the reserve than on the reserve,” Delorme said.
Anyone experiencing distress or pain can call the Indian Residential School Survivors Society Crisis Line, open 24 hours a day: (1-866-925-4419).
President Joe Biden said Thursday that Covid deaths in the United States will continue to rise due to the spread of the “dangerous” delta variant, calling it a “serious concern.”
“Six hundred thousand-plus Americans have died, and with this delta variant you know there’s going to be others as well. You know it’s going to happen. We’ve got to get young people vaccinated,” Biden said at a community center in Raleigh, North Carolina.
The variant, Biden said, is more easily transmissible and potentially deadly, and is “especially dangerous for young people.”
The president warned that Americans who are still unvaccinated are especially at risk.
“The data couldn’t be clearer: If you’re vaccinated, you’re safe,” Biden said. “You are still at risk of getting seriously ill or dying if you in fact have not been vaccinated, that’s just the fact.”
The delta variant now accounts for at least 20% of all new Covid cases in the U.S., according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. The variant has a doubling rate of about two weeks, setting it on a path to become the dominant strain in the U.S. in a few weeks, White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday.
The agency has designated the more transmissible variant a “variant of concern.”
Experts say the delta variant could also cause more severe disease in those infected, but more data is needed to be sure.
Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., speak to reporters following a May meeting about police reform legislation. The trio announced a tentative deal Thursday evening.
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Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., speak to reporters following a May meeting about police reform legislation. The trio announced a tentative deal Thursday evening.
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Lawmakers in Washington, D.C., have reached a preliminary, bipartisan agreement on police reform after months of closely watched debate on the topic.
Sens. Tim Scott, R-S.C., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., announced the agreement on Thursday evening.
“After months of working in good faith, we have reached an agreement on a framework addressing the major issues for bipartisan police reform,” the lawmakers said in a joint statement.
“There is still more work to be done on the final bill, and nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to. Over the next few weeks we look forward to continuing our work toward getting a finalized proposal across the finish line.”
The exact details of the plan were not immediately clear.
The issue of reforming qualified immunity, to make it easier to sue police officers over allegations of brutality, had been a sticking point in negotiations. The police use of chokeholds was another debated provision.
The effort to reform U.S. policing comes after several years of increasing pressure to better understand and regulate the way officers interact with the communities they patrol.
The high-profile deaths of several Black people — many unarmed — at the hands of police — who have in some notable instances been white — have been the catalyst for the police reform movement.
The Democratic-led House had approved the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act — named after one of those Black people killed by police — in early March, and President Biden had hoped Congress would pass the reform effort by the first anniversary of Floyd’s death in late May.
But Bass had said then that getting “a substantive piece of legislation” is “far more important than a specific date.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement Thursday that Biden “is grateful to Rep. Bass, Sen. Booker, and Sen. Scott for all of their hard work on police reform, and he looks forward to collaborating with them on the path ahead.”
The topic of police reform has divided the nation across party lines, with progressives accusing the right of seeking to maintain an antiquated and all-too-powerful law enforcement apparatus. Conservatives say the left has blamed the actions of some officers on the institution itself, turning the topic of police support and “blue lives” into more ammunition for the ongoing culture war.
The 10 senators in the group include moderates from both parties, but also some who less frequently reach across the aisle. Besides Portman and Sinema, they include Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Mark R. Warner (D-Va.).
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has been suspended from practicing law on an interim basis over his role in pushing false voter fraud claims. He will be afforded a chance for a post-suspension hearing to challenge the court decision.
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Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has been suspended from practicing law on an interim basis over his role in pushing false voter fraud claims. He will be afforded a chance for a post-suspension hearing to challenge the court decision.
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A New York state court has suspended Rudy Giuliani from practicing law after concluding that he made false statements alleging rampant fraud to try to overturn former President Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.
In a 33-page decision released Thursday, a New York state appellate court said there was “uncontroverted evidence” that Giuliani “communicated demonstrably false and misleading statement to courts, lawmakers and the public at large in his capacity as lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump and the Trump campaign in connection with Trump’s failed effort at reelection in 2020.”
Giuliani was a leading voice — on TV, in court, before state lawmakers and once even in front of a Philadelphia landscaping company — pushing Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
The New York court ruling says Giuliani’s statements were made to fuel the false narrative that the election was rigged and that Trump was the rightful winner.
