The remains of the final victim unaccounted for in the deadly apartment block collapse in Miami have been found and identified, her family announced.
The discovery ends a weeks-long wait for the family of 54-year-old Estelle Hedaya, who had been missing since her building collapsed on 24 June.
Estelle Hedaya’s brother, Ikey, told media that local New York police delivered the news to their family on July 26.
Her discovery brings the death toll in the collapse disaster to 98.
Search teams spent weeks combing the rubble for victims but said on July 23 that their search had finally ended. At that time, Estelle Hedaya was still unaccounted for.
Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said July 26 that police volunteers were continuing to “carefully and meticulously” sift through millions of pounds of debris at a secondary site looking for remains and personal items.
“We have done everything possible to bring closure to the families and I am especially proud that through these tireless efforts we were able at last to bring closure to all those who reported missing loved ones,” the mayor told reporters.
The number of people missing had initially been put as high as 159, but police brought that figure down after weeks of checking reports.
According to officials, the site where the 12-floor Champlain Towers South building once stood is being treated as a crime scene.
What caused the 40-year-old building to fall to the ground remains unknown, but a 2018 report had found structural problems with the ocean-side block.
All but one of those killed were recovered dead in the rubble, with one victim dying in hospital.
A Jewish funeral is expected to take place for Estelle Hedaya in New York on July 27, the AP reports.
Estelle Hedaya’s family and friends described her as outgoing and fun-loving and said she loved to travel and try new things, like salsa dancing.
Other victims of the disaster include the 7-year-old daughter of a Miami firefighter, a 92-year-old grandmother and the sister of Paraguay’s first lady.
Rodney Alcala, who was sentenced to death in California for murdering a 12-year-old girl and four other women, has died of natural causes, officials say.
The 77-year-old died at a hospital near California’s Corcoran state prison in the early hours of Saturday.
Rodney Alcala, who was known as the “Dating Game Killer” after taking part in The Dating Game TV show, was convicted in 2010.
As well as the California killings, he had also pleaded guilty to the murders of two other women in New York.
Rodney Alcala was first handed the death penalty in Orange County in 1980 for the kidnap and murder of Robin Samsoe, 12, in Los Angeles the previous year.
However, his sentence was overturned by the California Supreme Court and he was granted a new trial.
He later received the same penalty in the second trial, but this was again overturned in 2003.
In the years that followed, investigators discovered forensic evidence linking Rodney Alcala to the other California murders.
At the 2010 trial, he was found guilty of killing Robin Samsoe as well as four other women aged between 18 and 32 in the years between 1977 and 1979.
In September 1978, Rodney Alcala took part in The Dating Game, a TV show in which a single woman questioned three single men hidden from her view before selecting one based on their answers.
Rodney Alcala was selected at the end of show, but the woman later said she decided not to date him after a conversation with him backstage, describing him as “creepy”.
In 2012, Rodney Alcala was extradited to New York after he was charged over two additional murders from 1971 and 1977. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced in New York to 25 years to life.
California state prison officials said in a statement on July 24 that Rodney Alcala was suspected of being involved in a number of additional killings.
No further details were given about his death.
There are currently some 700 inmates on death row in California, but Governor Gavin Newsom has ordered a moratorium on executions.
China has rejected the next stage of a WHO plan to investigate the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.
The World Health Organization wants to audit laboratories in the area the virus was first identified.
Zeng Yixin, China’s deputy health minister, said this showed “disrespect for common sense and arrogance toward science”.
WHO experts said it was very unlikely the virus escaped from a Chinese lab, but the theory has endured.
Investigators were able to visit Wuhan – the city where the virus was first detected in December 2019 – in January 2021.
However, earlier this month WHO chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus outlined the terms of the inquiry’s next phase. This included looking at certain science research institutions.
He has now called on China to be more co-operative about the early stages of the outbreak.
Dr. Tedros urged China to “be transparent, to be open and co-operate” with investigators and provide raw patient data that had not been shared during the first probe.
Speaking at a press conference on July 22, Zeng Yixin said he was extremely surprised by the WHO proposal because it focused on alleged violations of China’s laboratory protocols.
He said it was “impossible” for China to accept the terms, adding that the country had submitted its own origins-tracing recommendations.
“We hope the WHO would seriously review the considerations and suggestions made by Chinese experts and truly treat the origin tracing of the Covid-19 virus as a scientific matter, and get rid of political interference,” Reuters quoted Zeng Yixin as saying.
Yuan Zhiming, director of the National Biosafety Laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, also appeared at the press conference. He said the virus was of natural origin and maintained no virus leak or staff infections had occurred at the facility since it opened in 2018.
More than 4 million people have died worldwide since the start of the pandemic and the WHO has faced growing international pressure to further investigate the origins of the virus.
Jeff Bezos blasted into space on July 20, in the first crewed flight of his rocket ship, New Shepard.
The billionaire was accompanied by his brother, Mark, Wally Funk, an 82-year-old pioneer of the space race, and 18-year-old student Oliver Daemen.
They travelled in a capsule with the biggest windows flown in space, offering stunning views of the Earth.
All four passengers have now parachuted safely back to Earth after their 10-minute, 10-second trip.
New Shepard, built by Jeff Bezos’ company Blue Origin, is designed to serve the burgeoning market for space tourism among the super-wealthy.
On this flight was the oldest person who has been to space – Wally Funk – and the youngest, Oliver Daemen.
The spacecraft lifted off at 09:12 EDT from a private launch site near Van Horn, Texas.
After the capsule touched down, Jeff Bezos said: “Astronaut Bezos [his callsign]: Best day ever!”
He later said: “My expectations were high and they were dramatically exceeded.”
Two minutes into the flight, the capsule separated from its rocket and continued upwards towards the Karman Line – the most widely recognized boundary of space, 100km up.
The passengers experienced about four minutes of weightlessness, and were able to unstrap from their seats to float around and enjoy the views of our planet far below.
Jeff Bezos said he was surprised by the sensation of microgravity: “It felt so normal.”
As the capsule passed the Karman Line, the astronauts could be heard shouting “wow!” and cheering.
“Oh my word, look at the world,” Wally Funk said as she marveled at the views.
Before the flight, Wally Funk had said she was looking forward to performing somersaults and tumbles in microgravity.
In the 1960s, Wally Funk was one member of a group of women called the Mercury 13. They underwent the same screening tests as male astronauts, but never got to fly into space.
