World
Mired in crises, Lebanon hopes summer arrivals bring relief
In a village in Lebanon’s scenic Chouf Mountains, 69-year-old Chafik Mershad pulls out a massive rectangular guestbook and reads out despairingly the date when he hosted his last visitor: Nov. 16, 2019.
A month earlier, anti-government protests had exploded across the country over taxes and a deteriorating currency crisis. Amid such uncertainty, few people visited his guesthouse. Then came the coronavirus and subsequent government-imposed lockdowns. The guesthouse officially closed its doors in February 2020. A year and a half later, he still has no plans to reopen amid the country’s current financial meltdown.
“Corona really affected us, but the biggest thing was the currency crisis,” Mershad said, speaking at his home above the guesthouse. “We used to offer meals for guests with Nescafe, tea, whatever they wanted for a cheap price. Now, one hamburger patty costs that much.”
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The dual shocks of the pandemic and a devastating financial crisis have gutted the hospitality sector of this Mediterranean nation, known for its beaches, mountain resorts and good food. Hundreds of businesses, including guesthouses like the Mershad Guesthouse, have been forced to close.
But as pandemic restrictions are being eased, the businesses that survived hope the dollars spent by visiting Lebanese expats and an increase in domestic tourism can get the wheels of the economy moving again.
Currently, most hotel reservations are from Lebanese expats and some foreigners from neighboring Iraq, Egypt and Jordan. Airport arrivals are picking up: Every day for the past several weeks, the Beirut Airport has had four flights coming from Iraq, with more than 700 passengers in total, according to Jean Abboud, president of the Travel and Tourist Agents Union. Chaotic scenes have been reported at the arrivals lounge as people crowd for the obligatory PCR test.
Many Lebanese who traditionally vacationed abroad over the summer are now turning to domestic tourism. It’s the more practical option because of travel restrictions, dollars trapped in banks and a lack of functioning credit cards.
“In the past two years, the country has radically changed. It is no longer a destination for nightlife, for city tourism and for the things that people knew. There’s ... more interest from the Lebanese to travel inside their country,” said Joumana Brihi, board member of the Lebanese Mountain Trail Association. The association maintains a 290-mile (470-kilometer) hiking trail spanning the country from north to south.
Many in the industry say the number of domestic tourists has increased significantly since the country’s lockdown eased in April. They expect to see expats piling in and spending this summer despite the instability, partly because of the devalued Lebanese pound.
That will save a lot of places from shutting down or “at least prolong the life of some businesses,” said Maya Noun, general secretary of the syndicate of restaurant owners.
Since October 2019, Lebanon’s currency has lost more than 90% of its value, trading at around 17,000 Lebanese pounds to the dollar on the black market. The official exchange rate remains at 1,507 pounds to the dollar.
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Last year, Member of Parliament Michel Daher was chastised on social media for saying on TV that “Lebanon is really cheap, in every sense,” because of the crumbling currency.
“People were laughing at me then,” Daher told The Associated Press. “Now, there are lots of Lebanese expats coming because of the prices, but we also want foreigners.”
Still, the scene on the ground is no picturesque vacation destination. Electricity cuts last much of the day and privately run generators have had to be turned off for several hours to ration fuel. The country suffers from a shortage of vital products, including medicine, medical products and gasoline.
For weeks, frustrated citizens have been lining up to fill up at gas stations, with occasional fistfights and shootings amid frayed nerves. More than half the population has been plunged into poverty, and with sectarian tensions on the rise, Lebanon feels ready to erupt.
Lebanon’s currency crash has created a jarring schism between the comfortable minority whose income is in so-called fresh dollars that can be withdrawn from banks, and those being pushed farther into poverty, including former members of a vanishing middle class whose purchasing power has disappeared.
Resorts in the coastal cities of Batroun and Byblos are regularly packed and forecast to do well this summer after being closed last year because of the pandemic. Restaurants, pubs and rooftop bars are buzzing again and some mountain guesthouses and boutique hotels are fully booked.
Yet the idea that expats will help the economy is partially misleading, said Mike Azar, a Beirut-based financial adviser. “Foreign dollars coming from tourists is always going to be a positive thing, but does it make the lira (pound) appreciate or depreciate at a slower pace? It is not really something you can say.”
Many expats seem to be wavering on whether to visit Lebanon. Some yearn to reconnect with family after long separations caused by the pandemic. Others are not willing to risk it.
Joe Rizk, a 20-year-old mechanical engineering student at UMass Lowell in the U.S. from the coastal village of Damour, said his family persuaded him to return for the month of August. He said he would bring medicines that are in short supply, like Advil, for family and friends.
