The scene of the cable car accident near Lake Maggiore in northern Italy. Photograph: Cnsas Handout/EPA
“At least nine people are reported to have been killed after a cable car collapsed near Lake Maggiore in northern Italy.
The cable car, which connects the resort town of Stresa and the Mottarone mountain in the Piedmont region, had 11 people onboard, according to Italian media reports.
At least nine people died in the crash, according to Italy’s Alpine rescue service. The incident was reported to have been caused after a tow rope broke.
Corriere della Sera said two children had been taken to a hospital in Turin by air ambulance.” Read more at The Guardian
“As US officials push for more vaccinations amid slowing demand across the country, another state has now crossed an important milestone.
Rhode Island is now the eighth state to have administered at least one Covid-19 shot to 70% of its adult population, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The state joins Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Vermont, who have also vaccinated at least 70% of their adult population.
The news adds on to experts' optimism about the country's declining Covid-19 case numbers and where we could be by summer time as vaccine numbers continue to climb. Earlier this month, President Joe Biden set a goal of administering at least one Covid-19 vaccine dose to 70% of American adults by July 4 -- and has said Americans will be able to celebrate Independence Day by then with a true semblance of normalcy.” Read more at CNN
“Washington’s Metropolitan police department recorded threats to lawmakers and public facilities in the wake of the 6 January attack on the Capitol, according to documents made public in a ransomware hack on their systems this month.
The documents also show how, in the month following the Capitol attack, police stepped up surveillance efforts, monitoring hotel bookings, protests in other jurisdictions, and social media for signs of another attack by far-right groups on targets in the capital, including events surrounding the inauguration of Joe Biden as president.
The revelation of the seriousness of the threats comes amid Republican opposition to forming a 9/11-style commission to investigate the January attack, which saw the Capitol roamed by looting mobs hunting for politicians and involved the deaths of five people.” Read more at The Guardian
“The cease-fire between Israel and Hamas appears to be holding after a brief war that reverberated worldwide.
In total, the Israeli military killed 248 Palestinians in Gaza, including 66 children, according to officials there, and thousands have been displaced during the 11 days of fighting. The rocket attacks launched by Hamas, the militant group that rules Gaza, killed 12 people in Israel, including two children.
Gaza is a sea of rubble, and the scale of the destruction will not allow a return to normalcy for some time. The fighting may be over for now, but for millions of Palestinians living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 war and has controlled through decades of failed peace talks, the routine indignities of occupation are part of daily life.
The battle with Hamas may benefit Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu politically in the short term as he struggles to stay in power, but it leaves his underlying problems unresolved, our correspondent writes in an analysis.
The Biden administration is now considering how to recalibrate its policy in the region without distracting from other priorities.” Read more at New York Times
“CNN cut ties this week with a prominent former Republican politician, Rick Santorum, who had drawn controversy — and created headaches for the network — by saying in a political speech last month that ‘there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture.’
Santorum, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania and two-time presidential candidate who had served as a paid political commentator for CNN since 2017, made the remarks at a summit held April 23 by the conservative group Young America’s Foundation.
Talking about the founding of this country, Santorum said that American settlers ‘birthed a nation from nothing,’ and that ‘there was nothing here’ when they arrived, ignoring the history and culture of the Native American people.
Groups that advocate for Native Americans lambasted Santorum’s comments and criticized his employer, CNN. The Native American Journalists Association, for example, called for Santorum to be fired and said that it ‘cautions Native American and Alaska Native reporters from working with, or applying to jobs at, CNN in the wake of continued racist comments and insensitive reporting directed at Indigenous people.’” Read more at Washington Post
“Maternity wards are shuttering in Italy. Ghost cities are appearing in China. Hundreds of thousands of properties in Germany have been leveled and the land turned into parks.
The world’s demographics are changing, pushing toward more deaths than births. Though some countries’ populations continue to grow, fertility rates are falling nearly everywhere else as women have gained more access to education and contraception. Demographers now predict that toward the middle of this century, the global population will enter a sustained decline for the first time.
A planet with fewer people could ease pressure on resources, slow climate change and reduce burdens for women. But the data also points to changes that are hard to fathom: Fewer workers could upend the ways societies are organized and our ideas about family and nation.” Read more at New York Times
“One year ago Tuesday, George Floyd went to buy a pack of cigarettes. The world hasn’t been the same since.
Floyd’s family will visit the White House on the anniversary of his death, more than a month after a former Minneapolis police officer was found guilty of murdering Floyd, who died after the officer knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes.
