United News of Bangladesh

A team of investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board was at the site of an Amtrak derailment in north-central Montana that killed three people and left seven hospitalized Sunday, officials said. The westbound Empire Builder was en route from Chicago to Seattle when it left the tracks about 4 p.m. Saturday near Joplin, a town of about 200. Trevor Fossen was first on the scene. The Joplin resident was on a dirt road nearing the tracks Saturday when he saw “a wall of dust” about 300 feet high. “I started looking at that, wondering what it was and then I saw the train had tipped over and derailed,” said Fossen, who called 911 and started trying to get people out. He called his brother to bring ladders for people who couldn’t get down after exiting through the windows of cars resting on their sides. The train was carrying about 141 passengers and 16 crew members and had two locomotives and 10 cars, eight of which derailed, Amtrak spokesman Jason Abrams said. A 14-member team including investigators and specialists in railroad signals would look into the cause of the derailment on a BNSF Railway main track that involved no other trains or equipment, said NTSB spokesman Eric Weiss. Read:Sheriff’s office: At least 3 killed in Amtrak derailment Law enforcement said the officials from the NTSB, Amtrak and BNSF had arrived at the accident scene just west of Joplin, where the tracks cut through vast, golden brown wheat fields that were recently harvested. Several large cranes were brought to the tracks that run roughly parallel to U.S. Highway 2, along with a truckload of gravel and new railroad ties. Several rail cars could still be seen on their sides. The accident scene is about 150 miles (241 kilometers) northeast of Helena and about 30 miles (48 kilometers) from the Canadian border. Amtrak CEO Bill Flynn expressed condolences to those who lost loved ones and said the company is working with the NTSB, Federal Railroad Administration and local law enforcement, sharing their “sense of urgency” to determine what happened. “The NTSB will identify the cause or causes of this accident, and Amtrak commits to taking appropriate actions to prevent a similar accident in the future,” Flynn said in the statement. Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte said BNSF was readying replacement track for when the NTSB gives the go-head. “BNSF has assured me they can get the line up and running in short order,” he said. Railroad safety expert David Clarke, director of the Center for Transportation Research at the University of Tennessee, said accident scene photos show the derailment occurred at or near a switch, which is where the railway goes from a single track to a double track. Clarke said the two locomotives and two cars at the front of the train reached the split and continued on the main track, but the remaining eight cars derailed. He said it was unclear if some of the last cars moved onto the second track. “Did the switch play some role? It might have been that the front of the train hit the switch and it started fish-tailing and that flipped the back part of the train,” Clarke said. Another possibility was a defect in the rail, Clarke said, noting that regular testing doesn’t always catch such problems. He said speed was not a likely factor because trains on that line have systems that prevent excessive speeds and collisions. Read:Trudeau's Liberals win Canada election, but miss majority Matt Jones, a BNSF Railway spokesman said at a news conference that the track where the accident occurred was last inspected Thursday. Because of the derailment, Sunday’s westbound Empire Builder from Chicago will terminate in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the eastbound train will originate in Minnesota. Most of those on the train were treated and released for their injuries, but five who were more seriously hurt remained at the Benefis Health System hospital in Great Falls, Montana, said Sarah Robbin, Liberty County emergency services coordinator. Two were in the intensive care unit, a hospital spokeswoman said. Another two people were at Logan Health, a hospital in Kalispell, Montana, spokeswoman Melody Sharpton said. Robbin said emergency crews struggled without success to cut open cars with special tools, “so they did have to manually carry out many of the passengers that could not walk.” Liberty County Sheriff Nick Erickson said the names of the dead would not be released until relatives are notified. Robbin said nearby residents rushed to offer help when the derailment occurred. “We are so fortunate to live where we do, where neighbors help neighbors,” she said. “The locals have been so amazing and accommodating,” passenger Jacob Cordeiro said on Twitter. “They provided us with food, drinks, and wonderful hospitality. Nothing like it when the best comes together after a tragedy.” Cordeiro, who is from Rhode Island, just graduated from college and was traveling with his father to Seattle to celebrate. Read:Canada begins allowing vaccinated US citizens to visit again “I was in one of the front cars and we got badly jostled, thrown from one side of the train to the other,” he told MSNBC. He said the car left the tracks, but did not fall over. “I’m a pretty big guy and it picked me up from my chair and threw me into one wall and then threw me into the other wall,” Cordeiro said. Chester Councilwoman Rachel Ghekiere said she and others helped about 50 to 60 passengers who were brought to a school..” A grocery store in Chester, about 5 miles (8 kilometers) from the derailment, and a nearby religious community provided food, she said. Allan Zarembski, director of the University of Delaware’s Railway Engineering and Safety Program, said he didn’t want to speculate but suspected the derailment stemmed from an issue with the train track, equipment, or both. Railways have “virtually eliminated” major derailments by human error after the implementation of positive train control nationwide, Zarembski said. He said NTSB findings could take months. Bob Chipkevich, who oversaw railroad crash investigations for several years at the NTSB, said the agency won’t rule out human error or any other potential causes for now. “There are still human performance issues examined by NTSB to be sure that people doing the work are qualified and rested and doing it properly,” Chipkevich said. Chipkevich said track conditions have historically been a significant cause of train accidents and noted most of the track Amtrak uses is owned by freight railroads and must depend on those companies for safety maintenance.

