Death toll rises to 30 in Havana hotel blast, Cuban authorities say
HAVANA — Search crews with dogs Sunday hunted through the ruins of a luxury hotel in Cuba’s capital for survivors of a devastating explosion while officials raised the number of known dead to 30.
The Hotel Saratoga, a fivestar 96-room hotel in Old Havana, was preparing to reopen after being closed for two years when an apparent gas leak ignited, blowing the outer walls into the busy, midmorning streets just a block from the country’s Capitol building on Friday.
Cuban officials on Sunday raised the known death toll to 30 from 27 even as crews continued to search for victims buried beneath piles of shattered concrete. Several nearby structures also were damaged, including the historic Marti Theater and the Calvary Baptist Church, headquarters for the denomination in western Cuba.
The church said on its Facebook page that the building suffered “significant structural damage, with several collapsed or cracked walls and columns (and) the ceiling partially collapsed,” though no church workers were hurt.
The Health Ministry said 84 people had been injured in Friday’s explosion. The dead included four minors, a pregnant woman and a Spanish tourist, whose companion was seriously injured.
The ministry on Sunday also released the names of those who died. Some 24 remained hospitalized.
On Saturday, a representative of Grupo de Turismo Gaviota SA, which owns the hotel, said 13 of its workers remained missing. Gov. Reinaldo Garcia Zapata said Saturday evening that 19 families had reported loved ones missing and that rescue efforts would continue.
Authorities said the cause of the explosion was still under investigation, but believed it to have been caused by a gas leak. A large crane hoisted a charred gas tanker out of the rubble Saturday.
Burials for victims have begun, according to authorities. But some people were still waiting for news of friends and relatives.
“We are hoping that something will be known about my cousin’s mother,” Angela Acosta said near the site of the explosion. Her relative, Maria de la Concepcion Alard, lived in an apartment adjacent to the hotel with a black Labrador, which was rescued along with another dog Sunday.
NY Gov. Hochul: New York Gov. Kathy Hochul tested positive for COVID-19 on Sunday, saying she will isolate and work remotely this week.
“Thankfully, I’m vaccinated and boosted, and I’m asymptomatic,” Hochul, 63, tweeted. “A reminder to all New Yorkers: get vaccinated and boosted, get tested, and stay home if you don’t feel well.”
A day earlier, the Democratic governor had tweeted a photo from the Olana State Historic Site outside Hudson, New York, which she visited to thank park volunteers.
Hochul is at least the 18th governor to test positive for COVID-19, according to an Associated Press tally.
Gas prices: The average U.S. price of regular-grade gasoline jumped 15 cents over past two weeks to $4.38 per gallon.
Industry analyst Trilby Lundberg of the Lundberg Survey said Sunday that the current price sits a nickel
below the highest average price in history — $4.43, set March 11. The average price at the pump is $1.36 higher than it was one year ago.
Nationwide, the highest average price for regular-grade gas is in the San Francisco Bay Area, at $5.85 per gallon. The lowest average is in Tulsa, Okla., at $3.80 per gallon.
The average price of diesel soared 43 cents over two weeks, to $5.58 a gallon, according to the survey.
UN resignation: Secretary-General Antonio Guterres accepted the resignation Sunday of the head of a United Nations agency that was under investigation for questionable investments.
Grete Faremo, a former Norwegian minister of justice and public security, had been undersecretary-general and executive director of the U.N. Office for Project Services since August 2014.
The office, headquartered in Copenhagen, says its
mission is to provide “infrastructure, procurement and project management services for a more sustainable world.”
Faremo’s resignation was accepted on the day the New York Times reported that the agency made “a baffling series of financial decisions” that purportedly led to $25 million in losses.
The Times report followed an April 16 article in Devex, the media platform for the global development community by Brussels-based writer Ilya Gridneff, titled: “What went wrong with UNOPS’ ambitious impact-investing initiative?”
Hong Kong election: John Lee, a hard-line security chief who oversaw a crackdown on Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, was elected as the city’s next leader Sunday in a vote cast by a largely pro-Beijing committee.
Lee was the only candidate and won with over
99% of the vote in which nearly all 1,500 committee members were vetted by the central government in Beijing.
He will replace Carrie Lam on July 1. Her fiveterm was marked by pro-democracy protests calling for her resignation, a security crackdown that has quashed virtually all dissent and the recentCOVID-19wavethat had overwhelmed the health system — events that have undermined Hong Kong’s reputation as an international business hub with Western-style freedoms.
Lam said she would submit the election results to Beijing.
Syria, Iran meet: Syrian President Bashar Assad met with Iranian leaders in Tehran on Sunday, Iranian and Syrian media reported, marking his second trip to major wartime ally Iran since Syria’s civil war erupted in 2011.
Nour News, a website close to Iran’s Supreme
National Security Council, reported that Assad met Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Ebrahim Raisi. It said the leaders praised the strong ties between their nations and vowed to boost relations further.
“Everybody now looks at Syria as a power,” Khamenei told Assad in the meeting, according to Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim news agency, believed to be close to the country’s powerful paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. “The respect and credibility of Syria is now much more than before.”
Assad, for his part, said that strong relations between Iran and Syria served as a bulwark against American and Israeli influence in the Middle East.
“America today is weaker than ever,” Syrian state news agency, SANA, quoted Assad as saying. “We should continue this track,” he added, praising Iran’s help in Syria’s “fight against terrorism.”
According to The Sun, bringing a pregnancy to term is 33 times more dangerous to the carrier than having an abortion (“If Roe v. Wade is ultimately overturned, Maryland must become a sanctuary state for abortion,” May 3). Since poor little women, who on average make only 82 cents to the men’s $1, can’t be trusted to decide with their doctors whether they should carry a pregnancy to term, I think we should get to the root of the abortion problem: Abortion is only a problem because the men have not used birth control.
Fortunately today, thanks to the miracle of modern science, I suggest we take a new approach: If a woman is forced to carry a pregnancy to term, we should match the baby’s DNA to its father. The baby could then be deposited with the father, along with the hospital bill and any additional bills for prenatal and postnatal expenses.
This would help those men who have neglected their responsibility to use birth control to reap their rewards: a fine young baby to raise on their own! The woman will feel freer to carry the pregnancy to term, since she, the vessel, will know that her expenses are under control and that the child will be provided for. With this little change, I’m sure the rates of abortion, which are already falling, will plummet. I would bet, as an added benefit, the din against women’s right to choose would lessen considerably. Women might even be considered competent to make their own decisions!
A win, win — right?
— Margaret Engvall, Baltimore