The capsule reached a maximum altitude of around 107km (351,210ft) before starting its descent, parachuting down to a soft touchdown in the desert.
On the way down, Jeff Bezos told mission control: “You have a very happy crew here up here, I want you to know.”
After landing, Mark Bezos, 53, said: “I am unbelievably good.”
Jeff Bezos recently resigned as chief executive of Amazon, the e-commerce giant he founded, in order to concentrate on his other ventures, including Blue Origin.
Mark Bezos, is a senior vice president at Robin Hood, a New York-based charity.
The fourth passenger, Oliver Daemen, is the son of financier Joes Daemen, who founded Dutch private equity firm Somerset Capital Partners. Oliver Daemen had originally secured a seat on the second flight, but was drafted in to replace the anonymous winner of a public auction.
This unnamed winner, who paid $28 million to join Jeff Bezos on New Shepard’s first crewed flight, had to pull out “due to scheduling conflicts”.
Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Twitter account has been suspended for posting “misleading” information about Covid-19.
Twitter said Marjorie Taylor Greene’s account would be in “read-only mode” for 12 hours.
The Republican lawmaker has been an outspoken critic of vaccines and the use of masks.
Last month Marjorie Taylor Greene apologized for likening coronavirus mask rules to the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany.
In two tweets on July 19, she argued that vaccines should not be required, and that Covid was not dangerous for people aged under 65 who are not obese.
Both posts are still on display, but have been tagged by Twitter as “misleading”.
Marjorie Taylor Greene was suspended from Twitter in April, but the company later rescinded the ban, saying it was a mistake caused by its automated moderation system.
In response to her latest suspension, Marjorie Taylor Greene said Silicon Valley companies were attacking free speech with support from the White House.
“These Big Tech companies are doing the bidding of the Biden regime to restrict our voices and prevent the spread of any message that isn’t state-approved,” she said in a statement to the New York Times.
Last week, President Joe Biden urged social media companies to take more action against the spread of false information about coronavirus and vaccines on their platforms.
“They’re killing people,” he told reporters.
“The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated.”
Health officials have warned the country’s current spike in Covid-19 deaths and infections is exclusively hitting unvaccinated communities.
Twitter has repeatedly banned users for sharing false information, and in March it introduced a new policy with penalties for users.
Under the new rules, 12-hour suspensions are given for second and third violations of its policy. A fourth breach results in a week-long ban, and a fifth leads to a full ban.
In January, Twitter permanently suspended President Donald Trump for posts that it said incited violence after the storming of the Capitol by hundreds of his supporters.
WhatsApp has announced it blocked over two million accounts in India in May and June for violating rules.
The Facebook-owned messaging service said 95% of these users were blocked for violating the limits of the number of times messages can be forwarded in India.
The submissions were made by WhatsApp in its first monthly compliance report under India’s controversial new IT rules.
India is WhatsApp’s largest market with about 400 million users.
The company said its “top focus” has been to prevent accounts in India from sending harmful or unwanted messages at scale.
Using advanced machine learning technology, WhatsApp reportedly bans close to eight million accounts across the world every month.
Two million accounts in India sending a “high and abnormal rate of messages” were banned in India alone between May 15 and June 15, the service said.
The service identifies an Indian account as one with a +91 (country code) phone number.
WhatsApp often ends up being the focus of discussions on the spread of misinformation and fake news in India.
Such fake news and hoaxes are forwarded to tens of thousands of users in hours, and it’s practically impossible to counter them.
Messages and videos circulating in bulk have in the past incited mob violence in India, even leading to deaths.
In addition to responding to user complaints, WhatsApp said it deployed its own tools to prevent abuse on the platform.
The service said it relied on the “behavioral signals” from user accounts, or on available “unencrypted information”, profile and group photos, and descriptions to identify potential offenders.
WhatsApp’s submissions come at a time when tech companies are embroiled in an intensifying battle with the Indian government over the new IT rules.
The guidelines – announced in February and became effective in May – seek to regulate content on social media and streaming platforms, and have raised serious concerns about free speech and user privacy.
Critics say they give the government and law enforcement agencies powers to take down a wide range of content on the internet. But the government claims the rules are meant to prevent abuse and misinformation.
Oliver Daemen is to become the youngest person to fly to space when he joins Jeff Bezos on the first human flight by his space company on July 20.
The 18-year-old will fly in place of an anonymous $28 million winning bidder of a public auction.
The winner of the auction could not fly on the mission “due to scheduling conflicts”, Jeff Bezos’ space venture Blue Origin said.
Oliver Daemen is the son of Somerset Capital Partners CEO Joes Daemen.
Joes Daemen had secured a seat on the second flight but was moved up to the first when the winning bidder pulled out, Blue Origin said. He then chose to instead fly his son, who is a physics student.
He will join 82-year-old Wally Funk, who will become the oldest ever person in space. Jeff Bezos and his brother Mark will make up the rest of the passengers on the New Shepard rocket.
The previous winner of the auction has remained anonymous, even as the launch edged closer, and the nature of the “conflicts” which led to their withdrawal have not been disclosed.
Blue Origin has not said how much Oliver Daeman’s ticket cost.
It said the flight will fulfill a lifelong dream for the teenager, “who has been fascinated by space, the Moon and rockets since he was four”.
Blue Origin plans to launch its passengers more than 62 miles above the Earth’s surface, allowing them to experience microgravity.
The capsule will then return to Earth using parachutes on a trip expected to last about 10 minutes.
Jeff Bezos is one of the world’s richest people.
He created Blue Origin in 2000 and announced last month that he and his brother would embark on the flight – describing it as something he had wanted to do “all my life”.
WhatsApp is testing a new feature that will let users message without using their phone for the first time.
At present, WhatsApp is linked to a user’s phone. Its desktop and web apps need that device to be connected and receiving messages.
However, the new feature will let users send and receive messages “even if your phone battery is dead”.
Up to four other devices – like PCs and tablets – can be used together, WhatsApp said.
To begin with, the new feature will be rolled out as a beta test for a “small group of users”, and the team plans to improve performance and add features before enabling it for everyone.
End-to-end encryption – a key selling point for WhatsApp – will still work under this new system, it said.
Several other messaging apps already have such a feature, including rival encrypted app Signal, which requires a phone for sign-up, but not to exchange messages.
The feature has long been requested by WhatsApp users – of which there are a reported two billion.
That is because the current version “uses a smartphone app as the primary device, making the phone the source of truth for all user data and the only device capable of end-to-end encrypting messages for another user [or] initiating calls”, the company said.