At least three people were killed Saturday afternoon when an Amtrak train that runs between Seattle and Chicago derailed in north-central Montana, an official with the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office said. Dispatcher Starr Tyler told The Associated Press that three people died in the derailment. She did not have more details. Amtrak said in a statement that there were multiple injuries. The Empire Builder train derailed about 4 p.m. near Joplin, a town of about 200, Amtrak spokesman Jason Abrams said in a statement. The accident scene is about 150 miles (241 kilometers) north of Helena and about 30 miles (48 kilometers) from the border with Canada. The train had about 146 passengers and 16 crew members onboard, Abrams said. Read:Trudeau's Liberals win Canada election, but miss majority The train consisted of two locomotives and 10 cars, with seven of those cars derailing, he said. Megan Vandervest, a passenger on the train who was going to visit a friend in Seattle, told The New York Times that she was awakened by the derailment. “My first thought was that we were derailing because, to be honest, I have anxiety and I had heard stories about trains derailing,” said Vandervest, who is from Minneapolis. “My second thought was that’s crazy. We wouldn’t be derailing. Like, that doesn’t happen.” She told the Times that the car behind hers was tilted over, the one behind that was entirely tipped over, and the three cars behind that “had completely fallen off the tracks and were detached from the train.” Speaking from the Liberty County Senior Center, where passengers were being taken, Vandervest said it felt like “extreme turbulence on a plane.” Read:Canada begins allowing vaccinated US citizens to visit again Amtrak was working with the local authorities to transport injured passengers and safely evacuate all other passengers, Abrams added. The National Transportation Safety Board will send a 14-member team, including investigators and specialists in railroad signals and other disciplines, to investigate the crash, spokesman Eric Weiss said. Five Amtrak cars derailed around 3:55 p.m. Mountain Daylight Time and no other trains or equipment were involved, Weiss said. The train was traveling on a BNSF Railroad main track at the time, he said. Photos posted to social media showed several cars on their sides. Passengers were standing alongside the tracks, some carrying luggage. The images showed sunny skies, and it appeared the accident occurred along a straight section of tracks. Amtrak said that because of the derailment, the Sunday westbound Empire Builder will terminate in Minneapolis, and the Sunday eastbound Empire Builder train will originate in Minneapolis. Read:Huge Oregon blaze grows as wildfires burn across western US Other recent Amtrak derailments include: — April 3, 2016: Two maintenance workers were struck and killed by an Amtrak train going more than 100 mph in Chester, Pennsylvania. The lead engine of the train derailed. — March 14, 2016: An Amtrak train traveling from Los Angeles to Chicago derailed in southwest Kansas, sending five cars off the tracks and injuring at least 32 people. Investigators concluded that a cattle feed delivery truck hit the track and shifted it at least a foot before the derailment. — Oct. 5, 2015: A passenger train headed from Vermont to Washington, D.C., derailed when it hit rocks that had fallen onto the track from a ledge. The locomotive and a passenger car spilled down an embankment, derailing three other cars and injuring seven people. — May 12, 2015: Amtrak Train 188 was traveling at twice the 50 mph speed limit as it entered a sharp curve in Philadelphia and derailed. Eight people were killed and more than 200 were injured when the locomotive and four of the train’s seven passenger cars jumped the tracks. Several cars overturned and ripped apart.

