Rescue efforts in Venezuela continue as thousands of people remain missing — trapped under the rubble of flattened homes and buildings nearly a week after two back-to-back earthquakes devastated the capital, Caracas, and the nearby city of La Guaira. Rescue teams are desperately searching for survivors, with Venezuelan health officials saying Monday that over 1,700 people are confirmed dead. The toll is expected to rise dramatically as the window for finding survivors closes. In the face of the wreckage, “we’re seeing also a lot of solidarity from the Venezuelan people” who are sharing space and resources with those displaced by the quakes, says Beatriz Ochoa, Latin America head of advocacy for the Norwegian Refugee Council. Looking ahead, “We will need to transition to more medium- and longer-term solutions, so that people can have affordable housing and a more dignified place to sleep and to be able to rebuild their lives,” says Ochoa, calling for more international support.
The New Jersey Republican was missing for months with no explanation for his constituents. He explained in a House floor speech that after his diagnosis, there was no timeline for recovery.
A crowd of reporters gathered outside the Capitol Hill office of Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-NJ) Tuesday morning, but the long-missing congressman has not yet shown.Kean last voted in the House on March 5. He has missed more than 140 votes since then.He has said only that he is dealing with a "personal medical issue." His office said he would return on Tuesday and finally explain his absence."No sign yet!" Charlie Cotton, a reporter, wrote on X just after 9:30 a.m., posting a photo of reporters and a camera crew camped outside Kean's office door."No sight of him yet," Mychael Schnell, a Capitol Hill reporter, wrote minutes later, noting Kean was "expected to address his absence today."A week ago, a New York Times reporter found Kean at his New Jersey home. He was dressed in a suit and tie."I'll talk to you next week," Kean said, and went inside.A person familiar with his plans told CNN that Kean intends to deliver a floor speech addressing his health. His spokesperson said he would be "fully transparent."He is also scheduled to attend a fundraiser on Tuesday evening.Kean represents one of the most competitive House districts in the country. He is running for a third term against Democrat Rebecca Bennett.House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has said he knows what is wrong with Kean but is keeping it private at Kean's request. "I do know what his health issue is, but he's asked me not to disclose that," Johnson said.As of Tuesday morning, Kean's office had not said when, or whether, he would appear.
Tens of thousands of people still haven’t been found after a pair of devastating earthquakes in Venezuela last week—including some Venezuelans who had just been deported from the United States as part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation push and were being held in a hotel when the temblors hit, The Associated Press revealed Monday.There were 146 Venezuelans, including 19 women and seven children, on a deportation flight that arrived just hours before the 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes, the AP reported, citing a Human Rights First initiative that has tracked thousands of such flights under Trump. They were brought to Hotel Santuario La Llanada in La Guaira, which collapsed because of the quakes.“Lisbeth Portillo, 58, said she escaped the rubble from the hotel with about 20 other deportees who walked the streets looking for help. They saw people running, some naked and others barefoot as they emerged from the rubble of the building,” according to the outlet.Another deportee who survived, 24-year-old Jenny Rodriguez, told Telemundo: “I was trapped under the rubble. A colleague who had been on the same flight came by; I managed to free my hand from the debris, grabbed him by the trousers, and begged for help... Thanks to God—and to him—I was able to get out of there.”Oswadeliz Núñez Ramírez is still “frantically searching for her son,” 28-year-old Daniel Alejandro Núñez Ramírez, who was also on the deportation flight and at the hotel, the Miami Herald reported Monday. A member of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service who called himself “Jonathan” told her that he had pulled her son from the rubble, but, “skeptical of the official account, his mother has searched every hospital, clinic, and sector of La Guaira and Caracas without success.”While US Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to the AP’s request for comment, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the agency, told the Herald: “This flight safely reached Venezuela, and all illegal aliens on board were returned home. When an individual is no longer in ICE custody, ICE is no longer responsible for them.”Venezuelan National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez said Monday that the earthquake has left at least 1,719 dead, 5,034 injured, and 15,866 displaced from their homes.UN News noted Monday that the ongoing search and rescue effort involves more than 2,000 workers from over two dozen countries, plus over 160 dogs, and Gianluca Rampolla, the United Nations resident coordinator in Venezuela, “reported that the UN and Venezuelan authorities had agreed to procure 10,000 body bags in anticipation of the death toll rising further.”Rampolla said that “together with the search and rescue operations, we are focusing, together with the government, on providing emergency healthcare, shelter, food assistance, water and sanitation, and logistical support to ensure not only the storage but also the distribution of all the supplies arriving in the country, as well as protection.”As of Monday evening, more than 44,000 people remained missing, according to a reunion website for families. As NBC News detailed Monday:Even as the chances of finding survivors diminished with every passing hour, Venezuelans continued using shovels, ropes, and their bare hands as they dug through mountains of collapsed concrete.They were joined by a growing number of international rescue teams, who pulled multiple survivors from the wreckage, offering desperate families a rare glimmer of hope.Among the rescues, teams from the United States, France, and Venezuela pulled a man and his son from the ruins Sunday morning after they had spent four days trapped beneath the rubble.Organizations including US-based peace group CodePink and the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington, DC-based think tank, have called on the US and allied countries to lift all sanctions against Venezuela in the wake of the earthquakes.Trump earlier this year directed an illegal invasion of Venezuela, during which US forces killed scores of people and abducted President Nicolás Maduro, then seized control of the South American country’s nationalized oil industry.