WhatsApp Web and other non-smartphone apps are essentially a “mirror” of what happens on the phone.
However, that system has significant drawbacks familiar to many regular users, as the web app is known to frequently disconnect.
It also means that only one so-called “companion app” can be active at a time – so loading WhatsApp on another device will disconnect a WhatsApp web window.
“The new WhatsApp multi-device architecture removes these hurdles, no longer requiring a smartphone to be the source of truth, while still keeping user data seamlessly and securely synchronised and private,” the company said.
On a technical level, the solution was giving every device its own “identity key”, and WhatsApp keeps a record of which keys belong to the same user account. That means it does not need to store messages on its own server, which could lead to privacy concerns.
In plain dollar for dollar terms, Bitcoin moved more in terms of price in 2021 alone than its entire history before it. The cryptocurrency closed the year in 2020 with a new high over $20,000, but from the start of 2021 to the high of the year, Bitcoin grew another $45,000 per coin.
It has since dropped more than 50% of that all-time high price, leaving crypto market participants wondering why the crash happened, and if the bull run is over. But before that can be understood, we have to first understand what caused the spike in Bitcoin price in the first place.
Getting an in-depth look at all the factors that prompted the uptrend can help shed light on if the rally is over for good and a new bear market here, of it this is merely a pause before another leg up and more all-time highs.
Why People Invest In Bitcoin And Cryptocurrencies
Time and time again, it has been proven that Bitcoin can be a worthwhile investment and a great, uncorrelated addition to a savvy investor’s portfolio. In fact, it is among the best performing investments in history, despite still being considered a dangerous and sometimes risky asset class. The risk is associated with the cryptocurrency’s volatility which is amplified by being a speculative asset. Speculative assets are highly susceptible to changes in sentiment, making the resulting changes in price action that much more powerful.
It has gone from virtually worthless and of interest only to hobbyist cypherpunks to being a highly sought and scarce asset that everyone in the world wants to own a piece of. The ROI is in the hundreds of thousands, if not more, but the cryptocurrency keeps on climbing.
Knowing the asset’s potential is one of the main reasons the price spiked in 2021. Any financial market prices in all available data, including news, and even the expected future results of an asset. In fact, most assets trade at the prices they will be worth in the future, and not at their actual valuation. Crypto is no different, and possibly even more departed from its value – because no one truly knows what the value should be.
Future Price Predictions Fuel Rally
But Bitcoin is one of the few cryptocurrencies with enough price history to predict future outcomes, and almost all analysts who have looked at a Bitcoin price chart see big things in the cryptocurrency’s future.
The cryptocurrency is projected by many ranging from the likes of Max Keiser to Tim Draper and Cathie Wood to reach hundreds of thousands of dollars per coin in the next several years. With expectations like that, crypto investors are hard to break and it took a major 50% correction to get some long term holders to finally capitulate.
The spike was driven in large part by the expectation that the price of Bitcoin would rise in 2020, but the expectation itself was driven by a variety of other factors.
Digital Gold Narrative Floods Crypto Market With Trillions
The digital gold narrative was one of the primary factors in Bitcoin’s parabolic climb in 2020. The cryptocurrency was designed by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto to share many of the same attributes as the precious metal, such as scarcity.
Gold has long been used as a monetary standard, however, Bitcoin is better than gold in every way. The cryptocurrency can be sent across communications channels due to having no physical footprint, and requires no space to store. It is even more scarce than gold, with a fixed supply that can never be increased.
The gold market is worth more than ten trillion dollars, and even just a small amount of it coming out of precious metals and flowing into the ultra scarce, low liquid crypto market sent speculative asset prices soaring. Bitcoin reached more than $1 trillion itself, with the crypto market reaching nearly $3 trillion in total value. But then a crash happened, and the entire crypto market is now less than $2 trillion with Bitcoin included.
The Bitcoin Halving Crushes Supply When Demand Is Highest
The cryptocurrency’s hard-coded halving in May of 2020 was another major factor in causing the spike. Demand for the cryptocurrency had been rising naturally after a long bear market. When demand was at the highest in years, the supply was slashed in half by the cryptocurrency’s underlying protocol.
With less BTC flowing into the market from miners, and no more holders willing to sell, the price per Bitcoin rose exponentially, and it carried the rest of the crypto market up with it. DeFi coins exploded, and Ethereum set a new peak also. The entire market was soaring.
Capital seemed to be flowing into crypto from every angle, and it was. Which leads us to another primary factor in the cryptocurrency’s epic rise to stardom in 2021.
Stimulus Money, The Fail of Fiat, And The Future Of Bitcoin
The rise began with Black Thursday, and the massive stimulus rolled out since to save the economy and keep markets afloat. Central banks and governments have collectively added trillions of dollars to the global money supply, all while the total supply of BTC has stayed the same, and the incoming supply has dropped.
The fall of fiat currencies could soon arrive, and inflation is already running wild and causing consumer prices to skyrocket across the board. If this happens, the true value of cryptocurrency scarcity could show its hand in the coming years.
With the economy still on thin ice and unprecedented money printing failing to hold up the stock market, another big crash is imminent. If and when central banks again try to prop things up, Bitcoin will spike yet again, and the bull market will continue. Buying Bitcoin in many ways, is an insurance policy against any potential outcomes where the US dollar fails, and a new currency prevails.
The rest of the year of 2021 is bound to be an exciting one as bulls and bears collide to decide the future fate of the crypto market.
MasterCard has been indefinitely barred from issuing new debit or credit cards to domestic customers in India.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has accused MasterCard of violating data storage laws.
India’s central bank said MasterCard had not complied with rules requiring foreign card networks to store data on Indian payments exclusively in India.
There has been no response from the global payments service provider.
The payments service provider will be prohibited from issuing debit, credit or prepaid cards to customers in India from July 22.
The RBI’s decision will not have any impact on MasterCard’s existing customers.
The bank said MasterCard had violated a 2018 order directing payments data to be stored in India. This would allow the regulator “unfettered supervisory access” to payment details.
“Notwithstanding (the) lapse of considerable time and adequate opportunities being given, the entity (MasterCard) has been found to be non-compliant with the directions of Storage Payment System Data,” the RBI said in a notification.
In 2020, MasterCard accounted for 33% of all card payments in India, according to London-based payments start-up PPRO quoted by AFP.
In 2019, MasterCard announced an investment of a billion dollars over the next five years as part of its expansion plans in India.