Canadians gave Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party a victory in Monday's parliamentary elections, but his gamble to win a majority of seats failed and nearly mirrored the result of two years ago. The Liberals won the most seats of any party. The 49-year-old Trudeau channeled the star power of his father, the Liberal icon and late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, when he first won election in 2015 and has led his party to the top finish in two elections since. Trudeau’s Liberals were leading or elected in 156 seats — one less than they won 2019, and 14 short of the 170 needed for a majority in the House of Commons. The Conservatives were leading or elected in 121 seats, the same number they won in 2019. The leftist New Democrats were leading or elected in 27, a gain of three seats, while the Quebec-based Bloc Québécois remained unchanged with 32 seats and the Greens were down to two. “You are sending us back to work with a clear mandate to get Canada through this pandemic,” Trudeau said. Read: Trudeau criticized for calling Canadian election in 4th wave “I hear you when you say you just want to get back to the things you love and not worry about this pandemic or an election." Trudeau entered the election leading a stable minority government that wasn’t under threat of being toppled. The opposition was relentless in accusing Trudeau of calling an unnecessary early vote — two years before the deadline — for his own personal ambition. “Trudeau lost his gamble to get a majority so I would say this is a bittersweet victory for him,” said Daniel Béland, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal. “Basically we are back to square one, as the new minority parliament will look like the previous one. Trudeau and the Liberals saved their skin and will stay in power, but many Canadians who didn’t want this late summer, pandemic election are probably not amused about the whole situation,” he said. Trudeau bet Canadians didn’t want a Conservative government during a pandemic. Canada is now among the most fully vaccinated countries in the world and Trudeau’s government spent hundreds of billions of dollars to prop up the economy amid lockdowns. Trudeau argued that the Conservatives’ approach, which has been skeptical of lockdowns and vaccine mandates, would be dangerous and says Canadians need a government that follows science. Conservative leader Erin O’Toole didn’t require his party’s candidates to be vaccinated and would not say how many were unvaccinated. O’Toole described vaccination as a personal health decision, but a growing number of vaccinated Canadians are increasingly upset with those who refuse to get vaccinated. “The debate on vaccination and Trudeau taking on the anti-vaccination crowd helped the Liberals to salvage a campaign that didn’t start well for the party,” Beland said. Trudeau supports making vaccines mandatory for Canadians to travel by air or rail, something the Conservatives oppose. And Trudeau has pointed out that Alberta, run by a Conservative provincial government, is in crisis. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, an ally of O’Toole, said the province might run out of beds and staff for intensive care units within days. Kenney apologized for the dire situation and is now reluctantly introducing a vaccine passport and imposing a mandatory work-from-home order two months after lifting nearly all restrictions. Read:Trudeau denounces truck attack that targeted Muslim family “Hubris led Trudeau to call the election. He and the Liberals won the election but lost the prize they were seeking. This is only a great night for the Liberals because two weeks ago it appeared they would lose government outright something they could not fathom before they gambled on an election,” said Nelson Wiseman, a political science professor at the University of Toronto. Wiseman said the Conservatives were hurt by the situation in Alberta. “The explosion of the pandemic in Alberta in the past 10 days undermined O’Toole’s compliments of the Alberta Conservatives on how they had handled the pandemic and reinforced Trudeau’s argument for mandatory vaccinations,” he said. A Conservative win would have represented a rebuke of Trudeau against a politician with a fraction of his name recognition. O’Toole, 47, is a military veteran, former lawyer and a member of Parliament for nine years. “Canadians did not give Mr. Trudeau the majority mandate he wanted,” O’Toole said. O'Toole said he was more determined than ever to continue but his party might dump him after it dumped the previous leader who failed to beat Trudeau in 2019. O’Toole advertised himself a year ago as a “true-blue Conservative.” He became Conservative Party leader with a pledge to “take back Canada,” but immediately started working to push the party toward the political center. O’Toole’s strategy, which included disavowing positions held dear by his party’s base on issues such as climate change, guns and balanced budgets, was designed to appeal to a broader cross section of voters in a country that tends to be far more liberal than its southern neighbor. The son of a long-time politician has faced criticism he will say and do anything to get elected. Whether moderate Canadians believed O’Toole is the progressive conservative he claims to be and whether he alienated traditional Conservatives became central questions of the campaign. Regina Adshade, a 28-year-old Vancouver software developer, said she was bothered that an election was called early, during a pandemic and with wildfires burning in British Columbia. But it didn’t stop her from voting Liberal because the party represents her values. Read: Trudeau looks to Biden for help in dispute with China “I don’t love there was an election right now but it wasn’t going to change my vote,” she said. Trudeau’s legacy includes embracing immigration at a time when the U.S. and other countries closed their doors. He also legalized cannabis nationwide and brought in a carbon tax to fight climate change. And he preserved free trade deal with the U.S. and Mexico amid threats by former U.S. President Donald Trump to scrap the agreement. Former U.S. President Barack Obama and ex-Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton tweeted support for Trudeau. There wasn’t a Trump endorsement of O’Toole. Conservative campaign co-chair Walied Soliman said there is no alignment whatsoever between O’Toole and Trumpism. Soliman said earlier in the day holding Trudeau to a minority government would be a win for O'Toole. Liberals governed Canada for 69 years during the 20th century. Pierre Trudeau called for a “just society” and ran the country with a panache not seen before from a Canadian leader. He is responsible for Canada’s version of the bill of rights and is credited with opening the door wide to immigration. Trudeau's Liberals dominated in Toronto, Canada's largest city and one of the most multicultural cities in the world.