In Brief: July 15, 2021

Mexico abandons fishing-free zone for endangered porpoise

MEXICO CITY — The Mexican government officially abandoned the policy of maintaining a fishing-free zone around the last 10 or so remaining vaquita marina.

The measure announced Wednesday replaces the fishing-free “zero tolerance” zone in the upper Gulf of California with a sliding scale of punishments if more than 60 boats are seen in the area on multiple occasions.

Given that Mexico has been unable to enforce the current restrictions — which bans boats in the small area — the sliding-scale punishments also seem doomed to irrelevance.

Environmental experts say the move essentially abandons the world’s most endangered marine mammal to the gill nets that trap and drown them. The nets are set for totoaba, a fish whose swim bladder is a delicacy in China, and sells for thousands of dollars per pound.

Alex Olivera, the Mexico representative for the Center for Biological Diversity, said the rules establish a sliding scale of responses to a situation that shouldn’t be allowed to occur in the first place. For example, the Agriculture and Fisheries Department says it will use 60% of its enforcement personnel if 20 fishing boats or less are seen in the restricted area.

Biden pitches huge budget, says Dems will ‘get a lot done’

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden made a quick foray to the Capitol on Wednesday hunting support for his multitrillion-dollar agenda of infrastructure, health care and other programs, a potential landmark achievement that would require near-unanimous backing from fractious Democrats.

His visit came a day after Senate Democratic leaders capped weeks of bargaining by agreeing to spend a mammoth $3.5 trillion over the coming decade on initiatives focusing on climate change, education, a Medicare expansion and more. That’s on top of a separate $1 trillion bipartisan compromise on roads, water systems and other infrastructure projects that senators from both parties are negotiating, with Biden’s support.

The president spent just under an hour at a closed-door lunch with Democratic senators in the building where he served for 36 years as a Delaware senator and where his party controls the House and Senate, though just barely. Participants said Biden paced the room with a microphone taking questions and received several standing ovations.

“It is great to be home,” Biden told reporters after his first working meeting at the Capitol with lawmakers since becoming president. “It is great to be with my colleagues, and I think we are going to get a lot done.”

Democrats’ accord on their overall $3.5 trillion figure was a major step for a party whose rival moderate and progressive factions have competing visions of how costly and bold the final package should be. But many of them say bolstering lower-earning and middle-class families, and raising taxes on wealthy people and big corporations to help pay for it, would nurture long-term economic growth and pay political dividends in next year’s elections for control of Congress.

Time on their side, Texas GOP waits for Democrats to return

AUSTIN, Texas — On Day 3 of Texas Democrats hunkering down in Washington to block tighter voting laws, Republicans back home settled into a new routine that boils down to turning the Democrats’ gambit into yet another advantage for the GOP in 2022.

With time and a commanding majority on their side, Texas Republicans who began the summer with a long to-do list aimed at pushing the state farther to the right were filling their sudden free time Wednesday hammering Democrats as obstructionists.

Despite being unable to pass any bills, GOP lawmakers promised to keep coming to work at the Texas Capitol. They say Democrats are blocking widely popular measures to lower property taxes and give teachers more money. And they are showing their resolve to eventually pass a new voting bill that includes a raft of changes that on the whole would make it harder to cast a ballot in Texas.

“While these Texas Democrats collect taxpayer money as they ride on private jets to meet with the Washington elite, those who remain in the chamber await their return to begin work on providing our retired teachers a 13th check, protecting our foster kids, and providing taxpayer relief,” Republican House Speaker Dade Phelan said.

The Republican criticism hinted at how the party is hoping to turn the screws on Democrats for the weeks to come. Both parties are mindful that the voting debate and the Democratic walkout are likely to resonate into next year, when the parties are battling over the governors office, as well as dozens of newly drawn statehouse districts.