Earlier this year, American Express and Diners Club were blocked from issuing new cards due to similar violations.
US-based payment service providers have lobbied aggressively against the 2018 directive, saying such a move would increase their costs of doing business in India.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s decision to stop accepting BTC payments due to the digital currency’s “rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining” has culminated into what could be the world’s most expensive breakup ever, with the BTC price dropping costing the cryptocurrency market more than $365 billion. Until now, BTC has not yet fully recovered from the price drop.
But the ramifications of these events did not stop here. Now, digital currencies are being seen as wasting a massive amount of energy like BTC. This is because Bitcoin mining uses Proof of Work algorithm (PoW), which is integral to the original Bitcoin design. According to the Bitcoin white paper published by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008, all miners who act as nodes on the network must “vote with their CPU power,” expending a huge amount of electricity in the process. Now, all people are talking about is how Bitcoin is inefficient and not environment-friendly.
And this is where the big misunderstanding lies. While BTC is indeed wasting energy due to its massive energy consumption that only benefits the few rich who can afford to store it in order to sell it when its value goes up, the same is not true for all digital currencies, especially BSV, which can actually be considered the green Bitcoin.
“I think what [Elon] got right is that BTC is not efficient and it does not, I think, have a good ratio of what it costs to use and the environmental cost relative to its utility. I think what people get wrong though is then that’s true for all Proof-of-Work blockchains, that’s true for all versions of Bitcoin, that’s true for crypto in general,” Zach Resnick, managing partner of BSV-focused Unbounded Capital, said during a panel discussion at the CoinGeek Conference in Zurich that includes nChain CTO Steve Shadders, TAAL Distributed Information Technologies CMO Angela Holowaychuk and Kristeen Harrison, environmental & sustainability advisor to the board of UK-based wallet Zumo.
“You cannot just look at the power consumption in isolation, you have to look at what is the utility, what is this thing providing and how much power does that cost, and looking at the net metric—not just how much power, which I think is a pretty horrible metric for analyzing this,” Resnick added.
And in this true measure of sustainability, which accounts for the energy consumed in proportion to the benefit and utility it provides, it can be said that BSV is the real green Bitcoin. How so? BTC can only process five to seven transactions per second (tps) and its blockchain only has a maximum of 3MB block sizes due to its refusal to scale. At this rate, where one BTC is mined at 5,500 kilowatt-hours, half the consumption of an average American household in a year, it certainly is a waste of electricity.
Now, compare that to BSV, which continues to scale. At present, its test network has already surpassed 9,000 tps. Last March 14, TAAL mined 2,674 transactions in a 638MB block. And with the release of Teranode later this year, the BSV network can process more than 50,000 tps—a figure that rivals that of VISA. The numbers speak for themselves. And the conclusion can only go one way—BSV is the green Bitcoin and is energy efficient.
“And you know, 50,000 is just the starting point, we’re talking about millions, billions of transactions per second. It’s only one angle to it, but there’s this total energy aggregate cost for Bitcoin, which you can divide amongst five transactions per second, or you can divide that cost amongst millions or billions,” Shadders explained.
“I think there’s a meaningful chance that when we look back 20, 30 years in the future back to now or over the next five to 10 years, there’a a very good chance that BSV adoption is synonymous with our transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy and potentially the largest driver of that revolution,” Resnick concluded.
The science behind building construction has come a long way over the years, and today’s buildings tend to be much stronger and sturdier than those that have come before. However, there are still stories of recently-built buildings collapsing unexpectedly, such as the Champlain Towers condo building in Surfside, Florida.
In the wake of that collapse, scientists and engineers have suggested that attitudes towards infrastructure and construction may need to evolve drastically in the years to come in order to prevent similar tragedies from occurring. But this is far from a new phenomenon. Throughout history, mankind has consistently sought to find ways to make buildings better and stronger.
Different methods and materials have been used throughout the ages to protect buildings and safeguard their inhabitants, but it’s only recently, with the advent of modern technology, that big breakthroughs have started to be made. Thanks to these exciting advancements in engineering, the future looks bright for buildings worldwide. Here are some of the top technologies that can help to strengthen buildings and reduce the risk of collapse, earthquake damage, and other events.
Levitating Foundations
For many years, base isolation has been targeted by engineers as a key method to make buildings stronger. It’s all about isolating the substructure of a building from the superstructure above. Recently, Japanese engineers have built on this idea to give us the “levitating foundation”, in which the superstructure of the building is actually supported on a thin layer of air, effectively levitating above its base.
The concept is complex in theory, but relatively simple in action: the building’s base is fitted with a powerful air compressor and a series of sensors. If the sensors detect seismic activity, the air compressor activates, forcing air between the building and its base, lifting the mass of the structure to isolate it from the forces in the ground.
Shock Absorbers
Many people are familiar with the idea of shock absorbers. We often associate them with automobiles, where they are used to absorb the energy of impacts in crashes and collisions, thereby reducing the risk of injury to the people inside the car. Well, shock absorbers can also be used in building construction too, designed to absorb energy from seismic waves. They’re designed to essentially transform kinetic energy into heat energy, via a physical process known as damping.
Shock absorbers, or dampers, can be positioned on the different levels of multi-storey buildings, connected to cylinders filled with oil that can absorb the heat energy. If an earthquake or other seismic event occurs, the dampers push into the oil, transforming the energy of the quake into heat energy and thereby protecting the building.
Replaceable Fuses
Many people rely on fuses around the home in various devices and appliances. These little electrical components serve as a form of protection against electrical fires and overheating appliances; if the current in an electrical circuit gets too high, the fuse blows, breaking the flow of electricity to prevent any further damage or risk.
Well, scientists a Stanford University and the University of Illinois have been looking at ways in which fuses can actually be used to prevent buildings from falling down or getting damaged during earthquakes too. The fuses, made of steel, are positioned between the frames of the building or at the bases of columns of a specially designed, flexible structure. Then, if an earthquake occurs, the fuses are effectively able to absorb seismic energy, and even if they “blow”, they can be replaced quite easily and cheaply.
Carbon Fiber Wraps
In many cases, these new technologies are designed to be incorporated in the construction of brand new buildings, but what if there was a way to protect older buildings from future damages by providing them with some kind of shield or reinforcement against seismic waves and other effects? Well, scientists believe they might have the answer in the form of carbon-fiber wrap.