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau defended his decision to call an election during the pandemic in first debate of the campaign for this month’s election. Trudeau is facing a tough re-election battle against his Conservative Party rival, Erin O’Toole. The vote is Sept. 20. “Why did you trigger an election in the middle of a fourth wave?” O’Toole asked Trudeau at the French-language debate in Montreal. Also read: Trudeau announces additional fund for medical research on COVID-19 Trudeau said he needs a mandate from voters. “Almost 80 percent of Canadians have done the right thing, they got vaccinated, twice in fact,” said Trudeau, noting Canada is having a fourth wave because 20 percent are unvaccinated. “And because of them we have to stop democracy from working? No,” Trudeau said. He criticized O’Toole for not requiring his candidates to be vaccinated. O’Toole said he believes the country can find reasonable accommodations for those who are unvaccinated, like rapid testing and social distancing. Four provinces including Quebec and Ontario, Canada’s largest, are bringing in vaccine passports that require citizens to be vaccinated to enter places like restaurants and gyms. Also read: Trudeau says Canada won't retaliate for US mask export ban Trudeau called the election last month seeking to win the majority of seats in Parliament but polls show that is unlikely and that he might even lose power to O’Toole and the Conservative party. Trudeau had wanted to capitalize on the fact that Canada is now one of the most fully vaccinated countries in the world, but the country is now in a fourth wave driven by the delta variant. Daniel Beland, a politics professor at McGill University in Montreal, said Trudeau held his ground. “His combative performance might help stop the bleeding for the Liberals or, at least, reassure his base that he still has fire in his belly,” Beland said. The 49-year-old Trudeau, the son of the late Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, became the second youngest prime minister in Canadian history when he was first elected with a majority of seats in Parliament in 2015. He reasserted liberalism in 2015 after almost 10 years of Conservative Party government in Canada, but scandals combined with high expectations damaged his brand. His father served as prime minister from 1968 to 1984 with a short interruption and remains one of the few Canadian politicians known in other countries.

Canada on Monday is lifting its prohibition on Americans crossing the border to shop, vacation or visit, but the United States is keeping similar restrictions in place for Canadians, part of a bumpy return to normalcy from COVID-19 travel bans. U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents must be both fully vaccinated and test negative for COVID-19 within three days to get across one of the world’s longest and busiest land borders. Travelers also must fill out a detailed on application on the arriveCAN app before crossing. Read:Tribe claims remains of kids who died at assimilation school Even though travelers have to register, the Canada Border Services Agency won’t say how many people they are expecting to enter Canada for the reopening. But travelers should plan for the possibility of additional processing time at the border. “CBSA will not compromise the health and safety of Canadians for the sake of border wait times,” agency spokeswoman Rebecca Purdy said in a statement. While the Canada Border Services Agency won’t say how many people it’s expecting, Garnet Health, an Essex, Vermont-based company that offers same-day COVID-19 testing, has seen the number of tests it performs more than triple in recent weeks. The increase coincides with Canada’s decision last month to drop a two-week quarantine requirement for its citizens when they return home from the U.S. “I imagine once that border opens, we are going to see lots of people,” said Chelsea Sweeney, the company’s director of business development. The U.S.-Canada border has been closed to nonessential travel since March 2020 to try to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The U.S. has said it will extend its closure to all Canadians making nonessential trips until at least Aug. 21, which also applies to the Mexican border. But the Biden administration is beginning to make plans for a phased reopening. The main requirement would be that nearly all foreign visitors to the U.S. will have to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. But Canadians aren’t waiting for reciprocal rules. Joel Villanueva, owner of Primo’s Mexican Grill in White Rock, British Columbia, about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) north of the U.S. border, is more than ready for Americans to return. Read:Canadian Indigenous group says more graves found at new site “Let’s get this thing going,” he said. “A lot of our customers are from the United States, and we are literally minutes from across the border. We welcome our Americans, and we depend on their foot traffic.” Villanueva said he supports people coming who are fully vaccinated and doesn’t think there will be a rush of Americans initially. But if his restaurant and dozens of others along the waterfront could fill some tables with U.S. visitors every day for the rest of the summer, it would be a big financial boost, he said. Near the border in Washington state, Blaine Chamber of Commerce board member Carroll Solomon called the reopening a step in the right direction for businesses. But she also said it was somewhat concerning because of an increase in COVID-19 cases nationwide as the highly contagious delta variant spreads. “For people who need to get up there (to Canada) for family reasons, it’s wonderful,” said Solomon, who also volunteers at the Blaine Visitor Information Center. With all the hoops people need to jump through — being fully vaccinated, getting tested for COVID-19 and uploading that information to an app — she doesn’t think that people will be going to Canada for many day trips. “I have a lot of friends on the Canadian side and would love to go have lunch with somebody, but you can’t just do that; you have to plan days in advance to make sure you can get through,” Solomon said. It’s going to be an event for the Blaine area when Canadians can come down on a regular basis, she said. As far as returning to the United States from Canada, U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Jason Givens said there’s no requirement to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test. Read:Unmarked graves found at another Indigenous school in Canada “CBP officers have been processing essential travel throughout the pandemic and remain ready and able to process American citizens and permanent residents returning from Canada,” Givens said by email. Steve Blake, who lives in Stanstead, Quebec, just across the border from Derby Line, Vermont, is hoping his siblings living in the United States will be able to visit Canada soon so they can hold a memorial service for their mother who died in early 2020, just before the pandemic closed the border. But given the requirements, he doesn’t know how quickly that will happen. “I’d like it to be sooner rather than later,” he said.

