Tag: people

Two people die after falling into the Atlantic along Spain’s north coast during high wind warnings


MADRID (AP) — Two people have died after falling into the Atlantic Ocean on Spain’s northern coast, emergency services for the northern region of Asturias said Thursday.

The deaths came amid warnings of strong winds and widespread rain across many parts of the European country.

Emergency services said that rescuers had recovered the bodies of a man and a woman in two separate incidents that occurred around 10 kilometers (six miles) apart along a stretch of coast west of the city of Gijon.

The man’s body was pulled from the sea without life after emergency services said they were informed that a person had fallen into the sea. The woman’s body was recovered after she had fallen into the sea and been thrown against the rocks by the waves, authorities said.

Spain’s national weather service issued warnings Thursday for heavy winds in several areas of the peninsula. Those included the Asturias’ coast, where waves reaching seven meters (23 feet) in height were forecast.

Spain’s Atlantic coastal area hasn’t been hit by the drought affecting its northeast and southern regions.

The rain caused some cities to cancel Easter Week processions scheduled on Thursday.



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How people with trouble sleeping can adjust to clocks going forward


The sun sets later, the evenings feel longer and you can sit out on the balcony a little later and listen to the birds singing.

There are, of course, positives to daylight saving time.

But in the coming days and weeks, millions around the world will also grudgingly lose an hour’s sleep as the clocks go forward an hour.

Several dozen countries in Europe make the switch on the night from March 30 to March 31. Australia, New Zealand and parts of the Middle East and South America follow in April.

For those worried about the loss of sleep, experts believe it’s worth focussing on the positives and not on the fears that the missing hour could throw your body clock out of sync.

“If you start worrying about possible problems days in advance, it can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy,” says Prof Markus Gosch, President of the German Society of Geriatrics. In other words, the fear itself can lead to people actually sleeping badly or feeling tired in the days after the clocks go forward.

There is no scientific evidence that older people are generally less able to cope with the time change, wspecially as the body needs less sleep in old age anyway. According to Gosch, many people manage well on six hours a night.

But what can you do if you already sleep poorly and are more sensitive to the time change? Gosch advises them to take the time change as an opportunity to scrutinize their own sleep habits.

“This means asking yourself: ‘How do I prepare myself for sleep?’ and ‘How do I stick to certain rules?'”

It might be time to crack down on some bad habits. This could mean switching off devices or the TV an hour before going to bed and reading something instead. Heavy meals and alcohol should be avoided.

It’s also a good idea to stop drinking anything at all before going to bed, so that your bladder doesn’t immediately start to work as soon as you fall asleep.

A ritual can also set the mood for a good night’s sleep. It could be a brief moment at the open window, breathing in the cool evening air. Or the classic warm milk with honey. The main thing is that the body gets the signal: The day is now coming to an end.

And older people have a big advantage over younger people when it comes to the time change: “Most people are retired, so it doesn’t matter whether you start the day an hour earlier or later,” says Gosch.

Nevertheless, it can make sense to take some of the pressure off in the week after the time change and perhaps not schedule any appointments for eight o’clock in the morning.

And what about medication that has to be taken at a certain time? There’s no need to do a lot of maths when it comes to the time change.

“As a rule, it doesn’t matter whether the medication is taken an hour earlier or later,” says Markus Gosch. And that also means: “You don’t have to get up an hour earlier after the time change in order to take the medication at the same time.”



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No Place Like Home: People with Disabilities’ Fight to Stay Out of Institutions | CBS Reports


No Place Like Home: People with Disabilities’ Fight to Stay Out of Institutions | CBS Reports – CBS News

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CBS Reports goes to Illinois, which has one of the highest rates of institutionalization in the country, to understand the challenges families face keeping their developmentally disabled loved ones at home.

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NTSB says police had 90 seconds to stop traffic, get people off Key Bridge before it collapsed


NTSB: DALI had 764 tons of hazardous material before Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse


NTSB: DALI had 764 tons of hazardous material before Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse

04:28

BALTIMORE – The National Transportation Safety Board provided a broader look Wednesday night into its investigation of the cargo ship hitting Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, causing its collapse.

Officials said police had just 90 seconds early Tuesday from when they received distress calls to cut the bridge off to traffic and to try to get people off.

A police officer who was already in the area patrolling because of the work on the bridge tried to get construction workers off before it was too late, according to officials.

Twenty-one members and two pilots were onboard DALI, a 948-foot vessel managed by Synergy Marine Group, a Singapore-based company with over 660 ships under management around the world, according to its website.