This special kind of wrap, known as FRP or fiber-reinforced plastic wrap, is made with different types of carbon fibers and binding polymers like epoxy and vinyl ester. It’s a very strong yet lightweight material that can be retrofitted around existing support columns of old buildings, giving them a new level of strength and durability.
Final Word
These are just some of the ways in which modern technologies are changing the game for construction engineering, helping to make current and future buildings safer, stronger, and more reliable than ever before, potentially saving lives and averting disasters in the process.
Richard Branson has successfully reached the edge of space on board his Virgin Galactic rocket plane.
The British billionaire flew high above New Mexico in the vehicle that his company has been developing for 17 years.
The trip was, Richard Branson said, the “experience of a lifetime”.
The entrepreneur returned safely to Earth just over an hour after leaving the ground.
He tweeted: “I was once a child with a dream looking up to the stars. Now I’m an adult in a spaceship looking down to our beautiful Earth. To the next generation of dreamers: if we can do this, just imagine what you can do https://virg.in/4wYm#Unity22@virgingalactic”
Sir Richard Branson also said in a press conference following the flight: “The whole thing was just magical.”
The trip also makes Richard Branson the first of the new space tourism pioneers to try out their own vehicles, beating Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and SpaceX’s Elon Musk.
The height reached by the billionaire in the rocket plane, known as Unity, was 85km (282,000ft).
Richard Branson was accompanied on the mission by the vehicle’s two pilots, Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci, and three Galactic employees – Beth Moses, Colin Bennett and Sirisha Bandla.
He billed the flight as a test of the space tourism experience he expects to begin selling to customers from next year.
“I’ve had my notebook with me and I’ve written down 30 or 40 little things that will make the experience for the next person who goes to space with us that much better,” he said.
“The only way sometimes you can find these little things is to get in a spaceship and go to space and experience it for yourself.”
Some 600 individuals have already paid deposits for tickets that will cost them up to $250,000.
These are all people who want to reach a height where they can see the sky turn black and marvel at the Earth’s horizon as it curves away into the distance. Such a flight should also afford them about five minutes of weightlessness during which they will be allowed to float around inside Unity’s cabin.
It’s been a long road for Richard Branson to get to this point. He first announced his intention to make a space plane in 2004, with the belief he could start a commercial service by 2007.
However, technical difficulties, including a fatal crash during a development flight in 2014, have made the space project one of the most challenging ventures of Richard Branson’s career.
According to Haitian police, a group of 28 foreign mercenaries, including retired Colombian soldiers, assassinated Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse earlier this week.
After a gun battle in the capital Port-au-Prince, 17 were detained, some at the house they were using, others after entering Taiwan’s diplomatic compound.
Three suspects were killed by police and eight are still being sought.
Bloodied and bruised, arrested suspects were shown to the media on July 8, along with a slew of seized weapons.
It is still unclear who organized the attack and with what motive.
Also unclear is who is in charge of the country. On July 9, a group of political parties added to that uncertainty by nominating a president, although how much legitimacy that has is unknown.
The attack took place in the early hours of July 7, when gunmen broke into the president’s home in Port-au-Prince, shooting him dead and wounding his wife. President Moïse, 53, was found lying on his back with 12 bullet wounds and a gouged eye, according to authorities.
First Lady Martine Moïse, 47, was seriously wounded and is in a stable condition after being flown to Florida for treatment.
Police said the hit squad included mainly Colombians, along with two Haitian-Americans.
Found in the suspects’ possession were firearms, sets of US dollar bills, Jovenel Moïse’s personal chequebook and the server that held surveillance camera footage from his home, Le Nouvelliste newspaper reported.
Taiwan confirmed that 11 of the suspects were arrested after breaking into a courtyard at its compound.
Angry civilians had joined the search for the gunmen, and helped police track down some who were hiding in bushes. The crowd set fire to three of the suspects’ cars and destroyed evidence.
Police chief Léon Charles called for calm, saying the public should not take the law into their own hands.
At the news conference on July 8, police showed reporters Colombian passports.
Colombia’s government has pledged to assist Haiti with its investigation efforts.
Colombian police director, Gen. Jorge Luis Vargas, said 17 former Colombian soldiers were thought to be involved.
The US state department, meanwhile, said it could not confirm if any of its citizens had been detained.
However, US and Canadian media are reporting that one of the dual citizens arrested, James Solages, 35, is from Florida and was a former bodyguard at the Canadian embassy in Haiti.
An investigating judge told local media that James Solages and the other US citizen, named as Joseph Vincent, had said they were there as translators for the mercenaries, after finding the job on the internet.
“The mission was to arrest President Jovenel Moïse… and not to kill him,” Judge Clément Noël told Le Nouvelliste.
On July 9, the US said it was sending FBI and department of homeland security officials to Haiti following the nation’s request for help in the investigation.
Members of Jovenel Moïse’s security detail have been summoned before Haiti’s courts to answer questions about its failures.
Colombian daily El Tiempo said that it had seen confidential documents that named the Colombian suspects. The paper’s research suggests that four of them flew from Colombia to the Dominican Republic on June 4.
They crossed by land from there into Haiti two days later. The two countries share the island of Hispaniola.
According to El Tiempo, Colombian intelligence has seen photos posted on social media by members of the group, showing them posing at a popular tourist spot in the Dominican Republic.
The killing of President Moïse has triggered some civil unrest in Haiti, the poorest nation in the Americas.
A state of emergency remains in force across Haiti, while the Dominican Republic has closed its border.
President Joe Biden has signed an executive order aimed at cracking down on Big Tech and promoting competition.
The move points to President Biden’s desire for tougher scrutiny of Big Tech, which the administration has accused of “undermining competition”.
“Capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism. It’s exploitation,” he said at Friday’s signing event.
The order includes 72 actions and recommendations involving ten agencies.
It suggests that problems have arisen because of large tech firms collecting too much personal information, buying up potential competitors and competing unfairly with small businesses.
Several recommendations it sets out include:
Greater scrutiny of mergers in the tech sector
New rules to be set out by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on data collection
Barring unfair methods of competition on internet marketplaces.
The Biden administration is also targeting a number of other sectors with the order.
It encourages other government agencies to take action to improve competition across healthcare, travel and agriculture.
Once fully implemented, it would allow hearing aids to be sold over the counter, for example, as well as the ban of early exit fees from internet contracts. It also intends to make it easier for consumers to claim refunds from airlines.
President Biden said that the order seeks to limit the use of “non-compete agreements” as a condition of getting a job, which he claimed can make it harder for people to change jobs and therefore limits wages.