North, Central and South Americas still bear the global burden of 40% of Covid-19 fatalities and more than 25% of cases, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Almost 1 million cases were reported in the Americas last week, said Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead on Covid-19 for the WHO, Monday. Read:US tops 30 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 In Brazil, around 300,000 cases were recorded last week; in the US, more than 200,000 cases were reported, Maria added. She warned of a peak in the transmission level that has been observed in the region, saying that "they are stuck at a high level of intensity, and cannot quite bring that transmission down." An 11.5% rise in global cases were seen last week, with Europe and the Western Pacific being hit the hardest, Maria said. "The Americas saw a moderate increase of 0.5%, but some countries were plagued by really sharp spikes in transmission possibly due to new variants." Meanwhile, US life expectancy fell by a year and a half in 2020, the largest one-year decline since World War II, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Read: Global Covid cases near 190 million The covid-19 pandemic is responsible for around 74% of the overall life expectancy decline. More than 3.3 million Americans died last year, far more than any other year in US history, with Covid-19 accounting for about 11% of those deaths, the health officials said. However, the virus' role varied by race and ethnicity. It was responsible for 90% of the decline in life expectancy among Hispanics, 68% among white people and 59% among Black Americans. For decades, US life expectancy was on the upswing. But that trend stalled in 2015, for several years, before hitting 78 years, 10 months in 2019. Last year, it fell to about 77 years, four months, the CDC said. "South America, Central America and other places around the world need more vaccines if they are going to break this deadly cycle of cases," said Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO's Health Emergencies Program. 

The largest wildfire in the U.S. torched more dry forest landscape in Oregon on Sunday, one of dozens of major blazes burning across the West as critically dangerous fire weather loomed in the coming days. The destructive Bootleg Fire just north of the California border grew to more than 476 square miles (1,210 square kilometers), an area about the size of Los Angeles. Read: Wildfire creates state of emergency in Australian capital Erratic winds fed the blaze, creating dangerous conditions for firefighters, said John Flannigan, an operations section chief on the 2,000-person force battling the flames. “Weather is really against us,” he said. “It’s going to be dry and air is going to be unstable.” Authorities expanded evacuations that now affect some 2,000 residents of a largely rural area of lakes and wildlife refuges. The blaze, which was 22% contained, has burned at least 67 homes and 100 outbuildings while threatening thousands more. At the other end of the state, a fire in the mountains of northeast Oregon grew to more than 17 square miles (44 square kilometers) by Sunday. The Elbow Creek Fire that started Thursday has prompted evacuations in several small, remote communities around the Grande Ronde River about 30 miles (50 kilometers) southeast of Walla Walla, Washington. It was 10% contained. Natural features of the area act like a funnel for wind, feeding the flames and making them unpredictable, officials said. In California, a growing wildfire south of Lake Tahoe jumped a highway, prompting more evacuation orders, the closure of the Pacific Crest Trail and the cancellation of an extreme bike ride through the Sierra Nevada. The Tamarack Fire, which was sparked by lightning on July 4, had charred nearly 29 square miles (74 square kilometers) of dry brush and timber as of Sunday morning. The blaze was threatening Markleeville, a small town close to the California-Nevada state line. It has destroyed at least two structures, authorities said. A notice posted Saturday on the 103-mile (165-kilometer) Death Ride’s website said several communities in the area had been evacuated and ordered all bike riders to clear the area. The fire left thousands of bikers and spectators stranded in the small town and racing to get out. Kelli Pennington and her family were camping near the town Friday so her husband could participate in his ninth ride when they were told to leave. They had been watching smoke develop over the course of the day, but were caught off guard by the fire’s quick spread. Read: Western wildfires threatening American Indian tribal lands “It happened so fast,” Pennington said. “We left our tents, hammock and some foods, but we got most of our things, shoved our two kids in the car and left.” About 500 fire personnel were battling the flames Sunday, “focusing on preserving life and property with point protection of structures