Ep. 90: News Roundup Week of 6/28/21

Heart & Home

The bottom of the 13-story condo tower — possibly in or below the underground parking garage — has emerged as a possible failure point, according to structural experts. It has been deemed that the remaining portion of the Champlain Towers South needs to be demolished because it poses a public safety hazard. No timeline has been given. The death toll stood at 22; 126 unaccounted for. Meanwhile, five miles away from the partially collapsed Surfside condo, the city of North Miami Beach ordered the 10-story Crestview Towers Condominium to be immediately closed and evacuated 300 residents Friday evening after a building inspection report found the 156-unit building built in 1972 to have unsafe structural and electrical conditions, officials announced. The city launched a thorough review of all condo high-rise buildings in the wake of the Surfside collapse. ————— At least 76 people died in Oregon and Washington from excessive heat during a stifling heat wave that hit the Pacific Northwest this past week. The deaths include 63 people in Oregon, of whom 45 were in the Portland area, and 13 in the Seattle area. ——— Israel and Australia imposed new Covid-19 restrictions to contain the spread of the highly infectious Delta variant of the coronavirus, while India warned of a worrying new mutation. ——— On Thursday, July 1, the day that would have been Princess Diana’s 60th birthday, a statue was unveiled at London’s Kensington Palace to “remember her love, strength and character – qualities that made her a force for good around the world, changing countless lives for the better.”