The vessel had 56 containers — 764 tons – of corrosive, flammable material and batteries, according to NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy, adding that some of the containers were breached. One of the hazardous materials was sheen, which is used in paint, that has leaked into the Patapsco River.

“That’s 764 tons of hazardous materials, mostly corrosive, flammables, Class 8 hazardous materials, which includes lithium-ion batteries,” Homendy said. “Some of those containers were breached.” 

NTSB says DALI left the terminal at the Port of Baltimore  around 12:39 a.m. and by 1:24 a.m., alarms started going off that something was wrong.

At 1:27 a.m., the pilot ordered crews to drop the anchor and called for tugs, telling officials the boat lost power and was headed toward the bridge.

And just two minutes later, the massive cargo ship crashed into the bridge at 8 mph, sending eight construction workers who were filling potholes plunging into the cold water along with Baltimore’s iconic bridge. Officials said they were from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

Two people were rescued soon after the collapse — one was uninjured and other was hospitalized and later released.

Divers recovered two bodies from a pickup truck Wednesday morning.

Officials said the search for the remaining four has moved from a recovery mission to a salvage effort because they believe vehicles are encased in the bridge debris and divers can’t operate around the debris.

The bridge itself “is fractural critical,” Homendy said. “What that means is if a member fails that would likely cause a portion of or the entire bridge to collapse; there’s no redundancy.” 

The collapse has halted the flow of ships in and out of Baltimore’s port and cut off nearly every dock in Baltimore from the global shipping industry. 

“The national economy and the global economy depends on the Port of Baltimore,” Gov. Wes Moore said at a news conference early Wednesday evening.

Moore said the state has submitted a request asking for federal funds to assist in rebuilding the bridge, but the cost and timeline is still unknown.

“The task in front of us, it will be real, it will be daunting, but our resolve is unshaken,” Moore said.

Kelsey Kushner

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Kelsey Kushner joined the WJZ team in January 2019.





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Sexually transmitted infection rates rose among older people, CDC data shows



Sexually transmitted infections are becoming more common in older adults.

Rates of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis in people ages 55 and up more than doubled in the U.S. over the 10-year period from 2012 to 2022, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The number of syphilis cases among people ages 55 and up increased seven-fold during those 10 years, while gonorrhea cases increased nearly five-fold and chlamydia cases more than tripled during that time. 

A presentation to be delivered Thursday — part of a lead-up event to the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases next month — warns that both doctors and older adults are overlooking the risks of STIs in this age group. 

“We talk about smoking, we talk about diet, exercise, so many things, and not about sex at all,” said Justyna Kowalska, the author of the presentation and a professor of medicine at the Medical University of Warsaw. 

The issue is not limited to the U.S. In England, surveillance data published in 2022 suggested that STI diagnoses rose 22% from 2014 to 2019 among people ages 45 and up. Chlamydia was the most common, followed by gonorrhea. 

Kowalska pointed to a few factors that may be driving up STI rates among older adults.

For one, people are living longer compared to past generations and enjoying more active lifestyles in their 60s, 70s and 80s. For many, that includes sex. A 2018 survey from AARP and the University of Michigan estimated that 40% of people ages 65 to 80 are sexually active, and nearly two-thirds are interested in sex. 

Hormone replacement therapy, which can treat symptoms of menopause, can prolong sexual desire in older women, while erectile dysfunction drugs like Viagra can help older men remain sexually active.

But older adults may not have gotten the type of sex education provided to teenagers today, according to Matthew Lee Smith, an associate professor at the Texas A&M School of Public Health.

“Back in the ’30s, the ’40s, the ’50s, traditional school wasn’t really doing sexual education very formally,” said Smith, who studies behavioral health risks in older adults.

Smith’s research has shown that older adults lack some knowledge about STI transmission, symptoms and prevention.

He said doctors can be sheepish about asking older patients about their sexual activity, and older people often aren’t inclined to discuss their sex lives with peers or family members.

“No one wants to think about grandma doing this,” Smith said. “You certainly aren’t going to ask grandma if she was wearing condoms — and that’s part of the problem, because every individual regardless of age has the right to intimacy.”

Some older men may struggle with condom use, Smith said, either because of a lack of dexterity or erectile dysfunction.

What’s more, he added, many older adults married at a younger age than is typical now and only had one sexual partner until they divorced or were widowed. So some might not think to use a condom, Smith said — especially since pregnancy isn’t a concern. 

Nursing homes also create opportunities for new sexual partners. The results of a U.S. survey of nursing home directors, published in 2016, found that sexual activity was common in these settings, which often have more female than male residents.

