World
US envoy hopes N. Korea responds positively on offered talks
President Joe Biden’s special envoy for North Korea said Monday he hopes to see a positive reaction from the North soon on U.S. offers for talks after the North Korean leader ordered officials to prepare for both dialogue and confrontation.
Read:North Korea's Kim vows to be ready for confrontation with US
Sung Kim, Biden’s special representative for North Korea, is in Seoul to speak with South Korean and Japanese officials about the U.S.’s stalled diplomacy with the North over its nuclear program and U.S.-led sanctions.
The trilateral talks followed a North Korean political conference last week where leader Kim Jong Un called for stronger efforts to improve his nation’s economy, further battered last year by pandemic border closures and now facing worsening food shortages.
After his meeting with senior South Korean diplomat Noh Kyu-duk, the U.S. envoy Sung Kim said the allies took note of the North Korean leader’s comments and are hoping the North will give a “positive response to our proposal for a meeting soon.”
Read:State media: Kim has plans to stabilize N. Korean economy
Sung Kim spoke later with Noh and Japanese nuclear envoy Takehiro Funakoshi over the stalled push to resolve the nuclear standoff with North Korea. “South Korea and the U.S will maintain close cooperation to keep the situation in the Korean Peninsula stable and find a way to resume the dialogue with North Korea as soon as possible,” Sung Kim told reporters.
North Korea’s economic setbacks followed the collapse of Kim Jong Un’s ambitious summitry with then-President Donald Trump in 2019, when the Americans rejected the North Koreans’ demands for major sanctions relief in exchange for a partial surrender of their nuclear capabilities.
Kim Jong Un in recent political speeches has threatened to bolster his nuclear deterrent and claimed that the fate of diplomacy and bilateral relations depends on whether Washington abandons what he calls hostile policies.
Read: NKorean leader calls for meeting to review battered economy
U.S. officials have suggested Biden would take the middle ground between Trump’s direct dealings with Kim and President Barack Obama’s policy of “strategic patience.” But some experts say the North likely must take concrete steps toward denuclearization before the Biden administration would ease any sanctions.
Companies give vaccines to workers, boosting Japan’s rollout
Thousands of Japanese companies began distributing COVID-19 vaccines to workers and their families Monday in an employer-led drive reaching more than 13 million people that aims to rev up the nation’s slow vaccine rollout.
Yuka Daimaru, among the Suntory workers getting the shot on a sprawling office floor, was visibly relieved after spending more than a year worrying about the coronavirus.
“I was nervous, but it didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would,” she said. “Now I don’t have to worry as much on commuter trains or at meetings.”
Read: China's comical picture 'The Last G-7' raps Japan's Fukushima water
The Tokyo-based beverage maker plans to inoculate 51,500 people, including part-time workers and employees’ families, with the Moderna vaccine.
About 3,500 companies have signed up for the free vaccines, and that number is growing. The companies must present a plan to inoculate at least 1,000 people per site. But they decide whom to include, such as families, affiliate companies and suppliers.
Universities are also eligible. Smaller companies can apply through organizations, such as the local merchant association, so ideally no one falls through the cracks, according to the health ministry.
Among those taking part are major automaker Toyota Motor Corp., planning to vaccinate 80,000 people at its plants and offices.
Read:Japan’s vaccine push ahead of Olympics looks to be too late
Fast Retailing, behind the Uniqlo clothing chain, is inoculating 18,500 people, including part-timers and cleaning and cafeteria staff, starting July 1.
Online retailer Rakuten said it’s vaccinating 60,000 workers and their families.
Company applications for the vaccines are accepted through February 2022.
Japan is relying totally on imported vaccines for a campaign that started in February with medical professionals. Only about 6% of Japanese are fully vaccinated. Japan has had more than 14,000 deaths from COVID-19.
Local governments and Japan’s self-defense forces are also leading the vaccination campaign, but the employer-led efforts are helping accelerate the pace.
Read:Japan opens mass vaccination centers 2 months before Games
Daisuke Sen, a human resources senior general manager at Suntory Holdings, said the vaccinations at his company will be completed by the end of August.
The first day for the vaccinations came after weeks of work, especially scrambling to find doctors and nurses to carry out the shots, he said.