and putting in containment lines where possible,” the U.S. Forest Service said. Meteorologists predicted critically dangerous fire weather with lightning possible through at least Monday in both California and southern Oregon. “With the very dry fuels, any thunderstorm has the potential to ignite new fire starts,” the National Weather Service in Sacramento, California, said on Twitter. Extremely dry conditions and heat waves tied to climate change have swept the region, making wildfires harder to fight. Climate change has made the West much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive. Firefighters said in July they were facing conditions more typical of late summer or fall. Northern California’s Dixie Fire roared to new life Sunday, prompting new evacuation orders in rural communities near the Feather River Canyon. The wildfire, near the 2018 site of the deadliest U.S. blaze in recent memory, was 15% contained and covered 39 square miles. The fire is northeast of the town of Paradise, California, and survivors of that horrific fire that killed 85 people watched warily as the new blaze burned. Officials in Montana identified a firefighter who was seriously burned when flames overtook a crew fighting a small blaze there. Dan Steffensen was flown to a Salt Lake City hospital after the winds shifted suddenly on Friday, engulfing his fire engine near the Wyoming border. A second firefighter escaped without injury and called for help. There were about 70 active large fires and complexes of multiple blazes that have burned nearly 1,659 square miles (4,297 square kilometers) in the U.S., the National Interagency Fire Center said. The U.S. Forest Service said at least 16 major fires were burning in the Pacific Northwest alone.

The remains of nine Native American children who died more than a century ago while attending a government-run school in Pennsylvania meant to assimilate them into white culture have been returned to their South Dakota tribe for burial on its reservation. The Rosebud Sioux planned to rebury the remains during a ceremony on Saturday, the Argus Leader reported. Read: Unmarked graves found at another Indigenous school in Canada The effort to return the remains took nearly six years. A caravan of young adults tasked with bringing the remains home to the reservation set out Tuesday from the site of the former Carlisle Indian Reform School, which is about 20 miles (32 kilometers) west of the Pennsylvania capital Harrisburg. It made several stops along the way, including in Yankton and Whetstone on Friday for emotional ceremonies with tribal members. Another ceremony was held earlier Friday at a Missouri River landing near Sioux City, Iowa, which was where the children, who died between 1880 and 1910, boarded a steamboat for their journey east. “This is a common sorrow we share, but on this day we have a common celebration,” Ben Rhodd, a member of the Rosebud Sioux, told the gathering in Yankton. Rodney Bordeaux, the tribe’s president, said Friday’s events were historic and thanked the young people for bringing the remains back. Read: More than 200 bodies found at Indigenous school in Canada “This is going to make us that much stronger as a people as we reclaim who we are,” he said. “Indian Country nationwide is rising up. We’re going to be stronger as we go forward.” Christopher Eagle Bear, 23, who was part of the youth council responsible for bringing returning the remains, said, “On this day, it is an honor to be Lakota. Hopefully, what we do here can inspire another youth group to move the road further than what we have started.” Some of the children will be reburied in a veterans’ cemetery on the reservation and others will be interred at family graveyards, tribal officials said. U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland last month announced a nationwide investigation into the boarding schools that attempted to assimilate Indigenous children into white society. Haaland, the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary, said “forced assimilation practices” stripped away the children’s clothing, their language and their culture. She said the government aims to locate the schools and burial sites and identify the names and tribal affiliations of children from the boarding schools around the country. The Carlisle school, which was founded by an Army officer and opened in 1880, was the first of its kind off a reservation and set an example later used by other schools to assimilate Native American children into white culture. It took drastic steps to separate students from their Indigenous cultures, including cutting their braids, dressing them in military-style uniforms and punishing them for speaking their native languages. They were also forced to adopt European names. More than 10,000 Native American children were taught at the Carlisle school and endured harsh conditions that sometimes led to death from such diseases as tuberculosis.