“In the heterosexual, older adult community, there’s a partner gap: Women live longer than men and there’s a larger proportion of females to men,” Smith said. “What it can lead to oftentimes is multiple partners and sharing of partners.”

Though STIs pose health risks to all age groups, older people may have a harder time clearing infections or be more susceptible to contracting them in the first place, medical experts said.

“The immune system is weaker, so you can get an infection easier, but there’s other physical things related to just sexual intimacy that make one more susceptible,” said Ethan Morgan, an assistant professor of epidemiology at The Ohio State University College of Nursing. Among women who are postmenopausal, for instance, the vaginal lining is more prone to tearing, which makes it easier for an infection to occur.

The experts stressed that doctors need to do a better job of discussing safe sex with older patients.

“We want them to have their best life,” Smith said, “but we want them to have it safely.”



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Employer of missing bridge workers vows to help their families. “They were wonderful people,” exec says.


With six workers who went missing after the collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge now presumed dead, attention is turning to helping their families. 

An executive with Brawner Builders, a general contractor in Hunt Valley, Maryland, told CBS MoneyWatch the workers had company-sponsored life insurance, while declining to disclose details regarding the policies. Separately, a GoFundMe campaign is aiming to raise $60,000 to help their survivors. 

“The company is doing everything possible to support the families and to counsel the families and to be with the families,” Brawner Builders executive vice president Jeffrey Pritzker said.

The six men were filling potholes on the center span of the bridge when a massive cargo ship struck the bridge early Tuesday morning. Originally from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico, the Maryland men were living with their families in Dundalk and Highlandtown, according to WJZ media partner The Baltimore Banner. 

So far, three of the missing workers have been identified:

  • Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval, originally from Honduras and who has been living in the U.S. for 20 years
  • Miguel Luna, originally from El Salvador
  • Dorlian Castillo Cabrera, originally from Guatemala 

Sandoval, 38, was the youngest of eight siblings from Azacualpa, a rural mountainous area in northwestern Honduras. He had worked as an industrial technician in Honduras, repairing equipment in the large assembly plants, but the pay was too low to get ahead, one of his brothers, Martín Suazo Sandoval, told the Associated Press Wednesday.

“He always dreamed of having his own business,” he said.


What’s known about the 6 missing from Baltimore bridge collapse

07:26

Another brother, Carlos Suazo Sandoval, said Maynor hoped to retire one day back in Guatamala.

“He was the baby for all of us, the youngest. He was someone who was always happy, was always thinking about the future. He was a visionary,” he told the AP by phone Wednesday from Dundalk, Maryland, near the site of the bridge collapse.

Brawner intends to offer financial assistance to the missing workers’ families as they cope with the sudden loss of income, Pritzker said, without providing additional details on the company’s plans.

“They had families, spouses and children, and they were wonderful people who now are lost,” he said, describing the contractor as a tight-knit business where other employees were “very close” to the missing workers. 

“The company is broken,” Pritzker added.

In a statement on Brawner’s website, company owner Jack Murphy wrote that highway construction work is one of the most dangerous occupations in the U.S. 

Construction workers “go out every day on our highways to make things better for everyone,” he said. “Unfortunately, this tragic event was completely unforeseen and was not something that we could imagine would happen.”


Timeline of Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore

01:49

When performing highway work, Brawner always uses employees, rather than contractors, Pritzker said. But the company sometimes works on other projects, such as building schools, that require it to hire subcontractors. 

The GoFundMe campaign for the missing workers’ families was organized by the Latino Racial Justice Circle, an advocacy group that fights racial injustice, and had raised more than $58,000 as of Wednesday afternoon. Brawner Builders is linking to the GoFundMe on its website, directing people who wish to support the families to the fundraising effort. 

“There’s a great deal of other benefits that will be flowing to the families as a result of this tragedy,” Pritzker said, without providing further details. “Of course that can’t replace the lost of their loved ones.” 

—The Associated Press contributed to this report



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People form a human chain around Slovakia’s public broadcaster that government wants to take over


BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (AP) — Protesters in Slovakia formed a human chain around the country’s public television and radio building Wednesday in anger over a takeover plan by the government whose populist, pro-Russia prime minister recently labeled several private media outlets his enemies.

The takeover plan was drafted by Culture Minister Martina Šimkovičová, who represents an ultra-nationalist member party of the coalition government and has worked for an internet television outlet known for spreading disinformation.

The plan has been condemned by President Zuzana Čaputová, opposition parties, local journalists, international media organizations, the European Commission and others who warn that the government would be taking full control of public broadcasting. Slovak journalists have called the plan an attack on all free media.

