AP News in Brief: 07-06-21

Demolition widens search at condo site, but storms threaten

SURFSIDE, Fla. — Rescuers searched through fresh rubble Monday after the last of the collapsed Florida condo building was demolished, which allowed crews into previously inaccessible places, including bedrooms where people were believed to be sleeping at the time of the disaster, officials said.

But they faced a new challenge from thunderstorms that hit the area as Tropical Storm Elsa approached the state.

Four more victims were discovered in the new pile, Miami-Dade Assistant Fire Chief Raide Jadallah told family members, raising the death toll to 28 people. Another 117 people remain unaccounted for.

The demolition late Sunday was crucial to the search-and-rescue effort, officials said, and raised the prospect that crews could increase both the pace of their work and the number of searchers at the site, although the chance of finding survivors 12 days after the June 24 collapse has diminished.

“We know that with every day that goes by, it is harder to see a miracle happening,” said Maggie Castro, a firefighter and paramedic with the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Department who briefs families daily.

Vatican: Pope alert and well a day after intestinal surgery

ROME — Pope Francis was “in good, overall condition, alert” and breathing on his own Monday, the Vatican said a day after the pontiff underwent a three-hour operation that involved removing half of his colon.

Francis, 84, is expected to stay in Rome’s Gemelli Polyclinic, which has a special suite reserved for popes, for about seven days, assuming no complications, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said.

The Vatican has given few details about the procedure, but an Italian newspaper reported, without citing sources, that surgeons began the operation laparoscopically but ended up having to operate with wider incisions after encountering unspecified complications.

Monday’s brief medical bulletin — which came more than 12 hours after the end of Sunday’s surgery and contained the first details from the Vatican — mentioned no such complications. The Holy See said the pope needed the procedure because of a narrowing of a portion of his large intestine that doctors say can be quite painful.

When the Vatican announced on Sunday afternoon that Francis had been admitted to hospital, it said the operation had been planned.

Tropical Storm Elsa moving across west Cuba, then to Florida

HAVANA — Tropical Storm Elsa swept over western Cuba near Havana with strong rain and winds Monday night, and forecasters said it would move on to the Florida Keys on Tuesday and Florida’s central Gulf coast by Wednesday.

The storm was passing over mainly rural areas to the east of Havana after making landfall near Cienega de Zapata, a natural park with few inhabitants.

By evening, Elsa had maximum sustained winds of 50 mph. Its core was about 30 miles east of Havana and moving to the northwest at 13 mph.

“The wind is blowing hard and there is a lot of rain. Some water is getting under the door of my house. In the yard the level is high, but it did not get into the house,” Lázaro Ramón Sosa, a craftsman and photographer who lives in the Zapata Swamp, told The Associated Press by telephone.

Sosa said he saw some avocado trees fall nearby.

Identifying remains a burdensome task in condo collapse

MIAMI — As crews peel away layer after layer of the collapsed condo tower in South Florida, the death toll increases — and so does the burden of collecting and identifying the dead, as rescuers and pathologists balance the rigors of their duties with relatives’ desperate need for closure.

Nobody has been found alive since the first hours of the June 24 disaster that killed at least 27 people in the town of Surfside, so updating the families has so far been a matter of delivering bad news. And what crews are finding is often not intact.

“It’s not necessarily that we are finding victims. We are finding human remains,” Miami-Dade County Assistant Fire Chief Raide Jadallah said to audible gasps and moans on a recent day when he had the delicate task of briefing relatives at a family assistance center set up in a hotel near the site.

With more than 115 people still unaccounted for, the task could soon overwhelm the local medical examiner’s office, and the federal government has sent a team of five people from the University of Florida to help with DNA analysis. More help could be on the way, said Jason Byrd, commander of the Florida Mortuary Operations Response System.

The medical examiner has already run into problems. When pathologists were trying to deliver one woman’s body in time for a funeral, some faulty DNA testing meant they had to cut off a finger and rush it to a lab to log her fingerprint, an official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the incident.

U.S. left Afghan airfield at night, didn’t tell the new commander

BAGRAM, Afghanistan — The U.S. left Afghanistan’s Bagram Airfield after nearly 20 years by shutting off the electricity and slipping away in the night without notifying the base’s new Afghan commander, who discovered the Americans’ departure more than two hours after they left, Afghan military officials said.

