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Friend of Evan Gershkovich discusses effort to get him home
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Navy supplying 4 cranes for Key Bridge clean up effort, Maryland governor says
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Inside the effort to clear the Baltimore bridge wreckage
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Baltimore bridge search moving from recovery mission to salvage effort
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What we know about the search and rescue effort at the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse site in Baltimore
BALTIMORE — Multiple agencies mobilized a mass casualty response after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed in Baltimore early Tuesday morning, sending multiple vehicles into the Patapsco River below.
A bridge column was hit by a large container ship around 1:30 a.m., causing the bridge to collapse.
Search and rescue ongoing
The Baltimore Fire Department said the scene was an active search and rescue, and that the U.S. Coast Guard is assisting.
It was not immediately clear how many cars fell into the water, but at least one semi-truck was involved.
Maryland Transportation Secretary Paul Wiedefeld said there are a total of eight victims, one who was hospitalized in serious condition, a second who refused treatment, and six bridge workers who remain unaccounted for.
Officials said in a news conference that a mayday had been issued before the collision, which allowed officials to stop traffic onto the bridge. Officials did not clarify how many vehicles were on the bridge at the time of the collapse.
Sonar used to detect vehicles
Nighttime conditions hindered visibility, but Wallace said crews used sonar to detect vehicles in the river.
The water below the bridge is 50 feet deep, Maryland Transportation Secretary Paul Wiedefeld said, and according to NOAA’s National Data Buoy Center, the river water was 48 degrees overnight.
Coast Guard efforts at Baltimore bridge collapse site
The Coast Guard’s primary mission is looking for any survivors in the water.
“We currently have three small boats,” Lieutenant Commander Erin Palmer said. “We also have Coast Guard Cutter Mako, an 87-foot patrol boat. We have a helicopter from Air Station at Atlantic City. And we’re working with numerous federal, state and local partners on scene on these search and rescue efforts.”
Wallace said at least two people have been rescued from the water — one wasn’t hurt and one was in “very serious” condition. The injured person was being treated at the University of Maryland Medical Center and had been unable to speak to investigators so far, officials said.
Who is missing?
The contractors were on the bridge making concrete deck repairs at the time of the collapse, and six remain unaccounted for. Officials did not say which contracting company the workers were from.
One victim rescued refused medical treatment, and the second was hospitalized at R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center with serious injuries, officials said. The trauma center later confirmed the victim was discharged from the hospital.
The state has set up a facility for any family members of any victims, and mental health professionals are available there.
Florida appears to reverse effort to bar AP Psychology’s LGBTQ content
Florida and the College Board appear to have come to a resolution over the inclusion of LGBTQ topics in the state’s Advanced Placement Psychology classes. The resolve came a day after the education nonprofit said the state “effectively banned” the course due to its content on sexual orientation and gender identity.
In a letter shared with school superintendents Friday, Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. said the department “is not discouraging districts from teaching AP Psychology.”
“In fact, the Department believes that AP Psychology can be taught in its entirety in a manner that is age and developmentally appropriate and the course remains listed in our course catalog,” Diaz wrote.
In a statement shared with NBC News on Monday, the College Board — which administers the SAT and college-level classes to high school students — responded to the Florida Department of Education’s new guidance with a mix of hope and skepticism.
“While district superintendents continue to seek additional clarity from the department, we note the clear guidance that, ‘AP Psychology may be taught in its entirety,'” the statement read. “We hope now that Florida teachers will be able to teach the full course, including content on gender and sexual orientation, without fear of punishment in the upcoming school year.”
The College Board describes the course’s LGBTQ content as teachings on “how sex and gender influence socialization and other aspects of development.”
In its Thursday statement, the College Board said the Florida Department of Education had “effectively banned AP Psychology in the state by instructing Florida superintendents that teaching foundational content on sexual orientation and gender identity is illegal under state law.” Florida’s Parental Rights in Education act, or what critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law, restricts the instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity in the state’s classrooms.
When contacted by NBC News on Thursday, the department denied that it had banned the course, though it did not answer questions on whether it tried to restrict the course’s LGBTQ content.
Florida’s so-called Don’t Say Gay law was signed last year by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican who is running for president.
The law initially prohibited “classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity” in kindergarten through third grade “or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards” in public and charter schools.
But earlier this year, DeSantis doubled down, signing a measure into law expanding the restrictions to explicitly include students through eighth grade. The newer version of the law also restricts reproductive health education in sixth through 12th grade.
Speaking with reporters Friday, DeSantis predicted that the AP Psychology course will “end up being offered.”
Urgent effort underway to save coral reefs from rising ocean temperatures off Florida Keys
The coral reefs off the shores of the Florida Keys should be vibrant and colorful this time of year. But after some of the highest recorded water surface temperatures, scientists say they’re seeing a very different picture.
