More than 300 firefighters and emergency medical personnel battled a fire in a large New York City apartment building Tuesday that displaced dozens of families, fire officials said.

There were no serious injuries from the eight-alarm fire in Jackson Heights, Queens, that broke out around 1 p.m. on the top floor of the six-floor apartment building, officials said.

But 21 people, including 16 firefighters, suffered injuries. The firefighters suffered mainly strains and sprains, but two firefighters suffered burns, FDNY Deputy Assistant Chief Michael Gala said.

The building houses about 150 apartments, and 90 families — about 240 people — were displaced, Gala said.

“There will be many, many families who will be needing a place to stay tonight,” Nigro said, according to video from the scene.

FDNY Commissioner Daniel A. Nigro said Wednesday that it took 12 hours to get the fire under control. The fire was able to grow so large because there was a delay in notifying the FDNY, according to the commissioner.

He said the cause of the fire has not been determined because the building was so heavily damaged that fire marshals still could not get inside.

Investigators do know that one person who escaped from the fire left a door open, which allowed the fire spread to hallways and other areas, Nigro said Tuesday.

“We’ve stressed over the years the seriousness of that — if you do unfortunately have a fire in your home or apartment, how important it is to close that door,” Nigro said.

There is no one reported missing, and firefighters searched the entire building, Gala said. Of the five people who were not firefighters who were hurt, four declined treatment, and one person was taken to a hospital, he said.

News helicopter footage showed thick black smoke rising from the building that was visible from far away.

Around 350 firefighters and EMS personnel were on the scene at one point Tuesday evening.

Originally Appeared On: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/eight-alarm-fire-new-york-city-apartment-building-displaces-hundreds-n1263252

 

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s president on Tuesday handed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the difficult task of trying to form a new government, giving the embattled Israeli leader a chance to extend his lengthy term in office.

But with the newly elected parliament deeply divided and the prime minister on trial for corruption charges, Netanyahu had little to celebrate.

He now has up to six weeks to lure his political foes into a coalition, an effort that appears to have slim odds of success. At the same time, those opponents will be working to form an alternative government that could end his 12-year reign.

In a meeting with members of his Likud party, Netanyahu struck a statesmanlike tone, saying he would be the prime minister of all of Israel’s citizens, Jewish and Arab, religious and secular.

“We will take care of everyone,” he said, vowing to “take Israel out of the cycle of recurring elections and to establish a strong government for all citizens of Israel.”

President Reuven Rivlin turned to Netanyahu in the wake of Israel’s fourth inconclusive election in the past two years.

In a post-election ritual, Rivlin had consulted Monday with each of the 13 parties elected to the Knesset, or parliament, in hopes of finding a consensus on a candidate for prime minister. But neither Netanyahu, nor his main rival, Yair Lapid, received the endorsement of a majority of lawmakers.

As he announced his decision Tuesday, an anguished Rivlin said no candidate had the support needed to form a majority coalition in the 120-seat Knesset. He also noted that there are many misgivings about Netanyahu remaining in office while on trial.

Yet he said there was nothing in the law preventing Netanyahu from continuing as prime minister and said he believed that Netanyahu had a better chance than his rivals of cobbling together a coalition.

“This is not an easy decision on a moral and ethical basis,” Rivlin said. “The state of Israel is not to be taken for granted. And I fear for my country.”

Netanyahu did not attend Tuesday’s announcement, as is tradition, and later Rivlin did not appear with Netanyahu in the usual photo of the new parliament’s swearing-in — moves local media interpreted as a show of the president’s unhappiness with the situation.

Netanyahu now has an initial period of 28 days to put together a coalition, a period that Rivlin could extend for an additional two weeks.

Netanyahu has received the endorsement of 52 lawmakers, more than his rivals, but still short of the 61-seat majority needed to form a government.

Securing the support of nine more lawmakers will not be easy. Netanyahu will use his formidable powers of persuasion, coupled with generous offers of powerful government ministries, to court his potential partners.

Netanyahu will likely require the backing of Raam, a small Arab Islamist party. Raam’s leader, Mansour Abbas, has left the door open to cooperating with Netanyahu if he aids Israel’s Arab sector, which has long suffered from crime, discrimination and poverty.

But one of Netanyahu’s allies, the Religious Zionist party, has an openly racist platform and refuses to serve in a government with Arab partners. Netanyahu could appeal to the rabbis who serve as the party’s spiritual guides in hopes of changing minds.

Netanyahu will also likely need the support of Yamina, a religious nationalist party led by former ally turned rival, Naftali Bennett, who also has been cool to an alliance with Arab parties.

Bennett, a former aide to Netanyahu, promised Tuesday to negotiate in “good faith,” but made no promises to his former mentor.