The executive order alone, however, does not mean these recommendations will come into force immediately.
The government agencies responsible will need to implement the changes, while some elements could be subject to court challenges.
The US Chamber of Commerce criticized the order, saying it was “built on the flawed belief that our economy is over-concentrated, stagnant and fails to generate private investment needed to spur innovation”.
It comes weeks after the House Judiciary Committee also voted to approve a series anti-trust bills, which could eventually become law and force big tech firms to transform or even break up their businesses.
Haitian President Jovenel Moïse has been murdered and the first lady injured in an attack on their home in Port-au-Prince.
Unidentified gunmen stormed the property at 01:00 local time, interim PM Claude Joseph said.
PM Joseph has called for calm and declared a state of emergency nationwide.
Jovenel Moïse, 53, had led Haiti, one of the poorest nations in the world, since 2017 but had faced widespread protests demanding his resignation.
Haiti’s recent history has been plagued by coups, political instability and widespread gang violence.
First Lady Martine Moïse later reportedly arrived by plane in Fort Lauderdale, south Florida, for treatment. There is no official word on her condition.
Claude Joseph called the shooting of the president a “heinous, inhuman and barbaric act”, saying the attackers were “foreigners who spoke English and Spanish”. Haiti’s official languages are Creole and French.
Some reports spoke of men dressed in black carrying high-powered weapons who may have pretended to be part of a US drug enforcement operation, although no official details have been given.
Haiti’s ambassador to the US, Bocchit Edmond, said there was “no way” US drugs agents carried out the attack. He believed it was the work of “professional mercenaries”.
Addressing the nation, PM Joseph vowed the killers would be brought to justice and said the security situation was “under control”.
The state of emergency, or “state of siege”, allows for the banning of gatherings and use of the military for police roles, along with other extensions of executive powers.
PM Joseph said that “all measures have been taken to ensure continuity” and that “democracy and the republic will win”.
But questions remain about how much control PM Joseph can assert.
Haiti’s constitution says ministers, under the leadership of the prime minister, take control in the event of presidential vacancy until elections can be called.
However, that also remains unclear, as a new prime minister, Ariel Henry, was named by Jovenel Moïse just this week but has yet to be sworn in.
The US later said it believed elections should go ahead this year, to bring about a peaceful transfer of power.
The US has been Haiti’s biggest donor for 50 years but has had a fractious relationship with some of its rulers and has carried out a number of blockades and interventions.
The country has also had strong counter-narcotics ties with Haiti to try to prevent South American drugs being shipped through the nation and on to the US.
The neighboring Dominican Republic ordered the “immediate closure” of its border with Haiti.
President Jovenel Moïse, 53, had been in power since February 2017.
His time in office was rocky as he faced accusations of corruption and there were widespread demonstrations in capital Port-au-Prince and other cities earlier this year.
Haiti’s opposition said that Jovenel Moïse’s five-year term should have ended on February 7, 2021, five years to the day since his predecessor, Michel Martelly, stepped down.
However, there had been a year’s delay to elections after Michel Martelly’s departure, and Jovenel Moïse insisted he had one more year to serve as he did not take office until February 7, 2017.
Parliamentary elections should have been held in October 2019 but disputes have delayed them, meaning Jovenel Moïse had been ruling by decree.
In February 2021, on the day the opposition wanted him to leave office, President Moïse said an attempt to kill him and overthrow the government had been foiled.
Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against tech giants Google, Twitter and Facebook, claiming that he is the victim of censorship.
The class action lawsuit also targets the three companies’ CEOs.
The former president was suspended from his social accounts in January over public safety concerns in the wake of the Capitol riots, led by his supporters.
On July 7, Donald Trump called the lawsuit “a very beautiful development for our freedom of speech”.
In a news conference from his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey, Donald Trump railed against social media companies and Democrats, who he accused of espousing misinformation.
He said: “We are demanding an end to the shadow-banning, a stop to the silencing, and a stop to the blacklisting, banishing, and cancelling that you know so well.”
The suit requests a court order to end alleged censorship. Donald Trump added if they could ban a president, “they can do it to anyone”.
None of the tech companies named have yet responded to the lawsuit, which was filed to a federal court in Florida.
Donald Trump was joined at the announcement by former Trump officials who have since created the not-for-profit America First Policy Institute.
The former president called the post that got him banned from Twitter, “the most loving sentence”.
According to Twitter, the tweets that resulted in Donald Trump’s ban for “glorification of violence” were from 8 January, two days after the rioting in the nation’s capital. The riot followed his repeated claims, without evidence, that the election was rigged in Joe Biden’s favor.
Donald Trump wrote that the “great patriots” who voted for him will have “a giant voice” and “will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form”, and in another post said he would not attend President Joe Biden’s inauguration.
At the same time on July 7, Donald Trump’s Republican allies in Congress released a memo describing their plan “to take on Big Tech”.
The agenda calls for antitrust measures to “break up” the companies, and a revamping of a law known as Section 230.
Section 230, which Donald Trump tried to repeal as president, essentially stops companies like Facebook and Twitter from being liable for the things that users post. It gives the companies “platform” rather than “publisher” status.
“It’s a liability protection the likes of which nobody in the history of our country has ever received,” he said, criticizing the law on July 7.
Donald Trump added that the law invalidates the companies’ statuses as private companies.
The lawsuit has been criticized by legal experts, who pointed to Donald Trump’s habit of issuing lawsuits for media attention but not aggressively defending the claims in court. His argument of free speech infringement has also been questioned by analysts, as the companies he accuses have those same First Amendment protections in determining content on their sites.
Search efforts for possible survivors in the rubble of a partially collapsed building in the Miami suburb of Surfside have been suspended ahead of the controlled demolition of the rest of the building.
Teams are preparing to bring down the remaining structure using explosives.
The demolition of Champlain Towers South was brought forward over safety fears due to approaching Tropical Storm Elsa.
Part of the 12-story block collapsed on June 24. Twenty-four people are known to have died and 121 are missing.
No survivors have been pulled from the rubble at the site in the Miami suburb of Surfside since the first few hours after the structure’s collapse.
The families of the missing were told in advance of the decision to pause the search effort, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Cava Levine said.
The decision to bring forward the demolition of the remaining block was made after concerns were raised over the approaching Tropical Storm Elsa, which is expected to reach the west coast of Florida on July 6.
The mayor of Surfside, Charles Burkett, said strong winds in the coming days could bring down additional debris from the unstable structure, endangering the lives of the search teams.