In a special series, our Opinion section looked at the legacy of Floyd’s death and the national reckoning over race that followed. Read about the surge of support for Black Lives Matter, how a cry of “I can’t breathe” united a generation and more.
Policing is still under scrutiny. A Times review of videos of the fatal shooting of Andrew Brown Jr., a Black man, in North Carolina casts doubt on whether the use of lethal force was justified. In Louisiana, the state police said Ronald Greene had died in a crash. Footage shows troopers shocking and beating him.” Read more at New York Times
“Nearly a year after a policeman killed George Floyd outside a convenience store in Minneapolis, sparking a vast social protest movement and calls to radically rethink the role of police in society, a scenic, wooded city in central New York is doing just that.
In March, Ithaca, home to about 30,000 people and Cornell University, approved a plan to replace its 63-officer police force with an entirely new agency bearing a friendly new name seemingly designed to repel all associations to police brutality.
By next year, the ‘Community Solutions and Public Safety Department’ could become the first public safety entity in the country largely made up of public servants who will not carry guns. They will answer non-emergency calls— including minor infractions and welfare and mental health checks — while a second group of armed officers will respond to more serious or life-threatening reports.
The new agency won’t be headed by a police chief but a superintendent, who won’t necessarily have to have been in law enforcement to take on the job.
‘Ithaca — this is what is coming next in policing,’ said Phillip Atiba Goff, a Yale University professor and cofounder of the Center for Police Equity, which worked with the Ithaca mayor’s office, the police department, and community advocates to make it happen.
The effort in Ithaca is one of many examples of states and cities tackling criminal justice reforms and rethinking policing in the year after Floyd’s death, which incited calls in many communitiesto ‘defund the police’ and what some scholars believe was the largest wave of social justice protests in the history of the United States.” Read more at Boston Globe
“Black Lives Matter activists recently took to the streets of Indianapolis to protest for Palestinians. In Congress, a lawmaker who cut her teeth as a Black Lives Matter organizer and who has compared her clashes with police to those faced by Palestinians tweeted Friday, ‘A cease-fire ends the bombardment — not the violence.’
And during the height of the recent Gaza hostilities, the official Black Lives Matter organization called for ‘Palestinian liberation,’ six years after the group’s early leaders took a trip to the Middle East that planted the seeds for the current alliance.
Black Lives Matter, which has grown into a potent political force amid a national reckoning on race, has responded forcefully to the violence in the Mideast to extend its reach into foreign policy, pressing the Democratic Party to adopt a dramatically different approach to the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” Read more at Washington Post
“Republicans and Democrats are gearing up to make abortion a major campaign issue ahead of the midterms as the Supreme Court prepares to a hear a case that could diminish Roe v. Wade.
The issue is already influencing races across the country, including in Virginia, where Democrats and pro-choice groups are hitting Republican gubernatorial nominee Glenn Youngkin for his anti-abortion stances ahead of the general election this November.
Other figures up for reelection next year who are being targeted include Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), who on Wednesday signed legislation that would virtually ban all abortions in the state once a fetal heartbeat is detected.
‘Greg Abbott wants to ban abortions at six weeks, before most people know they’re pregnant. WE CAN REPLACE HIM,’ EMILY’s List, a group dedicated to elected pro-choice Democratic women, tweeted on Wednesday.
The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a case involving a Mississippi law that bans abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy. Abbott’s action in Texas, meanwhile, comes after 28 abortion restrictions were enacted in seven states during the last week of April. Last month’s restrictions accounted for 46 percent of all restrictions passed at that point in 2021 alone.
Abortion rights groups say the latest developments will only galvanize their Democratic-leaning base, pointing to the base’s increased activity after the late liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death last year.” Read more at The Hill
“The Biden administration announced Saturday that it will re-designate Haiti under the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program for 18 months, a move that marks a key win for Democrats and immigration advocacy groups.
The designation will allow Haitians in the U.S. to obtain a work permit and permission to stay in the country amid what Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said were security concerns and other issues in Haiti.
‘Haiti is currently experiencing serious security concerns, social unrest, an increase in human rights abuses, crippling poverty, and lack of basic resources, which are exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic,’ Mayorkas said in an announcement. ‘After careful consideration, we determined that we must do what we can to support Haitian nationals in the United States until conditions in Haiti improve so they may safely return home.’
The designation comes as Haiti faces a political upheaval, concerns over human rights abuses and the crippling impact of the coronavirus.
The country was originally designated for TPS in 2010 following an earthquake that killed more than 300,000 people in the country.
The designation, like many TPS labels, must be renewed at least every 18 months. The Obama administration issued frequent renewals until the Trump administration in 2017 announced it would end Haitian TPS in mid-2019.