Netanyahu’s last hope will be to try to lure “defectors” from other opposition parties. For now, however, Netanyahu’s opponents have vowed to stand firm, especially after the painful experience of the previous government.

Following elections last year, Netanyahu and his main rival at the time, Benny Gantz, agreed to an “emergency” government to confront the coronavirus crisis. Their partnership was plagued by infighting and collapsed in half a year, triggering the March 23 election.

“The chances of Netanyahu to form a government, as it seems right now, are quite low,” said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem think tank.

Looming over the negotiations will be Netanyahu’s corruption trial, which resumed this week with testimony from the first of a string of witnesses to testify against him.

Netanyahu has been charged with fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in a series of scandals. He denies the charges and this week compared the case to “an attempted coup.”

Lapid, head of the centrist Yesh Atid party, acknowledged Tuesday that the law left Rivlin “no choice,” but nonetheless said that tapping Netanyahu was a “shameful disgrace that tarnishes Israel.”

Lapid has offered an alternative: a power-sharing arrangement with Bennett that would see the two men rotate between the prime minister’s job. They are expected to hold intense negotiations in the coming weeks.

Plesner, a former Knesset member, said the partnership between Bennett and Lapid has “a reasonable likelihood of materializing.”

Lapid would be able to deliver his key campaign promise of ousting Netanyahu, while Bennett, whose party has just seven seats, would be the first to be prime minister.

“For both of them, it’s a very lucrative deal,” Plesner said.

Gayil Talshir, a political scientist at Israel’s Hebrew University, said that Netanyahu’s opponents who share his hard-line ideology, including Bennett, would prefer to see him fail before banding together against him.

“Otherwise, they would’ve been thought of, from their own right-wing base perspective as traitors,” she said.

The new parliament takes office at a time of deep polarization in Israeli society. Last month’s election was seen as a referendum on Netanyahu’s divisive leadership style, and the result was continued deadlock.

Netanyahu’s supporters view him as a global statesman who is uniquely suited to leading the country. His opponents accuse him of pushing the country through repeated elections in hopes of producing a parliament that will grant him immunity from criminal prosecution.

In a sign of those divisions, about 100 protesters hoisted LGBT pride flags and a mock submarine in a noisy demonstration outside the Knesset as the new parliament was sworn in. The pride flags were aimed at the pro-Netanyahu Religious Zionists, whose members are openly homophobic, while the submarine points to a graft scandal involving the purchase of German subs.

As the new Knesset was sworn into office, Rivlin appealed for unity. It was the last time Rivlin will address such a gathering, and the outgoing president, who leaves office this summer, appeared emotional.

“If we do not learn and find a model of partnership that will allow us to live here together, out of mutual respect for each other, out of commitment to each other, and genuine solidarity, our national resilience will be in real danger,” he said.

Originally Appeared On: https://www.berkshireeagle.com/us-politics/netanyahu-asked-to-form-new-government-but-faces-long-odds/article_bb1e453a-cf19-5dcc-944a-7a1f2dded6cf.html

 

The league said it was finalizing details about new locations for this year’s All-Star Game, which was scheduled for July 13, and the draft. Before the announcement, baseball had faced the unsettling prospect of celebrating an All-Star week dedicated to the former Atlanta Braves great Hank Aaron, a Black pioneer of the game who broke Babe Ruth’s home run record, against the backdrop of a Georgia elections overhaul widely seen as targeting Black voters.

Mr. Kemp, who has been forcefully defending the law in television appearances this week, criticized the decision to move the All-Star Game and tried to pin the blame on state Democrats for their vocal criticism of the voting restrictions.

“Today, Major League Baseball caved to fear, political opportunism, and liberal lies,” Mr. Kemp said in a statement, calling out Mr. Biden and Stacey Abrams, the titular head of the state’s Democrats. He continued: “I will not back down. Georgians will not be bullied. We will continue to stand up for secure, accessible, fair elections.”

Georgia Democrats had not called for a boycott of the game, but were building pressure on Major League Baseball and Georgia-based corporations to oppose the state’s voting law.

Ms. Abrams, who ran against Mr. Kemp for governor in 2018 and may challenge him again next year, said Friday that she was “disappointed” league officials had pulled the All-Star Game but that she was “proud of their stance on voting rights.”

For now, the fallout from baseball’s decision is more political and civic than financial. The impact on the Georgia economy of losing the All-Star Game is minimal, said Andrew Zimbalist, a sports economist at Smith College, because most of the tickets would be sold locally and many of the typical festivities would most likely be canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.

But, Professor Zimbalist said, Major League Baseball is taking a risk with a move that could alienate conservative fans. After the country’s top professional basketball and football leagues embraced the Black Lives Matter movement last year, they faced organized boycotts from conservatives, though the effort ultimately had little effect. And baseball’s fan base is older and whiter than basketball’s or football’s.