Read: 'No Sweets': For Syrian refugees in Lebanon, a tough Ramadan
“I will not spend more than $300 or $400 this whole month even if I was going every night to a bar, or club or restaurant,” he said, adding he would be using the family house and car while in Lebanon.
But Hala al-Hachem, a 37-year-old assistant bank manager in Massachusetts, said she was too worried to visit Lebanon with two children, aged 8 and 6. Originally from south Lebanon, she used to return with her family every summer.
Not this time.
“Do I want to go there and not be able to put gas in my car and travel around? Do I want to go there and risk one of them getting sick and going to a hospital where they don’t have the medicine needed to treat them? Do I want my sons to wonder at night why there is no electricity?” she asked.
Southwest, American delays hint at hard summer for travelers
This summer is already shaping up to be a difficult one for air travelers.
Southwest Airlines customers have struggled with thousands of delays and hundreds of canceled flights this month because of computer problems, staffing shortages and bad weather.
American Airlines is also grappling with a surge in delays, and it has trimmed its schedule through mid-July at least in part because it doesn’t have enough pilots, according to the pilots’ union.
Travelers are posting photos of long airport lines and describing painful flights.
Read:Hundreds believed dead in heat wave despite efforts to help in Northwest
“It was ridiculously crowded,” Tracey Milligan said of airports after a round trip from her New Jersey home to Miami this week.
Milligan and her 6-year-old daughter endured hours-long delays on both legs of the trip. Before the flight to Florida, she said, JetBlue agents first told passengers there was a discrepancy with the plane’s weight, then they were missing three crew members because the airline was short-staffed, then there was a weather delay.
“I really wanted to start screaming and cursing everybody out, but that doesn’t get you anywhere, and security will come and remove you from the plane,” she said.
At least the passengers on Milligan’s flights kept their cool. Airlines have seen a surge in unruly passengers, and some experts predict it will get worse this summer as planes become even more crowded.
There have been 10 days in June when more than 2 million travelers went through U.S. airports, according to figures from the Transportation Security Administration. Airlines say that domestic leisure travel is nearly back to 2019 levels, although the lack of business travelers means that overall, the number of passengers over the past week is still down about 20% compared with the same days in 2019.
The airlines were expecting a blockbuster July Fourth weekend, scheduling more than 100,000 U.S. flights between July 1 and July 5. That was nearly twice the 58,000 that they offered over the same days last year, according to data from aviation researcher Cirium. July 1 was first time the TSA screened more people than on the same day in 2019.
The weekend highlights the rapid turnaround boosting an industry that was fighting for survival last year. The recovery has been faster than many expected — including, apparently, the airlines themselves.
Since the start of the pandemic, U.S. airlines have received $54 billion in federal aid to help cover payroll expenses. In return, they were prohibited from furloughing or laying off workers. However, they were allowed to persuade tens of thousands of employees to take buyouts, early retirement or leaves of absence.
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Now some are finding they don’t have enough people in key roles, including pilots.
This week, as Southwest officials braced for crowded flights over the holiday weekend they offered to double pay for flight attendants and other employees who agree to extra work through Wednesday.
“The staffing shortage is across the board. On the pilot side, it’s a training backlog,” said Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association. “Southwest came into the summer with very little margin.”
Murray said many pilots coming back from leave are still getting federally required training to refresh their skills and aren’t yet eligible to fly. When storms cause long delays, pilots can reach their FAA limit on the number of hours they are allowed to work, and there aren’t enough backups to step in, he said. On top of that, he said, Southwest pushed for an “aggressive” summer schedule to capitalize on rising travel demand.
Since June 14, Southwest has averaged more than 1,300 daily flights delays — a staggering 40% of its schedule — according to figures from tracking service Flightaware.com.
Southwest spokeswoman Brandy King said most delays were caused by weather, and that with fewer flights than before the pandemic, it’s harder for Southwest to recover from long thunderstorms.
At American Airlines, unions say labor shortages are contributing to delays and the scrubbing of up to 80 flights a day from the schedule through mid-July. In echoes of Southwest, the pilots’ union at American said management did not act quickly enough to retrain 1,600 pilots who were temporarily furloughed then rehired last year or replace the 1,000 who retired.
American has also suffered high delay numbers in June. Delta Air Lines and United Airlines have appeared to fare better, although staffing shortages caused Delta to cancel dozens of flights over Thanksgiving last year and again around Easter this year.
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Airlines that pushed people to quit a year ago and now beginning to hire again, which could help fix staffing shortages. Delta, for example, plans to hire more than 1,000 pilots by next summer, starting with about 75 by this August.
