1 dead from mudslides in Canada after heavy rains
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — The body of a woman was recovered from one of the mudslides caused by extremely heavy rainfall in the Pacific coast Canadian province of British Columbia, authorities said Tuesday.
Police said search and rescue personnel were continuing to look for other possible victims from Monday’s slides.
“Our team did recover one person,” said David MacKenzie, the Pemberton District Search and Rescue manager.
He said his team came across seven vehicles at the slide site on Highway 99 near the town of Lillooet and police were trying to determine if there were any other bodies.
“It is a significant amount of debris. It makes it very difficult for our search crews. The mud is up to their waist. I can’t recall our team being involved in anything like this in the past,” he said.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police Staff Sgt. Janelle Shoihet said the total number of people and vehicles unaccounted for had not yet been confirmed.
She said investigators had received reports of two other people who were missing but added that other motorists might have been buried in the slide.
Vancouver Heavy Urban Search and Rescue Team spokesman Jonathan Gormick said while the roadway has been cleared of potentially trapped vehicles or people, they’ll now be searching the slide’s debris field.
WOODSTOCK, N.H. — Fighting sagging poll ratings, President Joe Biden set out on a national tour to persuade everyday Americans of the benefits of his big, just-signed infrastructure plan. First stop: a snowy, rusty bridge in New Hampshire, a state that gave him no love in last year’s presidential primaries.
Biden left the state in February of 2020 before polls had even closed on his fifthplace primary finish. But he returned as president, eager to talk up the billions in investments in upgrading America’s roads, bridges and transit systems that he signed into law Monday.
Walking across the rural New Hampshire bridge that’s been tagged a priority for repairs since 2014, Biden framed the infrastructure law in direct and human terms. He said it would have a meaningful impact here, from efficient everyday transportation to keeping emergency routes open.
“This isn’t esoteric, this isn’t some gigantic bill — it is, but it’s about what happens to ordinary people,” he said. “Conversations
around those kitchen tables that are both profound as they are ordinary: How do I cross the bridge in a snowstorm?”
Biden is down in the polls but hopes to use the successful new law to shift the political winds in his direction and provide fresh momentum for his broader $1.85 trillion social spending package now before Congress.
The president held a splashy bipartisan bill-signing ceremony Monday for hundreds on the White House South Lawn, where lawmakers and union workers cheered and clapped.
“America is moving again, and your life is going to change for the better,” Biden promised Americans.
WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Congress that she believed she would run out of maneuvering room to avoid the nation’s firstever default soon after Dec. 15.
In a letter to congressional leaders, Yellen said that she believed Treasury could be left with insufficient resources to keep financing the government beyond Dec. 15.
Yellen’s new date is 12 days later than the Dec. 3 date she provided in a letter to Congress on Oct. 18. That letter was based on the fact that Congress had just passed a $480 billion increase in the debt limit as a stop-gap measure.
As she has done in the past, Yellen urged
Congress to deal with the debt limit quickly to remove the possibility of a potential default on the nation’s obligations.
“To ensure the full faith and credit of the United States, it is critical that Congress raise or suspend the debt limit as soon as possible,” Yellen wrote to congressional leaders.
NEW YORK — An influential U.S. advisory panel will discuss expanding eligibility for COVID-19 vaccine booster shots to all adults Friday, a move that could make the shots available nationwide as early as this weekend.
Some cities and states already allow all adults to get boosters of Pfizer’s vaccine, but it is not yet official U.S. policy. In the last week, California, New Mexico, Arkansas, West Virginia and Colorado expanded the shots to all adults. New York City made a similar move.
Pfizer asked U.S. regulators last week to allow boosters of its COVID-19 vaccine for anyone 18 or older. The Food and Drug Administration is expected to sign off on Pfizer’s application before the advisory panel meets Friday. The final step — CDC’s official recommendation — could come soon after the meeting.
The move would greatly expand who is eligible. Boosters are now recommended for people who initially received their second Pfizer or Moderna shots at least six months ago if they’re 65 or older or are at high risk of COVID-19 because of health problems or their job or living conditions. Boosters are also recommended for people who received the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine at least two months ago.
BRUNSWICK, Ga. — Prosecutors rested their case in the trial of three white men charged with chasing and killing Ahmaud Arbery after the jury saw graphic photos of the shotgun wounds that punched a gaping hole in his chest and unleashed bleeding that stained his white T-shirt entirely red.
Prosecutors called 23 witnesses during eight days of testimony. They concluded with Dr. Edmund Donoghue, the state medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Arbery’s body, followed by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s lead investigator in the case.
Donoghue testified that Arbery was hit by two of the three shotgun rounds fired at him. He said both gunshots caused such severe bleeding that either blast alone would have killed the 25-year-old Black man.
NEW YORK — American journalist Danny Fenster, who was freed after nearly six months in jail in military-ruled Myanmar, arrived in the United States for an emotional reunion with his family.
Fenster, who was sentenced last week to 11 years of hard labor, was handed over Monday to former U.S. diplomat Bill Richardson, who helped negotiate the release. He is one of more than 100 journalists, media officials or publishers who have been detained since the military ousted the elected government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in February.
It’s been a “long time coming, a moment I had been imagining so intensely for so long,” a bearded and shaggy-haired Fenster said after landing in New York. “Surpasses everything I had imagined.”
Fenster’s family awaited his arrival in the lobby of an airport hotel — and rushed outside to greet him as the SUV carrying him approached. His mother, Rose, embraced him in a long tight hug the moment he stepped out of the vehicle.
“It’s over. There’s nothing to be anxious about anymore,” Fenster said later in an interview. “Any bitter, ill will, regret, anger spilled out on the tarmac when I got on that plane.”
His wife, Julianna, who is still in Myanmar, is set to reunite with him in Detroit.