As the flood waters left behind from Hurricane Harvey recede, the search continues for victims not yet counted in the death toll. The number of confirmed deaths attributed to Harvey has reached 63 and that number is expected to rise as Houston emergency officials continue to search flooded homes. Emergency officials have said the number of calls for service and rescue has been steadily diminishing.
Hurricane Harvey hit Corpus Christi, Texas on August 25th and continued to batter cities and towns along the Gulf of Mexico with rain. Some areas got as much as 50 inches of rain. Some climatologists are calling Harvey the worst rainfall event in the country’s history. Officials have estimated the damage to be as much as $108 billion but it’s too early to know the full scope of the Texas disaster.
Across Southeast Texas, police, firefighters, the National Guard, the Coast Guard and other agencies responded with immense force trying to help those in need. With hundreds of miles of heavily flooded area to cover and days of rain- no government response could have been enough.
As first responders were overwhelmed with calls for rescue, emergency lines were jammed and people were posting desperate pleas for help on social media. Many had been stranded for days with no electricity, food or water. Civilians with boats, high water vehicles and small watercrafts, took to the murky waters to help save lives. Texans hours away-loaded up fishing boats, kayaks, canoes and flat-bottomed skiffs and headed to areas inundated with flood water and over the next six days, rescued hundreds of people and animals.
Others without boats stepped up to help as well. Stories of people who were out of harms way using social media apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Nextdoor and Snapchat along with google maps to connect civilian rescue boats with people who posted pleas for help from their smartphones. Boaters used Zello, a free “walkie-talkie” app to help each other navigate through rescues.
Three friends created the website “Houston Harvey Rescue,” in under 3 hours, in a leaky office, with intermittent power. The site allowed users to drop a pin on a Google map to alert rescuers to people in trouble. The color of the pin could be changed to indicate the degree of urgency, and the pin could be removed when the rescue was completed, giving rescuers a real-time view of needs across the city.
While it’s too soon to know how many of the more than 37,000 heavily damaged homes in Texas are salvageable. Officials say some will be submerged in water for up to a month and the longer a house is under water, the greater the damage. Thousands have already been destroyed in the state and evacuees are slowly returning to their homes to try to assess the damage and gather any salvageable belongings.
At least 33,000 people in Texas have fled to more than 230 shelters, with 11,000 people inside Houston’s largest sports stadium. Churches and many businesses have opened their doors to evacuees as well. Hundreds of thousands could seek some kind of disaster assistance, officials said. It will likely take years for some areas of Texas to rebuild while other areas will never be the same. The power of social media and people compelled to help others saved hundreds of lives during this disaster. The heroes that emerged to help those in need remind us all that our country is not as divided as it sometimes seems.
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The US Navy released the names and hometowns of the 10 sailors who went missing after the USS John S. McCain, a guided-missile destroyer, collided with a merchant ship near Singapore, east of the Malacca Strait on Monday. Initial reports indicated that the destroyer sustained damage to her port side aft, the left rear of the ship, in the collision that left five injured and 10 sailors missing. Authorities said four of those injured were medically evacuated by a Singapore navy helicopter with non-life threatening injuries and the fifth injured sailor stayed on board with minor injuries.
The collision was reported at 6:24 a.m. Japan Standard Time, while the ship was en route to a routine port visit in Singapore. The ship headed to port under its own power after the collision. The other ship, the Alnic MC, is a 600-foot oil and chemical tanker with a gross tonnage of 30,000 and is about three times the size of the McCain. The USS McCain is based at the fleet’s homeport of Yokosuka, Japan. It was commissioned in 1994 and has a crew of 23 officers, 24 chief petty officers and 291 enlisted sailors, according to the Navy’s website.
The US Navy confirmed they recovered the remains of two sailors — Kenneth Smith, 22, and Dustin Doyon, 26 but suspended the search for the sailors who are still missing after “more than 80 hours of multinational search efforts,” the statement said.