“Getting here means so much for me,” he said.
Biden and Congress face a summer grind to create legislation
Until recently, the act of governing seemed to happen at the speed of presidential tweets. But now President Joe Biden is settling in for what appears will be a long, summer slog of legislating.
Congress is hunkered down, the House and Senate grinding through a monthslong stretch, lawmakers trying to draft Biden’s big infrastructure ideas into bills that could actually be signed into law. Perhaps not since the drafting of the Affordable Care Act more than a decade ago has Washington tried a legislative lift as heavy.
It’s going to take a while.
Read: Biden promotes milestone of 300M vaccine shots in 150 days
“Passing legislation is not a made-for-TV movie,” said Phil Schiliro, a former legislative affairs director at the Obama White House and veteran of congressional battles, including over the health care law.
Biden appears comfortable in this space, embarked on an agenda in Congress that’s rooted in his top legislative priority — the $4 trillion “build back better” investments now being shaped as his American Jobs and American Families plans.
To land the bills on his desk, the president is relying on an old-school legislative process that can feel out of step with today’s fast-moving political cycles and hopes for quick payoffs. Democrats are anxious it is taking too long and he is wasting precious time negotiating with Republicans, but Biden seems to like the laborious art of legislating.
On Monday, Biden is expected to launch another week of engagement with members of both parties, and the White House is likely at some point to hear from a bipartisan group of senators working on a scaled-back $1 trillion plan as an alternative.
At the same time, the administration is pushing ahead with the president’s own, more sweeping proposals being developed in the House and Senate budget committees, tallying as much as $6 trillion, under a process that could enable Democrats to pass it on their own. Initial votes are being eyed for late July.
“This is how negotiations work,” White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said during last week’s twists and turns of the infrastructure negotiations.
“We continue to work closely with Democrats of all views — as well as Republicans — on the path forward. There are many possible avenues to getting this done, and we are optimistic about our chances,” Bates said.
During his administration, President Donald Trump had the full sweep of Republican control of the House and Senate for the first two years of his tenure, but the limits of legislating quickly became clear.
Trump tended to govern by tweet, rather than the more traditional legislative process, bursting out with policy ideas and official administrative positions often at odds with his party in Congress.
Read:Biden trip takeaways: Respect, optimism, some skepticism
The Trump-era results were mixed, and Republicans were unable to clinch their top legislative priority, repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act. But they went on to secure a sizable achievement when Trump signed the GOP tax cuts into law at the end of 2017.
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who is a leader of today’s bipartisan negotiations, said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Trump, too, proposed an infrastructure package. If Biden sticks with the bipartisan talks he could not only fulfill a campaign promise but “keep his pledge of doing things across the aisle and getting something done,” Portman said.
“Everybody wants to do infrastructure,” he said.
Even as Biden reaches for a bipartisan deal, skeptical Democrats are wary of a repeat of 2009, when Barack Obama was president and they spent months negotiating the details of the Affordable Care Act with Republicans. Eventually Democrats passed the package that became known as “Obamacare” on their own.
Lawmakers also have been energized by the speed at which Congress was able to approve COVID-19 relief — the massive CARES Act at the start of the pandemic in 2020 and more recently Biden’s American Rescue Plan in February. They are eager for swift action on these next proposals.
Biden’s strategy this time is a two-part approach. He is trying to secure a bipartisan deal on roads, bridges and broadband — the more traditional types of infrastructure — while also pursuing the broader Democratic priorities package.
The budget committees are preparing some $6 trillion in spending on what the White House calls the human infrastructure of Americans’ lives with child care centers, community colleges and elder care in Biden’s plans, adding in Democrats’ other long-running ideas. Among them, expanding Medicare for seniors with vision, hearing and dental services, and lowering the eligibility age to 60.
Regardless of whether Biden succeeds or fails in the on-again-off-again talks with Republicans, Democrats will press on with their own massive package, the president at least having showed he tried.
“There are two kinds of negotiation,” said Democrat Barney Frank, the former congressman and committee chairman from Massachusetts who was central to many Obama-era legislative battles. “One that will be successful and give you a good bill,” he said, and the other that will be unsuccessful, but will at least “take away any stigma of being partisan.”