Originally Appeared On: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/02/us/politics/mlb-all-star-game-moved-atlanta-georgia.html

 

“For over two years, I’ve tried to get off the no-fly list, but the government won’t even give me its reason for putting me on the list or a fair process to clear my name and regain my rights,” Mr. Chebli said in a statement released by the A.C.L.U. “No one should suffer what my family and I have had to suffer.”

The Justice Department had no immediate response to the lawsuit. But it has defended the legality of the government’s terrorism watch lists and its related practices in litigation over the past decade, arguing that the procedures are lawful and reasonable given the national security interests at stake.

Mr. Chebli’s case is a sequel to a major lawsuit by the A.C.L.U. during the Obama administration that challenged government procedures for reviewing whether it was appropriate to put someone’s name on the no-fly list. In 2014, a federal judge in Oregon ruled that those regulations were inadequate and violated Americans’ Fifth Amendment right to due process.

In response, the government promised to overhaul the Traveler Redress Inquiry Program to ensure that Americans would be told if they were on the list and given a meaningful opportunity to challenge the decision. (It also removed seven of the 13 original plaintiffs in that case from the no-fly list. Several remaining plaintiffs pressed on, but that judge, and later the appeals court in San Francisco, upheld the revised procedures as applied to them.)

Citing Mr. Chebli’s inability to obtain information about the government’s evidence about him or to challenge it in a hearing before a neutral decision maker, the new lawsuit said that the revised procedures are both unconstitutional and that they violate statutory law, including a federal law that protects religious liberty, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, because he is unable to travel to Mecca for the required Muslim pilgrimage.

“More than two years ago, Mr. Chebli filed an administrative petition for redress, but the government has failed to provide any reason for placing him on the no-fly list or a fair process to challenge that placement,” it said. “As a result, Mr. Chebli has been subjected to unreasonable and lengthy delays and an opaque redress process that has prevented him from clearing his name.”

Beyond the Oregon case, the new lawsuit takes its place among a constellation of related litigation that has tested the limits of the government’s terrorism watch-listing powers and individual rights.

Originally Appeared On: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/06/us/politics/no-fly-list-lawsuit.html

 

Evans, an 18-year veteran of the Capitol Police, died while protecting the Capitol from an individual who brandished a knife after ramming his vehicle into a police barricade along the perimeter of the Capitol. Another officer was injured in the attack.

“The United States Congress joins all Americans in mourning the tragic death of one of our Capitol Police heroes, Officer Billy Evans,” Pelosi and Schumer said in a joint statement. “In giving his life to protect our Capitol and our Country, Officer Evans became a martyr for our democracy. On behalf of the entire Congress, we are profoundly grateful.”

“It is now the great and solemn privilege of the House of Representatives and the Senate to convey the appreciation and the sadness of the Congress and Country for the heroic sacrifice of Officer Evans with a lying-in-honor ceremony in the US Capitol,” Pelosi and Schumer said in their statement.

Acting US Capitol Police Chief Yogananda D. Pittman reflected on the day of Evans’ death how difficult a time it has been for the Capitol Police force, who remain understaffed and overworked since the violent insurrection on the Capitol on January 6.

“This has been an extremely difficult time for US Capitol Police after the events of Jan. 6 and now the events that have occurred here today. So I ask that you keep our US Capitol Police family in your thoughts and prayers,” Pittman said on April 2.

Capitol Police Union Chairman Gus Papathanasiou said in a statement Saturday that the Capitol Police is staffed below its authorized level by 233 officers and could face larger staffing shortages as officers retire in the coming years. Papathanasiou noted the shortage is exacerbated by the continued injuries of several officers in the January 6 attack.

Evans is the second Capitol Police officer to die in the line of study this year. Capitol Police Officer, Brian D. Sicknick, died a day after the Capitol riot on January 6 “due to injuries sustained while on-duty,” the Capitol Police said in a statement. Two officers also died by suicide after responding to the riot.

Originally Appeared On: https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/06/politics/william-evans-slain-capitol-police-office-lie-in-honor/index.html

 

President Joe Biden walks over to speak to members of the media after arriving on the Ellipse on the National Mall after spending the weekend at Camp David, Monday, April 5, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo / Evan Vucci)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden was set to announce Tuesday that he is shaving about two weeks off his May 1 deadline for states to make all adults eligible for coronavirus vaccines.

With states gradually expanding eligibility beyond such priority groups as older people and essential, front-line workers, the president plans to announce that every adult in the U.S. will be eligible by April 19 to be vaccinated, a White House official said.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss Biden’s plans before the formal announcement. Biden was scheduled to visit a COVID-19 vaccination site in Virginia on Tuesday, followed by remarks at the White House updating the nation on the administration’s progress against the coronavirus.