Passengers whose flights aren’t canceled or delayed still risk being on board with troublesome plane mates. Airlines have reported more than 3,200 incidents of unruly passengers since Jan. 1, most of them involving compliance with the federal requirement to wear face masks on flights, and some face large fines.
Andrew Thomas, a frequent flyer who teaches international business at The University of Akron and has tracked air rage for more than 20 years, believes conditions are ripe for even more incidents on planes this summer because travelers are more stressed than ever.
“The problem was there before COVID, and now you are putting more people in the sky and you exacerbate this with the masks,” Thomas said. “Service levels are atrocious. Planes are packed, they are not feeding you, it’s hard to get food in an airport. The only thing that’s easy to get is alcohol, which is not a good thing.”
Search back on after rest of South Florida condo demolished
Rescuers were given the all-clear to resume work looking for victims at a collapsed South Florida condo building after demolition crews set off a string of explosives that brought down the last of the building in a plume of dust.
Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told the Associated Press that the demolition went “exactly as planned” around 10:30 p.m. Sunday.
Crews immediately began clearing some of the new debris so rescuers could start making their way into parts of the underground garage that is of particular interest. Once there, they were hoping to get a clearer picture of voids that may exist in the rubble and could possibly harbor the 121 people believed to be trapped under the fallen wing of the Champlain Towers South in Surfside that collapsed June 24.
No one has been rescued alive since the first hours after the collapse. On Sunday, Miami-Dade police identified David Epstein, 58, as one of the 24 people known to have perished in the fallen tower. His remains were recovered Friday.
Read:Florida Collapse: Demolition of condominium set; rescue work to resume after
Shortly after the demolition, cranes were again in motion at the site, suggesting that crews were back in place in the wee hours of Monday morning to sift through the rubble from above and below.
Rescuers are hoping the demolition will give them access for the first time to parts of the garage area. Once a new pathway into the initial rubble is secure, “we will go back to the debris pile, and we’ll begin our search and rescue efforts,” Miami-Dade Fire Chief Albert Cominsky said at a press conference several hours before the remaining wing of the residential high rise came tumbling down.
During the demolition, a loud rat-at-tat of explosions echoed from the structure. Then the building began to fall, one floor after another, cascading into an explosion of dust. Plumes billowed into the air, as crowds watched the scene from afar.
“It was picture perfect. Exactly what we were told would happen,” Levine Cava said in an interview shortly after the demolition.
Levine Cava expressed relief that the search for victims can now continue, after being suspended on Saturday so workers could begin rigging the damaged but still-upright portion of the the partly-collapsed tower with explosives — a precarious operation that could have caused the structure to fail.
“I feel relief because this building was unstable. The building was hampering our search efforts,” Levine Cava said.
Some residents had pleaded to return to their homes one last time to retrieve belongings left in haste, but were denied. Others wondered about the pets left behind, even though officials said they found no signs of animals after making three final sweeps, including the use of drones to peer into the abandoned structure.
Read:Collapse survivors escaped with their lives, but little else
Approaching Tropical Storm Elsa has added urgency to the demolition plans with forecasts suggesting there could be strong winds in the area by Monday. President Joe Biden declared a state of emergency in Florida because of the storm, making federal aid possible.
The latest forecasts have moved the storm westward, mostly sparing South Florida, but National Hurricane Center meteorologist Robert Molleda said the area could still feel effects.
“We’re expecting primarily tropical storm force gusts,” Molleda said, referring to gusts above 40 mph (64 kph).
The decision to demolish the remnants of the Surfside building came after concerns mounted that the damaged structure was at risk of falling, endangering the crews below and preventing them from operating in some areas. Parts of the remaining building shifted on Thursday, prompting a 15-hour suspension in the work.
Authorities had gone door-to-door to advise nearby residents of the timing of the demolition, and to ask them to keep windows closed. They were told to stay inside until two hours after the blast to avoid the dust raised by the implosion.
The method used for Sunday night’s demolition is called “energetic felling,” which uses small detonation devices and relies on the force of gravity. Levine Cava, speaking ahead of the demolition, said that should bring the building down in place, containing the collapse to the immediate surroundings so as to minimally disturb the existing mound of debris — where scores of people are believed to be trapped.
Officials used tarps to visually mark the search area, in case new debris scattered unexpectedly.
Read:Latest victims in condo tower collapse include 2 children
State officials said they hired the BG Group, a general contractor based in Delray Beach, Florida, to lead the demolition. They did not immediately respond to an inquiry about how the firm was selected, but a contract for the project calls for the state to pay the company $935,000.
