Flooding in central Appalachia kills at least 3 in Kentucky
JACKSON, Ky. (AP) — Torrential rains unleashed devastating floods in Appalachia on Thursday, as fast-rising water killed at least three people in Kentucky and sent people scurrying to rooftops to be rescued.
Water gushed from hillsides and flooded out of streambeds, inundating homes, businesses and roads throughout eastern Kentucky. Parts of western Virginia and southern West Virginia also saw flooding. Rescue crews used helicopters and boats to pick up people trapped by floodwaters.
“In a word, this event is devastating,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said as he announced the deaths and warned that more lives would surely be lost. “And I do believe it will end up being one of the most significant, deadly floods that we have had in Kentucky in at least a very long time.”
In Breathitt County in Kentucky, Krystal Holbrook's family raced against surging floodwaters in the early morning hours to move possessions to higher ground. Their ordeal began around 4 a.m. Thursday, as they scurried in the dark to move vehicles, campers, trailers and farm equipment. But as the water kept rising throughout the day, the concern was that "higher ground is getting a little bit difficult,” she said.
“It looks like a huge lake back here,” she said.
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US economy shrinks for a 2nd quarter, raising recession fear
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. economy shrank from April through June for a second straight quarter, contracting at a 0.9% annual pace and raising fears that the nation may be approaching a recession.
The decline that the Commerce Department reported Thursday in the gross domestic product — the broadest gauge of the economy — followed a 1.6% annual drop from January through March. Consecutive quarters of falling GDP constitute one informal, though not definitive, indicator of a recession.
The GDP report for last quarter pointed to weakness across the economy. Consumer spending slowed as Americans bought fewer goods. Business investment fell. Inventories tumbled as businesses slowed their restocking of shelves, shaving 2 percentage points from GDP.
Higher borrowing rates, a consequence of the Federal Reserve's series of rate hikes, clobbered home construction, which shrank at a 14% annual rate. Government spending dropped, too.
The report comes at a critical time. Consumers and businesses have been struggling under the weight of punishing inflation and higher loan costs. On Wednesday, the Fed raised its benchmark rate by a sizable three-quarters of a point for a second straight time in its push to conquer the worst inflation outbreak in four decades.
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Biden calls deal with Manchin 'godsend' for US families
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden declared his support Thursday for the “historic” inflation-fighting agreement struck by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and holdout Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, an expansive health care and climate change package that had eluded the White House and seemed all but lost.
Biden said the bill will be a “godsend” for American families.
"This bill would be the most significant legislation in history to tackle the climate crisis," Biden said. He said it will also lower healthcare costs for millions of Americans who buy their own health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.
Biden vowed the package will not raise taxes on anyone earning less than $400,000 a year. Instead the 15% corporate minimum tax will help fund the new costs, with extra going to deficit reduction.
He acknowledged the final product was a compromise, but was upbeat that it would win support in Congress.
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Biden, Xi could meet in person, US official says
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping are exploring meeting in person, a senior administration official said after the leaders spent more than two hours on Thursday talking through the future of their complicated relationship, with tension over Taiwan once again emerging as a flashpoint.
Biden conducted the telephone call from the Oval Office, where he was joined by top aides, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The official declined to be identified to talk about the private conversation.
When Biden was vice president, he spent long hours with Xi in the United States and China, an experience he often recalls as he talks about the two countries' opportunities for conflict and cooperation. However, they have not met in person since Biden became president last year.
Xi has left mainland China only once, to visit Hong Kong, since the COVID-19 pandemic began. However, he's been formally invited to Indonesia in November for the next G20 summit of the world's leading economies, making the conference a potential location for a meeting with Biden.
The latest strain over Taiwan is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s potential visit to the island, which has governed itself for decades but China asserts as part of its territory.
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Deal on Capitol Hill could ease seniors' health costs
A deal on Capitol Hill that could cut prescription drug costs for millions of Medicare beneficiaries was cautiously cheered by older Americans and their advocates Thursday even as many worried it might never come to fruition.
The health care and climate agreement struck by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin includes landmark provisions that could help senior citizens, including a cap on out-of-pocket Medicare drug costs and a requirement that the government negotiate prices on some high-cost drugs.
Some of the issues addressed in the deal have been talked about for decades and proved elusive. But Manchin's backing brought new optimism to many who have lobbied and prayed for relief.
“We worry constantly, ‘Will we be able to afford this?’” said Becky Miller, a 67-year-old retired teacher from Bradenton, Florida, who spends thousands of dollars each year for drugs to treat epilepsy, heart problems and an inflammatory disease that affects her spine.
She is afraid the powerful pharmaceutical lobby might still thwart the plan, but said, “If this goes through, it will help a lot of people.”
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Climate migration growing but not fully recognized by world
TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — Worsening climate largely from the burning of coal and gas is uprooting millions of people, with wildfires overrunning towns in California, rising seas overtaking island nations and drought exacerbating conflicts in various parts of the world.