Read:Biden abroad: Pitching America to welcoming if wary allies
Congress is eyeing an end-of-summer deadline to launch the budget reconciliation process, which would allow passage of the bills on majority votes, notably in the now split 50-50 Senate where 60 votes are typically required to advance legislation.
After that, the House and Senate would prepare the actual packages for votes in fall.
As the process drags on, it’s a reminder that it took more than a year in Congress to pass Affordable Care Act, which was signed into law in spring 2010.
“Tweets are so easy,” Schiliro said. “Legislating is different from that, so to develop good legislation takes time.”
Witness tells of horror as truck rams into Arizona bike race
Bicyclist Tony Quinones had only just shaken hands with a fellow cyclist and wished him good luck in this weekend’s community race in an Arizona mountain town when a truck sped into a crowd of bike riders.
Suddenly, Quinones said in an interview Sunday, he was “watching bodies going on top of the hood, bodies going to the left, bodies going to the right” about six minutes after the race had started.
The sounds of breaking and smashing as the truck plowed through the cyclists on Saturday was quickly replaced by their groans of pain — including those of the cyclist Quinones had just met.
Read:Driver rams cyclists in Arizona race, critically injuring 6
Authorities in the small city of Show Low said the unidentified 35-year-old male suspect fled the crash scene in the pickup and was shot and wounded by officers a short time later.
Of the seven cyclists hospitalized, six were in critical condition, and one was in stable condition on Sunday, police said in a statement. The suspect, described as a local resident, was in stable condition, police said.
Quinones, 55, said the man he had met before the race was a fellow New Mexican and that blood was flowing from his head and his nose after the pickup hit him.
“He’s got a compound fracture, and I’m just saying, ‘Hey man keep breathing, keep breathing. Help’s on its way. Hey man, you’re going to be OK.’” Quinones said. “I mean, that’s just insane. It’s not just one. There’s like six, seven, eight other guys like who are all around doing the same thing.”
Authorities were trying to determine why the man driving the truck rammed into the group of cyclists participating in the annual 58-mile (93-kilometer) Bike the Bluff race that drew hundreds of participants. He was shot by police nearby outside a hardware store in Show Low, which is about a three-hour drive northeast of Phoenix.
Read: Driver crashes into crowd at Pride parade in Florida; 1 dead
“We don’t know the motivation,” said Show Low city spokeswoman Grace Payne.
Quinones said some cyclists wondered at first whether the driver of the truck had fallen asleep at the wheel. But Quinones said he saw the man accelerate toward the cyclists.
“He went right at us,” he said.
Witnesses said helmets, shoes and crumpled and broken bicycles were strewn across the street after the crash, and a tire was wedged into the grill of the truck that rammed the cyclists at about 7:25 a.m. in downtown Show Low.
“I just remember, you know, this is surreal,” Quinones said. “I can’t believe I just shook this guy’s hand and we wished each other luck, and now I’m watching him with blood all over the place. And not a little blood. It wasn’t trickling out. There’s like a pool of blood.”
The truck had damage to its top and sides and a bullet hole in a window.
Read:Bangladeshi Lyft driver killed in NYC crash
“This has been a horrible event,” police spokeswoman Kristine Sleighter said in a statement. “Our community is shocked at this incident and our hearts and prayers are with the injured and their families at this time.”
After the truck’s driver hit a telephone pole, cyclists ran up to the truck and started pounding on the windows, screaming at the driver to get out. Instead of stopping, Quinones said the driver hit the accelerator and backed out, drove down the road, made a U-turn and then headed back toward the cyclists but did not hit them again and drove away.
Payne said the driver did not comply when officers tried to arrest him, but the circumstances of the shooting were not immediately made public.
Vaccine hesitancy puts India’s gains against virus at risk
In Jamsoti, a village tucked deep inside India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, the common refrain among the villagers is that the coronavirus spreads only in cities. The deadly infection, they believe, does not exist in villages.
So when a team of health workers recently approached Manju Kol to get vaccinated, she locked up her house, gathered her children and ran to the nearby forest.
The family hid there for hours and returned only when the workers left in the evening.
“I would rather die than take the vaccine,” said Kol.