A spokesperson for the state’s Division of Emergency Management said the company subcontracted with Maryland-based Controlled Demolition Inc., which experts say is among only a handful of companies in the U.S. that demolishes structures using explosives. The company was supposed to place explosives on the basement and lobby levels of the still-standing structure, according to the contract for the work.
CDI is “probably one of the best” in the industry, said Steve Schwartz, a member of the National Demolition Association’s board of directors. He described the company’s president and owner, Mark Loizeaux, as “cool, calm and collected.”
In implosions — using explosives to have a building fall in on itself — the charges are generally set off in rapid succession over a matter of seconds, said Scott Homrich, who heads the National Demolition Association and runs his own demolition company in Detroit, Michigan. Setting the explosives off at intervals serves to break up the building at the same time it’s coming down.
Indonesia seeks more oxygen for COVID-19 sick amid shortage
Parts of Indonesia lack oxygen supplies as the number of critically ill COVID-19 patients who need it increases, the nation’s pandemic response leader said Monday, after dozens of sick people died at a public hospital that ran out of its central supply.
“Due to an increase of three to four times the amount (of oxygen) needed, the distribution has been hampered,” said Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, the coordinating maritime affairs and investment minister.
Read:Vaccination 'most patriotic thing', COVID not yet finished: Biden
The government is asking oxygen producers to dedicate their full supply to medical needs and will import it if needed, Pandjaitan said at the virtual news conference.
This statement comes after Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikit said the government guaranteed oxygen supply for COVID-19 patients on June 26.
At least 63 COVID-19 patients died during treatment at Dr. Sardjito General Hospital in Yogyakarta city since Saturday — 33 of them during the outage of its central liquid oxygen supply even though the hospital switched to using oxygen cylinders during that period, hospital spokesman Banu Hermawan said.
“Their deteriorating condition contributed the most to their deaths,” Hermawan said.
Read:UAE becomes world’s most vaccinated nation against COVID-19: Bloomberg's Vaccine Tracker
The hospital’s central oxygen supply was operational again at 4:45 a.m. Sunday, after 15 tons of liquid oxygen were delivered. Medical oxygen comes in liquid and compressed forms.
Yogyakarta Gov. Sri Sultan Hamengkubuwono X said the hospitals needed more oxygen than they needed before because of the increasing number of COVID-19 patients in the province.
“We need more oxygen supply. But it does not mean there is no supply at all,” he said.
Indonesia, the world’s fourth-most populous country, has seen a rapid surge in COVID-19 cases in the last two weeks. The Health Ministry recorded 27,233 new cases with 555 deaths from the virus on Sunday. The country has recorded more than 2,284,000 cases, including 60,582 deaths.
Read:Europe in vaccination race against COVID-19′s delta variant
Pandjaitan said the incubation period means the number of people infected will continuously increase through mid-July.
“It can increase again in the future if we cannot be disciplined,” he said.
Japan searches for dozens missing in resort town mudslide
Rescue workers slogged through mud and debris Monday looking for dozens feared missing after a giant landslide ripped through a Japanese seaside resort town, killing at least three people.
Eighty people were still unaccounted for, according to Shizuoka prefectural disaster management official Takamichi Sugiyama. Officials were preparing to release their names in hopes of reaching some that might not have been caught in the landslide. Initially, 147 of those people were unreachable, but that number was revised downward after city officials confirmed some had safely evacuated or were away when the disaster struck, it said.
Read: 2 dead, 20 missing after mudslide rips through Japan town
The disaster is an added trial as authorities prepare for the Tokyo Olympics, due to start in less than three weeks, while Japan is still in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
At least 20 were initially described as missing. Adding to confusion over casualties is that Atami is a vacation city, with many apartments and homes unoccupied for long parts of the year, their listed residents living in other places.
Others may be away visiting relatives or friends or not answering the phone, officials said. They hope to get in touch with more of those unaccounted for on Monday.
The landslide occurred Saturday after several days of heavy rains. Witnesses heard a giant roar as a small stream turned into a torrent, carrying black mud, trees, rocks and debris from buildings.
Bystanders were heard gasping in horror on cell phone videos taken as it happened.
Like many seaside and mountain towns in Japan, Atami is built on steep hillsides, its roads winding through bits of forest and heavy vegetation. With other parts of Japan expecting heavy rains in what is known as Japan’s rainy season, authorities elsewhere were also surveying hillsides. NHK carried a program Monday about risk factors and warning signs that might precede a landslide.
Three coast guard ships, and six military drones were backing up the hundreds of troops, firefighters and other rescue workers toiling in the rain and fog in search of possible survivors.
Read: It’s Olympic month for Japan
The mudslide struck Atami’s Izusan neighborhood, known for its hot springs, a shrine and shopping streets. Atami is about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southwest of Tokyo.