Last month, a marine buoy in the nearby Upper Keys measured the surface water temperature at more than 100 degrees, which scientists believe is due, in part, to human-caused climate change. It’s a trend researchers predict could last well into the fall, with elevated water temperatures continuing to strain coral, which has been stripped of its color due to the rising temperatures.
Scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said Cheeca Rocks, off of Islamorada, has been one of the reefs that has held on.
“This has been a resilient reef,” said Ian Enochs, who has been doing research there for about 10 years, as head of the coral program at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory.
He wasn’t prepared for the state of Cheeca Rocks today: a virtual moonscape, a condition known as bleaching. Extremely warm water causes the coral to lose the algae it needs to survive, leaving them looking like ghosts.
“As a scientist, we are trying not to be emotional,” said Enochs. “For me just seeing the scale of death, it’s hard to kind of come to terms with that.”
The scale of the bleaching, he said, “is not subtle; it’s a hundred percent.”
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Now, there’s a race to save the coral – by removing them from their habitat.
“We are trying to rescue as much of the genetic diversity and as much of the stock that we have. It’s paramount to the survival of this species in the Florida Keys,” said Phanor Montoya-Maya, program manager of the Coral Restoration Foundation, headquartered in Key Largo Florida.
Volunteers have been taking 20 different species of coral from the sea, and to their partners at the Keys Marine Lab, where they are placed into tanks that simulate more normal conditions.
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The goal is to keep them alive and return them once the waters have cooled.
“We have seen a species disappear, but an entire ecosystem? We haven’t seen that. And I don’t want to be part of the generation that sees that,” said Montoya-Maya.
Reefs cover less than 1% of the Earth’s surface, but are home to 25% of marine species, making them critical to food supply, shoreline protection and tourism.
For sea turtles, it’s a matter of survival.
“This animal was in our oceans when dinosaurs were on our land. So, what we see happening to them is eventually going to affect all of life,” said Bette Zirkelbach, general manager of The Turtle Hospital in Marathon, Fla.
Zirkelbach said warming waters contribute to abnormalities and deformities in turtles, but could also affect the species long-term. For example, nests in warmer sands yield more female turtles.
“As far as hatchlings in the state of Florida, we’re only seeing female hatchlings,” she said.
A fragile ecosystem is at risk. According to NOAA’s Enochs, reducing greenhouse gas emissions is the most important thing people and governments can do. And because coral reefs grow very slowly, the large ones that are lost could take hundreds of years to fully grow back.
Despite the odds, Enochs isn’t willing to give up.
“We have too much at stake,” he said. “And so, we have no other option than to try to turn this around, and I think we can.”
Manuel Bojorquez
Russia is raising its conscription age and calling up 70-year-olds in an effort to avoid another large-scale mobilization that could spark backlash, expert says
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Russia has recently introduced a series of bills that expands the pool of eligible conscripts.
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The country is facing mounting manpower struggles amid its ongoing war in Ukraine.
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An expert on Russia said the government is likely trying to avoid another large-scale mobilization.
The Russian government passed a series of bills last month that significantly expands the pool of men eligible for military service as the country looks to address its increasing personnel problems while avoiding another full-scale mobilization.
The country is facing mounting manpower shortages amid its 17-month war in Ukraine even after President Vladimir Putin announced the mobilization of 300,000 reservists in one fell swoop last fall, prompting tens of thousands of Russian men to flee.
Now, the Russian government is looking for new ways to pad its military numbers without sparking civilian backlash or cannibalizing its own economy.
Last week, Putin signed into law legislation that raises the maximum age for male conscription from 27 to 30 years old.
One year of military service was previously required by Russian men ages 18 to 27 with conscriptions held twice a year. But starting in 2024, that call-up category will be extended by three years, significantly broadening the pool of young men who are now eligible for Russia’s one year of compulsory service.
“This gives Russia more latitude on who it can pull into the fight without taking people who are producing both militarily and economically valuable products,” said Simon Miles, an assistant professor at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and a historian of the Soviet Union and US-Soviet relations.
The legislation also prevents conscripts from leaving Russia after they’ve been sent a draft notice — an apparent response to the scores of Russians who fled the country in response to last year’s mobilization. A similar law passed earlier this year would impose several possible penalties on would-be draft dodgers, including a suspended driver’s license and blocks on buying real estate and receiving bank loans.
“If I were Putin, I wouldn’t want to do another big mobilization, because that’s a really galvanizing moment to remind people that this war affects them too,” Miles said.
Russian state media has sought to present the war as entirely divorced from everyday Russians’ lives since the invasion in February 2022, framing the conflict as something happening “over there” in Ukraine, Miles said.
“But it’s not “over there” when 200,000 people get roped into military service to go and fight this stupid and futile war,” he added.
