Notice how tightly the floors pancaked. Photo: Giorgio Viera/AFP via Getty Images
“Owners in the Surfside condo building were just days away from a deadline for steep payments toward more than $9 million in repairs that had been recommended three years earlier, AP reports.
Why it matters: Engineers and experts say documents make clear that several major repairs needed to be done as soon as possible. Other than some roof repairs, that work had not begun, officials said.
Owners were facing payments of anywhere from $80,000 for a one-bedroom unit to $330,000 or so for a penthouse, to be paid all at once or in installments. Their first deadline was July 1 — this Thursday.
One resident whose apartment was spared, Adalberto Aguero, had just taken out a loan to cover his $80,000 bill.” Read more at Axios
“Rescue crews are still searching through the debris -- and families are still waiting in agony -- after a Miami-area condo building partially collapsed last week. At least nine people are confirmed dead and 152 are unaccounted for this morning. Crews have carved out trenches, contained a deeply rooted fire, and burrowed into the site to pull out remains as those above ground use K9s, sonar and heavy equipment to locate the missing. Some families have expressed frustration at how long rescue and recovery efforts are taking. Three years ago, a structural report on the building showed major issues in need of repair but didn’t indicate whether it was at risk of collapse. Officials are now inspecting nearby buildings for signs of structural damage.” Read more at CNN
“After the Miami-area condo collapse, neighbors ask whether it’s safe to stay. Structural engineers are looking for the source of the collapse as many residents in the almost identical Champlain Towers North—which is two buildings away and was constructed around the same time—are anxious.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“President Biden directed military forces yesterday to conduct defensive precision airstrikes against facilities used by Iran-backed militia groups in the Iraq-Syria border region. The President directed the actions after recent attacks by Iran-backed groups on US targets in Iraq, the Pentagon's press secretary said. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi supported the strikes in a statement, calling them a ‘targeted and proportional response to a serious and specific threat’ but said Congress would review the formal notification of the operation. This isn’t the first time Biden has ordered such an airstrike. The military’s first known action under Biden came in February, when it struck a site in Syria, prompting concern among lawmakers who said Biden had not asked for the necessary congressional authorization.” Read more at CNN
“Biden also this weekend tried to walk back a rogue comment he made last week when he said he wouldn't sign the big bipartisan infrastructure bill unless it came paired with a multi-trillion dollar Democratic spending plan for ‘human infrastructure.’ He was referring to huge economic recovery bill backed by Democrats. Biden assured potential defectors that he wasn’t issuing a veto threat, and for now, it looks like the bill is back on track with bipartisan support. Republican senators like Mitt Romney accepted that Biden’s comments were a flub -- but the mistake gave opposing GOP members the opportunity to paint Biden’s comments as deceptive.” Read more at CNN
“Prosecutors in New York have given former president Donald Trump’s attorneys a deadline of Monday afternoon to make any final arguments as to why the Trump Organization should not face criminal charges over its financial dealings, according to two people familiar with the matter.
That deadline is a strong signal that Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. (D) and New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) — now working together, after each has spent more than two years investigating Trump’s business — are considering criminal charges against the company as an entity.
Earlier this year, Vance convened a grand jury in Manhattan to consider indictments in the investigation. No entity or individual has been charged in the investigations thus far, and it remains possible that no charges will be filed.” Read more at Washington Post
Austun Wilde rests with her two dogs, Bird Is the Wurd and Fenrir, at a cooling center in the Oregon Convention Center in Portland yesterday. Photo: Nathan Howard/Getty Images
“The dangerous heat wave enveloping the Pacific Northwest is shattering weather records by such large margins that it is making even climate scientists uneasy, Axios' Andrew Freedman writes.
Why it matters: Infrastructure, including heating and cooling, is built according to expectations of a ‘normal’ climate. Human-caused climate change is quickly redefining that normal, while dramatically raising the likelihood of events that simply have no precedent.
Portland, Ore., reached 112°F yesterday, breaking the all-time record of 108°F set just the day before.
Canada set a national all-time heat record on Monday, smashing the old record by nearly 3°F.
How it works: The heat dome over the Northwest, which is a sprawling, intense area of high pressure aloft, causes air to sink, or compress. As it does so, the air temperatures increase. Winds blowing from land to sea around this high are pushing temperatures higher.” Read more at Axios
“A UN report that analysed racial justice in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd has called on member states including the UK to end the ‘impunity’ enjoyed by police officers who violate the human rights of black people.
The UN human rights office analysis of 190 deaths across the world led to the report’s damning conclusion that law enforcement officers are rarely held accountable for killing black people due in part to deficient investigations and an unwillingness to acknowledge the impact of structural racism.
The 23-page global report, and its accompanying 95-page conference room paper, features seven examples of deaths involving police, including the case of Kevin Clarke, who died after being restrained by officers in London in 2018.
A jury at Clarke’s inquest, who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 2002, found the police’s inappropriate use of restraints contributed to his death.
