United News of Bangladesh

At least six people died after a dust storm caused a 21-car-pileup on a highway in the U.S. State of Montana Friday evening, said authorities. Six people are confirmed dead and eight people were transported to nearby hospitals after the pileup, which is described as one of the most intense multi-vehicle accidents in Montana, a local television station reported on Saturday morning. "My prayers are with everyone affected by the tragic events during the dust storm in Big Horn County today," Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen wrote on his Facebook page on Friday night. Read: Tropical Storm Colin threatens a wet weekend for Carolinas The Montana Highway Patrol is on the scene with other first responders, said Knudsen, adding that more information will be released when it becomes available. The numbers of fatalities and injuries did not change overnight and the accident scene has been totally cleared, Montana Highway Patrol Sgt. Jay Nelson was quoted as saying. Information so far showed the wind storm was an isolated, extreme weather event, Nelson added, noting authorities believed that there is no further danger to the public. ■

A sexual assault survivor chooses sterilization so that if she is ever attacked again, she won’t be forced to give birth to a rapist’s baby. An obstetrician delays inducing a miscarriage until a woman with severe pregnancy complications seems “sick enough.” A lupus patient must stop taking medication that controls her illness because it can also cause miscarriages. Abortion restrictions in a number of states and the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade are having profound repercussions in reproductive medicine as well as in other areas of medical care. Read: Judges rule on state abortion restrictions, shape Roe impact “For physicians and patients alike, this is a frightening and fraught time, with new, unprecedented concerns about data privacy, access to contraception, and even when to begin lifesaving care,” said Dr. Jack Resneck, president of the American Medical Association. Even in medical emergencies, doctors are sometimes declining immediate treatment. In the past week, an Ohio abortion clinic received calls from two women with ectopic pregnancies — when an embryo grows outside the uterus and can’t be saved — who said their doctors wouldn’t treat them. Ectopic pregnancies often become life-threatening emergencies and abortion clinics aren’t set up to treat them.

President Joe Biden on Saturday will lay out his strategy for the Middle East as he closes out of the final leg of a four-day trip meant to bolster U.S. positioning and knit the region together against Iran. In the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, Biden will meet with heads of state from six Arab Gulf countries, plus Egypt, Jordan and Iraq for a regional summit. Hours before the Gulf Cooperation Council summit, the White House released satellite imagery that indicates Russian officials have twice visited Iran in recent weeks for a showcase of weapons-capable drones it is looking to acquire for use in its ongoing war in Ukraine. None of the countries represented at the summit have moved in lockstep with the U.S. to sanction Russia, a key foreign policy priority for the Biden administration. If anything, the UAE has emerged as a sort of financial haven for Russian billionaires and their multimillion-dollar yachts. Egypt remains open to Russian tourists. Release of the satellite imagery—which shows Russian officials visited Kashan Airfield on June 8 and July 15 to get a look at the drones—could help the administration better tie the relevance of the war to many Arab nations own concerns about Iran’s nuclear ambitions and other malign activity in the region. Read: ‘Free Palestine’: Protesters in major US cities decry airstrikes over Gaza A senior Biden administration officials, who briefed reporters ahead of the summit, said that Moscow’s efforts to acquire drones from Tehran show that Russia is “effectively making a bet on Iran.” The gathering of leaders comes a day after he championed steps toward normalizing ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and sought to rebuild cooperation with the Saudi king and crown prince after once promising to make the kingdom a “pariah” for its human rights abuses. When he speaks to the Gulf Cooperation Council and its Arab allies, the White House said, Biden will offer his most fulsome vision yet for the region and how the U.S. can cooperate with it. The U.S. is expected His first Middle East trip comes 11 months after the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and as Biden aims to reprioritize the U.S. away from the Middle East’s ruinous wars and ongoing conflicts stretching from Libya to Syria. “It’s a strategy fit for purpose for 2022 as opposed to the two decades of major land wars that the U.S. fought in this region over the course of the 2000s,” Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters in a preview of the speech. Energy prices — elevated since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — were expected to be high on the agenda. But Biden aides