Naoto Date, an actor who happened to be visiting the Izusan area after a filming session, woke up to sirens in the neighborhood when he was in his house, which is next to his mother’s. Both of them were safe, but he made sure his mother walked to a nearby community center to evacuate, and he called all his friends and schoolmates and made sure they’d survived.
“I grew up here and my classmates and friends live here. I’m so sad to see my neighborhood where I used to play with my friends is now destroyed,” Date told The Associated Press in a video interview from his home in Atami.
So far, Date said his friends all had safely evacuated, and his mother moved to a hotel in a safer location. Date, who lives in Tokyo, said he was staying away from evacuation centers due to concern about the coronavirus.
Even though his house was located in a hazard area, he said he never imagined it would be hit by a disaster.
“I used to take it not so seriously and I regret that,” he said. He filmed scenes in his neighborhood with muddy water gushing down and rescuers wading through knee-deep mud.
He also went to the sea where toppled cars were floating with debris from destroyed homes. “Many people saw their homes and belongings and everything washed away. They won’t be able to return home, and it must require an unimaginable effort to recover.”
Three people had been found dead as of early Monday, Fire and Disaster Management Agency and local officials said. Twenty-three people stranded by the mudslide were rescued, including three who were injured.
Read: Companies give vaccines to workers, boosting Japan’s rollout
Shizuoka’s governor, Heita Kawakatsu told a news conference Sunday that land development upstream may have been a factor in the mudslide. Citing a preliminary examination by drone, Kawakatsu said massive amounts of soil that had been heaped up in the construction area had all washed down.
Kawakatsu said he will investigate the land development. Media reports said a planned housing development was abandoned after its operator ran into financial problems.
Vaccination 'most patriotic thing', COVID not yet finished: Biden
Calling a vaccination “the most patriotic thing you can do,” President Joe Biden on Sunday mixed the nation’s birthday party with a celebration of freedom from the worst of the pandemic. He tempered the strides against COVID-19 with a warning that the fight against the virus wasn’t over.
“Today, all across this nation, we can say with confidence: America is coming back together,” Biden declared as he hosted more than 1,000 service members, first responders and other guests for a July Fourth celebration on the South Lawn of the White House.
Read: Biden urges shots for young adults as variant concern grows
For Biden it was a long-awaited opportunity to highlight the success of the vaccination campaign he championed. The event was the largest yet of his presidency, the clearest indication yet that the U.S. had moved into a new phase of virus response. Shifting from a national emergency to a localized crisis of individual responsibility, the nation also moved from vaccinating Americans to promoting global health.
“This year the Fourth of July is a day of special celebration, for we’re emerging from the darkness of a year of pandemic and isolation, a year of pain fear and heartbreaking loss,” the president said before fireworks lit up the sky over the National Mall.
Noting the lockdowns that shuttered businesses, put millions out of work and separated untold numbers of families, Biden said: “Today we’re closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus. That’s not to say the battle against COVID-19 is over. We’ve got a lot more work to do.”
Biden wanted all Americans to celebrate, too, after enduring 16 months of disruption in the pandemic and more than 605,000 deaths. The White House encouraged gatherings and fireworks displays all around the country to mark — as though ripped from a Hollywood script — the nation’s “independence” from the virus.
And there was much to cheer: Cases and deaths from COVID-19 were at or near record lows since the outbreak began, thanks to the robust U.S. vaccination program. Businesses and restaurants were open, hiring was picking up and travel was getting closer to pre-pandemic levels.
However, Biden’s optimism was measured for good reason. The vaccination goal he had set with great fanfare for July Fourth — 70% of the adult population vaccinated — fell short at 67%, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More concerning to officials was the gap between heavily vaccinated communities where the virus was dying out and lesser-vaccinated ones where a more infectious variant of the virus was already taking hold.
Read: Biden promotes milestone of 300M vaccine shots in 150 days
More than 200 Americans still die each day from COVID-19, and tens of millions have chosen not to get the lifesaving vaccines.
“If you’ve had the vaccine, you’re doing great,” said Dr. Mati Hlatshwayo Davis, an infectious disease physician at the John Cochran VA Medical Center and St. Louis Board of Health. “If you haven’t had the vaccine, you should be alarmed and that’s just the bottom line, there’s no easy way to cut it.”
“But that doesn’t take away from the fact that this country is in a significantly better place,” she said.
Still, about 1,000 counties have a vaccination rate below 30%, and the federal government is warning that they could become the next hot spots as virus restrictions ease.