Read:Virus surge claims brightest minds at Indian universities
A deadly surge of coronavirus infections that ripped through India in April and May, killing more than 180,000, has tapered off and new cases have declined. But the relief could be fleeting as a significant amount of the population is still reluctant to get the shots. This has alarmed health experts who say vaccine hesitancy, particularly in India’s vast hinterlands, could put the country’s fragile gains against COVID-19 at risk.
“Vaccine hesitancy poses a risk to ending the pandemic in India,” said retired virologist and pediatrician Dr. T. Jacob John. “The more the virus circulates, the more it can mutate into dangerous new variants that can undermine vaccines.”
Delivering vaccines in the world’s second-most populous country was always going to be challenging. Even though India did relatively well at the beginning of its mammoth vaccination drive, the campaign hit a snag almost immediately due to shortages and a complicated vaccine policy, exacerbating existing inequalities.
Only less than 5% of India’s people are fully immunized. Experts caution that by the end of the year, vaccination rates must go up significantly to protect most Indians from the virus that has so far already killed more than 386,000 people — a figure considered to be a vast undercount.
Starting Monday, every adult in India will be eligible for a shot paid for by the federal government. The new policy, announced last week, ends a complex system of buying and distributing vaccines that overburdened states and led to inequities in how the shots were handed out.
There is still widespread hesitancy fueled by misinformation and mistrust, particularly in rural areas where two-thirds of the country’s nearly 1.4 billion population lives.
Health workers face stiff resistance from people who believe that vaccines cause impotence, serious side effects and could even kill. Some simply say they do not need the shots because they’re immune to the coronavirus.
Rumors about jabs disrupting the menstruation cycle and reducing fertility have also contributed to fear and skewed the data in favor of men. In almost every Indian state, more men are getting vaccinated than women — and that gap is widening further every day.
Quashing such rumors and conspiracy theories is a tough order for many, particularly in India’s tribal-dominated districts that have recorded disproportionately lower vaccine coverage in comparison with other districts, according to official data.
Yogesh Kalkonde, a public health doctor in Gadchiroli, a tribal area in the western state of Maharashtra, said his district was overrun with the belief that the vaccine is more dangerous than the virus.
Some in the area have raised the untrue claim that the shots can cause infertility, Kalkonde said. Others simply question its effectiveness.
Read: How India is changing vaccine plan amid shortages
“We have to convince people, go door to door, and rely on people who have taken the vaccine to spread the word,” he said. “It’s an extremely slow process.”
There is some pushback. State governments have mounted aggressive awareness campaigns through posters and radio announcements to allay some of the anxiety and confusion. Some local administrations have started giving rides to vaccination centers, especially from remote villages. Volunteers are conducting door-to-door surveys and even small rallies to encourage people to get the jab.
For months, Vibha Singh, a government-appointed nurse, has gone door-to-door in the villages of Uttar Pradesh.
“People tell us to leave or they would beat us,” said Singh. “Sometimes they also throw stones and bricks at us.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other leaders have routinely spoken about the need to shun vaccine hesitancy, but health experts say more needs to be done.
“We need to explain it clearly to people, ideally through local trusted networks,” said K. Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India. He said state governments should bolster local self-help groups, village councils and ask local religious leaders to step in.
“It requires a conversation, not just top-down messaging,” he said.
Dr. Vinod K. Paul, head of the country’s COVID-19 task force, acknowledged the immediate need to address the problem but said public participation to dispel rumors and misinformation was important.
“It is the responsibility not only of the government but also the society as a whole to create such an environment in which an unfounded hesitancy is addressed,” said Paul.
Virologists and public health experts say eradicating doubts about the vaccine in rural India and inoculating people quickly should be of paramount importance since the majority of Indians live in the hinterlands. Already, urban dwellers are getting the shots much faster.
“If they are protected, much of India will be protected,” Reddy said of rural areas. “Their vulnerability to a sweeping pandemic is much, much more. So vaccinating them quickly must be a priority.”
Read:To launch J&J Covid shot in India, Biological E begins talks with govt lab to test vaccine
Not everyone is convinced.