tempered expectations that he would leave with a deal for regional producers to immediately boost supply. “I suspect you won’t see that for another couple of weeks,” Biden told reporters late Friday. At the summit, Biden was set to hear a chorus of concern about the region’s stability and security, as well as concerns about food security, climate change and the continued threat of terrorism. Overall, there’s little that the nine Mideast heads of state agree on when it comes to foreign policy. For example, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates are trying to isolate and squeeze Iran over its regional reach and proxies. Oman and Qatar, on the other hand, have solid diplomatic ties with Iran and have acted as intermediaries for talks between Washington and Tehran. Qatar recently hosted talks between U.S. and Iranian officials as they try to revive Iran’s nuclear accord. Iran not only shares a huge underwater gas field with Qatar in the Persian Gulf, it rushed to Qatar’s aid when Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt cut off ties and imposed a years-long embargo on Qatar that ended only shortly before Biden took office. Biden’s actions have frustrated some of the leaders. While the U.S. has played an important role in encouraging a months-long ceasefire in Yemen, Biden’s decision to reverse a Trump-era move that had listed Yemen’s rebel Houthis as a terrorist group has outraged the Emirati and Saudi leadership. On Friday, Biden fist-bumped Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto leader, as he arrived at the royal palace in Jeddah. But he rejected the notion that he was ignoring the kingdom’s human rights abuses as he tries to reset a fraught diplomatic relationship. “I said, very straightforwardly, for an American president to be silent on an issue of human rights is inconsistent with who we are and who I am,” Biden said. “I’ll always stand up for our values.” U.S. intelligence believes that the crown prince likely approved the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a U.S.-based writer, four years ago. Biden said Prince Mohammed claimed that he was “not personally responsible” for the death. “I indicated I thought he was,” the president said he replied. As for U.S. concerns over China’s expanding reach, China appears willing to provide Saudi Arabia with missile and nuclear technologies that the U.S. is much more hesitant to do. China is also the kingdom’s biggest buyer of Saudi oil. For Iraq, which has the deepest and strongest links to Iran of all the Arab countries, its presence at the meeting reflects Saudi efforts — supported by the U.S. — to bring Iraq closer to Arab positions and the so-called Arab fold. Iraq has hosted around five rounds of direct talks between Saudi and Iranian officials since Biden took office, though the talks have produced little results. Ahead of the summit, Iraq’s Prime Minister Mustafa al-Khadhimi, who survived an assassination attempt with armed drones in November, wrote in Foreign Policy that Iraq faces many problems, but is working “to solve Iraqi problems with Iraqi solutions”.   “When U.S. President Joe Biden comes to the Middle East this week, he will be arriving in a region facing numerous challenges, from terrorism to food insecurity and climate change,” he wrote. “But the Middle East is also a region that is increasingly facing those challenges together under a group of leaders pursuing positive change.”

The U.S. is getting another COVID-19 vaccine choice as the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday cleared Novavax shots for adults. Novavax makes a more traditional type of shot than the three other COVID-19 vaccines available for use in the U.S. -- and one that’s already available in Europe and multiple other countries. Nearly a quarter of American adults still haven’t gotten their primary vaccinations even this late in the pandemic, and experts expect at least some of them to roll up their sleeves for a more conventional option — a protein-based vaccine. The Maryland company also hopes its shots can become a top booster choice in the U.S. and beyond. Tens of millions of Americans still need boosters that experts call critical for the best possible protection as the coronavirus continues to mutate. For now, the FDA authorized Novavax’s initial two-dose series for people 18 and older. “I encourage anyone who is eligible for, but has not yet received, a COVID-19 vaccine to consider doing so,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf said in a statement. Before shots begin, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must recommend how they should be used, a decision expected next week. Novavax CEO Stanley Erck told The Associated Press that he expected the U.S. to expand use of the vaccine beyond unvaccinated adults fairly quickly. Read: Bangladesh gets another 4 mn doses of COVID-19 vaccine from US Already the FDA is evaluating it for those as young as 12, Erck said. Novavax also has submitted data on booster doses, including “mix-and-match” use in people who’d earlier received Pfizer or Moderna vaccinations. The Biden administration has bought 3.2 million Novavax doses