Those lost in the collision have been identified as Kenneth Smith, 22 of Cherry Hill, New Jersey; Dustin Doyon, 26, of Suffield, Connecticut; Kevin Bushell, 26, of Gaithersburg, Maryland; Jacob Drake, 21, of Cable, Ohio; Timothy Eckels Jr., 23, of Manchester, Maryland; Charles Findley, 31 of Amazonia, Missouri; John “CJ” Hoagland III, 20 of Killeen, Texas; Corey Ingram, 28 of Poughkeepsie, New York; Abraham Lopez, 39, of El Paso, Texas and Logan Palmer, 23, of Decatur, Illinois.
The incident is the second serious collision for a Navy vessel in two months and fourth since January. The USS Fitzgerald collided with a freighter off the coast of Japan on June 17, leaving seven sailors dead. The Navy last week relieved the Fitzgerald’s skipper and two top sailors of their command for losing “situational awareness” in the hours leading up to the collision. About a dozen sailors in all are facing some punishment, including all of the destroyer’s watch, the Navy said.
The Navy is preparing to conduct an extremely rare suspension of ship operations worldwide for a day or two in order to review safety and operational procedures. Navy officials are also investigating the role that training, manning and crew communications may have played in the accidents. Vice Adm. Joseph P. Aucoin, the head of the Seventh Fleet, the Navy’s largest overseas, was removed Wednesday in connection with the four accidents since January, according to a statement by the Navy.
Admiral Aucoin had been expected to retire in the coming weeks, but his superiors pushed up his departure date after losing confidence in his leadership. Admiral Aucoin is being replaced by Rear Adm. Phil Sawyer, “who has already been nominated and confirmed for the position and promotion to vice admiral,” the Navy statement said.
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Tens of thousands of residents began evacuating coastal communities in Texas as forecasters predicted Hurricane Harvey could make landfall late Friday as a major category-three storm, delivering a life-threatening 35-40 inches of rain to some parts of the Gulf Coast. Several counties along the Gulf coast, including Nueces county, Calhoun county and Brazoria county, have ordered mandatory evacuations in low-lying areas.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has activated about 700 members of the state National Guard and put military helicopters on standby in Austin and San Antonio in preparation for search and rescues and emergency evacuations. In the Gulf of Mexico, oil and natural gas operators had begun evacuating workers from offshore platforms.
Harvey intensified on Thursday from a tropical depression into a category 1 hurricane. Early on Friday morning, the National Hurricane Center reported it had become a category 2. Fuelled by warm Gulf of Mexico waters, it was projected to become a major category 3 hurricane. Typical category 3 storms damage small homes, topple large trees and destroy mobile homes. The wall of water called a storm surge poses the greatest risk.
Hurricane trackers expect the storm’s eye to come ashore near the city of Corpus Christi, where Mayor Joe McComb called for a voluntary evacuation. Forecasters predict that if Harvey stalls over Texas it could deliver catastrophic flooding before drifting back over the Gulf of Mexico towards Louisiana.
The National Hurricane Center said it expected flash flooding along the middle and upper Texas coast. The storm is expected to stall and unload torrents of rain for four to six straight days. In just a few days, the storm may dispense the amount of rain that normally falls over an entire year, shattering records. The storm is also predicted to generate a devastating storm surge — raising the water as much as 13 feet above normally dry land at the coast.
The National Weather Service office in Corpus Christi said that due to the combination of flooding from storm surge and rainfall, “locations may be uninhabitable for an extended period.” It warned of “structural damage to buildings, with many washing away” and that “streets and parking lots become rivers of raging water with underpasses submerged.”
Harvey made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane at 11 p.m. Friday between Port Aransas and Port O’Connor, Texas. With 130 mph winds, the storm became the first major hurricane, rated Category 3 or higher to strike U.S. soil in 12 years. In 2008, Hurricane Ike hit near Galveston, Texas as a Category 2 storm that killed 113 in the US and caused $37.5 billion in damages.
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A federal appeals court has thrown out the prison sentences of former Blackwater contractors who were involved in a 2007 massacre in Nisoor Square in central Baghdad that left 17 civilians dead and 20 injured when they opened fire with machine guns and threw grenades into the crowded public space. The appeals court ruled three of the contractors could be resentenced, meaning their 30-year prison sentences could be dramatically shortened. A fourth contractor’s murder conviction was thrown out entirely, so he’ll now face a new trial.