“We conclude that respondent’s conduct immediately threatens the public interest and warrants interim suspension from the practice of law, pending further proceedings,” it says.
It also says the seriousness of Giuliani’s actions “cannot be overstated” and points to the ripple effects of his falsehoods.
“This country is being torn apart by continued attacks on the legitimacy of the 2020 election and of our current president, Joseph R. Biden,” it says.
There was no immediate comment from Giuliani, although on Twitter he retweeted posts that criticized the decision to suspend his license.
His attorneys, meanwhile, said they were “disappointed” by the court’s decision to suspend Giuliani “prior to being afforded a hearing on the issues that are alleged.”
“This is unprecedented as we believe that our client does not pose a present danger to the public interest,” John Leventhal and Barry Kamins said in a statement. “We believe that once the issues are fully explored at a hearing Mr. Giuliani will be reinstated as a valued member of the legal profession that he has served so well in his many capacities for so many years.”
As of now, Giuliani has been suspended on an interim basis. He will be afforded an opportunity for a post-suspension hearing to challenge the decision.
Still, the suspensionmarks yet another remarkable fall from grace for Giuliani, who was the U.S. attorney for Manhattan and later served two terms as the mayor of New York City.
Giuliani is also facing legal peril in an unrelated matter. He’s under federal investigation over potential violations of foreign lobbying laws related to his work tied to Ukraine. FBI agents searched his Manhattan apartment and office in April and seized his computers and cellphones as part of that investigation.
The Biden administration sprung into action this week after it faced growing pressure to stop a wave of Americans from being kicked out of their homes once the eviction ban expired next Wednesday. A group of 44 House Democrats on Tuesday urged the Biden administration to extend the moratorium to buy state and local officials more time to get rental aid out the door.
More than six million renter households are behind on rent, according to a recent survey by the Census Bureau. State and local programs have been overwhelmed with requests for rental assistance funds even as housing advocates report that plenty of renters and mom-and-pop landlords don’t know about the programs or are having trouble applying for them.
But officials signaled Thursday that the Biden administration was ready to move on from the sweeping housing relief programs stood up during the pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is in charge of the eviction ban, said the latest extension of the 11-month moratorium was intended to be the last.
As part of the push, Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta planned to send a letter to state courts on Thursday encouraging them to adopt “anti-eviction diversion practices,” the White House said, including by issuing administrative orders requiring landlords to apply for rental assistance before filing for eviction.
The CDC first issued the eviction ban in September, citing a public health law that gives the agency certain powers to prevent communicable diseases from crossing state lines. Before Thursday, Congress and the White House had extended it three times.
Separate foreclosure bans that were also extended to July 31 on Thursday apply to homes with federally-backed mortgages.
Landlords have challenged the eviction moratorium in courts around the country. The Supreme Court has not acted yet on a petition by property owners to block a stay on overturning the ban. The coalition fighting the restrictions has said said landlords are losing more than $13 billion a month because of the moratorium.
Senate Banking Chair Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) applauded the administration’s decision Thursday.
“The eviction moratorium is providing essential protections to millions of renters during the pandemic,” he said. “It’s time for state and local grantees to remove unnecessary red tape and make sure that the funds Congress provided to help families stay in their homes get out to them quickly.”
Mr. Giuliani now faces disciplinary proceedings and can fight the suspension. But the court said in its decision that Mr. Giuliani’s actions had posed “an immediate threat” to the public and that it was likely he would face “permanent sanctions” after the proceedings conclude.
Mr. Giuliani’s lawyers, John Leventhal and Barry Kamins, said in a statement that they were disappointed that the panel took action before holding a hearing on the allegations.
“This is unprecedented as we believe that our client does not pose a present danger to the public interest,” they said. “We believe that once the issues are fully explored at a hearing, Mr. Giuliani will be reinstated as a valued member of the legal profession that he has served so well in his many capacities for so many years.”
The suspension marked another stunning chapter in the rise and fall of Mr. Giuliani’s long legal and political career. He rose to national prominence when, as New York City mayor, as he steered the city through the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
More recently, Mr. Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine before the election designed to damage President Biden’s campaign have been under criminal investigation by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, working for the same office that he once led. In April, F.B.I. agents seized Mr. Giuliani’s cellphones and computers, an extraordinary action to take against a lawyer for a former president.
Authorities told reporters that they have rescued 35 people from the building so far, with two people rescued from the rubble itself.