so far, and Erck said vaccinations should begin later this month. Sharon Bentley of Argyle, Texas, is one of the holdouts. Bentley was hesitant about the first COVID-19 vaccines but then her husband volunteered for a Novavax trial, getting two doses and later a booster. Her husband’s positive experience with a more tried-and-true technology, “that convinced me,” Bentley said, adding that she planned to tell some unvaccinated friends about the option, too. The Novavax vaccine is made of copies of the spike protein that coats the coronavirus, packaged into nanoparticles that to the immune system resemble a virus. Then an immune-boosting ingredient, or adjuvant, that’s made from the bark of a South American tree is added that acts as a red flag to ensure those particles look suspicious enough to spark a strong immune response. Protein vaccines have been used for years to prevent hepatitis B, shingles and other diseases. It’s a very different technology than the dominant Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines that deliver genetic instructions for the body to produce its own copies of the spike protein. The lesser-used Johnson & Johnson option uses a harmless cold virus to deliver spike-making instructions. Like the other vaccines used in the U.S., the Novavax shots have proved highly effective at preventing COVID-19′s most severe outcomes. Typical vaccine reactions were mild, including arm pain and fatigue. But FDA did warn about the possibility of a rare risk, heart inflammation, that also has been seen with the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. The Novavax vaccine was tested long before the omicron variant struck. But last month, the company released data showing a booster dose promised a strong immune response even against omicron’s newest relatives — preliminary evidence that several of the FDA’s scientific advisers called compelling.

The Johnny Depp-Amber Heard libel trial, which generated intense interest for two months earlier this year as a livestreamed, no-holds-barred soap opera featuring one of Hollywood's biggest stars, is not fading away quietly. Earlier this month, Heard's lawyers filed a 51-page motion asking Judge Penney Azcarate to set aside the jury's verdict, which gave $10 million to Depp and $2 million to Heard on competing defamation claims. The motion cites multiple reasons that the verdict is untenable, from the surprising decision to declare both sides victorious to one extent or another, to a bizarre case of mistaken identity with one of the jurors. Among the issues raised: WHY $10 MILLION? Depp sued for $25 million in Fairfax County after Heard wrote a 2018 op-ed piece in The Washington Post about domestic violence in which she referred to herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse.” The article never mentioned Depp by name, but his lawyers said several passages in the article defamed him by implication by referring to highly publicized abuse allegations she made in 2016 as she filed for divorce. Heard then filed a $50 million counterclaim, also for defamation. By the time the case went to trial, her counterclaim had been whittled down to a few statements made by one of Depp’s lawyers, who called Heard’s abuse allegations a hoax. Read: Johnny Depp and Amber Heard: Uphill battle to rebuild images The jury awarded $15 million to Depp and $2 million to Heard on her counterclaim. The $15 million judgment was reduced to $10.35 million because Virginia law caps punitive damages at $350,000. Heard's lawyers say in court papers that the $10 million verdict is unsupported by the facts, and seems to demonstrate that jurors failed to focus on the fallout from the 2018 op-ed piece — as they were supposed to do — and instead just looked broadly at the damage Depp's reputation suffered as a result of the alleged abuse. Depp's lawyers, though, say the damages are supported by testimony from his agent and others. They say the precedents cited by Heard's team to support her arguments “are decades old, and none involves an international A-list celebrity." Steve Cochran, a civil lawyer in Virginia who was appointed by a judge as a neutral conciliator in the case to try to minimize pretrial discovery disputes, said he always believed the weakest link in Depp's case was the damages, given evidence that the actor's reputation had been ruined in Hollywood well before the publication of the op-ed. Still, he said he's skeptical that Heard can get the verdict set aside. Scott Surovell, a lawyer and Democratic state senator who practices law in Fairfax, also said he sees little reason to set aside the damages. “What the judge looks for ... is that the verdict was adequately supported at trial and wasn’t based on speculation or conjecture. (Depp) makes a lot of money from movies. That doesn’t sound to me like the damages were based on speculation or conjecture, but on evidence," he said. “INCONSISTENT AND IRRECONCILABLE” Heard's lawyers argue that the verdicts for Depp on one hand and Heard on the other are fundamentally nonsensical. “The jury's dueling verdicts are inconsistent and irreconcilable,” her lawyers wrote. Depp's lawyers, though, say the