“It was obvious that the building was a problem,” Charles Burkett said on July 3.
He added: “We agreed that the only solution for that problem was to eliminate it.”
Mayor Burkett said the controlled demolition could take place as early as July 4, and should be completed within days.
Announcing the temporary pause in the search operation, Mayor Cava Levine said the latest developments “do not signify that we are no longer focused on search and rescue”.
She said preparations for the demolition included “drilling into columns in the unsafe structure” and a pause was needed while the process was under way.
“We will begin the search and rescue once again on any sections of the pile that are safe to access as soon as we’re cleared,” she said.
Drones and 3D imaging equipment are being brought in to help those combing the rubble for signs of life.
The mayor signed a demolition order on July 2. She initially said she expected the demolition would not happen until late July.
There are no details so far about compensating the owners of the apartments. Meanwhile, officials are investigating other tower blocks in the area for structural faults.
What caused the 40-year-old Champlain Towers South to crumble remains unclear. A 2018 inspection, however, warned of “major” design flaws in the original design.
The building association’s board has said it will appoint an “independent receiver… to oversee the legal and claims process”.
According to recent reports, Donald Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, and its finance chief have been indicted in an investigation into alleged tax crimes.
Allen Weisselberg, 73, turned himself in to authorities in New York on July 1, ahead of the expected unsealing of as-yet-unknown charges.
The former president is not expected to be implicated personally in the case.
New York City has already cut business ties with the twice-impeached former president.
The Trump Organization is a family holding company that owns hotels, golf clubs and other properties.
Any criminal charges brought against the company would mark the first in long-running investigations on alleged fraud by both the Manhattan district attorney and the state attorney general.
Charges by District Attorney Cyrus Vance are expected to focus on whether Allen Weisselberg and other company executives received benefits such as apartment rentals or leased cars without reporting them properly on their tax returns.
Allen Weisselberg entered Manhattan’s criminal court building on July 1, the New York Times said. He and at least one other Trump Organization representative are expected to appear in court later in the day.
Donald Trump and his allies have said the investigations are politically motivated.
In a statement this week, Allen Weisselberg said the case was looking at “things that are standard practice throughout the US business community, and in no way a crime”.
If the company is found guilty, however, certain business partners might draw a line under their relationship with the Trump Organization and the company could face fines.
New York City has already announced it will terminate contracts with Donald Trump’s company to run skating rinks, a carousel and a golf course, in the aftermath of the Capitol riots.
Daniel Goldman, who was lead lawyer in the House of Representatives for the first impeachment of President Trump in 2019, tweeted that the indictment could spur lenders to call in their loans, driving the Trump Organization to bankruptcy.
The investigations will also take into account eight years of Donald Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns, obtained by prosecutors after a long legal battle, which ended in the Supreme Court in February.
Donald Trump, who inherited money from his father and went on to become a property developer, is the first president since Gerald Ford in the 1970s not to have made his tax returns public.
Despite facing a number of investigations, Donald Trump has denied any wrongdoing personally or in his business.
An LA court has denied Britney Spears’ request to remove her father from his role overseeing her conservatorship.
Britney Spears’ lawyer asked to end Jamie Spears control of the singer’s estate, in November 2020.
They said Britney was “afraid of her father” and wanted him removed as her sole conservator – a role he has carried out since 2008.
Although the request has been denied, the ruling is not a response to Britney Spears’ explosive testimony in court last week.
Speaking for 23 minutes, she said she had been drugged, forced to perform against her will and prevented from having children.
“I just want my life back,” the star said, via phone, as she asked the court to end her conservatorship.
However, the judge cannot make a ruling based on Britney Spears’ statement until she files a formal petition to terminate the arrangement.
The documents filed on June 30 refer only to the November request, in which Spears asked for the private wealth management firm the Bessemer Trust to be appointed as her “sole conservator”.
Although Judge Brenda Penny refused to remove Jamie Spears from his position, she did agree to the Bessemer Trust’s role as co-conservator of Britney’s multi-million dollar estate.
In a separate development, Jamie Spears’ lawyers have asked the court to investigate Britney’s claims of abuse.
The LA court system has also ended a scheme allowing members of the press to listen to court proceedings remotely, after audio of Spears testimony was recorded and leaked online.
The move comes a week after Britney Spears delivered a blistering attack on the “abusive” conservatorship that has controlled her life for 13 years.
She told a judge she was traumatized and cried every day, adding: “I deserve to have a life.”
Britney Spears also said she had been denied the right to have more children and was put on the psychiatric drug lithium against her wishes.
The mother of two said she wanted to marry her boyfriend and have another baby, but the conservatorship would not allow her to. She claimed she was prevented from having a contraceptive intrauterine device (IUD) removed so she could get pregnant.
Dozens of fans gathered outside court, holding signs that read “Free Britney now!” and “Get out of Britney’s life!”
Jamie Spears’ lawyers have denied he was responsible for the restrictions apparently placed on his daughter’s private life.
While the 68-year-old has overseen her estate for 13 years, he has not actually been in charge of her personal affairs since September 2019, when he stepped down from that role due to ill health.
He was replaced on a temporary basis by Jodi Montgomery, the singer’s care-giver.
On June 29, Jamie Spears’ lawyers requested an inquiry into his daughter’s testimony.
His lawyers said he had no intention of returning as Britney’s personal conservator, but said he was “concerned ” about her well-being.
Facebook’s shares jumped 4.2% to $355.64 after federal court has dismissed two separate anti-trust lawsuits filed against the social networking giant.
Judge James Boasberg ruled that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)’s anti-trust complaint against the social networking giant was too vague.
Another separate anti-competition lawsuit filed by a coalition of states was thrown out because the alleged violations occurred too long ago.
This resulted in Facebook’s market value rising above $1trillion for the first time ever.
In the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruling, Judge Boasberg wrote that the FTC’s complaint was “legally insufficient” and had to be dismissed, because the FTC had “failed to plead enough facts” to back up its claim that Facebook was stifling competition.
The FTC’s lawsuit had requested that the technology giant, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, be broken up.
“The FTC’s complaint says almost nothing concrete on the key question of how much power Facebook actually had, and still has, in a properly defined anti-trust product market,” wrote Judge Boasberg.
“It is almost as if the agency expects the court to simply nod to the conventional wisdom that Facebook is a monopolist.”
While this is a setback for the FTC that some analysts say could have repercussions for the future of anti-competition law in the US, the watchdog can re-file the charges and has until July 28 to do so.