When a team of health workers last week attempted to vaccinate Panna Lal, a resident of Sikanderpur village in Uttar Pradesh, they were met with an absolute refusal.
Lal even discouraged the rest of his family from getting the jab.
“The vaccine will not protect me,” the 56-year-old told the workers. “God has sent me here safely, and he will continue to protect me.”
Iran’s sole nuclear power plant undergoes emergency shutdown
Iran’s sole nuclear power plant has undergone an unexplained temporary emergency shutdown, the country’s state TV reported.
An official from the state electric company Tavanir, Gholamali Rakhshanimehr, said on a talk show that aired on Sunday that the Bushehr plant shutdown began on Saturday and would last “for three to four days.” Without elaborating, he said that power outages could result.
Read:Hard-line judiciary head wins Iran presidency in low turnout
This is the first time Iran has reported an emergency shutdown of the plant in the southern port city of Bushehr. It went online in 2011 with help from Russia. Iran is required to send spent fuel rods from the reactor back to Russia as a nuclear nonproliferation measure.
The report came as top diplomats said that further progress had been made at talks Sunday between Iran and global powers to try to restore a landmark 2015 agreement to contain Iranian nuclear development that was abandoned by the Trump administration. They said it was now up to the governments involved in the negotiations to make political decisions.
Earlier in the day, Tavanir released a statement saying that the Bushehr nuclear plant was being repaired, without offering further details. It said the repair work would take until Friday.
In March, nuclear official Mahmoud Jafari said the plant could stop working since Iran cannot procure parts and equipment for it from Russia due to banking sanctions imposed by the U.S. in 2018.
Read: Iran elects hard-liner Raisi as new president
Bushehr is fueled by uranium produced in Russia, not Iran, and is monitored by the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency. The IAEA acknowledged being aware of reports about the plant, but declined to comment.
Construction on the plant, on the coast of the northern reaches of the Persian Gulf, began under Iran’s Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in the mid-1970s. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the plant was repeatedly targeted in the Iran-Iraq war. Russia later completed construction of the facility.
The plant, which sits near active fault lines and was built to withstand powerful quakes, has been periodically shaken by temblors. There have been no significant earthquakes reported in the area in recent days.
Meanwhile, the European Union on Sunday chaired the final meeting in Vienna of the sixth round of talks between Russia, China, Germany, France, Britain and Iran.
Read:Apathy greets Iran presidential vote dominated by hard-liner
The nations involved in the negotiations have been trying to resolve the major outstanding issues on how to return the U.S. into the landmark nuclear agreement, which then-President Donald Trump pulled Washington out of unilaterally in 2018. Trump also restored and augmented sanctions to try to force Tehran into renegotiating the pact with more concessions.
The meeting was the first since Iran’s hard-line judiciary chief won a landslide victory in the country’s presidential election last Friday. Some diplomats expressed concern that the election of Iran’s incoming President Ebrahim Raisi could complicate a possible return to the nuclear agreement.
Fear shakes Mexico border city after violence leaves 18 dead
Fear has invaded the Mexican border city of Reynosa after gunmen in vehicles killed 14 people, including taxis drivers, workers and a nursing student, and security forces responded with operations that left four suspects dead.
While this city across the border from McAllen, Texas is used to cartel violence as a key trafficking point, the 14 victims in Saturday’s attacks appeared to be what Tamaulipas Gov. Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca called “innocent citizens” rather than members of one gang killed by a rival.
Local businessman Misael Chavarria Garza said many businesses closed early Saturday after the attacks and people were very scared as helicopters flew overhead. On Sunday, he said “the people were quiet as if nothing had happened, but with a feeling of anger because now crime has happened to innocent people.”
Read:Mexico City metro overpass collapses onto road; 20 dead
“It’s not fair,” said taxi driver Rene Guevara, adding that among the dead were two of his fellow taxi drivers whom he defended and said were not involved in crime.
The attacks took place in several neighborhoods in eastern Reynosa, according to the Tamaulipas state agency that coordinates security forces, and sparked a deployment of the military, National Guard and state police across the city. Images posted on social media showed bodies in the streets.
Authorities say they are investigating the attacks and haven’t provided a motive.