verdict form used by jurors allowed them to express with specificity exactly which statements they found defamatory. When you look at the individual statements, they say, the dueling verdicts make sense. Also read: Jury sides with Johnny Depp in libel case, awards him $10M Jeremiah Denton III, a Virginia Beach attorney with experience in defamation cases, said he doesn’t view the verdicts as irreconcilable. If anything, he said, the award most in jeopardy is the $2 million given to Heard, because he said it's legally dubious that Depp can be held liable for statements made by his attorney. “I don’t understand why the judge even allowed that issue to go to the jury," he said. JUROR #15 One of the more unusual items in the discussion is a case of apparent mistaken identity with one of the jurors. According to court papers, a 77-year-old county resident received a summons for the trial. But the man's son, who has the same name and lives at the same address, responded to the summons and served in his stead. Heard's lawyers say Virginia law is strict about juror identities, and the case of mistaken identity is grounds for a mistrial. They have presented no evidence that the 52-year-old son, identified in court papers only as Juror #15, purposefully or insidiously sought to replace his father, but they argue that possibility should not be discounted. “The Court cannot assume, as Mr. Depp asks it to, that Juror 15’s apparently improper service was an innocent mistake. It could have been an intentional attempt to serve on the jury of a high-profile case,” Heard's lawyers wrote. Paul Bekman, a Baltimore lawyer who has also tried cases in Virginia, said Heard's team needed to raise any issues about the juror ahead of time. “Anybody looking at a 52-year-old and a 77-year-old would be able to tell — hopefully — that there’s a difference of 25 years, and they would have the right to inquire about that,” he said. “I believe it is too late to complain about the juror.” Cochran also said he was skeptical that the confusion could result in a mistrial or the judge setting aside the verdict, but he cautioned that it's difficult to predict because the issue is so rare. “I've been practicing for 50 years and never seen that issue come up,” he said.    

Joe Biden starts the first visit to the Middle East of his presidency with a monumental task: assuring uneasy Israeli and Saudi Arabian officials that he is committed to preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Biden begins the visit Wednesday with a three-day stop in Israel, where officials say Iran’s quickly evolving nuclear program is at the top of their agenda for talks with the U.S. president. Biden made reviving the Iran nuclear deal, brokered by Barack Obama in 2015 and abandoned by Donald Trump in 2018, a key priority as he entered office. But indirect talks for the U.S. to reenter the deal have stalled as Iran has made rapid gains in developing its nuclear program. That's left the Biden administration increasingly pessimistic about resurrecting the deal, which placed significant restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Shortly after his arrival in Israel on Wednesday, Biden is expected to get a briefing on the country’s new “Iron Beam” missile defense system and visit the Yad Vashem, a memorial to Holocaust victims. Besides meetings with Israeli and Palestinian officials, he’s slated to receive Israel’s Presidential Medal of Honor and visit with U.S. athletes taking part in the Maccabiah Games, which involve thousands of Jewish and Israeli athletes from around the globe. Biden, in a Washington Post op-ed published Saturday, laced into Trump for quitting the nuclear deal that Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the European Union also signed onto. But Biden also suggested that he's still holding onto at least a sliver of hope that the Iranians will come back into compliance. “My administration will continue to increase diplomatic and economic pressure until Iran is ready to return to compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal, as I remain prepared to do,” he wrote. Israeli officials, who briefed reporters ahead of Biden's departure from Washington on Tuesday, said the U.S. and Israel would issue a broad-ranging “Jerusalem Declaration” that will take a tough stance on Iran’s nuclear program. The declaration commits both countries to use “all elements of their national power against the Iranian nuclear threat,” according to an Israeli official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the statement. The official said the Israelis would stress to Biden their view that Iran has calculated "time is on their side” and is loath to give any concessions. The Biden administration's last round of indirect negotiations with Iran in Doha, Qatar, late last month ended without success. Read: Biden urges Western unity on Ukraine amid war fatigue Separately, Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid issued a joint statement on Wednesday announcing the two nations were launching a new strategic high-level dialogue on technology. The partnership is to focus on the use of emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence and other tech-based solutions, to take on global challenges such as pandemic preparedness and climate change. The White House has also been frustrated with repeated Iran-sponsored attacks on U.S. troops based in Iraq, though the administration says the frequency of such attacks has dropped precipitously over the last two years. Tehran also sponsored the rebel Houthis in a bloody war with the Saudis in Yemen. A U.N.