July 5, 2021 4:21 am
HAVANA (AP) – Tropical Storm Elsa is sweeping along Cuba’s southern coast, and forecasters expect it to make landfall on the island’s central shore by mid-afternoon Monday. Cuban officials evacuated 180,000 people as a precaution against the possibility of heavy flooding from a storm that already battered several Caribbean islands, killing at least three people. Elsa is forecast to cross over Cuba by Monday night and then head for Florida, where a state of emergency has been declared in 15 counties, including in Miami-Dade County, where a high-rise condominium collapsed last week. Forecasters say the storm will weaken some while crossing over Cuba, but is likely to strengthen slightly as it moves toward Florida. Elsa was the Atlantic season’s first hurricane before weakening into a tropical storm.
July 5, 2021 4:20 am
SURFSIDE, Fla. (AP) – Rescuers are searching through fresh rubble after the last of the collapsed Florida condo building was demolished. Officials said Monday that the demolition allowed crews into previously inaccessible places, including bedrooms where people were believed to be sleeping at the time of the disaster. Three more victims were discovered in the new pile, raising the death toll to 27 people. Another 118 people remain unaccounted for. The demolition raised the prospect that crews could increase both the pace of their work and the number of searchers at the site, although the chance of finding survivors 12 days after the June 24 collapse has diminished.
July 5, 2021 4:15 am
MCKEESPORT, Pa. (AP) – Authorities are investigating the death of a girl killed after being ejected from a vehicle that went over a western Pennsylvania hillside.Allegheny County police say the single-vehicle crash in McKeesport was reported shortly after 4 p.m. Saturday. County police say emergency responders found that a vehicle had gone over a hillside and a juvenile female passenger had been ejected from the vehicle. She was pronounced dead at the scene.Homicide detectives opened an investigation. Anyone with information was asked to call county police.
July 5, 2021 4:13 am
WEST YORK, Pa. (AP) – Authorities say improper disposal of fireworks sparked a blaze in a Pennsylvania duplex that killed one child and left another child and their two parents hospitalized. The York Daily Record reports that the blaze in West York was reported just before 11 p.m. Saturday. All four occupants were taken to York Hospital. The borough police chief, Matt Millsaps, says the two boys were taken to other hospitals, where one died Sunday morning. He says officials are trying to find out who was using the fireworks before the blaze.
July 5, 2021 4:11 am
MONESSEN, Pa. — (WPXI)- A firefighter who was injured after falling through the floor of a burning house in Monessen is recuperating at the hospital. According to the Charleroi Fire Department, Captain Matt Prentice is “doing well and in good spirits” after being injured in the incident on Park Way around 2:45 p.m. Saturday. “Please keep he, his wife Megan, and his two young boys in your thoughts and prayers as he begins his road of healing and recovery,” the department posted on Facebook. “We would like to thank everyone that has reached out to ask about Matt and offer their support.” Prentice was flown to UPMC Mercy with serious traumatic injuries after a house fire caused the floor to give out. According to the post, as firefighters were arriving on scene, a woman was standing out front screaming that her kids were trapped inside the home. While searching for the children, a floor joist broke, sending Prentice from the second floor down to the first floor. He was rescued from the building, and it was found that no children were inside the home. Two other firefighters also suffered heat-related issues and were taken by ambulance to Mon Valley Hospital. There is no word as to what initially started the fire. (PHOTO; Charleroi Fire Department Facebook)
July 5, 2021 3:38 am
ROANOKE, W.Va. (AP) – Authorities say a woman was killed and two others were injured in a tubing accident on Stonewall Jackson Lake in West Virginia. News outlets cited a statement from the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources in reporting that a boat was pulling the women on a tube Sunday evening near the Vandalia boat ramp. The statement says it appears the driver of the boat swung the tube too close to a rock wall causing a collision. Officials say one woman died and two others were flown to a hospital with serious injuries.