Miami-Dade County Commissioner Sally Heyman told Fox News that about 51 people remain unaccounted for.
“Over 80 MDFR units including #TRT (Technical Rescue Teams) are on scene with assistance from municipal fire departments,” Miami Dade Fire Rescue said in a tweet.
The scene of a collapsed building in Surfside, Fla., just north of Miami Beach. (WSVN)
Firefighters pulled at least one boy from the debris, according to photos online. A reporter from CBS Miami said at at least nine people were transported to the hospital.
Officials received offers of support from Sens. Rick Scott and Marco Rubio, as well as Gov. Ron DeSantis, to provide anything needed for the search-and-rescue operation, which may take up to a week.
The building address is 8777 Collins Avenue, according to Surfside police. The sea-view condo development was built in 1981 in the southeast corner of Surfside, on the beach. It had a few two-bedroom units currently on the market, with asking prices of $600,000 to $700,000, police said.
One witness who was on vacation in the city with his family told Fox News he was next door when it suddenly sounded like a tornado or earthquake.
“It was the craziest thing I ever heard in my life,” he said.
List of Champlain Tower residents who are missing, per a local synagogue. (Courtesy: Jordan Early, Fox News)
He added that he believed much of the building was occupied.
He estimated that the collapse occurred at about 1:20 a.m.
SOURCE: WSVN(SOURCE: WSVN)
Miami Dade Fire Rescue is conducting search and rescue. Authorities had no word yet on casualties, or details of how many people lived in the building. (AP)( )
SOURCE: WSVN(SOURCE: WSVN)
SOURCE: WSVN(SOURCE: WSVN)
SOURCE: WSVN(SOURCE: WSVN)
A bedroom is seen in part of the collapsed building.(WSVN)
A partially collapsed building is seen early Thursday, June 24, 2021, in the Surfside area of Miami, Fla. A partial building collapse in Miami caused a massive response early Thursday from Miami Dade Fire Rescue, according to a tweet from the department’s account. Miami Dade Fire Rescue is conducting search and rescue. Authorities had no word yet on casualties, or details of how many people lived in the building. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)( )
A light glows in a partially collapsed building early Thursday, June 24, 2021, in Surfside area of Miami, Fla. A partial building collapse in Miami caused a massive response early Thursday from Miami Dade Fire Rescue, according to a tweet from the department’s account. Miami Dade Fire Rescue is conducting search and rescue. Authorities had no word yet on casualties, or details of how many people lived in the building. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)( )
A partial collapsed building is seen early Thursday, June 24, 2021, in Surfside area of Miami, Fla. A partial building collapse in Miami caused a massive response early Thursday from Miami Dade Fire Rescue, according to a tweet from the department’s account. Miami Dade Fire Rescue is conducting search and rescue. Authorities had no word yet on casualties, or details of how many people lived in the building. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)( )
In this image made from video, officials arrive on the scene of a building collapse in Surfside, Miami, FL., early Thursday, June 24, 2021. A partial building collapse in Miami caused a massive response early Thursday from Miami Dade Fire Rescue, according to a tweet from the department’s account. Miami Dade Fire Rescue is conducting search and rescue. Authorities had no word yet on casualties, or details of how many people lived in the building. (Jamal Akakpo via AP)( )
People view a partially collapsed building early Thursday, June 24, 2021, in the Surfside area of Miami, Fla. A partial building collapse in Miami caused a massive response early Thursday from Miami Dade Fire Rescue, according to a tweet from the department’s account. Miami Dade Fire Rescue is conducting search and rescue. Authorities had no word yet on casualties, or details of how many people lived in the building. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)( )
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Miami-Dade fire rescue pulling a boy probably in his early teens from the rubble alive and also them rescuing some people from a balcony with an ariel ladder truck. I also have sound with three witnesses, one says there had been some on going construction being done on the building.( )
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A partially collapsed building is seen early Thursday, June 24, 2021, in the Surfside area of Miami, Fla. A partial building collapse in Miami caused a massive response early Thursday from Miami Dade Fire Rescue, according to a tweet from the department’s account. Miami Dade Fire Rescue is conducting search and rescue. Authorities had no word yet on casualties, or details of how many people lived in the building. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)( )
A partially collapsed building is seen early Thursday, June 24, 2021, in the Surfside area of Miami, Fla. A partial building collapse in Miami caused a massive response early Thursday from Miami Dade Fire Rescue, according to a tweet from the department’s account. Miami Dade Fire Rescue is conducting search and rescue. Authorities had no word yet on casualties, or details of how many people lived in the building. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)( )
Firefighters search a partially collapsed building early Thursday, June 24, 2021, in the Surfside area of Miami, Fla. A partial building collapse in Miami caused a massive response early Thursday from Miami Dade Fire Rescue, according to a tweet from the department’s account. Miami Dade Fire Rescue is conducting search and rescue. Authorities had no word yet on casualties, or details of how many people lived in the building. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)( )
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Miami building collapse, June 24, 2021( )
Joel Franco, a Miami-based freelance journalist, was live-tweeting from the scene. He noted that an urban search-and-rescue truck was at the scene. He posted another photo that he said showed about a dozen people who were rescued. Two were embracing. He posted, “This is tough to document.”