-brokered cease-fire has been in place for more than four months, a fragile peace in a war that began in 2015. Separately, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Monday said the administration believes Russia is turning to Iran to provide it with hundreds of unmanned aerial vehicles, including weapons-capable drones, for use in its ongoing war in Ukraine. The Saudis, like the Israelis, have been frustrated that the White House has not abandoned efforts to revive the nuclear deal with Tehran. Biden heads to the Saudi port city of Jeddah on Friday to meet with King Salman and the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is widely known by his initials MBS, and to attend a gathering of the Gulf Cooperation Council, where Iran's nuclear program is on the agenda. Also looming over the Saudi visit is the president's strained relationship with the crown prince. As a White House candidate, Biden, a Democrat, said he would look to make the kingdom a “pariah” nation over its human rights abuses. The relationship was further strained when Biden last year approved the release of a U.S. intelligence report that determined that MBS likely approved the 2018 killing of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The president will arrive in Saudi Arabia, among the world's biggest oil producers, at a moment of skyrocketing gas and food prices around the globe — driven, in part, by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. White House officials and energy analysts say there are low expectations that the Saudis or fellow members of OPEC+ will deliver relief. Another factor in seeking a détente in the Saudi relationship is growing concern in the administration that the Saudis could move closer to China and Russia amid strains with the United States. Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former U.S. State Department official, said Biden is looking forward to visiting Saudi Arabia “like I would look forward to a root canal operation.” “You’ve got a president who is terribly conflicted about this meeting," Miller said. "He can’t even acknowledge, in all of his public remarks, that he’s even going to meet with Mohammed bin Salman.” But Israeli officials are cautiously optimistic that the Biden visit could be a breakthrough moment on a slow path toward normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Biden will be the first U.S. president to travel directly from Israel to Saudi Arabia, and the two nations' shared enmity for Iran has led to subtle cooperation. Earlier this week, opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu praised the crown prince's “contribution” to the Abraham Accords, declarations of diplomatic and economic normalization signed by Bahrain, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and the United States while Netanyahu was prime minister. Israel is expected to hold new elections in the fall after the fragile coalition government led by Naftali Bennett crumbled last month.

President Joe Biden is hosting a “celebration” of a new bipartisan law meant to reduce gun violence that, after just 16 days in effect, already has been overshadowed by yet another mass shooting. The bill, passed after recent gun rampages in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, incrementally toughens requirements for young people to buy guns, denies firearms to more domestic abusers, and helps local authorities temporarily take weapons from people judged to be dangerous. But the South Lawn event on Monday morning comes a week after a gunman in Highland Park, Illinois, killed seven people at an Independence Day parade, a stark reminder of the limitations of the new law in addressing the American phenomenon of mass gun violence. Biden on Saturday invited Americans to share with him via text — a new White House communications strategy — their stories of how they’ve been impacted by gun violence, tweeting that “I’m hosting a celebration of the passage of the Safer Communities Act.” The law is the the most impactful firearms violence measure Congress has approved since enacting a now-expired assault weapons ban in 1993. Yet gun control advocates — and even White House officials — say it’s premature to declare victory. “There’s simply not much to celebrate here,” said Igor Volsky, director of the private group Guns Down America. “It’s historic, but it’s also the very bare minimum of what Congress should do,” Volsky said. “And as we were reminded by the shooting on July 4, and there’s so many other gun deaths that have occurred since then, the crisis of of gun violence is just far more urgent.” Volsky’s group, along with other gun violence advocacy groups, was set to host a news conference on Monday