Putin has promised that conscripts won’t be sent to the frontlines in Ukraine, but The New York Times reported last week that these men have been deployed to regions on Ukraine’s border and could be called upon to sign wartime contracts.
The new conscription law is just one of several steps Russia has recently taken to address personnel shortages. In mid-July, the Russian Parliament also raised the maximum age that reservists who have already completed their compulsory service can be called back to fight. The highest-ranking officers now eligible for general mobilization are as old as 70.
Then, the Duma last week passed a bill that upped the fines for people who don’t show up to an enlistment office after receiving a draft notice. Previous fines maxed out at 3,000 rubles, but the new legislation institutes a flat fee of 30,000 rubles, or nearly $330.
That bill also expands powers among Russian governors to oversee regional paramilitary units during periods of mobilization.
“These are solutions that create opportunities for Russia to continue [conscripting people] at a lower intensity level that doesn’t generate the big news stories and the backlash,” Miles said.
Russian authorities have also mobilized nearly 60,000 residents in Russian-occupied Crimea since early 2022, the Institute for the Study of War reported, citing Ukrainian intelligence, with many of those men deployed to the frontlines of the war, despite being offered assurances they would be kept away from the most brutal fighting.
The recent Russian crackdown on conscripts has managed to spark at least some discontent, with reports of civilians conducting arson attacks against registration and enlistment offices, per ISW.
“This is further evidence against Putin’s proposition — which was flawed from the outset — that he can keep this war going as long as wants to and needs to,” said Miles.
Read the original article on Business Insider
Inside Ron DeSantis’ awkward comeback effort
ROCHESTER, N.H. — For $1, New Hampshire voters were invited to drink beer with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Saturday in Concord.
But barely more than two dozen people showed up at the New Hampshire Home Builders Association, which slashed the ticket price for the general public from $50 late in the week in order to build the crowd.
By the time the event started, an hour late, there were just 30 people in the room.
For a campaign that promised allies a new approach while shedding staff amid a cash crunch and declining poll numbers, the meet-and-greet with homebuilders was just one of a string of events in Iowa and New Hampshire in recent days that were distinctive less for any change in DeSantis’ tack than for the appearance of waning interest in his candidacy.
At least at the outset, DeSantis has reset in name only.
“When you’re not gaining traction in the polls, they’ve got to do something,” said Jim Tobin, who attended DeSantis’ economic policy speech in Rochester on Monday, and is leaning toward voting for the governor. “If he was even in the polls, they wouldn’t be doing anything.”
In campaign memos and conversations with donors, DeSantis advisers have talked of a path forward by making the governor more approachable through retail politicking — diners and barbecues — and town-hall forums that emphasize his policy ideas (the economy and foreign policy in August) and military service. DeSantis’ economic policy speech to a crowd of about 100 people here Monday, along with appearances at restaurants, a house party and former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown’s barbecue, followed that plan.
His campaign says he’s hitting his marks.
“The media will continue their obsession with endless clickbait stories that do nothing to inform voters, and Ron DeSantis will keep sharing his plans to declare American’s economic independence and restore sanity in our country as the next president,” campaign spokesman Andrew Romeo said.
“While some candidates think they are entitled to the nomination,” Romeo added, “the governor will not be outworked and will fight for every vote, one day at a time.”
While his four-day swing through the Granite State and a bus tour of Iowa last week bore some of the trappings of a candidate trying to make a sharp turn, DeSantis often reverted to his norm, both in substance and style.
He remains committed to the basic message that, as president, he can export his agenda from Florida to the rest of the country and, despite beefing up his stump speech with broadsides against President Joe Biden and a handful of policy promises, he still emphasizes the culture-war issues that dominated the early days of his campaign.
At a coffee shop in Oskaloosa, Iowa, on Friday, he began his remarks with some sharp zingers against Biden and a tight section on economic conditions. But he then spoke at length about destroying “woke” culture and defended the Florida Board of Education’s decision to approve a Black history curriculum that said middle school students should learn about the “personal benefit” slaves received from learning trades.
And there were signs that the campaign’s focus on retail politics — on showing that DeSantis can connect with people outside his bubble — eluded the candidate at times.
A 15-year-old at the Oskaloosa coffee shop asked about military service restrictions on people with mental health disorders — a topic right in line with the DeSantis campaign’s desire to highlight his military expertise.
“I can’t legally vote,” the teen said, “but I struggle with major depressive disorder.”
DeSantis interrupted the teen with a rejoinder: “It’s never stopped the other party from not letting you vote.”
After letting the youngster finish, DeSantis swung back around to acknowledge that he wasn’t sure what restrictions might be in place and stressing that such rules are made with “whatever is best for the unit” in mind.
It wasn’t the only moment on the two-state trip in which the governor’s attempts to project intimacy by making small talk seemed to backfire.