But the area’s criminal activity has long been dominated by the Gulf Cartel and there have been fractures within that group. Experts say there has been an internal struggle within the group since 2017 to control key territories for drug and human trafficking. Apparently, one cell from a nearby town may have entered Reynosa to carry out the attacks.
Olga Ruiz, whose 19-year-old brother Fernando Ruiz was killed by the gunmen, said her sibling was working as a plumber and bricklayer in a company owned by his stepfather to pay for his studies.
Read: Mexico tops 155,000 COVID-19 deaths, may be 3rd highest
“They killed him in cold blood, he and two of his companions,” said Olga Ruiz, adding that the gunmen arrived where her brother was fixing a drain.
“They heard the gunshots from afar and my stepfather told him: ‘son, you have to take shelter.’ So he asked permission to enter a house but my brother and his companions were only about to enter when the vehicles arrived,” Ruiz said. “They stopped in front of them and started to shoot.”
On Saturday, authorities detained a person who was transporting two apparently kidnapped women in the trunk of a car.
Security is one of the great challenges facing the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. He has assured Mexicans that he is fighting the root causes of the violence and since the beginning of his administration in December 2018, he has advocated “hugs, not bullets” in dealing with criminals. He also says he is fighting corruption to stop the infiltration of organized crime among authorities.
But the violence continues.
Read:Mexico's gang violence appears to rise during pandemic
“Criminal organizations must receive a clear, explicit and forceful signal from the Federal Government that there will be no room for impunity, nor tolerance for their reprehensible criminal behavior,” said García Cabeza de Vaca of the rival National Action Party. “In my government there will be no truce for the violent.”
But García Cabeza de Vaca himself is being investigated by the federal prosecutor’s office for organized crime and money laundering - accusations he says are part of plan by López Obrador’s government to attack him for being an opponent.
Tamaulipas - the state where the Zetas cartel arose and where the Gulf Cartel continues to operate - has seen several of its past governors from the Institutional Revolutionary Party accused of corruption and links to organized crime. One former governor, Tomás Yarrington, was extradited to the United States from Italy in 2018 on drug trafficking charges.
8 kids in youth van among the 13 lives lost to Claudette
Eight children in a van from a youth home for abused or neglected children were killed in a fiery multi-vehicle crash on a wet interstate that also killed a man and his baby in another vehicle, the most devastating blow from a tropical depression that claimed 13 lives in Alabama as it caused flash floods and spurred tornadoes that destroyed dozens of homes.
The crash happened Saturday about 35 miles (55 kilometers) south of Montgomery on Interstate 65 after vehicles likely hydroplaned on wet roads, said Butler County Coroner Wayne Garlock.
The van, containing children ages 4 to 17, belonged to the Tallapoosa County Girls Ranch, a youth home operated by the Alabama Sheriffs Association. Michael Smith, the youth ranches CEO, said the van was heading back to the ranch near Camp Hill, northeast of Montgomery, after a week at the beach in Gulf Shores. It caught fire after the wreck and Candice Gulley, the ranch director, was the van’s only survivor — pulled from the flames by a bystander.
Gulley remained hospitalized Sunday in Montgomery in serious but stable condition. “She’s going to survive her physical injuries,” Smith said. Two of the dead in the van were Gulley’s children, ages 4 and 16. Four others were ranch residents and two were guests, Smith said.
Read:Driver rams cyclists in Arizona race, critically injuring 6
“This is the worst tragedy I’ve been a part of in my life,” said Smith, who drove Sunday to the ranch to talk to the remaining residents, who had returned from Gulf Shores in a separate van and did not see the wreck.
“Words cannot explain what I saw,” Smith said of the accident site, which he visited Saturday. “We love these girls like they’re our own children.”
The crash also claimed the lives of two other people who were in a separate vehicle. Garlock identified them as 29-year-old Cody Fox and his 9-month-old daughter, Ariana, both of Marion County, Tennessee.
“He was a great guy and we’re really gonna miss him,” said Aaron Sanders, who worked with Fox at the emergency management agency in Marion County. He said Fox also ran a hot tub business with his father and doted on his daughter. “He just loved her to death and that was his life.”
Multiple people were also injured.