“I did see some family members being rescued by a crane from the Miami-Dade Fire Department,” he said.
A bedroom is seen in part of the collapsed building. (SOURCE: WSVN)
The building is one block away from where Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner are leasing a condominium, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Miami-Dade Fire Rescue set up a family reunification center nearby, and asked anyone who has family members who are unaccounted for or are safe to call 305-614-1819.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Fox News’ Brie Stimson, Greg Norman and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
A memorial stands outside the Residential School in Kamloops, British Columbia. The remains of 215 children were discovered buried near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School earlier this month.
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A memorial stands outside the Residential School in Kamloops, British Columbia. The remains of 215 children were discovered buried near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School earlier this month.
Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian Press via AP
REGINA, Saskatchewan — The chief of an Indigenous nation in Canada said Thursday that investigators have found 751 unmarked graves at the site of a former residential school for Indigenous children — a discovery that follows last month’s report of 215 at another school.
Chief Cadmusn Delmore of the Cowessess First Nation made the announcement at a news conference.
Chief Bobby Cameron of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous First Nations said he expects more graves will be found on residential school grounds across Canada.
“This was a crime against humanity, an assault on First Nations,” he said.
“We will not stop until we find all the bodies.”
The bodies were discovered at the Marieval Indian Residential School, which operated from 1899 to 1997 where Cowessess is now located, about 87 miles east of Regina, the capital of Saskatchewan.
Delorme said at one time the graves were marked but those who operated the school removed the markers.
“We are treating this as a crime,” he said.
The Cowessess and the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous First Nations, which represents Saskatchewan’s First Nations, said a day earlier that “the number of unmarked graves will be the most significantly substantial to date in Canada.”
Last month the remains of 215 children, some as young as 3 years old, were found buried on the site of what was once Canada’s largest Indigenous residential school near Kamloops, British Columbia.
The “delta variant” has come to dominate headlines, having been discovered in India where it provoked an extreme surge in Covid-19 cases before spreading around the world.
But now a mutation of that variant has emerged, called “delta plus,” which is starting to worry global experts.
India has dubbed delta plus a “variant of concern,” and there are fears that it could potentially be more transmissible. In the U.K., Public Health England noted in its last summary that routine scanning of Covid cases in the country (where the delta variant is now responsible for the bulk of new infections) has found almost 40 cases of the newer variant, which has acquired the spike protein mutation K417N, i.e. delta plus.
It noted that, as of June 16, cases of the delta plus variant had also been identified in the U.S. (83 cases at the time the report was published last Friday) as well as Canada, India, Japan, Nepal, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Switzerland and Turkey.
India third wave?
As is common with all viruses, the coronavirus has mutated repeatedly since it emerged in China in late 2019. There have been a handful of variants that have emerged over the course of the pandemic that have changed the virus’s transmissibility, risk profile and even symptoms.
Several of those variants, such as the “alpha” strain (previously known as the “Kent” or “British” variant) and then the delta variant, have gone on to be dominant strains globally, hence the attention on delta plus.
India’s Health Ministry reportedly said Wednesday that it had found around 40 cases of the delta plus variant with the K417N mutation. The ministry released a statement on Tuesday in which it said that INSACOG, a consortium of 28 laboratories genome sequencing the virus in India during the pandemic, had informed it that the delta plus variant has three worrying characteristics.
India’s Health Ministry said it had alerted three states (Maharashtra, Kerala and Madhya Pradesh) after the delta plus variant was detected in genome-sequenced samples from those areas.