Other case studies include Luana Barbosa dos Reis Santos and João Pedro Matos Pinto in Brazil; George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in the US; Janner García Palomino in Colombia; and Adama Traoré in France.” Read more at The Guardian
“The French far-right fared poorly in regional elections over the weekend, failing to win control of even one of France’s 18 regions and potentially denting Marine Le Pen’s chances ahead of next year’s presidential contest.
Le Pen’s party, National Rally, had set its sights on the southern region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur as it sought to secure a breakthrough first regional victory. The party had recruited Thierry Mariani, a former transport minister and one-time member of the center-right Les Républicains, to lift its fortunes and to soften the party’s image in an area home to a large proportion of right-leaning voters.
In the end the campaign failed, as voters instead favored Renaud Muselier of Les Républicains with approximately 57 percent of the vote. Muselier’s victory was helped along by the late withdrawal of Green Party candidate Jean-Laurent Félizia, whose strategic exit prevented the kind of vote split that would have given Mariani an opening.
Low turnout. Le Pen will hope that the low turnout exhibited in both rounds belies greater support on the national stage. An estimated 34.5 percent of French voters cast a ballot on Sunday, just above the record low turnout of 33 percent in the first round. ‘Mobilization is the key to the victories to come,’ Le Pen reflected after Sunday’s defeat.
De-demonization. Still, the loss puts into question the effectiveness of the party’s ‘de-demonization’ campaign, with an electorate appearing not quite ready to cede power to the far-right. Writing in Foreign Policy earlier this month, Fleur Macdonald profiled National Rally’s Julien Sanchez, one of ten mayors the party has successfully elected as it seeks to showcase its ability to govern.
Élection 2022. Even though Emmanuel Macron’s party, La République En Marche!, performed dismally, he will be happy that National Rally’s momentum has been stalled for now. In the most recent presidential poll, Macron leads Le Pen in a one-on-one matchup, winning 54 percent support, while his approval rating far outstrips his two predecessors at the same point in their presidencies. Macron’s attempts to burnish his environmental credentials with left-leaning voters today, as the French Senate considers a wide-ranging climate bill.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“The FDA’s approval of an Alzheimer’s treatment — the first in two decades — should have been a cause for celebration. Instead, it's a scientific and financial mess, Axios' Sam Baker and Bob Herman report.
Why it matters: Experts fear the FDA’s decision will undermine medical standards, explode the federal budget and fill millions of desperate people with false hope.
The backstory: FDA approval of Aduhelm, developed by Biogen, was controversial at the time, and criticism has only gotten louder.
The evidence that the drug works is extremely thin. The FDA's own statisticians said it didn’t meet the agency's usual standards.
An outside advisory panel — whose advice the agency usually follows — recommended against approving the drug. Three members quit in protest. One of them called this "probably the worst drug approval decision in recent U.S. history."
The bottom line: Patients will likely take it for several years. If it doesn’t provide any clinical benefit, it will simply add billions more to the financial and emotional costs that Alzheimer’s already extracts.” Read more at Axios
‘WASHINGTON — Former Attorney General William Barr candidly denounced former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to a report in The Atlantic detailing how the man who was once one of Trump's most loyal lieutenants split with the former president.
In a series of interviews with ABC News' Jonathan Karl, detailed in a forthcoming book on the last days of the Trump administration, Barr described the final weeks of the Trump administration and Trump's frenzied attempts to retain power.
‘My attitude was: It was put-up or shut-up time,’ Barr said. ‘If there was evidence of fraud, I had no motive to suppress it. But my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there.’
The expletive-laden conversations between Trump and Barr describe a president furious at his election loss and genuinely in disbelief that his most loyal subordinates would not support him in attempting spread false conspiracy theories and subvert the election.
After the 2020 election, the Justice Department launched investigations into widespread voter fraud across the country in key battleground states.
The latest revelations show that Barr was skeptical of Trump's claims even as he greenlit the operations. Barr also told Karl that he'd expected Trump to lose the 2020 election and that he was not surprised by the outcome. In the aftermath, he launched his own informal inquiries into the most popular claims made by Trump's close allies, alongside the DOJ's official investigations.” Read more at USA Today
“Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, repeatedly blew up at President Trump over how to handle last summer's racial-justice protests, The Wall Street Journal's Michael Bender writes in his forthcoming book, ‘Frankly, We Did Win This Election.’
Trump wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act and put Milley in charge of a scorched-earth military campaign to suppress protests that had spiraled into riots in several cities.
Milley — now a GOP villain for his testimony last week on critical race theory — pushed back, Bender writes in a passage we're reporting here for the first time:
Seated in the Situation Room with [Attorney General Bill] Barr, Milley, and [Secretary of Defense Mark] Esper, Trump exaggerated claims about the violence and alarmed officials ... by announcing he’d just put Milley ‘in charge.’
Privately, Milley confronted Trump about his role. He was an adviser, and not in command. But Trump had had enough.
‘I said you're in f---ing charge!’ Trump shouted at him.
‘Well, I'm not in charge!’ Milley yelled back.
‘You can't f---ing talk to me like that!’ Trump said. ...
‘Goddamnit,’ Milley said to others. ‘There's a room full of lawyers here. Will someone inform him of my legal responsibilities?’