The National Transportation Safety Board tweeted that it was sending 10 investigators to the area Sunday to investigate the crash, photos of which showed at least four burned vehicles, including two large trucks. It said the inquiry would focus on vehicle technologies such as forward collision warning systems, fuel tank integrity and occupant survivability.
Meanwhile, a 24-year-old man and a 3-year-old boy were also killed Saturday when a tree fell on their house just outside the Tuscaloosa city limits, said Capt. Jack Kennedy of the Tuscaloosa Violent Crimes Unit. Makayla Ross, a 23-year-old Fort Payne woman, died Saturday after her car ran off the road into a swollen creek, DeKalb County Deputy Coroner Chris Thacker told WHNT-TV.
The deaths occurred as drenching rains from Tropical Depression Claudette pelted northern Alabama and Georgia late Saturday. As much as 12 inches (30 centimeters) of rain was reported earlier from Claudette along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Flash flood watches were posted Sunday for eastern Georgia, the southern two-thirds of South Carolina and the North Carolina coast. A tropical storm warning was in effect in North Carolina from the Little River Inlet to the town of Duck on the Outer Banks. A tropical storm watch was issued from South Santee River, South Carolina, to the Little River Inlet, forecasters said.
WBRC-TV reported that search efforts were also under way for a man believed to have fallen into the water during flash flooding in Birmingham. Crews were using boats to search Pebble Creek.
Garlock said the location of the multi-vehicle wreck is “notorious” for hydroplaning, as the northbound highway curves down a hill to a small creek. Traffic on that stretch of I-65 is usually filled with vacationers driving to and from Gulf of Mexico beaches on summer weekends.
Read:Driver crashes into crowd at Pride parade in Florida; 1 dead
“Butler County has had one of the most terrible traffic accidents,” county Sheriff Danny Bond wrote on Facebook.
The Tallapoosa County school system said counselors would be available Sunday at the 225-student Reeltown High School, where some of the ranch residents were students. Smith said the ranch, which is Christian-based, would likely have a memorial service later, asking for prayers as he began to cry.
A GoFundMe account was set up for Tallapoosa County Girls Ranch to help offset the costs of funeral expenses, medical costs for the injured and counseling for those impacted.
Gulley had worked with children for years, beginning when she and her husband were house parents at the ranch for seven years.
“During those years, there have been 74 girls that have come through our house and called us mom and dad,” she told the Opelika-Auburn News in August 2019. She said she then became a relief parent, working on fundraising and being involved in the community, before she became the ranch director.
“My heart goes out to the loved ones of all who perished,” Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said in a statement.
Claudette was beginning to re-strengthen late Sunday, with the National Hurricane Center reporting top winds at 35 mph (55 kph) in a nighttime advisory. The depression was expected to return to tropical storm status Monday over eastern North Carolina before heading out to sea in the Atlantic Ocean.
The center of Claudette’s disorganized circulation was located about 65 miles (100 kilometers) northeast of Columbia, South Carolina. It was moving east-northeast at 20 mph (31 kph), the National Hurricane Center said.
Aside from rainy weather, it seemed to be business as usual along North Carolina’s Outer Banks on Sunday.
At Ace Hardware in Avon, shift manager David Swartwood said they were preparing for whatever might come, but the overall sense was that it wouldn’t be that bad in that area. He said winds from the south don’t usually cause huge flooding problems, so “we don’t really anticipate any bad scenarios.”
“Everybody here has been through it many, many times, so we’re used to the drill,” he said. “We’ve been prepared.”
Read:Fierce Capitol attacks on police in newly released videos
For the hardware store, he said, that means having supplies like flashlights, batteries, tarps, generators, ropes and sandbags on hand. As of Sunday morning, there wasn’t a huge rush.
At Stack ’em High in Kill Devil Hills, a restaurant that specializes in pancakes, co-owner Dawn Kiousis said Sunday morning restaurant service was busy.
“We’re serving just like normal,” she said.
“You keep your eye on the weather and you prepare as much stuff in advance as you can,” she said. “Just know she’s gonna win. Mother Nature is going to do what she’s going to do, so you just prepare.”
Global hunger levels rise as conflict, climate shocks and Covid collide
The United Nations World Food Programme warned that the world is no longer moving towards Zero Hunger.
