Good morning,
Miami Building Collapse
The pictures are shocking, showing a building in Miami collapsed with 99 people listed as missing in the rubble.
Half of the Champlain Towers complex collapsed to the ground yesterday, just after midnight, as if struck by an earthquake. The building was home to a mix of retirees and well-off professionals with young families. Fifty-five units were affected by the collapse, the mayor said.
This was a building constructed in 1981 and units selling for more than a million dollars each. The building was in the middle of a recertification inspection process and may have been weakened by salt water eroding steel beam support.
But why it happened, and could it happen again, are huge unanswered questions in a City that has many aging buildings.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/article252328493.html
U.S. Spending Plan
President Joe Biden announced a bipartisan deal to fix America’s infrastructure, and stimulate the pandemic economy.
It’s worth 1.2 trillion dollars to deliver high growth and jobs and is the biggest investment in America’s crumbling economy in more than a decade to fix things like roads and bridges and broadband, and also pour billions into waterways and coastlines to rebuild crumbling coastlines.
It still has to pass the Senate, but the agreement hinges on the Democrats also passing another deal on human infrastructure which is a far larger bill that would pour trillions more into health care, child care, higher education access and climate change programs. The Republicans are opposed to that bill and Biden says both bills must pass in tandem.
Canada’s Grim Past
For the second time in a month, ground-penetrating radar has confirmed what government and church authorities have been accused of trying to suppress for most of Canada’s history.
This time in the Western Province of Saskatchewan, as many as 751 unmarked graves have been detected at the former site of Marieval Indian Residential School, which operated from 1898 until 1997, and was run by the Catholic Church for most of its history. It’s not clear if all the graves hold children’s remains.
The community started its investigation less than a week after Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation near Kamloops, B.C., announced the discovery of the remains of 215 children on the site of a former residential school.
More graves will be found still at school grounds once run by the Catholic church, forcing native integration, as Canada attempts to reckon with this country’s brutal legacy of residential schools. Indigenous students were sent there to learn how to be Roman Catholic and were forced to set aside all aspects of their culture, language, beliefs and Indigenous upbringing.
Many of the children were taken from their families at ages of 5 and 6 years old and when Canada was first settled by the French and later the British. And there are stories of severe abuse.
The revelation once again cast a spotlight on a dark chapter in Canada’s history, and revived calls on the Pope and the Church to apologize for the abuse and violence suffered at the schools.
Cyber Wars
On this Back Story the vulnerable West and cyber warfare.
How hackers, some of them foreign intelligence agents, have held companies ransom, shut down pipelines and other critical infrastructure, and influenced elections.
What is the worst case scenario? And did U.S. President Biden's message to Russian President Putin to stop, resonate inside the Kremlin?
Host Dana Lewis interviews Cyber expert Ammar Barghouty, who was a field agent for the FBI on counter terrorism and dealt with computer intrusion threats.
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1016881/8756055
Nuclear Iran
Israel’s media is reporting a sabotage operation at one of Irans key nuclear facilities, caused extensive damage, even though Iran is denying it.
The attacked site was likely one of Iran’s centrifuge manufacturing facilities, which meant a major setback for the Islamic Republic’s uranium enrichment program for nuclear weapons.
The attack was reportedly carried out by the Mossad, and of course Iran will not open most of the facilities for inspection, and they are in violation of the agreements to only produce nuclear energy, and not develop nuclear weapons.
Meantime the new Israeli Prime Minister spoke at a graduating class of Air Force Pilots, on the 40th anniversary of the bombing or Iraqs nuclear plant.
Naftali Bennett suggested Israel would work with allies to end Irans nuclear program while at the same time maintaining a military threat if talks fail.
Israel would prefer a world that understands that “this violent, fanatical regime, that elected ‘the hangman of Tehran’ as its president, that is willing to starve its nation for years in order to attain a military nuclear program, is a regime with which one cannot do business,” Bennett said.
Britney Spears
Singer Britney Spears has told her fans she has been faking happiness trying to create a “fairytale life” on Instagram for years. In fact she told a court this week “I’ve lied and told the whole world I’m OK and I’m happy … I’ve been in denial. I’ve been in shock. I am traumatized, you know, fake it till you make it. But now I’m telling you the truth.”
A court ordered Conservatorship, meant that Spears father had complete control over her life for the last 13 years including demands on when she would perform, to blocking her from getting married and even stopping her from removing birth control so she could have another child, she said.
Conservatorships are granted in American law for people courts deem physically or mentally unable to manage daily affairs on their own.
Celebrities and activists across the globe have supported Spears over the last day, some calling for her to be urgently freed from the conservatorship with hash tags #FreeBritneyNOW trending on Twitter.
Other News
-The UN Says Israels settlements illegal
-Apple Daily News issues final edition on Hong Kong, shut down by China
-Afghan President to visit White House as U.S. Troops are leaving and security is deteriorating rapidly
-EU says progress made in talks to restore Iran 2015 nuclear deal
-EU reject a proposal by France and Germany to invite Russia’s Putin to a summit
Have a good weekend everyone.
(This letter was launched to give you an international news source, so all original links to credible news sources are listed below)
Dana Lewis
https://www.miamiherald.com
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/bennett-israel-consulting-allies-on-iran-but-we-will-protect-ourselves-671939
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/drone-attack-targets-irans-atomic-energy-organization-671834
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/survivors-and-historical-archives-chronicle-abuse-at-marieval-residential-school
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/24/us/politics/biden-bipartisan-infrastructure.html