“Oh, what is that? An Icee?” a puzzled-looking DeSantis asked one kid during his Thursday visit to the Wayne County Fair in Corydon. “That’s probably a lot of sugar, huh?”
Later that evening, in Osceola, an 82-year-old farmer told DeSantis that he tends fewer acres since his wife died of cancer five years ago, and asked about the candidate’s thoughts on ethanol, a corn-based renewable fuel used in cars.
DeSantis passed up an opportunity to offer sympathy, launching into a stump-speech promise to “turn back this rush to electric vehicles.”
Agreeing with DeSantis’ view on electric vehicles, the farmer said he couldn’t afford to transition his tractors and other equipment. In that case, it seemed, the voter found a way to connect with DeSantis rather than the other way around.
DeSantis defended his personal touch in an interview with NBC News last week, arguing that critics are off-base when they say he has difficulty connecting.
“That hasn’t been the truth,” he said during the Iowa tour. “The truth here on this trip, we’ve gone to all these counties, people coming up to me saying, ‘I’m so glad that you showed up. You know, you’re the first guy to actually show up here where people are signing up committing to caucus for us and really significant numbers in terms of the percentages of people that are showing up.’”
DeSantis said that’s a sign that his campaign is moving in the right direction.
“So we’re making big, big progress,” he said, pointing to his visits to smaller counties. “I’m going to say I have been in your community. We’ve listened to your concerns, and we’re going to deliver results for you.”
DeSantis’ cash-strapped campaign has turned to his super PAC, Never Back Down, to defray costs by sponsoring events that DeSantis attends. Ostensibly, part of his new strategy is to get closer contact with voters at slimmed-down meetings. That has the obvious benefit of portraying sparse attendance as a virtue.
There were some bright spots on DeSantis’ most recent campaign swing, which was due to wrap up Tuesday with a town hall-style event televised by WMUR in New Hampshire.
After his Lincoln Dinner speech to the Iowa GOP Friday night, DeSantis hung out with supporters at an after-party sponsored by his super PAC, beer in hand. The speech itself, part of a cattle call of candidates delivering remarks to a crowd of more than 1,000 Iowa Republicans, drew applause and praise from attendees.
“DeSantis was in danger of being written off by many Iowa Republican Party leaders and activists,” said Will Rogers, a former chairman of the Polk County, Iowa, GOP who has not endorsed a candidate. “His performance at Friday night’s dinner clearly shows that he has a lot of life left in his campaign, and this might have been the start of his comeback.”
On Sunday, at Brown’s barbecue, DeSantis spoke to an energized crowd of well more than 100 people — more than at the homebuilders event but still short of the audiences that flocked to see him in Iowa during his pre-campaign book tour.
Despite out-raising the field, earning enough media coverage to make himself a household name in political circles and securing second place in polling, DeSantis’ campaign looks more like the operation of a second-tier candidate now than the juggernaut it was expected to be.
This month, DeSantis fired more than 40 percent of his campaign staff after a filing with the Federal Election Commission showed that he had tapped out top donors and burned through cash. Out of $20.1 million raised in his first six weeks as a candidate, he had spent $7.8 million. Under federal election law, roughly $3 million of the remainder can’t be used in the primary because it is reserved for the general election.
At the same time, DeSantis’ poll numbers have sagged. A New York Times/Siena College survey released Monday showed former President Donald Trump at 54 percent and DeSantis at 17 percent. The remaining candidates in the crowded field were all below 4 percent.
DeSantis donors and allies have long been concerned about his campaign. Some expressed optimism about his chances of resetting his trajectory after the staff layoffs. But other Republicans say the campaign is still falling well short of expectations.
“I think he’s got a very good team in Iowa and I think he’s heavily focused,” said a GOP lawmaker who has not endorsed in the race yet. “But am I disappointed overall? Yeah. I think people thought the rollout was going to be better. I think they thought there would be a more robust campaign, that they’d be making more progress. And so, yeah, I think it’s been disappointing over the last six weeks.”
The attendance at Saturday’s “Beers With Builders” event was measurably smaller than the crowds DeSantis drew at several stops on his first trip to the state as a candidate this year.
Originally, organizers had made the event free to members of the homebuilders’ association and charged $50 per ticket for nonmembers. But in an effort to pack the room, the association dropped the price to $1 for nonmembers — a nominal fee designed to prevent tickets from being reserved by malicious actors.
“I charged a token $1 because the ‘bots’ fill up events with bad emails,” association executive director Matt Mayberry said in a text exchange with NBC News.
But a cheap ticket and free beer could only do so much.
Allan Smith and Emma Barnett reported from New Hampshire, Henry J. Gomez from Iowa, and Jonathan Allen from Washington, D.C.
Gabe Gutierrez, Scott Wong and Alec Hernández contributed.