According to the international organisation, progress has stalled, reversed, and today, more than 270 million people are estimated to be acutely food insecure or at high risk in 2021.
Also read: In multiple countries, alarm over hunger crisis rings louder
WFP’s latest Global Operational Response Plan found that famine - driven by conflict and fueled by climate shocks and the economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 - could soon become a reality for millions of people. The number of people teetering on the brink of famine –has risen from 34 million projected at the beginning of the year to 41 million projected as of June. Without immediate emergency food assistance, they too face starvation as the slightest shock will push them over the cliff into famine.
Also read: Achieving Zero Hunger by 2030 in doubt, UN report warns
"The situation in 2021 is not business as usual, and it’s getting worse. We are extremely concerned about the world’s most vulnerable people as food prices continue to rise globally," WFP said.
WFP is undertaking the biggest operation in its history targeting 139 million people this year. WFP is focused on scaling up life-saving food and nutrition assistance to meet the essential needs of those furthest behind, overcoming access challenges and expanding cash-based transfers with significant scale-ups foreseen across several operations including Ethiopia, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Sudan, and Syria.
Also read: Public Development Banks for greater commitment to tackle global hunger, poverty
WFP needs US$5 billion in 2021 to avert famine and meet the urgent food and nutrition needs of those people most at risk, but the price of doing nothing is exponentially higher.The $5 billion for famine mitigation is approximately one-third of WFP’s total resourcing needs of $15 billion for 2021.
World Refugee Day should serve as stark reminder to politicians to do more: UNHCR
The World Refugee Day, which observed on June 20, should serve as a stark reminder to politicians of the need to do more to prevent and resolve conflict and crises and of the imperative to protect people irrespective of their race, nationality, beliefs or other characteristics, of the need to speak out and fight injustice, instead of fueling division and fomenting hate and to resolve to find pragmatic and lasting solutions to crises instead of blaming others or vilifying victims, said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi in a message ahead of the World Refugee Day.
''Two days ago, we announced that an unprecedented number of people have been forced to flee their homes. More than 82.4 million men, women and children have had their worlds turned upside down by war, violence and persecution. While the rest of us spent much of the last year at home to stay safe, they had to run from their homes just to stay alive.'' ''And as world leaders are seemingly unable or unwilling to make peace, more and more displaced people pay the price. In the past three years alone, some one million children were born into a life of exile. What will their futures hold? What opportunities will they have to achieve their potential?,'' Grandi asked.
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Simply put, he noted, leaders need to step up and work together to solve today’s global challenges.
''Yet World Refugee Day is also an opportunity to celebrate the fortitude of refugees. Those who have been stripped of everything and yet carry on, often bearing the visible and invisible wounds of war, persecution, and the anxiety of exile,'' he added.
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''Over the past several months, a time dominated by the pandemic, we have seen that refugees – while needing, deserving, and having the right to international protection, safety, and support – also give back to each other and to their host communities.'' ''When given the chance, they have run to the front lines of the COVID-19 response as doctors, nurses, cleaners, aid workers, care givers, shopkeepers, educators, and many other roles, providing essential services as we collectively battled the virus. We have seen them and their hosts selflessly share meagre resources and help lift those in the greatest of need,'' he further added.
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''Next month, we will see them in another arena demonstrating what can be achieved if included in society and given the same opportunities as the rest of us: refugee athletes will approach the starting line as they compete with the world’s best in the Tokyo Olympics,'' he continued.
''So on World Refugee Day, as we pause to express solidarity with refugees in our communities and around the world, I hope each of us will also acknowledge and admire the drive, determination, and contributions made by people forced to flee. My colleagues and I have the privilege of witnessing their tenacity and achievement every day, which - especially today – should be a source of inspiration for everyone, everywhere,'' he concluded.
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World Refugee Day is observed every year on June 20 to respect and honour the courage and resilience of refugees across the world. The unprecedented and prolonged coronavirus pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of refugees who hardly have any resources to fight the health and economic crisis.
This year's World Refugee Day theme - together we heal, learn and shine - aims at people belonging to all faiths, all over the world, working together to welcome stateless persons, displaced people, refugees and others who have been forced to flee their homes.