The administration was sending “surge” teams to Colorado and Missouri. Additional squads of infectious disease experts, public health professionals and doctors and nurses were getting ready to assist in additional locations with a combination of low vaccination rates and rising cases.
Overall, the vastly improved American landscape stood in stark contrast with much of the rest of the world, where there remained vast vaccine deserts and wide community spread that could open the door to even more dangerous variants. The Biden administration was increasingly turning the federal response to the complicated logistics of sending excess U.S. vaccines abroad in an effort to assist other nations in beating back the pandemic.
With U.S. demand for vaccines falling even as they have been widely available for months, and as governments and businesses dangled an array of incentives at Americans to get a shot, officials were increasingly emphasizing that the consequences of disease now largely reflect the individual choices of those who are not yet vaccinated.
“The suffering and loss we are now seeing is nearly entirely avoidable,” said the CDC’s director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky.
When asked about the potential risks of holding gatherings around July Fourth in areas where there are large pockets of unvaccinated individuals, White House press secretary Jen Psaki had countered that “if individuals are vaccinated in those areas, then they are protected.”
The cookout and fireworks viewing at the South Lawn was “being done in the right way,” White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients said in television interviews, and “consistent” with CDC guidelines. The White House was not requiring vaccinations but was asking guests to get a COVID-19 test and to wear a mask if they are not fully vaccinated.
“For as much work there still is to do, it’s so important to celebrate the victories,” Davis said. “I’m OK with us having those pockets of joy and celebration as long as we still wake up the next day and continue to go to work and prioritize equity in vaccine distribution.”
Florida Collapse: Demolition of condominium set; rescue work to resume after
The precarious, still-standing portion of a collapsed South Florida condo building was rigged with explosive charges and set for demolition overnight, Miami-Dade County officials said late Sunday. The work has suspended the search-and-rescue mission, but officials said it will open up new areas for rescue teams to explore.
Rescuers will await the “all-clear” after the demolition and then immediately dive back into the task of trying to locate any survivors buried under the rubble, County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said. Officials had previously said that the search could resume from 15 minutes to an hour after the detonation.
Read: Collapse survivors escaped with their lives, but little else
“We are standing by. We are ready to go in, no matter the time of night,” Levine Cava told a news conference Sunday night.
No one has been rescued alive since the first hours after the June 24 collapse.
Rescuers are hoping the demolition will give them access for the first time to parts of the garage area that are a focus of interest, Miami-Dade Assistant Fire Chief Raide Jadallah has said. That could give a clearer picture of voids that may exist in the rubble and could possibly harbor survivors.
The decision to demolish the Surfside building came after concerns mounted that the damaged structure was at risk of falling, endangering the crews below and preventing them from operating in some areas. Parts of the remaining building shifted on Thursday, prompting a 15-hour suspension in the work. An approaching storm added urgency to the concerns.
Read: Latest victims in condo tower collapse include 2 children
“I truly believe ... that the family members recognize and appreciate that we are proceeding in the best possible fashion to allow us to do the search that we need to do,” Levine Cava said.
Jadallah told family members Sunday afternoon that the demolition had been scheduled for between 10 p.m. Sunday and 3 a.m. Monday, barring any last-minute glitch such as someone straying into the restricted zone around the building. Levine Cava confirmed that time frame.
The mayor said residents in the area were being told to stay inside until two hours after the blast to avoid the dust raised by the explosion. Local authorities were going door to door to advise them of the timing, and to ask them to keep windows closed.
Responding to concerns of missing pets, Levine Cava said she had made it “a priority since Day 1 to do absolutely everything possible to search for every animal.”
She said Miami-Dade fire rescue team members had conducted three full sweeps of Champlain Towers South, including searching in closets and under beds, but “the latest information we have is that there are no animals remaining in the building.”
The search at the Surfside building has been suspended since Saturday afternoon so workers could begin the drilling work and lay the explosives. Jadallah said the suspension was necessary because the drilling could cause the structure to fail, but a family member could be heard calling the delay “devastating.”
So far, rescuers have recovered the remains of 24 people, with 121 still missing. Many others barely escaped. The Miami-Dade Police Department on Saturday night added Graciela Cattarossi, 48, and Gonzalo Torre, 81, to the list of those confirmed dead.
Approaching Tropical Storm Elsa has added urgency to the demolition plans with forecasts suggesting there could be strong winds in the area by Monday. The latest forecasts have moved the storm westward, mostly sparing South Florida, but National Hurricane Center meteorologist Robert Molleda said the area could still feel effects.
“We’re expecting primarily tropical storm force gusts,” Molleda said, referring to gusts above 40 mph (64 kph).
The detonation will aim to bring the remaining portion of the building straight down and toward the street side, away from the existing pile of debris, Jadallah said.