A Canadian Indigenous group said Wednesday a search using ground-penetrating radar has found 182 human remains in unmarked graves at a site near a former Catholic Church-run residential school that housed Indigenous children taken from their families. The latest discovery of graves near Cranbrook, British Columbia follows reports of similar findings at two other such church-run schools, one of more than 600 unmarked graves and another of 215 bodies. Cranbrook is 524 miles (843 kilometers) east of Vancouver. The Lower Kootenay Band said in a news release that it began using the technology last year to search the site close to the former St. Eugene’s Mission School, which was operated by the Catholic Church from 1912 until the early 1970s. It said the search found the remains in unmarked graves, some about 3 feet (a meter) deep. Read:Unmarked graves found at another Indigenous school in Canada It’s believed the remains are those of people from the bands of the Ktunaxa nation, which includes the Lower Kootenay Band, and other neighboring First Nation communities. Chief Jason Louie of the Lower Kootenay Band called the discovery “deeply personal” since he had relatives attend the school. “Let’s call this for what it is,” Louie told CBC radio in an interview. “It’s a mass murder of Indigenous people.” “The Nazis were held accountable for their war crimes. I see no difference in locating the priests and nuns and the brothers who are responsible for this mass murder to be held accountable for their part in this attempt of genocide of an Indigenous people.” From the 19th century until the 1970s, more than 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend state-funded Christian boarding schools in an effort to assimilate them into Canadian society. Thousands of children died there of disease and other causes, with many never returned to their families. Nearly three-quarters of the 130 residential schools were run by Roman Catholic missionary congregations, with others operated by the Presbyterian, Anglican and the United Church of Canada, which today is the largest Protestant denomination in the country. The Canadian government has acknowledged that physical and sexual abuse was rampant in the schools, with students beaten for speaking their native languages. Last week the Cowessess First Nation, located about 85 miles (135 kilometers) east of the Saskatchewan capital of Regina, said investigators found “at least 600” unmarked graves at the site of a former Marieval Indian Residential School. 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. Prior to news of the most recent finding, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he has asked that the national flag on the Peace Tower remain at half-mast for Canada Day on Thursday to honor the Indigenous children who died in residential schools. On Tuesday, it was announced that a group of Indigenous leaders will visit the Vatican later this year to press for a papal apology for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in residential schools. The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops said Indigenous leaders will visit the Vatican from Dec. 17-20 to meet with Pope Francis and “foster meaningful encounters of dialogue and healing.” After the graves were found in Kamloops, the pope expressed his pain over the discovery and pressed religious and political authorities to shed light on “this sad affair.” But he didn’t offer the apology sought by First Nations and the Canadian government. Read:More than 200 bodies found at Indigenous school in Canada The leader of one of Canada’s largest Indigenous groups says there are no guarantees an Indigenous delegation travelling to the Vatican will lead to Pope Francis apologizing in Canada. Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde confirmed that assembly representatives will join Metis and Inuit leaders making the trip to the Vatican in late December. “There are no guarantees of any kind of apology″ from the pope, said Bellegarde. “The Anglican Church has apologized,” he told a virtual news conference. “The Presbyterian Church has apologized. United Church has apologized.” “This is really part of truth and part of the healing and reconciliation process for survivors to hear the apology from the highest position within the Roman Catholic Church, which is the pope.” Louie said he wants more concrete action than apologies. “I’m really done with the government and churches saying they are sorry,” he said. “Justice delayed is justice denied.” A papal apology was one of 94 recommendations from Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but the Canadian bishops conference said in 2018 that the pope could not personally apologize for the residential schools. Since the discovery of unmarked graves at the sites of former residential schools, there have been several fires at churches across Canada. There has also been some vandalism targeting churches and statues in cities. Four small Catholic churches on Indigenous lands in rural southern British Columbia have been destroyed by suspicious fires and a vacant former Anglican church in northwestern B.C. was recently damaged in what RCMP said could be arson. On Wednesday, Alberta’s premier condemned what he called “arson attacks at Christian churches” after a historic parish was destroyed in a fire. “Today in Morinville, l’église de Saint-Jean-Baptiste was destroyed in what appears to have been a criminal act of arson,” Kenney said in a statement. RCMP said officers were called to the suspicious blaze at the church in Morinville, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of Edmonton, in the early hours of Wednesday. Read:Trudeau denounces truck attack that targeted Muslim family Trudeau and an Indigenous leader said arson and vandalism targeting churches is not the way to get justice following the discovery of the unmarked graves. “The destruction of places of worship is unacceptable and it must stop,” Trudeau said. “We must work together to right past wrongs.″ Bellegarde said burning churches is not the way to proceed. “I can understand the frustration, the anger, the hurt and the pain, there’s no question,″ he said. ”But to burn things down is not our way.″