The Blackwater guards claimed that the convoy was ambushed and that they fired at the attackers in defense of the convoy. The Iraqi government and Iraqi police investigator Faris Saadi Abdul stated that the killings were unprovoked. The Iraqi government claimed that as the convoy drew close to Nisour Square, a Kia sedan carrying a woman and her adult son was approaching the square from a distance, driving slowly on the wrong side of the road, ignoring a police officer’s whistle to clear a path for the convoy. The security team fired warning shots and then lethal fire at the Kia. They then set off stun grenades to clear the scene. Iraqi police and Iraqi Army soldiers, mistaking the stun grenades for fragmentation grenades, opened fire at the Blackwater men, to which they returned fire.
The Blackwater guards contend that the Kia continued to approach even when fired upon and after an Iraqi policeman went over to the car, it looked as if the policeman was pushing it. They feared they were under attack by a car bomb so they fired at the car, killing both occupants as well as the Iraqi policeman. Iraqi police officers began to fire at the Blackwater men. The guards felt they could not be sure they were dealing with actual police since insurgents often disguise themselves by wearing police uniforms.
A military report appeared to corroborate “the Iraqi government’s contention that Blackwater was at fault. Blackwater Worldwide’s license to operate in Iraq was temporarily revoked. An FBI investigation found that, of the 17 Iraqis killed by the guards, at least 14 were shot without cause.
In 2008, the U.S. charged five Blackwater guards with 14 counts of manslaughter, 20 counts of attempted manslaughter and a weapons violation. On December 31, 2009, a U.S. district judge dismissed all charges on the grounds that the case against the Blackwater guards had been improperly built on testimony given in exchange for immunity.
In 2011, a U.S. federal appeals court reinstated the manslaughter charges against Paul A. Slough, Evan S. Liberty, Dustin L. Heard and Donald W. Ball after closed-door testimony. A fifth guard had his charges dismissed, and a sixth guard -Jeremy Ridgeway pled guilty to voluntary manslaughter and attempted manslaughter.
On October 22, 2014, a Federal District Court jury convicted Nick Slatten of first-degree murder and sentenced him to life in prison. Three other guards Paul A.Slough, Evan S. Liberty and Dustin L.Heard were found guilty of all three counts of voluntary manslaughter and using a machine gun to commit a violent crime. They were each sentenced to 30 years in prison. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit tossed Slatten’s murder conviction and ordered the other defendants to be re-sentenced. A new trial was also recommended for Slatten, on the grounds that it was unjustifiable to try him with his co-defendants, and that he should have been tried separately.
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Baltimore Ravens offensive lineman John Urschel has retired from the NFL just before the first full-team practice of training camp. His decision came two days after a medical study indicated that chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) was found in nearly 99 percent of deceased NFL players’ brains that were donated to scientific research. A team source said that the findings weighed heavy on Urschel’s decision to retire.
The study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association found that of the 111 NFL players whose brains were studied, 110 of them had signs of CTE, which can lead to memory loss, depression and dementia—often years or even decades after players retire. Several top names in the game- including Junior Seau, Frank Gifford, John Mackey and Kenny Stabler — were diagnosed with the disease after their deaths.
Coach John Harbaugh said he was surprised when Urschel called him 90 minutes before practice to inform him of his retirement. “He said he’s going to retire from football, that it was something that’s been on his mind for quite a while and throughout the offseason.”
In August 2015, Urschel suffered a concussion in a helmet-to-helmet collision, which he said “I think it hurt my ability to think well mathematically,” Urschel said. “It took me about three weeks before I was football-ready. It took me a little bit longer before my high-level visualizations ability came back.”
Urschel will now pursue his PhD in Mathematics fulltime at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, focusing on spectral graph theory, numerical linear algebra and machine learning. He had been pursuing it in the offseason prior to his retirement. Urschel was recently named to Forbes’ “30 under 30” in the field of science. He has published six peer-reviewed mathematics papers to date and has three more ready for review. According to the Ravens website, Urschel is an expert mathematician who gets straight A’s while also grinding away in the NFL trenches.