The method of demolition is called “energetic felling,” which uses small detonation devices and relies on the force of gravity. Levine Cava said that should bring the building down in place, containing the collapse to the immediate surroundings.
State officials said they hired the BG Group, a general contractor based in Delray Beach, Florida, to lead the demolition. They did not immediately respond to an inquiry about how the firm was selected, but a contract for the projects calls for the state to pay the company $935,000.
Read: 'Excruciating:' Florida collapse search stretches to Day 6
A spokesperson for the state’s Division of Emergency Management said the company is subcontracting with Maryland-based Controlled Demolition Inc., which experts say is among only a handful of companies in the U.S. that demolishes structures using explosives. The company was supposed to place explosives on the basement and lobby levels of the still-standing structure, according to the contract for the work.
CDI is “probably one of the best” in the industry, said Steve Schwartz, a member of the National Demolition Association’s board of directors. He described the company’s president and owner, Mark Loizeaux, as “cool, calm and collected.”
In implosions — using explosives to have a building fall in on itself — the charges are generally set off in rapid succession over a matter of seconds, said Scott Homrich, who heads the National Demolition Association and runs his own demolition company in Detroit, Michigan. Setting the explosives off at intervals serves to break up the building at the same time it’s coming down.
Officials acknowledged that the tragedy is continuing to unfold during the July 4th holiday.
“This July 4 we’re reminded that patriotism isn’t just about loyalty to country,” said Levine Cava. “It’s about loyalty to one another — to our communities, to those in need whose names or stories we may not know ever, but to whom we are connected by compassion and by resilience.”
UAE becomes world’s most vaccinated nation against COVID-19: Bloomberg's Vaccine Tracker
The United Arab Emirates leads the world, with enough vaccinations to cover 72.1 percent of its population and has overtaken Seychelles to become the world's most vaccinated nation, according to Bloomberg's Vaccine Tracker.
The UAE has so far administered 15.5 million doses, enough to cover 72.1 percent of its population based on a two-dose regimen. The UAE tests more people per capita than most nations and has one of the lowest fatality rates in the world.
In a statement, Abdul Rahman bin Mohammad bin Nasser Al Owais, Minister of Health and Prevention, said that this new global achievement adds to the country’s success and record of achievements in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that it is an international recognition of the success of the National Vaccination Campaign, launched by the UAE, which is continuing to achieve its objectives.
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"The proactive vision of the country’s leadership enabled us to address the challenges posed by COVID-19. Today, the UAE is the world’s most vaccinated country," he added. He also highlighted the efforts of the national health sector, which is keen to provide diverse types of vaccines to all segments of the community, as well as the community's awareness about the importance of being vaccinated.
Al Owais stressed that the National Vaccination Campaign is continuing in all emirates of the country, along with the adherence to relevant precautionary measures, which represent the foundations of the national efforts aimed at achieving recovery and ensuring the return to normalcy.
Medical teams and front-liners are working as one team, upon the directives of the UAE’s leadership, to achieve recovery from the pandemic, he added, affirming that the UAE is a unique global model of combating the COVID-19 pandemic, and has received widespread international appreciation, underscoring the community’s confidence in the procedures adopted by the UAE Government.
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He also noted the importance of the community’s awareness of, and adherence to, precautionary measures to maintain the gains achieved by the country and protect its members.
Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker is the most up-to-date and comprehensive tally of vaccinations around the globe.
Car crash kills 32 in southern Mozambique
At least 32 people were killed and dozens more were injured in a road accident on Saturday night in Maputo Province, southern Mozambique, Radio Mozambique (RM) reported on Sunday.
The crash, involving one cargo truck and a bus, took place on national EN1 road at the Maluana administrative post in the district of Manhica, which is about 80 kilometers away from the capital city Maputo, the report quoted the Administrator of Manhica Cristina Mafumo as saying.
"The driver of the bus, who survived, made an irregular overtaking at high speed and could not control his vehicle, (which ended up) colliding with other cars," Mafumo told RM.
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Thirty-one people, including a two-year-old child, died on the spot and the road was awash with blood. The 32nd victim, a 38-year-old female, lost her life at the Manhica District Hospital, where the wounded were taken to, among whom several are still in critical condition, says the report.
Following the accident, the Police Commander-General Bernardino Rafael went to the scene on Sunday morning, accompanied by the Governor of Maputo Province Julio Jose Parruque, where they seek to find out what happened, according to the report.
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Rafael lamented the loss of so many lives and said that it is necessary to consider the banning of the transport company Nhacale, which the passenger bus belongs to and had already been suspended once in 2017, the report says.