Rescuers searching for a fifth day for survivors of a Florida condo building collapse used bucket brigades and heavy machinery Monday as they worked atop a precarious mound of pulverized concrete, twisted steel and the remnants of dozens of households. Authorities said their efforts were still a search-and-rescue operation, but no one has been found alive since hours after the collapse on Thursday. Two more bodies were recovered Monday, bringing the confirmed death toll to 11. They were later identified as 50-year-old Frank Kleiman and 50-year-old Michael David Altman in a Miami-Dade Police news release that also named 52-year-old Marcus Joseph Guara as one of the bodies recovered on Saturday. More than 150 others are still missing in the community of Surfside, just outside Miami. Read: Families of the missing visit site of Florida condo collapse The pancake collapse of the building left layer upon layer of intertwined debris, frustrating efforts to reach anyone who may have survived in a pocket of space. “Every time there’s an action, there’s a reaction,” Miami-Dade Assistant Fire Chief Raide Jadallah said during a news conference. “It’s not an issue of we could just attach a couple of cords to a concrete boulder and lift it and call it a day.” Some of the concrete pieces are smaller, the size of basketballs or baseballs. Underscoring the risks of the work, he noted that families who rode buses to visit the site on Sunday witnessed a rescuer tumble 25 feet down the pile. Workers and victims must both be considered, he said. “It’s going to take time,” he said. “It’s not going to happen overnight. It’s a 12-story building.” Relatives continued their visits on Monday. From outside a neighboring building, more than two dozen family members watched teams of searchers excavate the building site. Some held onto each other for support. Others hugged and prayed. Some people took photos. The intense effort includes firefighters, sniffer dogs and search experts using radar and sonar devices. A photo illustration compares the similar architecture and highlights the near proximity of the sister Champlain Towers. The illustration also highlights the newer and architecturally different third building of the Champlain complex Early Monday, a crane lifted a large slab of concrete from the debris pile, enabling about 30 rescuers in hard hats to move in and carry smaller pieces of debris into red buckets, which are emptied into a larger bin for a crane to remove. The work has been complicated by intermittent rain showers, but the fires that hampered the initial search have been extinguished. Jimmy Patronis, Florida’s chief financial officer and state fire marshal, said it was the largest deployment of such resources in Florida history that was not due to a hurricane. He said the same number of people were on the ground in Surfside as during Hurricane Michael, a devastating Category 5 hurricane that hit 12 counties in 2018. “They’re working around the clock,” Patronis said. “They’re working 12 hours at a time, midnight to noon to midnight.” Andy Alvarez, a deputy incident commander with Miami-Dade Fire Rescue, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that rescuers have been able to find some voids, or spaces, inside the wreckage, mostly in the basement and the parking garage. “We have been able to tunnel through the building,” Alvarez said. “This is a frantic search to seek that hope, that miracle, to see who we can bring out of this building alive.” Others who have seen the wreckage up close were daunted by the task ahead. Alfredo Lopez, who lived with his wife in a sixth-floor corner apartment and narrowly escaped, said he finds it hard to believe anyone is alive in the rubble. “If you saw what I saw: nothingness. And then, you go over there and you see, like, all the rubble. How can somebody survive that?” Lopez told The Associated Press. Authorities on Monday insisted they are not losing hope. “We’re going to continue and work ceaselessly to exhaust every possible option in our search,” Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said Monday. Deciding to transition from search-and-rescue work to a recovery operation is agonizing, said Dr. Joseph A. Barbera, a professor at George Washington University. That decision is fraught with considerations, he said, that only those on the ground can make. Barbera coauthored a study examining disasters where some people survived under rubble for prolonged periods of time. He has also advised teams on where to look for potential survivors and when to conclude “that the probability of continued survival is very, very small.” “It’s an incredibly difficult decision, and I’ve never had to make that decision,” Barbera said. As time goes on, he said, teams will begin a process called “rapid delayering, where you take more risk by moving larger amounts of rubble, because you recognize you’re running up against the time factor for survival.” How long a person can survive depends on a host of issues, including the availability of water, the severity of any injuries and the degree to which they are trapped, Barbera said. “The human dimension is huge -- the uncertainty that you could be leaving someone alive behind by ending too early,” Barbera said. “Families continue to have hope, as do rescuers, which is why you continue to see them pushing so hard within these difficult conditions.” The ultimate decision to move into the recovery phase, he said, will have to be made “with the involvement of the political authority because they’re the ultimate authority over this.” The building collapsed just days before a deadline for condo owners to start making steep payments toward more than $9 million in repairs that had been recommended nearly three years earlier, in a report that warned of “major structural damage.” A federal team of scientists and engineers are conducting a preliminary investigation at the site and will determine whether to launch a full probe of what caused the building to come down. The National Institute of Standards and Technology also investigated disasters such as the collapse of the twin towers on 9/11, Hurricane Maria’s devastation in Puerto Rico and a Rhode Island nightclub fire that killed 100 people. Previous investigations have taken years to complete.