April 19 is about two weeks earlier than Biden’s original May 1 deadline.

Biden is also expected to announce that 150 million doses have been put into people’s arms since his inauguration on Jan. 20. That puts the president well on track to meet his new goal of 200 million shots administered by April 30 — his 100th day in office.

Biden’s original goal had been 100 million shots in arms by the end of his first 100 days.

The announcement about vaccine eligibility is somewhat symbolic and comes as states already were moving up their deadlines from the original May 1 goal. It also comes as a flood of vaccine supply is being sent to states this week.

At least a dozen states opened eligibility to anyone over the age of 16 on Monday alone, while New Jersey’s governor announced Monday that people age 16 and older will become eligible on April 19. A handful of states, including Hawaii and Oregon, still have May 1 as the deadline.

The president had announced just last week that 90% of adults would be eligible for one of three approved COVID-19 vaccines by April 19, in addition to having a vaccination site within 5 miles of their home.

But eligibility isn’t the same as actually being vaccinated. People still have to make appointments to be vaccinated.

The White House said Monday that nearly 1 in 3 Americans and over 40% of adults have received at least one shot, and nearly 1 in 4 adults is fully vaccinated. Among older people, 75% have now received at least one shot, and more than 55% of them are fully vaccinated.

CNN was first to report on Biden’s planned announcement.

Originally Appeared On: https://news.wttw.com/2021/04/06/official-biden-moving-vaccine-eligibility-date-april-19

 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warned big businesses they would face “serious consequences” after accusing them of employing “economic blackmail” in attempts to influence voting laws as the backlash over Georgia’s elections law that imposes voting restrictions intensifies.

“From election law to environmentalism to radical social agendas to the Second Amendment, parts of the private sector keep dabbling in behaving like a woke parallel government,” the Kentucky Republican said in a statement Monday. “Corporations will invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country from outside the constitutional order.”

“Businesses must not use economic blackmail to spread disinformation and push bad ideas that citizens reject at the ballot box,” he added.

His statement comes after Major League Baseball’s decision to no longer host the All-Star Game in Atlanta, potentially sparking other boycotts of the state, and several businesses condemned the new Georgia elections law.

McConnell accused Democrats of lying about the Georgia law hastily passed by state Republicans and signed into law last month by GOP Gov. Brian Kemp.

He disputed the claim from President Joe Biden and others that the Georgia voting law is reminiscent or worse than Jim Crow-era laws, arguing that “nobody really thinks this current dispute comes anywhere near the horrific racist brutality of segregation.”

“Our private sector must stop taking cues from the Outrage-Industrial Complex. Americans do not need or want big business to amplify disinformation or react to every manufactured controversy with frantic left-wing signaling,” McConnell said in his statement, adding that “it’s jaw-dropping to see powerful American institutions not just permit themselves to be bullied, but join in the bullying themselves.”

McConnell also slammed congressional Democrats’ legislation, the “For the People Act,” as a “power grab” of all 50 states’ election laws and the Federal Election Commission that “is impossible to defend, so the left wants to deflect.” The measure, which does not have enough votes in the US Senate to pass, would override many of the restrictive provisions in the new Georgia law and others like it.

The Georgia law imposes voter identification requirements for absentee ballots, allows state officials to take over local elections boards, limits the use of ballot drop boxes and makes it a crime to give or offer voters food and drink as they wait in line to vote.

MLB’s move to relocate the All-Star Game, potentially costing Georgia $100 million in lost economic impact, was the first in response to the state election law. Atlanta Democratic Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms on CNN Saturday predicted that it would be the “first of many boycotts of our state to come.”

During a news conference Saturday, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp said he would not waver or be swayed if Georgia were to lose more events, thus costing the state more business and tourism dollars.

He accused MLB of putting Democrats’ wishes “ahead of the economic well-being of hard-working Georgians who were counting on the All-Star Game for a paycheck.”

Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, like other Democrats, said he respected MLB’s decision, but hoped businesses would protest the law not by boycotting the state, but “by coming here and fighting voter suppression head on.”

After the law was passed, some of the nation’s most prominent Black business leaders called out their Fortune 500 peers for their muted response to new laws that restrict voting across the country, and challenged them to be more forceful in condemning what they said were deliberate attempts by Republicans to limit the number of Black Americans casting ballots in key states.

At an event in his home state Monday, McConnell said he “found it completely discouraging to find a bunch of corporate CEOs getting in the middle of politics. My advice to the corporate CEOs of America is to stay out of politics.”

Originally Appeared On: https://ktvz.com/politics/2021/04/06/mcconnell-warns-businesses-of-serious-consequences-after-many-condemn-georgias-restrictive-voting-law/