Separately, Judge Boasberg also dismissed an anti-competition lawsuit brought by a coalition of 45 US states together with the FTC.
This lawsuit had also sought to force Facebook to divest Instagram and WhatsApp. It related to Facebook’s acquisition of the two apps in 2012 and 2014.
In March, Facebook petitioned the federal court in the US to dismiss them, describing the FTC complaint as “nonsensical”.
The Miami building collapse death toll has risen to five, authorities say.
Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said the number unaccounted for has now dropped to 156, with three more of the recovered bodies identified.
She told reporters: “Our top priority continues to be search and rescue and saving any lives that we can.”
Part of the building collapsed early on June 24 while many residents slept.
As yet the cause of the collapse remains unclear.
However, an engineer’s report from 2018 was made public on June 26, which highlighted “a major error” in the original design of the seafront Champlain Towers. It said the fault prevented water draining away from the base of the building.
President Joe Biden tweeted: “My heart is with the community of Surfside as they grieve their lost loved ones and wait anxiously as search and rescue efforts continue. Yesterday I spoke with Gov. DeSantis to let him know that we are ready to provide assistance as needed by state and local officials.”
Rescue teams have been using machines, drones and specially trained dogs in their efforts to find survivors. Rescue efforts were briefly hampered on June 26 after a fire broke out underneath the rubble.
According to reports, the missing include people from Israel and Latin America. Paraguay’s foreign ministry said six of its nationals had been registered as missing, including relatives of the country’s first lady.
Local officials have provided families with hotel rooms and food as they wait for news about their loved ones.
The building contained 136 apartments and 55 of them collapsed early on June 24, leaving piles of debris.
Ex-police officer Derek Chauvin has been sentenced to 22 years and six months in jail for murdering African-American man George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020.
The judge said Derek Chauvin’s sentence was based “on your abuse of a position of trust and authority, and also the particular cruelty shown” to George Floyd.
George Floyd, 48, died after Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for nine minutes.
His murder caused global protests against racism and police brutality.
Derek Chauvin, 45, was convicted of second-degree murder and other charges last month. During his trial, his lawyer described the killing as “an error made in good faith”.
He was also told to register as a predatory offender and was barred from owning firearms for life.
Derek Chauvin and three other former officers are separately charged with violating George Floyd’s civil rights.
The Floyd family and their supporters welcomed the sentence.
Lawyer Ben Crump tweeted: “This historic sentence brings the Floyd family and our nation one step closer to healing by delivering closure and accountability.”
George Floyd’s sister Bridgett said the sentence “shows that matters of police brutality are finally being taken seriously” but there was still “a long way to go”.
President Joe Biden said the sentence “seemed to be appropriate” but admitted that he did not know all the details.
During the sentencing hearing, George Floyd’s brother Terrence Floyd demanded the maximum available, a sentence of 40 years.
“Why? What were you thinking? What was going through your head when you had your knee on my brother’s neck?” he said.
George Floyd’s daughter Gianna, aged seven, appeared in a video recording, saying she missed him and she loved him.
The judge said the case had been painful for the community and the country, but above all, for George Floyd’s family.
“What the sentence is not based on is emotion, or sympathy, but at the same time, I want to acknowledge the deep and tremendous pain that all the families are feeling, especially the Floyd family,” said Judge Peter Cahill.
Derek Chauvin told the court he offered his condolences to the Floyd family, saying there would be “some other information in the future” and he hoped “things will give you some peace of mind”.
However, he did not apologize.
In court, Derek Chauvin’s mother said he was a “good man”.
“I have always believed in your innocence and I will never waver from that,” said Carolyn Pawlenty.
Derek Chauvin’s sentence was “one of the longest a former police officer has ever received” for deadly force, said Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison.
At least four have been killed and 159 are still missing after a12-storey residential building north of Miami.
Rescuers are desperately searching for any survivors trapped in the rubble.
As families desperately wait for news, search teams have been working around the clock and have reported hearing people banging beneath the debris.
What caused the 40-year-old building to collapse early on June 24 remains unclear.
At least 102 people have now been accounted for, but it is uncertain how many were in the building when it came down. Dozens of people have been evacuated from what is left of the structure.
President Joe Biden has approved an emergency declaration for Florida, meaning the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will help state agencies with the relief effort.
Overnight hundreds of rescuers used sonar cameras and specially trained dogs as they scoured the rubble for survivors. Teams were tunneling from an underground car park below the building in an effort to reach victims.
The mayor of Surfside, where the disaster happened, Charles Burkett, said at an early-morning news conference that some 15 families had walked out of the building.
Most residents would have been asleep when the collapse happened at about 01:00 AM local time.
Overnight, search teams detected sounds of banging and other noises, but no voices coming from the tonnes of debris. Officials say the efforts are dangerous as further rubble could collapse on them.
Constant rain and storms are further complicating an already difficult task for the search-and-rescue teams.
Authorities have begun taking DNA samples from relatives of those missing in case only remains of their family members are found in the rubble.
Relatives of the missing have been huddled around a community centre a few blocks away, waiting for information and fearing the worst. They have been putting out appeals on social media for information that could help them find their loved ones.
A 12-story residential building partially collapsed, killing at least one person in Miami, Dade County, Florida.
Rescuers are combing the rubble, searching for any trapped survivors, and were seen pulling a boy out alive.
Images from Surfside, north of Miami Beach, show a pile of debris on one side of the building. At least eight people have been injured.
The collapse is said to have occurred at about 02:00 local time.
It is unclear how many people were inside the building at the time.
Fifty-one people believed to have been living in the building have not been contacted and are as yet unaccounted for, said County Commissioner José Díaz.
Miami-Dade Fire Rescue said it had sent 80 vehicles to the scene. Police are also assisting with the rescue operation.
Rescuers pulled 35 people from the wreckage, officials said. Ten were assessed and treated, of whom two were sent to hospital.
“The back of the building, probably a third or more, is totally pancaked,” Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett told a news conference. At least one person had died, and about 30 units were affected, he said.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said he would travel to South Florida on June 24.
“We are bracing for some bad news just given the destruction that we’re seeing,” he warned, saying he thought the quick response from the emergency services had saved lives.
Police gave the building’s location as 8777 Collins Avenue, the address of the 12-story Champlain Towers, which contains more than 100 beachfront apartments and was built in 1981. Surfside runs along Collins Avenue, north of Miami Beach city limits.
