Friday, 25 June 2021

Friday Briefing: Race to find survivors as death toll in Miami condo collapse rises

Friday, June 25, 2021

by Linda Noakes

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Here's what you need to know.

Chauvin to be sentenced, hundreds more unmarked graves found in Canada, and Branson's Virgin Galactic is cleared for takeoff

Today's biggest stories

Emergency crews respond at a partially collapsed residential building in Surfside, near Miami Beach Florida, U.S., June 24, 2021

U.S.

Rescue workers frantically scoured the rubble of a collapsed apartment block in a Miami suburb for signs of life, after the oceanfront condo dramatically crumpled in a matter of seconds leaving four people dead and 159 unaccounted for.

Hours after President Joe Biden declared "We have a deal" to renew the infrastructure of the United States, the Senate's top Republican lashed out at plans to follow the $1.2 trillion bipartisan bill with another measure funding what Democrats call "human infrastructure."

Former Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin will be sentenced today for murdering George Floyd in May 2020 after a trial that was widely seen as a watershed moment in the history of U.S. policing.

A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers said they had reached an agreement on a framework for a policing reform bill, after weeks of talks.

Elijah Ross stood watch last Friday by the candles, flowers, liquor bottles and balloons at a memorial for his 31-year-old friend, Eric Ruise, among the latest victims of a murder spree gripping the city of Rochester, New York. As U.S. murder rates surge, we visited a city "ready to explode."

Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban arrives for the second day of an EU summit at the European Council building in Brussels, Belgium, June 25, 2021

WORLD

Respect LGBT rights or leave the European Union, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told his Hungarian counterpart as the bloc's leaders confronted Viktor Orban over a law that bans schools from using materials seen as promoting homosexuality.

An indigenous group in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan said it had found the unmarked graves of an estimated 751 people at a now-defunct Catholic residential school, just weeks after a similar, smaller discovery rocked the country.

The virus that causes COVID-19 could have started spreading in China as early as October 2019, two months before the first case was identified in the central city of Wuhan, a new study shows.

In a fusion of the modern and the medieval, green laser beams and flaming torches light up the night sky in a remote part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, as Palestinians wage a battle to stop a new Jewish settlement. Meanwhile, Israel says it will ease more Gaza trade restrictions as the truce holds.

BUSINESS

Billionaire Richard Branson's spaceship company Virgin Galactic has received approval from the U.S. aviation safety regulator to fly people to space, turning up the pressure on rivals in the nascent and expensive space tourism sector.

China's sweeping ban on cryptocurrency mining has paralysed an industry that accounts for over half of global bitcoin production, as miners dump machines in despair or seek refuge in places such as Texas or Kazakhstan.

Toshiba shareholders voted out its board chairman and one other director, delivering a seismic rebuke to the company after it was found to have colluded with the government in suppressing foreign investor interests.

Panasonic sold its stake in Tesla for about $3.6 billion in the year ended March, a spokesperson for the Japanese company said. The sale comes as the bicycles-to-hair dryers conglomerate seeks to reduce its dependence on the electric car maker and raise cash for investments.

Credit Suisse's top management are under pressure to come up with an overhaul plan for the scandal-hit Swiss bank that could include a potential merger with rival UBS, people familiar with its thinking have told Reuters.

Quote of the day

"I hope I'm not the UFO, Tic Tac person for the rest of my life. This is not what I envisioned for myself"

Alex Dietrich

Former U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander

'Normalizing' UFOs - retired U.S. Navy pilot recalls encounter

Video of the day

The moment a UK warship meets Russian forces

As Russia warns the UK that it will bomb British naval vessels if there are further provocations in the Black Sea, footage shows an incident on Monday as seen from the British warship HMS Defender.

And finally…

New early human discovered in Israel

Nesher Ramla Homo may have lived alongside Homo sapiens for more than 100,000 years, and may have even interbred with our species.

More from Reuters

COVID-19 Investigations Breakingviews Legal News

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