Wednesday’s was the latest protest against the policies of Prime Minister Robert Fico, known for his tirades against journalists. His critics worry Slovakia under him will abandon its pro-Western course and follow the direction of Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

Šimkovičová has said taking over public media is needed because she believes the current broadcaster is biased, giving space only to mainstream views and censoring the rest. The broadcaster has denied that.

According to her plan, the current public radio and television known as RTVS would be replaced by a new organization. A new seven-member council with members nominated by the government and parliament would select the broadcaster’s director and have the right to fire the director without giving cause.

The current broadcaster’s director was elected by parliament, and his term in office will end in 2027.

The hundreds of protesters unveiled a banner reading “HANDS OFF RTVS!” and chanted to local journalists, “We’re by your side.” Thousands of people rallied in a similar protest earlier this month.

Fico returned to power for the fourth time last year after his leftist party Smer (Direction) won the parliamentary election on a pro-Russian, anti-American platform.



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Sacramento declares itself a sanctuary city for transgender people



The Sacramento City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to declare the California capital a “sanctuary city for transgender people.”

The resolution, which takes effect immediately, ensures that no city resources will be used to criminalize trans people seeking transition-related care or to cooperate with jurisdictions seeking to enforce laws that criminalize the care elsewhere.

It comes as conservative lawmakers across the country have enacted laws to limit both surgical and nonsurgical forms of gender-affirming care for minors — including puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy — within the last handful of years. Twenty-four states limit gender-affirming care for trans youths, according to LGBTQ think tank Movement Advancement Project. 

“California has been a leader in protecting the rights of transgender individuals to access care, but many states across the nation are moving in the opposite direction,” the resolution reads. “In preparation of future legislation that may criminalize those providing or seeking gender-affirming care and given the Council’s stated values of equity and inclusion, it is important for the City of Sacramento to be proactive in reiterating our commitment to transgender rights and equal protections for transgender people by declaring ourselves a sanctuary city and a place of safety for transgender people.”

Proponents of the measure applauded the council’s unanimous vote.

“By affirming our commitment to supporting our LGBTQ+ community and ensuring that no city resources or staff time will be used to help enforce these harmful laws in other jurisdictions, the City has taken a step beyond state law and sent a powerful signal to everyone in our community that we are a safe place for everyone,” Sacramento Councilmember Katie Valenzuela, who introduced the resolution, wrote on X. “Tonight’s testimony in support of this resolution was a powerful reminder of the resiliency and passion in our community to protect our transgender neighbors. I have never been prouder to represent this incredible city I call home.”

Opponents slammed the vote, arguing that gender-affirming care can be harmful to children.

“We cannot be giving children cross-sex hormones. We can’t give them surgeries to change their sex,” Beth Bourne, a member of a Sacramento chapter of Moms for Liberty, conservative group focused on school curricula, told NBC affiliate KCRA of Sacramento. “This sanctuary city is saying that we will promote the idea that people can be born in the wrong body.”

As debates over whether such care should be prohibited continue in state legislatures, major U.S. medical associations — including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association — have repeatedly come out in support of transition-related care, including for some minors. The AMA and APA have both deemed it medically necessary.

The Sacramento City Council is not the first governmental body to pass such a  measure aimed at safeguarding trans rights and gender-affirming care in particular. In recent years, 14 states and Washington, D.C., have passed legislation to protect access to gender-affirming care, commonly referred to as “shield laws,” according to MAP.

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Search continues for 6 people presumed dead in Baltimore bridge collapse


Search continues for 6 people presumed dead in Baltimore bridge collapse – CBS News

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Divers resumed their search Wednesday for the six people who are presumed dead after the collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge. The National Transportation Safety Board is leading the investigation into the collapse. CBS News’ Jarred Hill reports.

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A bus has come off a highway in eastern Germany, killing at least 5 people


BERLIN (AP) — At least five people were killed Wednesday when a bus headed from Berlin to Switzerland came off a highway in eastern Germany and ended up on its side, authorities said.

The accident happened on the A9 highway near Leipzig at about 9:45 a.m. and the road was closed in both directions.

It wasn’t immediately clear why the bus, which was operated by Flixbus and en route from Berlin to Zurich, came off the road. Rescue helicopters and ambulances were at the scene.

Police spokesman Olaf Hoppe told n-tv television that there were “numerous injured and at least five dead.”

Flixbus said there were 53 passengers and two drivers on board, German news agency dpa reported. The company said it was working closely with local authorities and rescue services and would do everything to clear up the cause of the accident quickly.

The A9 is a major north-south route that links Berlin with Munich. The scene of the accident was just north of a highway interchange at Schkeuditz, next to the Leipzig/Halle airport.



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