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The detection of a variation to the delta variant largely blamed for India’s catastrophic second wave of cases has stoked fears that India is ill-prepared for a potential third wave. But some experts are urging calm.
Dr. Chandrakant Lahariya,a physician-epidemiologist and vaccines and health systems expert based in New Delhi, told CNBC on Thursday that while the government should remain alert to the progress of the variant, there is “no reason to panic.”
“Epidemiologically speaking, I have no reason to believe that ‘Delta plus’ alters the current situation in a manner to accelerate or trigger the third wave,” he told CNBC via email.
“If we go by the currently available evidence, Delta plus is not very different from Delta variant. It is the same Delta variant with one additional mutation. The only clinical difference, which we know till now, is that Delta plus has some resistance to monoclonal antibody combination therapy. And that is not a major difference as the therapy itself is investigational and few are eligible for this treatment.”
He advised the public to follow Covid restrictions and to get vaccinated as soon as possible. Analysis from Public Health England released last week showed that two doses of the Pfizer–BioNTech or Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccines are highly effective against hospitalization from the delta variant.
The WHO has said it is tracking recent reports of a “delta plus” variant. “An additional mutation … has been identified,” Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s Covid-19 technical lead said at a briefing last week.
“In some of the delta variants we’ve seen one less mutation or one deletion instead of an additional, so we’re looking at all of it.”
Democrats are moving to create the panel four weeks after Senate Republicans blocked a bipartisan effort to establish an independent commission. Pelosi said she still preferred a bipartisan approach, resembling Congress’s probe into the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but said she had no indication Senate Republicans could be persuaded to ever agree to that tack.
Pelosi did not disclose who would lead the commission, saying she would “make those announcements later.” Several of her members, including House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn have privately pushed for Homeland Security Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who seems to be the caucus favorite with few other names circulating.
Thompson told POLITICO Wednesday the path for the investigation was ultimately the speaker’s decision but noted his committee has “dealt with domestic terrorism for a long time.”
The select committee will consolidate the House’s several ongoing investigations into Jan. 6, which includes panels such as the Homeland Security Committee and the House Oversight Committee.
Besides who will lead the group, one of the biggest questions over the development of the select committee is whether Republicans will take part in the panel by appointing members — and, if so, who they would pick.
Some Democrats privately fear that Republicans would give the perch to flame-throwing members, such as Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a scenario they say would further inflame partisan tensions over the Jan. 6 attack.
Pelosi acknowledged some of those risks, telling members that some Democrats had warned, “God knows who the Republicans would appoint.” But Pelosi said she had no intention of “walking away from our responsibility.”
The goal of the committee, many Democrats say, is to keep its work from devolving into a hyper-partisan brawl. They want to avoid the political chaos of the GOP’s select committee to investigate the 2012 attacks in the Libyan city of Benghazi when they held the majority.
“I hope that Kevin will appoint responsible people to the committee,” Pelosi said, referring to Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
Typically, doctors space out treatments to measure a patient’s response. Some drugs, such as monoclonal antibodies, are most effective if they’re administered early in the course of an infection. Others, such as remdesivir, are most effective when they’re givenlater, after a patient has become critically ill. But Trump’s doctors threw everything they could at the virus all at once. His condition appeared to stabilize somewhat as the day wore on, but his doctors, still fearing he might need to goon a ventilator, decided to move him to the hospital.It was too risky at that point to stay at the White House.
SURFSIDE, Fla. – Miami-Dade Fire Rescue officials confirmed at least one person has been killed and numerous others are trapped after a condominium building partially collapsed early Thursday morning.
The incident occurred at the Champlain Towers South building near 88th Street and Collins Avenue in Surfside.
Santos Mejia told Local 10 News reporter Madeleine Wright that his wife, Janet Rodriguez, 55, was staying at the condominium building with a 95-year-old woman she is caring for when the collapse occurred around 1:20 a.m.
At least 1 dead following partial building collapse in Surfside
He said she immediately called him after the collapse and told him she heard an earthquake, but they soon learned the building had partially collapsed in the back on the oceanside.
The building’s pool and parking garage were on the side of the building that collapsed.
Mejia said his wife and the elderly woman are both OK, but they could have fallen off the side of the building had they been closer to the balcony.
“The whole building shook like an earthquake. I opened my sliding glass and I saw a plume of dust and then I opened the door and I saw that the building had pancaked in the back,” a woman who lives on the ninth floor of the building said.