Urschel who played on the offensive line for three seasons with the Baltimore Ravens, received a $144,560 signing bonus when joining the Ravens in 2014. The bonus prorated at $36,140 per year. With one year left on the contract, Urschel owes the Ravens $36,140 upon retirement.
Urschel released a statement shortly after the announcement. “Thank you to everyone for the kind words today. It wasn’t an easy decision, but I believe it was the right one for me,” Urschel said in a statement. “There’s no big story here, and I’d appreciate the right to privacy. I’m extremely grateful to the Ravens, and blessed to have been able to play the game I love at the highest level.
It is a great game. There are some games — like the playoff game at Pittsburgh — that I will never forget. I’m excited to start working on my doctorate in mathematics full time at MIT. I’m looking forward to the chance to take courses that are only offered in the fall semester, while spending time with my fiance and preparing myself for the new challenges that will come with fatherhood. We’re expecting our first child in December.”
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The cholera outbreak in Yemen has become a dire situation as the World Health Organization (WHO) confirms the number of cases has reached over 400,000. U.N. leaders say the outbreak has increased the number of people in need of assistance to nearly 21 million. Since late April, the total has reached 402,484 suspected cases, 1,880 of them fatal. Illnesses have been reported in all but 2 of the country’s 23 governorates.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD, along with UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake and World Food Program Executive Director David Beasley, said in a statement that more than 2 years of hostilities have crippled health, water, and sanitation systems, creating ideal conditions for the disease to spread.
“We now call on the international community to redouble its support for the people of Yemen. If we fail to do so, the catastrophe we have seen unfolding before our eyes will not only continue to claim lives but will scar future generations and the country for years to come,” the three said in their statement.
They warned that Yemen is on the brink of famine and 60% of the population doesn’t know where their next meal is coming from. They added that nearly 2 million of the country’s children are acutely malnourished, making them susceptible to cholera, which leads to more malnutrition.
The outbreak began last year but a second wave of the waterborne disease has spread even more quickly in the last couple of months. UNICEF and WHO have attributed the outbreak to malnutrition, collapsing sanitation and clean water systems due to the country’s ongoing conflict.
The impact of the outbreak has been exacerbated by many factors including the collapse of the Yemeni health services, where 30,000 health workers have remained unpaid for 10 months but are still reporting for duty. Less than half of Yemen’s medical centres are still functional. WHO officials said “We have asked the Yemeni authorities to pay these health workers urgently because, without them, we fear that people who would otherwise have survived may die.”
Local authorities and humanitarian groups have set up more than 1,000 treatment centers and oral rehydration units. The UN is working with the World Bank on a partnership to support the response needs and maintain the local health system.
Two years of conflict between the Saudi-led coalition and Houthi rebels have taken a heavy toll on Yemen, causing widespread internal displacement and leaving millions facing famine. The collapse of the country’s infrastructure has led to 14.5 million people, including nearly 8 million children, having no access to clean water and sanitation.
With thousands more cases reported each day the number of cholera cases in Yemen is expected to exceed 600,000 by the end of the year.
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Six Burundi teenagers have been reported missing after taking part in an international robotics competition in Washington DC. A police spokesperson said authorities “do not have any indication of foul play” as the investigation continues into what happened after the group attended the FIRST Global Challenge robotics competition with students from 157 nations.
Teams of high school students from more than 150 countries took part in the competition organized by FIRST Global, a U.S.-based non-profit that organized the competition which was designed to encourage careers in math and technology.
Police reports indicated that the four boys and two girls were last seen in the early evening of July 18th in northwest DC after which their adult mentor was unable to locate them. FIRST Global informed the police later that day. All six members of the robotics team Audrey Mwamikazi, 17, Nice Munezero, 17, Don Charu Ingabire, 16, Kevin Sabumukiza, 17, Richard Irakoze, 18, and Aristide Irambona, 18 reportedly have one-year US visas.
The DC police have said that Ms Mwamikazi and Mr Ingabire are in Canada because they were spotted crossing the border but no details have been released about how they got there or why. Canada’s Border Services Agency said it could neither confirm nor deny that the pair entered Canada. DC police also said the other four teenagers seem to be in a safe place, but police are not reporting any further details.