Asked for a response, Trump told Jonathan Swan through an aide: ‘This is totally fake news, it never ever happened. I'm not a fan of Gen. Milley, but I never had an argument with him and the whole thing is false. He never talked back to me. Michael Bender never asked me about it and it's totally fake news.’
Trump later added: ‘If Gen. Milley had yelled at me, I would have fired him.’
Bender told Swan: ‘I asked the former president for his side of this particular argument in a written question — as he requested — along with other queries included in my thorough fact-checking process. He did not reply.’” Read more at Axios
“The Panama Canal is tackling a climate-change puzzle. Authorities, facing diminishing levels of rainwater that the 50-mile canal needs to operate, plan to unveil a $2 billion plan to build infrastructure to manage and preserve freshwater reserves.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“$44,527 — An Oklahoma City senior living center’s February gas bill, which was about 50 times more than the month before. Several states are having to help local utilities, businesses and homeowners cover February bills after a freeze that caused natural-gas prices to surge in parts of the country.
390,000 — The approximate number of coronavirus deaths officially recorded in India. Health experts, statisticians and families who have lost loved ones say that figure vastly undercounts the true toll.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Team B&B KTM’s Bryan Coquard of France (R) and a Team Alpecin Fenix’ rider lie on the ground after crashing during the 1st stage of the 108th edition of the Tour de France cycling race, 197 km between Brest and Landerneau, on June 26, 2021. ANNE-CHRISTINE POUJOULAT/Getty Images
“The Tour de France will be filing a lawsuit against the spectator who caused a massive pileup when she stepped onto the road in the first stage of the race on Saturday. The woman was apparently eager for the TV cameras to capture her holding a large sign with the words ‘ALLEZ OPI-OMI,’ a mixture of French and German that translates to ‘come on grandpa-grandma!’ so she stepped onto the road and didn’t realize the peloton was fast approaching. German cyclist Tony Martin hit the spectator’s sign and went tumbling to the ground, causing a chain reaction that led many others to fall off their bicycles. It was the first of two crashes in that leg of the race.
The Tour de France says the woman will face consequences for her actions. ‘We are suing this woman who behaved so badly,’ Pierre-Yves Thouault, the organization’s deputy director, told AFP. ‘We are doing this so that the tiny minority of people who do this don’t spoil the show for everyone,’ he said.” Read more at Slate
“The tennis world was shaken when Wimbledon was canceled in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic — the first time since World War II. But the oldest Grand Slam tennis tournament ends a two-year absence on Monday . What's at stake? Defending champion Novak Djokovic will try to win his 20th major championship, a record already shared by Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. Serena Williams is seeking her 24th major singles trophy to equal the all-time mark after losing in the 2018 and 2019 Wimbledon finals. And Coco Gauff, now 17, will return to the site of her big breakthrough at 15. Could there be yet another new Slam champion?” Read more at USA Today
“Simone Biles, Sunisa Lee, Jordan Chiles and Grace McCallum are set on Monday as the official 2021 U.S. women's Olympic gymnastics team. The Tokyo Olympics are less than a month away, and the USA locked in its team for one of the most popular sports on Sunday night. Jade Carey and MyKayla Skinner will join as individual competitors. Four alternates will also travel to Japan. The men's team was announced Saturday: Brody Malone, Yul Moldauer, Shane Wiskus, Sam Mikulak and Alec Yoder will represent the U.S. in Tokyo.” Read more at USA Today
“‘F9: The Fast Saga,’ the ninth installment in the ‘Fast and Furious’ franchise, had the top weekend box-office haul in North America since before the pandemic, Axios Media Trends expert Sara Fischer reports.
Why it matters: The weekend blowout is a huge sign of optimism for the struggling movie theater industry, which has been ravaged by pandemic-driven theater closures and the rise of streaming.
‘F9’ blew past estimates and brought in $70 million this weekend — beating the previous pandemic champ, Paramount's ‘A Quiet Place Part II,’ which brought in $50 million on Memorial Day weekend.
That makes ‘F9’ the biggest box-office opening winner domestically since ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ debuted in theaters in December 2019.
What's next: Disney's Marvel action film ‘Black Widow’ debuts July 8, and Warner Bros.' ‘Space Jam: A New Legacy’ on July 16.” Read more at Axios
“Broadway (and Bruce) are back
On Saturday, Bruce Springsteen returned to the St. James Theater to perform his one-man show — the first Broadway show since New York’s theaters went dark on March 12, 2020.
Broadway’s big musicals — including ‘Hadestown,’ ‘Hamilton’ and ‘Wicked’ — will not return until September. But for the 1,700 people at ‘Springsteen on Broadway,’ the first strums on Springsteen’s guitar felt like ‘proof that the rhythms that moved New York City were emerging from behind a heavy, dark and weighty curtain,’ The Times’s Nick Corasaniti writes.” Read more at New York Times
“The principal at a New Jersey high school cut off a valedictorian speech about queer identity.” Read more at New York Times
“In the Euro 2020 soccer tournament, Belgium beat Portugal, the defending champion. The Czech Republic beat the Netherlands.” Read more at New York Times