Local 10 News was at the scene just before 5:30 a.m. as one person was being rescued from their balcony.
More than 80 MDFR units, including Technical Rescue Teams, are at the scene with assistance from municipal fire departments, including some from Broward County. There are more than 100 units that responded in all.
A photo taken from the scene shows a boy being pulled from the rubble by a firefighter.
Copyright WPLG (WPLG)
It’s unclear how many people were injured and hospitalized, but crews did set up a triage area before some people were transported to hospitals.
Witnesses say people are currently trapped inside the building’s south tower. Crews used ladder trucks to rescue residents from balconies and are working to clear all of the floors.
As people began waking up, a crowd began gathering on the sand.
The building was built in 1981 and has more than 100 condo units. It is about 12 stories tall.
The power has been cut off to the building and it appeared that part of at least four levels were totally destroyed in the collapse.
Those who were rescued or are in the area are being kept away from the building to prevent any injuries from falling debris and to prevent further collapse.
‘The whole building shook like an earthquake,’ resident says after part of condo building collapses
The cause of the collapse remains unclear, however people in the area told Local 10 News that work was being done on the roof of the building with the use of heavy equipment.
Surfside Mayor Charles W. Burkett confirmed roof work was being done at the building, but said roof work is constantly being done on buildings and doesn’t believe that is a reason for the collapse.
He said he is sure an application must have been completed before the work started and that an inspection would have been made beforehand.
The mayor said he can’t imagine any reason for the tragedy other than if a sinkhole occurred or someone pulled the supports out of the building.
Burkett confirmed 10 people were treated for injuries at the scene and two were taken to hospitals, one of whom died.
He said he was aware of 15 families that walked out of the building on their own.
Coral Springs-Parkland Fire Department Deputy Chief Michael Moser commended Miami-Dade Fire Rescue and other fire departments that quickly responded to the scene, saying first responders need to be “quick on their toes” and “thinking far into the future” during catastrophic situations like these.
He said MDFR quickly called in support services, including K9s and drones to assist in the search.
First responders told Local 10 News that the search and rescue operation could take perhaps up to a week to complete, if not more.
Authorities say southbound traffic is currently being diverted west on 96th Street, while northbound traffic is being diverted at 85th Street and Collins Avenue.
The American Red Cross is assisting survivors, who will be placed in hotels for the time being.
A family reunification center has been set up for anyone looking for unaccounted or missing relatives at 9301 Collins Ave.
An emergency information hotline has also been created for those who are trying to locate their loved ones. That number is 305-993-1071.
‘Media Buzz’ host Howard Kurtz discusses the publication’s approach to shaming White people.
As the carnage continues, the rise in urban crime is “staggering” and “sobering.”
That’s not some police commissioner or Republican lawmaker decrying the surge in violence. It’s President Biden’s deputy attorney general, Lisa Monaco.
The spike in homicides and other major crimes is becoming a political albatross for the Democrats, who run nearly all these major cities. And that’s why Biden gave a crime speech Wednesday when he’d rather be focusing on vaccines or infrastructure or just about anything else.
Unfortunately for the president, and urban America, he has few tools at his disposal, which is why he’s concentrating mainly on guns, despite his failure to get any legislative traction on that subject or police reform. The Justice Department is creating several strike forces to go after illegal gun trafficking in the largest cities.
There is no, forgive me, magic bullet. But it’s no accident that a tough-talking former police officer, Eric Adams, leads the field after New York City’s mayoral primary over several liberal rivals. (The final results may take weeks because of the city’s ranked-choice method.)
A Politico piece portrays the Biden efforts sympathetically, saying that after one of several mass shootings in Chicago, a White House official called Mayor Lori Lightfoot and asked what they could do to help.
“White House officials,” says Politico, “are pushing back on attempts to paint the violence as a partisan issue, with aides and allies pointing to statistics showing a rise in violent crime during the Trump administration, including a 33 percent surge in homicides in major cities in 2020.”
OK, great. But Biden is in charge now, and in the first quarter of this year, murder is up 24% over the same period last year, and 49% over the first quarter of 2019.
Biden’s workmanlike speech mostly repeated talking points on gun control (the sellers are “merchants of death,” and we need a “ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines”).
He said other policies were “woefully underfunded,” calling for “more police officers, more nurses, more counselors, more social workers, more community violence interrupters.”