The Republic of Burundi,has a population of 11.2 million people and is a landlocked country in the African Great Lakes region of East Africa. It is bordered by Rwanda, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It has been plagued by instability for decades with bouts of ethnic cleansing and ultimately two civil wars and genocides during the 1970s and again in the 1990s left the country undeveloped and its population as one of the world’s poorest.
Burundi continues to experience civil unrest after a failed coup in 2015. The U.S. State Department issued a travel warning in late June about the African nation, advising Americans of “political tensions, political and criminal violence, and the potential for civil unrest.” The warning also stated that rebel forces, ex-combatants and youth gangs from the Democratic Republic of Congo reportedly crossed into Burundi and attacked and kidnapped civilians; armed criminals have ambushed vehicles.
There have also been reports of human rights abuses as well. According to the UN, over 300,000 people fled the country since 2014 due to violent gangs from Congo and disappearances and killings allegedly committed by Burundian security forces.
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Longtime Arizona senator and former presidential candidate John McCain has been diagnosed with primary glioblastoma, a malignant form of brain cancer. Senator McCain’s office said the diagnosis came after McCain had surgery last week to remove a blood clot above his left eye at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona. Lab results from the surgery confirmed the presence of glioblastoma.
McCain is reportedly weighing whether to undergo an aggressive treatment of radiation and chemotherapy, and has not said when he might return to Capitol Hill. Glioblastoma is the most common of all malignant brain tumors, representing 15.4% of all primary brain tumors, according to the American Brain Tumor Association (ABTA), who estimate there will be over 12,000 cases before the end of 2017.
With the permission of McCain’s family, CNN’s Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta spoke to doctors involved in the senator’s care. Gupta learned McCain had felt tired over the last few months and had a bout of double vision, but blamed it on his intense travel schedule. Doctors ordered a CAT scan and an MRI scan of McCain’s brain that revealed the tumor.
The symptoms of glioblastoma are usually a result of increased pressure on the brain. The ABTA lists headaches, nausea, vomiting and drowsiness as symptoms for the tumor. Depending on where the tumor is, however, weakness on one side of the body, memory and speech difficulties and visual changes can all be developed as a result.
The ABTA labels the prognosis for glioblastoma survival in terms of median survival — the length of time at which an equal number of patients do better and an equal number of patients do worse. Depending on the type of glioblastoma and treatment used, this can range from 14 months to three years. The association also cites a 2009 study that found 10% of patients with glioblastoma may live five years or longer. The average survival time for malignant glioblastoma is around 14 months with treatment.
There is no specific treatment used for glioblastoma but there are a few different approaches doctors can take. Gupta said “This is a malignant cancer, what that means in this case is that you operate on this,” “It needs to be treated as well with chemotherapy and radiation.”
When a cancer is malignant, cells are dividing uncontrollably and can invade nearby tissues. The cancer cells may also spread to other parts of the body through the blood stream or lymph system in the body. Gupta added because of the nature of the tumor, McCain will likely need more procedures in the coming weeks. “The concern is that it will come back. That’s the big concern with these types of tumors,” he said. “In order to try to give him the best chance at that, it is likely he’ll undergo further treatments over the next several days.”
McCain’s cancer is the same form that claimed the lives of Senator Ted Kennedy and Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Beau Biden. This is not McCain’s first battle with cancer; in 2000 he underwent a procedure to remove a type of skin cancer called melanoma from the left side of his face. McCain, 80, also had a melanoma removed from his left arm in 2000 and another removed from his nose in 2002. Both were determined to be the least dangerous types of melanoma.
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A Stockton,CA teen livestreamed a gruesome video of the fatal car wreck that killed her 14 year old sister Jacqueline Sanchez. Obdulia Sanchez, 18, filmed herself singing along to a song and dancing while at the wheel. Her sister Jacqueline and a pal, 14, can be briefly seen in the back seat.