outside the White House calling on Biden to stand up a dedicated office at the White House to address gun violence with a greater sense of urgency. Read: Facing pressure, Biden to sign order on abortion access Biden has left gun control policy to his Domestic Policy Council, rather than establishing a dedicated office like he stood up to address climate change or the gender policy council he established to promote reproductive health access. “We have a president who really hasn’t met the moment, who has chosen to act as a bystander on this issue,” Volsky said. “For some reason the administration absolutely refuses to have a senior official who can drive this issue across government.” The president signed the bipartisan gun bill into law on June 25, calling it “a historic achievement” at the time. “Time is of the essence. Lives will be saved,” Biden said in the Roosevelt Room during a hastily arranged signing ceremony before he flew to Europe. Referencing the families of shooting victims he has met, the president said: “Their message to us was, ‘Do something.’ How many times did we hear that? ‘Just do something. For God’s sake, just do something.’ Today we did.” White House officials said Biden doesn’t see the passage of the bill as the finish line, but rather a foundation that needs to be built on. The Illinois shooting occurred nine days after the bill signing. “I recently signed the first major bipartisan gun reform legislation in almost 30 years into law, which includes actions that will save lives,” Biden said after July 4th shooting. “But there is much more work to do, and I’m not going to give up fighting the epidemic of gun violence.” On Friday, Biden responded to the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe by taking note of how the shooting had shocked people in Japan. The country has a strikingly low incidence of gun violence compared to the U.S., which has experienced thousands of gun deaths already this year. Most of the new law’s $13 billion in spending would be used for bolstering mental health programs and for schools, which have been targeted by shooters in Newtown, Connecticut; Parkland, Florida; and many other gun massacres. It was the product of weeks of closed-door negotiations by a bipartisan group of senators who emerged with a compromise. It does not include far tougher restrictions that Democrats and Biden have long championed, such as a ban on assault-type weapons and background checks for all gun transactions. Biden on Monday was expected to reiterate his call for those tougher measures, but prospects are slim for any further congressional action.

Bobby Shapiro ran down Central Avenue in socks, moving toward the street corner where gunfire had erupted just moments before. At first, he only wanted to confirm that what he was hearing was real — a mass shooting at a July 4 parade in Highland Park. Any sense of disbelief vanished with the sight of bone fragments, blood and pieces of flesh lying in the street where a parade was marching just minutes before. Then he saw the bodies. “It was pure horror. It was a battle zone,” Shapiro, 52, said in an interview. When the gunshots first went off, he had been changing out of his cycling shoes about 100 yards away. Emergency vehicles and first responders were not yet at the scene, so Shapiro, a tech salesman with no medical training, began doing whatever he could to help. From the bystanders who tied tourniquets and administered CPR to the fleeing paradegoers who rescued and cared for an orphaned two-year-old covered in blood, people from every corner of the Highland Park community sprung into action on July 4 in the wake of unspeakable tragedy. Nearly a dozen people, including off-duty doctors, nurses and a football coach, were among the first to administer lifesaving assistance to victims of the parade shooting. “Things happen so quickly that your brain can’t possibly comprehend that there is an active shooter in your town, in your sleepy little neighborhood,” said Dr. Wendy Rush, an anesthesiologist with decades of experience working in trauma centers. Rush joined Shapiro in trying to save an elderly man who had a gunshot wound in his thigh and another that left a gaping hole in his abdomen. While Rush used a ventilation mask and bag to help the elderly man breathe, Shapiro and another bystander took turns giving chest compressions and holding pressure on his wounds. All the while, “We didn’t know where the shooter was. We knew he wasn’t dead,” Rush said. Read: 6 dead, 30 hurt in shooting at Chicago-area July 4 parade Nearly 30 minutes later, Rush boarded an ambulance alongside the dying man, and Shapiro, in shorts stained with blood, walked back to the bench where he’d been changing his shoes what felt like hours earlier. The man died at the hospital, and was later identified as Stephen Straus, an 88-year-old financial advisor. Rush’s husband and son were also on the scene. As members of Highland Park’s Community Emergency Response Team, both men have training in first aid and basic life support. They were working the parade expecting to assist with the regular crowd control and the occasional lost child. Rush’s son cared for people with less critical gunshot wounds, applying tourniquets and pressure to stop their bleeding. Her husband, Rush said, spent most of his time caring for Keely Roberts, a school superintendent shot twice in her foot and leg. Roberts’ 8-year-old son Cooper, shot in the chest, remains in serious condition at University of Chicago Comer Children’s Hospital with a severed spine. His twin brother, Luke, was nearby. “I’ll never forget his face. He was just hysterical. He kept saying, ‘Don’t let my mommy die, don’t let my mommy die. Don’t let her lips turn blue like my brother.’ It was the worst you could ever imagine,” Eddie Rush told Fox 32 Chicago. Football coach Brad Hokin was at his usual spot at the beginning of the route when the shooting started. He took off running down the bloodied street past those with minor injuries and toward the people he could tell needed assistance most urgently. When his wife, nurse practitioner Jacquie Toia, called from their seats about a quarter mile away to make sure he was OK, Hokin simply told her, “Get up here. We need you.” Read: Police: Parade shooting suspect contemplated 2nd shooting Toia, 58, hurried to the scene still unsure of what was happening. When she saw the destruction, her instincts kicked into gear. As a nurse for 36 years, Toia had experience working in an emergency setting. By that point, paramedics on scene had equipment, and Toia and another nurse on the scene began to administer IVs. Meanwhile Hokin, with no prior medical training, was holding pressure on gunshot wounds and helping EMTs load the wounded onto gurneys until all the victims were safely en route to hospitals. “We did what we could to take care of the immediate needs, and that’s probably the real tragedy – we didn’t have enough hands to do what needed to be done,” Toia said. Responders were overwhelmed by the sheer number of casualties. “Thirty-six years in medicine is enough that loss is not a stranger to me,” Toia said. “This was so different. This was hell.” Dr. David Baum, an OBGYN and longtime attendee of the parade, was sitting with his family when the shooting started. The doctor rushed to help, and found bodies destroyed by bullets. Baum recalled trying to move people to ambulances and seeing wounds unlike anything he’d dealt with before. “These were wartime injuries,” Baum said. Baum and Toia both expressed their frustrations that the shooter had such easy access to high-capacity weapons. “You should never have to worry about being killed in your street on the Fourth of July at a parade,” Toia said. Dr. Rush’s son, Shane Selig, said everyone is still processing what happened. “There are those that feel guilty they didn’t do more,” he said, while adding, “at least I could do something.” But it is hard, this aftermath. People, he said, will be “forever scarred by this.” And it makes him angry. The images of the hurt and dying haunt those who ran to help. Shapiro wakes up and when he opens his eyes, “It’s the ’bang, bang, bang, bang, bang of the shooting and initial panic again.” For Toia, “The children’s faces running and screaming and crying and falling will never escape me.” Still, Hokin says it won’t deter him next year from joining with the community he loves. Read: Parade shooting suspect bought 5 weapons despite threats In his 58 years, he’s been to the parade 52 times. Even during the pandemic when the parade was canceled, he went out just to say he was there.   “I’m sure next Fourth of July, I’ll be on the corner at 8 o’clock, waiting for the parade.”

The U.S. government's auto safety watchdog is sending investigators to another Tesla crash, this time one that killed two people along Interstate 75 in Florida. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration confirmed Friday that it sent a Special Crash Investigations team to probe the Wednesday crash into the back of a semi-trailer at a rest area near Gainesville. The agency would not say if the Tesla was operating on one of the company's partially automated driving systems. The 2015 model year Tesla was traveling on Interstate 75 about 2 p.m. Wednesday when, for an unknown reason, it exited into a rest area. It then went into the parking lot and hit the back of a parked Walmart Freightliner tractor-trailer, the Florida Highway Patrol said in a release. The driver and passenger, both from Lompoc, California, were pronounced dead at the scene. Highway Patrol Lt. P.V. Riordan said Friday night in an email that his agency will determine whether any partially automated features were in use. “That is a consideration that will be explored during our investigation,” he said. A message was left Friday seeking comment from Austin, Texas-based Tesla. NHTSA is investigating 37 crashes involving automated driving systems since 2016. Of those, 30 involved Teslas, including 11 fatal crashes that have killed a total of 15 people. Read: Tesla faces another US investigation: unexpected braking The agency also said in documents that it's investigating a fatal pedestrian crash in California involving a Tesla Model 3 that happened this month. It also sent a team to probe a Cruise automated vehicle crash in California that