Biden has never been on the hard left when it comes to crime. He refused to embrace the idiotic “defund the police” movement during the campaign. He drew flak as an author of the 1994 crime bill, which is seen in retrospect as overly harsh in jailing people, especially minorities. But the president is a passionate advocate of gun control, which is anathema on the right.
Republicans have been viewed as the law-and-order party since the days of Richard Nixon. And during last year’s riots, it was the Democratic mayors of such cities as Portland and Seattle who seemed wary of cracking down on the lawbreakers and ceded whole areas to them. Biden denounced the violence, as well as excessive police force against Blacks, but never took on the mayors of his own party.
Crime is a gut issue that can blot out almost everything else, dominating our politics in the crack-ravaged 1980s and ’90s. If people don’t feel safe in their neighborhoods, they’re not going to worry much about climate change, or voting rights (another issue on which Biden is stymied after Tuesday’s successful Republican filibuster threat).
It’s the reason that Adams, an African-American, won not liberal Manhattan but Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, where violence has devastated entire sections and many minorities are victims.
When it comes to crime, federal laws matter, but Washington’s main role is to send money. Beyond the question of guns, Biden is proposing such initiatives as expanding summer programs and helping convicts reenter society, which just nibble at the edges of the problem. And such community-based approaches take time, when people want immediate relief during a crime surge.
The “delta variant” has come to dominate headlines, having been discovered in India where it provoked an extreme surge in Covid-19 cases before spreading around the world.
But now a mutation of that variant has emerged, called “delta plus,” which is starting to worry global experts.
India has dubbed delta plus a “variant of concern,” and there are fears that it could potentially be more transmissible. In the U.K., Public Health England noted in its last summary that routine scanning of Covid cases in the country (where the delta variant is now responsible for the bulk of new infections) has found almost 40 cases of the delta variant, which has acquired the spike protein mutation K417N, i.e. delta plus.
It noted that, as of June 16, cases of the delta plus variant had also been identified in the U.S. (83 cases at the time the report was published last Friday) as well as Canada, India, Japan, Nepal, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Switzerland and Turkey.
India third wave?
As is common with all viruses, the coronavirus has mutated repeatedly since it emerged in China in late 2019. There have been a handful of variants that have emerged over the course of the pandemic that have changed the virus’ transmissibility, risk profile and even symptoms.
Several of those variants, such as the “alpha” variant (previously known as the “Kent” or “British” variant) and then the delta variant, have gone on to be dominant strains globally, hence the attention on delta plus.
India’s Health Ministry reportedly said Wednesday that it had found around 40 cases of the delta plus variant with the K417N mutation. The ministry released a statement on Tuesday in which it said that INSACOG, a consortium of 28 laboratories genome sequencing the virus in India during the pandemic, had informed it that the delta plus variant has three worrying characteristics.
India’s health ministry said it had alerted three states (Maharashtra, Kerala and Madhya Pradesh) after the delta plus variant was detected in genome sequenced samples from those areas.
CNBC Health & Science
Read CNBC’s latest global coverage of the Covid pandemic:
The detection of a variation to the delta variant largely blamed for India’s catastrophic second wave of cases has stoked fears that India is ill-prepared for a potential third wave. But some experts are urging calm.
Dr. Chandrakant Lahariya,a physician-epidemiologist and vaccines and health systems expert based in New Delhi, told CNBC Thursday that that while the government should remain alert to the progress of the variant, there is “no reason to panic.”
“Epidemiologically speaking, I have no reason to believe that ‘Delta plus’ alters the current situation in a manner to accelerate or trigger the third wave,” he told CNBC via email.
“If we go by the currently available evidence, Delta plus is not very different from Delta variant. It is the same Delta variant with one additional mutation. The only clinical difference, which we know till now, is that Delta plus has some resistance to monoclonal antibody combination therapy. And that is not a major difference as the therapy itself is investigational and few are eligible for this treatment.”
He advised the public to follow Covid restrictions and to get vaccinated as soon as possible. Analysis from Public Health England released last week showed that two doses of the Pfizer–BioNTech or Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccines are highly effective against hospitalization from the delta variant.
The WHO has said that it is tracking recent reports of a “delta plus” variant. “An additional mutation … has been identified,” Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s Covid-19 technical lead said at a briefing last week.
“In some of the delta variants we’ve seen one less mutation or one deletion instead of an additional, so we’re looking at all of it.”
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