Each year, natural disasters force an average of 21.5 million people from their homes around the world, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. And scientists predict migration will grow as the planet gets hotter. Over the next 30 years, 143 million people are likely to be uprooted by rising seas, drought, searing temperatures and other climate catastrophes, according to the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report published this year.
Still, the world has yet to officially recognize climate migrants or come up with formalized ways to assess their needs and help them. Here’s a look at climate migration today.
WHO ARE CLIMATE MIGRANTS?
Most climate migrants move within the borders of their homelands, usually from rural areas to cities after losing their home or livelihood because of drought, rising seas or another weather calamity. Because cities also are facing their own climate-related problems, including soaring temperatures and water scarcity, people are increasingly being forced to flee across international borders to seek refuge.
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Russia attacks Kyiv area for the first time in weeks
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces launched a missile attack on the Kyiv area for the first time in weeks Thursday and pounded the northern Chernihiv region as well, in what Ukraine said was revenge for standing up to the Kremlin.
Ukrainian officials, meanwhile, announced a counteroffensive to take back the occupied Kherson region in the country's south, territory seized by Russian President Vladimir Putin's forces early in the war.
Russia attacked the Kyiv region with six missiles launched from the Black Sea, hitting a military unit in the village of Liutizh on the outskirts of the capital, according to Oleksii Hromov, a senior official with Ukraine’s General Staff.
He said that the attack ruined one building and damaged two others, and that Ukrainian forces shot down one of the missiles in the town of Bucha.
Fifteen people were wounded in the Russian strikes, five of them civilians, Kyiv regional Gov. Oleksiy Kuleba said.
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'Rescind the Doctrine' protest greets pope in Canada
ST-ANNE-DE-BEAUPRÉ, Quebec (AP) — Pope Francis celebrated Mass on Thursday at Canada’s national shrine and came face-to-face with a long-standing demand from Indigenous peoples: to formally rescind the papal decrees underpinning the so-called “Doctrine of Discovery” that legitimized the colonial-era seizure of Native lands and resources.
Right before Mass began, two Indigenous women unfurled a banner at the altar of the National Shrine of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré that read: “Rescind the Doctrine” in bright red and black letters. The protesters were escorted away and the Mass proceeded without incident, though the women later marched the banner out of the basilica and draped it on the railing.
The brief protest underscored one of the lingering issues facing the Holy See following Francis’ historic apology for the Catholic Church’s involvement in Canada’s notorious residential schools, where generations of Indigenous peoples were forcibly removed from their families and cultures to assimilate them into Christian, Canadian society. Francis has spent the week in Canada seeking to atone for the trauma and suffering of First Nations, Metis and Inuit peoples.
Beyond the apology, Indigenous peoples have called on Francis to formally rescind the 15th century papal decrees, or bulls, that provided European kingdoms the religious backing to expand their territories for the sake of spreading Christianity. Those decrees have been seen as underpinning the Doctrine of Discovery, a legal concept coined in a 1823 U.S. Supreme Court decision that has come to be understood as meaning that ownership and sovereignty over land passed to Europeans because they “discovered” it.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cited the need for the Holy See to “address the Doctrine of Discovery,” as well as other issues including the return of Indigenous artifacts in the Vatican Museums, in his private talks with Francis on Wednesday, Trudeau's office said.
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If monkeypox spreads through sexual contact, is it an STD?
NEW YORK (AP) — For most of the six decades that monkeypox has been known to affect people, it was not known as a disease that spreads through sex. Now that has changed.
The current outbreak is by far the biggest involving the virus, and it's been designated a global emergency. So far, officials say, all evidence indicates that the disease has spread mainly through networks of men who have sex with men.
“It clearly is spreading as an STI (sexually transmitted infection) at this point,” said Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
To protect the people at highest risk while trying to contain the spread, public health agencies are focusing their attention on those men — and attacking the virus based on how it's behaving now.
On Wednesday, the head of the World Health Organization advised men at risk for monkeypox to consider reducing their sexual partners “for the moment.”
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$1.1B Mega Millions jackpot latest in history of lotteries
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — At over $1 billion, the Mega Millions jackpot is among the largest lottery prizes ever up for grabs, making it the latest focus of lotteries that have been conducted in the U.S. and around the world for centuries.
Only two prizes have grown larger than the massive jackpot that could be won Friday night. Other lotteries elsewhere around the globe offer smaller payouts, though in other ways they are more integrated into life in their countries.
“There are a ton of lotteries throughout the world,” said Bill Coley, president of the Institute of Responsible Gaming, Lotteries and Sports at Miami University. “It’s the mystiques of mathematics. You can take a nominal fee and give a chance to build a revenue stream of a billion dollars for potentially one individual. It’s pretty exciting.”
Lotteries in the U.S. initially mirrored similar games in Europe, and in 1776 one was created to help fund the Revolutionary War.
Lotteries remain popular in Europe. The Eurojackpot game paid a $120 million euro ($121.9 million) prize just last week to someone in Denmark, and a player in the United Kingdom recently won a $230 million euros ($233.6 million) Euromillions prize.
The Associated Press