Afghanistan’s army showed off the sprawling air base Monday, providing a rare first glimpse of what had been the epicenter of America’s war to unseat the Taliban and hunt down the al-Qaida perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks on America.

The U.S. announced Friday it had completely vacated its biggest airfield in the country in advance of a final withdrawal the Pentagon says will be completed by the end of August.

“We (heard) some rumor that the Americans had left Bagram … and finally by seven o’clock in the morning, we understood that it was confirmed that they had already left Bagram,” Gen. Mir Asadullah Kohistani, Bagram’s new commander said.

Galesburg tunes out feuding Congress

GALESBURG, Ill. — Pickup trucks and cars rumble north across East Main Street’s railroad tracks into Galesburg, Illinois, past the red-brick Lindstrom’s appliances building that has occupied the same corner for more than 100 years.

An edifice from more prosperous days, the Orpheum Theater near the remodeled Amtrak station anchors one end of a downtown lined with banks, antique shops, eateries and empty storefronts. The bronze likeness of Galesburg’s most famous native, the poet Carl Sandburg, stands watch at the other end. A plaque commemorates the spot where Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas drew thousands to their 1858 U.S. Senate campaign debate.

In this town in the heart of the Midwest, the fights in Washington seem distant. On cable TV, Democrats and Republicans feud over things like abolishing the filibuster in the Senate, creating a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol or whether Democrats should use a complicated budget process to ram through President Joe Biden’s agenda.

But in interviews with close to 30 people over three days in Galesburg, conversations are dominated by issues much closer to home, like rising local crime, racial strife and whether life can return to an approximation of normal after a deadly pandemic.

And their voices matter because it is places like Galesburg, among a few dozen swing congressional districts in the country that will have an outsize voice in the midterm elections next year, with control of Congress and the fate of President Joe Biden’s agenda in the balance. In 2020, voters here favored President Donald Trump but also their incumbent Democratic congresswoman, Cheri Bustos.

‘Superman,’ ‘Lethal Weapon’ director Richard Donner dies

Filmmaker Richard Donner, who helped create the modern superhero blockbuster with 1978’s “Superman” and mastered the buddy comedy with the “Lethal Weapon” franchise, has died. He was 91.

Donner died Monday in Los Angeles, his family said through a spokesperson.

Donner gained fame with his first feature, 1976’s “The Omen.” A then-unheard-of offer followed: $1 million to direct 1978’s “Superman.” Donner channeled his love of the character into making the film, repeatedly facing off with producers over the need for special effects that would convince the audience that a superhero could really fly. In the title role, Donner cast Christopher Reeve, who was associated with “Superman” for the rest of his life.

By the 21st century, the genre was dominating the box office in the U.S. and thriving overseas. The heads of Marvel Studios and DC Entertainment—producers of most of today’s superhero fare— both worked for Donner when they were starting out in Hollywood.

Steven Spielberg, who produced “The Goonies,” wrote in a statement that, “Dick had such a powerful command of his movies, and was so gifted across so many genres. Being in his circle was akin to hanging out with your favorite coach, smartest professor, fiercest motivator, most endearing friend, staunchest ally, and — of course — the greatest Goonie of all. He was all kid. All heart. All the time. I can’t believe he’s gone, but his husky, hearty laugh will stay with me always.”

Amazon begins new chapter as Bezos hands over CEO role

NEW YORK — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos stepped down as CEO on Monday, handing over the reins as the company navigates the challenges of a world fighting to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic.

Andy Jassy, who ran Amazon’s cloud-computing business, replaced Bezos, a change the company announced in February.

Bezos, Amazon’s biggest shareholder with a stake worth about $180 billion, will still hold sway over the company he started out of his Seattle garage in 1995. He takes over the role of executive chair, with plans to focus on new products and initiatives.

Jassy takes the helm of a $1.7 trillion company that benefited greatly from the pandemic, more than tripling its profits in the first quarter of 2021 and posting record revenue as customers grew ever more dependent on online shopping.

At the same time, Amazon faces activism from a restive workforce just as a rapid economic recovery causes a labor crunch that has retailers, manufacturers and other companies competing for workers with higher wages and other benefits. The company defeated an attempt by workers to unionize at an Alabama warehouse earlier this year, but faces a more formidable challenge as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters launches a broader effort to unionize Amazon workers.

By wire sources