Court injunctions blocked that move from taking effect, leaving Haitian TPS recipients in limbo.
The re-designation of Haiti under TPS protects the existing beneficiaries of the program as well as any Haitian nationals who have arrived in the United States since the last designation in 2017. Any person from Haiti who attempts to travel to the United States after the announcement will not be eligible for TPS and could be deported.
Overall, the move could give more than 100,000 Haitians the right to live and work in U.S.” Read more at The Hill
“An iceberg nearly half the size of Puerto Rico that broke off the edge of Antarctica last week is now the world’s largest, researchers said.
The iceberg, known as A76, following a naming convention established by the National Ice Center, naturally split from Antarctica’s Ronne Ice Shelf into the Weddell Sea through a process known as calving, the center said.
It measures about 1,668 square miles (4,320 square kilometers), making it larger than A23a, an iceberg that formed in 1986 and had a total area of more than 1,500 square miles (4,000 square kilometers) in January.
Researchers sought to put the formation of A76 in context, saying that the forces that severed it from the Ronne Ice Shelf were part of the shelf’s normal life span and may not be directly related to climate change.” Read more at New York Times
“KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. — Mindful of keeping his focus as he ages, Phil Mickelson has begun meditating in his spare time. In the third round of the P.G.A. Championship on Saturday, he clearly took his new diversion to the workplace, pausing for long contemplative moments, occasionally with eyes closed, as he prepared to execute a shot.
For 11 holes on Saturday, the result was a commanding, five-shot lead.
But Mickelson’s composed walk around the treacherous Ocean Course at Kiawah Island would turn into roughly an hour of chaos, when it seemed he was on the verge of playing his way out of the tournament.
Mickelson found the inner peace — or relied on nearly 30 years of top performances — to right the ship in the nick of time, rallying with five closing pars to take a one-stroke lead over Brooks Koepka into Sunday’s final round. Koepka had briefly tied Mickelson atop the leaderboard but bogeyed the 18th hole as Mickelson was calmly closing out his day.
If Mickelson, who turns 51 next month, maintains that advantage in the final round, he will become the oldest golfer to win a major championship, taking the record from Julius Boros, who was 48 when he won the 1968 P.G.A. Championship. A win on Sunday would be Mickelson’s sixth major victory, something only 13 other men’s golfers have achieved.” Read more at New York Times
“Twenty one ultra-marathon runners have died after extreme weather conditions hit a 100-kilometer (62-mile) mountain race in northwest China.
The high-altitude Huanghe Shilin Mountain Marathon began on Saturday morning in sunny conditions. But by 1 p.m. local time weather conditions had turned, with freezing rain, hail stones and gale winds lashing runners in Gansu County, according to the state-run Global Times….
As temperatures dropped in the Yellow River Stone Forest, runners started reported suffering from hypothermia, while others went missing.
The marathon organizers called off the race and launched a search party of 1,200 people to scour the complicated terrain. The search operation continued after dark.
Most competitors were wearing thin shorts and T-shirts.
Janet Ng, a race director of the Hong Kong 100 Ultra Marathon, told CNN on Sunday that she was not in a position to comment on the importance or safety of the Gansu marathon, but noted that the trail-running community is mourning with great sadness.” Read more at CNN
Robin Van Lonkhuijsen/EPA, via Shutterstock
“‘We just want to say to the whole Europe, to the whole world, rock ‘n’ roll never dies!’
That’s Damiano David, the lead singer of Maneskin after winning the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday night. With their song ‘Zitti E Buoni,’ Maneskin beat 25 other acts from across Europe to bring the title home for Italy. France came in second, and Switzerland came in third.
The contest was the first major global cultural event to be held in person since the coronavirus pandemic hit last year. Other contenders included a folk-techno act from Ukraine, a feminist Russian pop star and an Icelandic disco band. Here’s what we learned from the grand final.” Read more at New York Times
Justin Casterline/Getty Images
“The N.B.A. playoffs are underway. The scariest teams aren’t at the top.
In the Western Conference, neither of the two top seeds — the Jazz or the Suns — is favored to escape the conference with the defending-champion Lakers and the Clippers lurking. In the Eastern Conference, the Nets are finally at full strength, and the Bucks and the 76ers are revamped. Here’s a preview of the matchups.
And the Knicks — the Knicks! — finally have a seat at the table. No one is more excited about that than their long-suffering fans. They play the Hawks tonight at 7 Eastern.
But the toughest playoff matchup may be with the opponent the N.B.A. has been facing for 14 months: the coronavirus.” Read more at New York Times