From wire sources

911 recordings show panic, disbelief when Florida condo fell

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. — Recordings of 911 calls after an oceanfront Florida condominium building collapsed in the middle of the night show disbelief, panic and confusion as people tried to comprehend the disaster.

“Oh my God! The whole building collapsed!” one caller said to a dispatcher at the Miami-Dade Police Department, which released the recordings Wednesday from the June 24 collapse of Champlain Towers South. The names of the callers were not released.

“We’ve gotta get out. Hurry up, hurry up. There’s a big explosion,” a second caller said. “There’s a lot of smoke. I can’t see anything. We gotta go. I can’t see nothing but smoke.”

At least 97 people died in the collapse, and a handful of others are still missing. A cause has not yet been pinpointed, although there were several previous warnings of major structural damage at the 40-year-old building in Surfside.

One 911 caller, a woman, said she saw what appeared to be a large depression near the swimming pool, which had concrete problems that investigators are looking into as they try to identify a cause.

Device taps brain waves to help paralyzed man communicate

In a medical first, researchers harnessed the brain waves of a paralyzed man unable to speak — and turned what he intended to say into sentences on a computer screen.

It will take years of additional research but the study, reported Wednesday, marks an important step toward one day restoring more natural communication for people who can’t talk because of injury or illness.

“Most of us take for granted how easily we communicate through speech,” said Dr. Edward Chang, a neurosurgeon at the University of California, San Francisco, who led the work. “It’s exciting to think we’re at the very beginning of a new chapter, a new field” to ease the devastation of patients who lost that ability.

Today, people who can’t speak or write because of paralysis have very limited ways of communicating. For example, the man in the experiment, who was not identified to protect his privacy, uses a pointer attached to a baseball cap that lets him move his head to touch words or letters on a screen. Other devices can pick up patients’ eye movements. But it’s a frustratingly slow and limited substitution for speech.

Tapping brain signals to work around a disability is a hot field. In recent years, experiments with mind-controlled prosthetics have allowed paralyzed people to shake hands or take a drink using a robotic arm — they imagine moving and those brain signals are relayed through a computer to the artificial limb.

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Bad hiccups, but no immediate surgery for Brazil’s president

RIO DE JANEIRO — After 10 straight days of hiccups, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was admitted to a hospital Wednesday with an intestinal obstruction, but doctors said they would not operate immediately.

Bolsonaro, 66, was admitted to the Armed Forces Hospital in the capital of Brasilia in the morning and was “feeling well,” according to an initial statement that said physicians were examining his persistent hiccups.

But hours later, the president’s office said the surgeon who operated on Bolsonaro after he was stabbed in the abdomen during the 2018 presidential campaign decided to transfer him to Sao Paulo, where he underwent additional tests. By Wednesday night, the Hospital Nova Star released a statement saying the president would receive “a conservative clinical treatment,” meaning he will not go through surgery for now.

Bolsonaro, who is both Catholic and evangelical, posted on his official Twitter account a photo of himself lying on a hospital bed, eyes closed, several monitoring sensors stuck to his bare torso. At the edge of the photo, a hand reaches out from an unseen person wearing what appears to be a black religious robe and a long chain with a gold cross.

The 2018 stabbing caused intestinal damage and serious internal bleeding and the president has gone through several surgeries since, some unrelated to the attack.

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Britney Spears’ new attorney says father must step aside

LOS ANGELES — A judge allowed Britney Spears to hire an attorney of her choosing at a hearing Wednesday in which she broke down in tears after describing the “cruelty” of her conservatorship.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny approved Spears hiring former federal prosecutor Mathew Rosengart, who called on Spears’ father to immediately resign as her conservator.

“The question remains, why is he involved,” Rosengart said outside the courthouse.

Britney Spears, taking part in the hearing by phone, told the judge she approved of Rosengart after several conversations with him. She then asked to address the court, but asked that the courtroom be cleared.

As Rosengart began to argue for a private hearing, Spears interrupted him to say “I can talk with it open.”