A veteran journalist and former New York Times public editor called out CBS News' gesture toward public accountability as a "blatant sham."The network's Donald Trump-aligned new owners tapped Kenneth R. Weinstein, a former chief executive of the right-leaning Hudson Institute, to review complaints about its coverage as ombudsman, but media expert Margaret Sullivan wrote on her "American Crisis" Substack that he had failed to be independent or transparent as promised."From the get-go, there was no reason to think this would be a real thing — a person whose first responsibility was to the CBS audience and whose first interest was fairness in the public interest," Sullivan wrote. "First off, Weinstein had no background in supervising news coverage. He was a denizen of the right-leaning think tank, the Hudson Institute, a vocal champion of Israel, a critic of the Biden administration and a big donor to Republican and pro-Trump political groups.""I’m not sure how this amounts to independence," she added.Weinstein had been "notably unresponsive" to viewer complaints about CBS News, which has seen "60 Minutes" stars like Anderson Cooper and Scott Pelley flee and ratings collapse, and Sullivan said the network's ombudsman had done remarkably little to respond to the tumult."Despite the lip service to 'transparency,' his role was never meant to face outwards, as is the norm with news ombudsmen; rather, if he saw a problem, he’d report it to his corporate bosses," Sullivan wrote.The Times recently reported on Weinstein's public silence, noting that he hadn't issued any statements about the CBS News controversies or issued any guidance to staffers, and employees say he's told them he is scheduled to work only one day a month."It’s absurd," Sullivan wrote."I know something about this because I was the fifth 'public editor' at the New York Times, a role dedicated to making sure the news organization was fair and was serving the public interest," she added. "The way the Times’s position was structured created actual, not fake, transparency."Sullivan compared her workload – several blog posts each week and a more formal column every other week, in addition to fielding hundred of emails and calls – to Weinstein's duties, and she suggested five topics the CBS News ombudsman could look into during his seemingly singular workday.For example, Sullivan urged him to investigate editor-in-chief Bari Weiss delaying Alfonsi's El Salvador prison report amid a pending merger; mass departures of top talent like Cooper, Pelley and "60 Minutes" executive producer Tanya Simon; CBS Evening News' ratings collapse under Dokoupil; CBS Mornings' steep audience drop post-Pelley; and whether Weiss's pro-Israel views compromise Gaza coverage independence."I could go on, but you get the picture," Sullivan said. "So does the public, if comments on the Times article are any indication. It’s (yet another) embarrassment to CBS News."
Speaker Johnson's plan to merge the SAVE America Act with the defense bill faced resistance from GOP holdouts demanding stronger Senate assurances.
Iran allegedly attacked commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz to counter a new southern corridor developed by the U.S. and Oman, analysts say.
The Colorado Supreme Court on Monday delivered a death blow to ballot measures aimed at handing Democrats seven of Colorado's eight Congressional seats.
President Donald Trump's Medicare and Medicaid administrator Dr. Oz took the stage at the Great American State Fair on Monday to brag about the crowd size — but a TMZ reporter was on scene to pan the camera and reveal that, in fact, almost no one was there on the National Mall to watch the speech."There are tons of people here, it's a huge space, and it's going to get more and more crowded as the week goes on," said Oz, standing on the stage with right-wing actor Dean Cain.He went on to tout the guests at the event, including Pennsylvania state treasurer and Republican gubernatorial candidate Stacy Garrity.Meanwhile, the video posted to X showed the reporter, Charlie Cotton, scanning the crowd, showing only a small cluster of people near the stage and the rest of the Mall practically deserted.The picture, TMZ concluded, was "quite the opposite" of what Oz was boasting.The Great American State Fair is part of "Freedom 250," a series of explicitly partisan events the Trump administration organized by hijacking the originally nonpartisan America250 celebrations authorized by Congress.The whole series of events, leading up to the 250th anniversary of America's founding, has been plagued with issues from the start, including a promised list of celebrity performers who did not materialize, and air traffic shutdowns caused by Trump's plans for massive fireworks displays.Oz is not alone; Trump himself, who has throughout his time in politics embellished his own crowd sizes, claimed last week that the kickoff rally for the fair was "packed to the brim," even though it wasn't.