caused a minor injury in June. NHTSA also has been investigating Teslas on Autopilot crashing into parked emergency vehicles. In a separate probe, the agency is looking at Teslas on Autopilot braking for no apparent reason. Last week, newly confirmed NHTSA Administrator Steven Cliff told The Associated Press that the agency is intensifying efforts to understand the risks posed by automated vehicle technology so it can decide what regulations may be necessary to protect drivers, passengers and pedestrians. He also says automated systems such as automatic emergency braking have huge potential to save lives. In June, NHTSA released data from automakers and tech companies showing nearly 400 crashes over a 10-month period involving vehicles with partially automated driver-assist systems, including 273 with Teslas. The agency cautioned against using the numbers to compare automakers, saying it didn’t weight them by the number of vehicles from each manufacturer that use the systems, or how many miles those vehicles traveled. Automakers reported crashes from July of last year through May 15 under an order from the agency, which is examining such crashes broadly for the first time. Tesla’s crashes happened while vehicles were using Autopilot, “Full Self-Driving,” Traffic Aware Cruise Control, or other driver-assist systems that have some control over speed and steering. The company has about 830,000 vehicles with the systems on the road. Also read: Tesla Smartphone Model Pi: Leaked features, release date The next closest of a dozen automakers that reported crashes was Honda, with 90. Honda says it has about 6 million vehicles on U.S. roads with such systems. Tesla’s crash number may appear elevated somewhat because it uses telematics to monitor its vehicles and get real-time crash reports. Other automakers don’t have such capability, so their reports may come slower or crashes may not be reported at all, NHTSA said. Auto safety advocates said driver-assist and self-driving systems have potential to save lives, but not until NHTSA sets minimum performance standards and requires safety improvements to protect all road users.

Tony Sirico, who played the impeccably groomed mobster Paulie Walnuts in “The Sopranos” and brought his tough-guy swagger to films including “Goodfellas,” died Friday. He was 79. Sirico died at an assisted living facility in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, said his manager, Bob McGowen. There was no immediate information on the cause of death. A statement from Sirico's family confirmed the death of Gennaro Anthony “Tony” Sirico “with great sadness, but with incredible pride, love and a whole lot of fond memories.” McGowan, who represented Sirico for more than two decades, recalled him as “loyal and giving,” with a strong philanthropic streak. That included helping ex-soldiers' causes, which hit home for the Army veteran, his manager said. Steven Van Zandt, who played opposite Sirico as fellow mobster Silvio Dante on “The Sopranos,” saluted him on Twitter as “legendary.” “A larger than life character on and off screen. Gonna miss you a lot my friend,” the actor and musician said. Michael Imperioli, who portrayed Christopher Moltisanti on “The Sopranos,” called Sirico his “dear friend, colleague and partner in crime.” “Tony was like no one else: he was as tough, as loyal and as big hearted as anyone i’ve ever known,” Imperioli said on Instagram. Sirico was unconcerned about being cast in a string of bad guy roles, McGowan said, most prominently that of Peter Paul “Paulie Walnuts” Gualtieri in the 1999-2007 run of the acclaimed HBO drama starring James Gandolfini as mob boss Tony Soprano. (Gandolfini died in 2013 at age 51). “He didn't mind playing a mob guy, but he wouldn't play an informant,” or as Sirico put it, a “snitch,” McGowan said. Read: Entertainment fraternity mourns the death of Sharmili Ahmed Sirico, born July 29, 1942, in New York City, grew up in the Flatbush and Bensonhurst neighborhoods where he said "every guy was trying to prove himself. You either had to have a tattoo or a bullet hole.” “I had both,” he told the Los Angeles Times in a 1990 interview, calling himself ”unstable" during that period of his life. He was arrested repeatedly for criminal offenses, he said, and was in prison twice. In his last stint behind bars, in the 1970s, he saw a performance by a group of ex-convicts and caught the acting bug. “I watched ’em and I thought, ‘I can do that.’ I knew I wasn’t bad looking. And I knew I had the (guts) to stand up and (bull) people," he told the Times. "You get a lot of practice in prison. I used to stand up in front of these cold-blooded murderers and kidnapers — and make ’em laugh.” Sirico also was cast outside the gangster mold, playing police officers in the films “Dead Presidents” and “Deconstructing Harry." Among his other credits were Woody Allen films including “Bullets over Broadway” and “Mighty Aphrodite,” and appearances on TV series including “Miami Vice” and voice roles on “Family Guy” and “American Dad!” Sirico is survived by daughter Joanne Sirico Bello; son Richard Sirico; his brother, Robert Sirico, a priest; and other relatives.