Philippine military plane crashes, 45 dead, 49 rescued
A Philippine air force C-130 aircraft carrying combat troops assigned to fight Muslim militants crashed and exploded while landing in the south Sunday, killing at least 42 army soldiers on board and three civilians on the ground in one of the worst disasters in the air force’s history.
At least 49 other soldiers were rescued with injuries and survived the fiery noontime crash into a coconut grove outside the Jolo airport in Sulu province, including some who managed to jump off the aircraft before it exploded and was gutted by fire, military officials said. Three of seven villagers who were hit on the ground died.
The aircraft had 96 people on board, including three pilots and five crew while the rest were army personnel, the military said, adding only five soldiers remained unaccounted for late Sunday. The pilots survived but were seriously injured, officials said.
The Lockheed C-130 Hercules was one of two ex-U.S. Air Force aircraft handed over to the Philippines as part of military assistance this year.
The aircraft originally took off from Manila with only a few passengers, including a two-star army general, Romeo Brawner Jr., who disembarked with his wife and three children in Cagayan de Oro city, where he’s set to become the new military regional commander on Monday. The army troops then boarded the C-130 in Cagayan de Oro for the flight to Sulu.
Brawner said he was stunned to learn that the plane he’d just flown on had crashed.
“We’re very thankful that we were spared, but extremely sad that so many lost their lives,” Brawner told The Associated Press.
Officials said the injured personnel were brought to a hospital in Sulu or flown to nearby Zamboanga city, and troops were continuing to search for the missing. “A number of soldiers were seen jumping out of the aircraft before it hit the ground, sparing them from the explosion caused by the crash,” a military statement said, citing witnesses.
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Initial pictures released by the military showed the tail section of the cargo plane relatively intact. The other parts of the plane were burned or scattered in pieces in a clearing surrounded by coconut trees. Soldiers and other rescuers with stretchers were seen dashing to and from the smoke-shrouded crash site, where a dark gray smoke billowed shortly after impact.
The plane was transporting troops, many of them new soldiers who had just undergone basic training, from the southern Cagayan de Oro city for deployment in Sulu, officials said.
“They were supposed to join us in our fight against terrorism,” Sulu military commander Maj. Gen. William Gonzales said. Government forces have been battling Abu Sayyaf militants in the predominantly Muslim province of Sulu for decades.
It was not immediately clear what caused the crash. Regional military commander Lt. Gen. Corleto Vinluan said it was unlikely that the aircraft took hostile fire, and cited witnesses as saying that it appeared to have overshot the runway then crashed on the periphery of the airport.
Military chief of staff Gen. Cirilito Sobejana told reporters that “the plane missed the runway and it was trying to regain power but failed and crashed.”
An air force official told The AP that the Jolo runway is shorter than most others in the country, making it more difficult for pilots to adjust if an aircraft misses the landing spot. The official, who has flown military aircraft to and from Jolo several times, spoke on condition of anonymity because of a lack of authority to speak publicly.
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Initial pictures showed that the weather was apparently fine in Sulu, although other parts of the Philippines were experiencing rains due to an approaching tropical depression. The airport in Sulu’s main town of Jolo is located a few kilometers (miles) from a mountainous area where troops have battled Abu Sayyaf militants. Some militants have aligned themselves with the Islamic State group.
The U.S. and the Philippines have separately blacklisted Abu Sayyaf as a terrorist organization for bombings, ransom kidnappings and beheadings. It’s been considerably weakened by years of government offensives but remains a threat.
President Rodrigo Duterte expanded the military presence in Sulu to a full division in late 2018, deploying hundreds of additional troops, air force aircraft and other combat equipment after vowing to wipe out Abu Sayyaf and allied foreign and local militants.
Government forces at the time were pursuing Muslim armed groups a year after quelling the five-month siege of southern Marawi city by hundreds of militants linked to the Islamic State group. More than 1,000 people, mostly militants and long-elusive Abu Sayyaf commanders, were killed in months of intense air and ground assaults.
Sunday’s crash comes as the limited number of military aircraft has been further strained, as the air force helped transport medical supplies, vaccines and protective equipment to far-flung island provinces amid spikes in COVID-19 infections.
The Philippine air force has a history of tragic disasters. One of its aircraft crashed in a rice field north of Manila in 1971, killing 40 military personnel. A recently delivered S-701 Blackhawk helicopter crashed more than a week ago near Clark freeport, a former U.S. air base, killing all six air force personnel on board.
The Philippine government has struggled for years to modernize its military, one of Asia’s least equipped, as it dealt with decades-long Muslim and communist insurgencies and territorial rifts with China and other claimant countries in the South China Sea.