July 4, 2021 7:44 am
ATLANTA (AP) — The young midshipman needed a date one evening while he was home from the U.S. Naval Academy, so his younger sister paired him with a family friend who already had a crush. Nearly eight decades later, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter are still together in the same tiny town where they were born, grew up and had that first outing. In between, they’ve traveled the world as Naval officer and military spouse, American president and first lady, and finally as human rights and public health ambassadors. “It’s a full partnership,” the 39th president told The Associated Press during a joint interview ahead of the couple’s 75th wedding anniversary on July 7. It will be another milestone for the longest-married presidential couple in American history. At 96, Carter also is the longest-lived of the 45 men who’ve served as chief executive. Yet even having reached that pinnacle, Carter has said often since leaving the Oval Office in 1981 that the most important decision he ever made wasn’t as head of state, commander in chief or even executive officer of a nuclear submarine in the early years of the Cold War.
July 4, 2021 7:43 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — As it has been for nearly 16 months, longer than any time in the nation’s history, the U.S. Capitol is closed to most public visitors. The one-two punch of the coronavirus pandemic that shuttered the Capitol’s doors in the spring of 2020 and the deadly insurrection by then-President Donald Trump’s supporters on Jan. 6 has left the icon of American democracy unopen to all but a select few. As the rest of the nation emerges this July Fourth holiday from the pandemic for cookouts and fireworks that President Joe Biden is encouraging from the White House, the people’s house faces new threats of violence, virus variants and a more difficult moment. Congressional leaders are working intensely to try to resume public tours at the Capitol in some form, but any reopening probably will come with new protocols for health and safety for the millions of annual visitors, 535 lawmakers and thousands of staff and crew that work under the dome and its surrounding campus. In the House, lawmakers have been operating under a proxy voting system that has allowed them to avoid travel to Washington, though most now vote in person. The smaller Senate is mostly back to in-person business. Both chambers conduct some committee operations remotely. The security fencing surrounding the Capitol is about to come down, a gesture toward normalcy. A $1.9 billion emergency spending package to bolster security for the complex was approved by the House, but the Senate is objecting to the increased money.
July 4, 2021 7:40 am
HAVANA (AP) — Cuba prepared to evacuate people along the island’s southern region on Sunday amid fears that Tropical Storm Elsa could unleash heavy flooding after battering several Caribbean islands, killing at least three people. The government opened shelters and moved to protect sugarcane and cocoa crops ahead of the storm, whose next target was Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency in 15 counties, including in Miami-Dade County where the high-rise condominium building collapsed last week. Elsa was located about 175 miles (280 kilometers) east-southeast of Montego Bay, Jamaica, and was speeding west-northwest at 17 mph (28 kph). It had maximum sustained winds of 65 mph (100 kph), according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. The storm killed one person in St. Lucia, according to the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency. Meanwhile, a 15-year-old boy and a 75-year-old woman died Saturday in separate events in the Dominican Republic after walls collapsed on them, according to a statement from the Emergency Operations Center. Elsa was a Category 1 hurricane up until Saturday morning, causing widespread damage in several eastern Caribbean islands on Friday as the first hurricane of the Atlantic season. Among the hardest hit was Barbados, where more than 1,100 people reported damaged houses, including 62 homes that completely collapsed as the government promised to find and fund temporary housing to avoid clustering people in shelters amid the pandemic.
July 4, 2021 7:35 am
MONESSEN, Pa. — Three firefighters were transported to local hospitals after a house fire on Park Way in Monessen caused the floor to give out. One was sent by helicopter to the UPMC Burn Clinic and the two others were ferried by ambulance to Mon Valley. There is no word as to what initially started the fire. 911 officials said that they were alerted to the scene just before 3 p.m. on Saturday. The Monessen fire chief said when firefighters got to Park Way, another person came up and shouted that someone was inside. Firefighters went in to try to rescue whoever might be in there, while other firefighters worked to put the fire out. The fire chief said that when first responders went into the house, they confirmed that there were signs that a squatter had taken over. They didn’t find anyone in the house but the fire chief said a Charleroi firefighter fell through the second floor onto the first floor and had to be life-flighted. Two other firefighters were treated for heat-related issues.