The video, which was livestreamed to her Instagram, shows Obdulia turning the camera from herself to the roadway a few times before losing control of the car. With the camera still rolling, screams can be heard as the car swerved across both lanes, crashed into a barbed wire fence and overturned in a field just off of Highway 165 in Los Banos, California.
Still filming, Obdulia exited the vehicle where she filmed her sister’s bloodied, fatally injured body. She is seen shaking her sister’s lifeless body, saying: “I killed my sister, but I don’t care…I killed my sister. I know I’m going to prison, but I don’t care. I’m sorry baby. I’m a hold it down.”
Obdulia Sanchez was arrested and booked at the Merced County Jail, charged with driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs and causing bodily injury and with gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated. She is being held on a $300,000 bond.
Sheriff Vern Warnke said Jacqueline Sanchez was not wearing her seat belt at the time and was ejected as the vehicle was rolling over. She died of severe head injuries. Her friend who was also not wearing her seatbelt, suffered severe but non-life threatening injuries.
Officials said they believe the July 21st crash was caused when Obdulia Sanchez over corrected a turn which caused the vehicle to swerve across both lanes, crashing through a wire fence and overturning into a field south of the road. The highway patrol said alcohol is believed to be a factor in the crash.
The girl’s parents, Nicandro and Gloria Sanchez say they believe their 18 year old daughter is still in shock and that they both are numb and unsure of what to feel. Jacqueline Sanchez was heading into her sophomore year of high school and was about to celebrate her Quinceanera. Instead, her parents have to bury one daughter while the other is in jail.
A California Highway Patrol officer told the media that Obdulia became combative at the scene of the accident while screaming that her sister was dead. He was quoted as saying “The video is very disturbing,” “It’s very disturbing to us because of the callous nature of her actions, both leading up to this tragedy and in the immediate aftermath.” The highway patrol said it is still looking into whether Obdulia Sanchez dialed 911 to report the crash.
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A horrific incident of human trafficking was discovered in the parking lot of a Walmart in San Antonio, TX. Eight people were discovered dead inside a tractor-trailer and around three dozen people more were in very bad shape, many of them unconscious and unable to speak. Thirty people were taken to the hospital, 17 were listed in critical condition with one critical patient dying later. Another 13 people were in serious condition. In total, 39 people were in the back of the trailer, two were school age children but most were in their twenties and thirties.
Authorities were alerted when the employees of the San Antonio Walmart saw the tractor-trailer in their parking lot for a long time. When some employees went to check on the trailer, the driver asked for water. While giving him the water, police were alerted who reached the scene within a short time.
San Antonio Police Chief William McManus said that when police arrived on the scene, they discovered eight people dead and 30 suffering from various injuries. The driver, identified as James M. Bradley Jr., 60, of Clearwater, Florida was arrested at the scene.
The eight people whose bodies were initially found were believed to have died from heat exposure and asphyxiation. San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood told the media “We quickly called a ‘mass casualty incident’ and had about 29 units arrive out there and start transporting people”. “With heat strokes or heat injuries, a lot of them are going to have some irreversible brain damage”.
He added, “Unfortunately, some of them were severely overheated, and that was a refrigerated truck with no refrigeration…So the inside of the truck was just austere condition that nobody was going to survive in it. So we were very fortunate that they were found because if they would have spent another night in that environment, we would have 38 people who would not have survived.”
San Antonio police are investigating what they believe is a massive human trafficking operation. Officials from the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement were helping with the investigation. Surveillance video showed that several vehicles had approached the trailer to pick up people. Some occupants fled into the woods nearby. Authorities are searching the entire area on foot and by air using helicopters to locate those that ran into the woods.
Smugglers often transport large groups of migrants from stash houses near the border in tractor-trailers, or disperse them in smaller vehicles, taking them to cities like Houston or San Antonio. A spokesman for Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency of the Border Patrol, said that the people in the truck were probably migrants who had crossed the Mexican border on foot and been taken to a stash house before being put in the tractor-trailer to be transported farther north.
Just this month in Houston, about a dozen immigrants being smuggled in a cargo truck were rescued after being left in the locked vehicle for about 12 hours in a strip-mall parking lot. A police officer heard the immigrants, including a 16-year-old girl, banging on the walls for help.
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