A devoted grandmother, a beloved teacher, the sister of Paraguay’s first lady and a mother whose now distraught daughter couldn’t take her call, all are among scores unaccounted for in the Miami building collapse.

Dozens are from the large Jewish community, a similar number named by Latin American consulates.

Anxious posts go up on social media as fearful relatives and friends struggle for information, but also refuse to give up hope.

The 12-storey residential building partially collapsed early on Thursday morning. So far only five people have been confirmed dead, and four of them have been named.

This is what we know about some of the missing:

The first victim to be named was Stacie Fang, 54, whose 15-year-old son Jonah Handler was rescued from the rubble hours after the collapse.

According to US media, Ms Fang was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at Aventura Hospital and Medical Center on Thursday. Her funeral is due to take place on Sunday in New Jersey, NBC6 reported.

In a statement, her family expressed thanks for the outpouring of sympathy and support they had received.

“There are no words to describe the tragic loss of our beloved Stacie,” it said.

Antonio Lozano, 83, and his wife Gladys, 79, lived on the ninth floor. They were confirmed dead after officials took a DNA sample from their son, Sergio Lozano, and matched it to their bodies.

Sergio Lozano told local media that his parents had known each other for more than 60 years, and would have celebrated their 59th anniversary on 21 July.

They used to joke that neither wanted the other one to die first, because they didn’t want to be apart from each other.

He said he took some comfort in the knowledge that they “went together and went quickly”.

Manuel LaFont, 54, lived on the eighth floor of the building and has also been confirmed dead.

Mr LaFont’s two children, a 10-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl, had been spending time with him that day, but were picked up by their mother – Mr LaFont’s ex-wife – just hours before the collapse.

He would often be found playing baseball with his young son, the Miami Herald reports.

Danny Berry, director of the Miami Beach Youth Baseball League, told the paper that “they were out there [playing baseball] until the lights went out”.

The whereabouts of Bhavna Patel, a 38-year-old British and US citizen, are unknown. She has been reported missing along with her husband, Vishal Patel, 42, and their one-year-old daughter, Aishani.

In a tweet a relative, Sarina Patel, confirmed her family members were yet to be found. Bhavna is pregnant, the tweet says.

Umma Kannayan is a family friend of the Patels. She told the BBC’s Will Grant that they were a “very loving” family who were closely involved in their religious community.

“Aishani was like the little baby of the temple,” she said. “It feels like you’ve lost a part of yourself.”

She said she was waiting with the Patel family’s relatives for news, but that “not much information has been shared” about the victims.

“I think all of us, the family included, and the folks that are very closely associated with them [at temple] would want to know the list of survivors currently present,” she said. “Perhaps from there some hope either might be given or might be shattered, but some names out there would be very helpful for all.”

Nicolette Brent, the UK’s consul-general in Miami, visited the family reunification centre in Surfside on Thursday night. She said her team was “ready to help any British nationals who may have been involved in this tragic incident”.

There are concerns for many members of the large Jewish community in the area.

On Thursday a local synagogue told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper that at least 34 of the people unaccounted for were Jewish.

Rabbi Sholom Lipskar of The Shul of Bal Harbour in Surfside said several members of his congregation were missing.

“This is something that transcends our capacity for understanding,” he told US broadcaster CNN. “We accept it and we have to learn, as we do in our culture, resilience and to move forward because challenges don’t hold us back.”

The rabbi named Nancy Kress Levin, Jay Kleinman, Frankie Kleinman, Arie Leib, Yisroel Tzvi Yosef and Tzvi Doniel as missing.

Brad Cohen, 51, was in the building with his brother-in-law at the time of the collapse.

“The hardest thing has been seeing the devastation of my 12-year-old daughter, she is very close to her father,” Brad’s wife, Soraya Cohen, told the BBC.

Given the area has a large Jewish community, the tragedy has drawn the attention of Israeli aid groups and government authorities, including the country’s consulate in Miami.

The consulate said the Israeli government had offered search-and-rescue help or other aid to local authorities, but had yet to receive an answer.

In a statement, Paraguay’s foreign ministry said six Paraguayan nationals had been registered as missing.

Among them was Sophia López Moreira, the sister of Paraguay’s first lady, Silvana López Moreira.

Sophia lives with her husband, Luis Pettengill, and their three children in the building.

Foreign Minister Euclides Acevedo told local media that President Mario Abdo Benítez had expressed concern for the safety of his relatives.

“Our consul and his team are making the rounds at hospitals in Miami,” Mr Acevedo said.

The sixth missing Paraguayan was named as Lady Luna Villalba by the ministry.

The Paraguayans are among at least 26 Latin American nationals reported missing by their consulates.

That includes two Chileans, three Uruguayans, six Venezuelans and nine Argentines, but the number could be higher.

Three of the Argentines were identified as Andrés Galfrascoli, 45, his partner Fabián Nuñez, 55, and their daughter, Sofía Galfrascoli Núñez, six, by a local newspaper. The paper says Mr Galfrascoli is a plastic surgeon, while Mr Nuñez is a singer and theatre director.

The two missing Chileans have been named as Claudio Bonnefoy, 85, and his wife María Obias-Bonnefoy. In a tweet their nephew said the couple had lived on the 10th floor of the collapsed building.

They lived in an apartment on the side of the building that collapsed, the couple’s daughter, Pascale Bonnefoy, told the New York Times, a newspaper she writes for.

Magaly Ramsey received a call from her mother, Magaly Delgado, the night before the building’s collapse.

“My mother called me at around 10 o’clock on Wednesday night, but I was at a conference and I couldn’t answer her,” Ms Ramsey told the BBC.

I’ll call her tomorrow, she thought. Since then, however, she has not heard from her mother, an 80-year-old of Cuban origin.

“The most difficult thing is not having information,” Ms Ramsey said.

The disappearance of one Jewish couple prompted an emotional reaction on social media.

Several people have queried the whereabouts of Myriam Caspi Notkin and Arnie Notkin, an elderly couple who lived on the third floor of the collapsed building.

Speaking to the Miami Herald newspaper, Fortuna Smukler said Mr Notkin was a beloved member of the community.

Ms Smukler said Mr Notkin taught physical education (PE) at a local primary school in South Beach for years, implanting him in the memories of many students.

“He was such a well-liked PE teacher from people’s past,” she said. “Everyone’s been posting, ‘Oh my god, he was my coach’.”

“It would be a miracle if they’re found alive.”

Kevin Spiegel was on a business trip in California when he received a message about the building’s collapse. He and his wife Judy, 66, had an apartment on the sixth floor of the building for more than four years.

Judy’s daughter, Rachel Spiegel, was last in contact with her mother on Wednesday night, the New York Times reported.

The newspaper said Judy had texted her to say that she had finally found the Disney dress one of her granddaughters, four-year-old Scarlett, had asked for as a gift.

A devoted grandmother, Judy had been helping with picking up the children from school, her daughter said.

As of Friday, Judy was still missing, but her family have not given up hope.

“We’re very hopeful that the community here will be able to find our loved ones,” Judy’s son Josh Spiegel told CNN.

Colombia has offered a reward of three billion pesos ($796,000; £573,000) for information about an attack on the president’s helicopter.

Iván Duque was nearing Cúcuta airport near the border with Venezuela when his aircraft was hit by gunfire on Friday.

Photos released later showed bullet holes in the rotor and tail of the helicopter.

Nobody on board was injured. The UN, EU and US have all condemned the attack.

Defence Minister Diego Molano – who was also on board the aircraft – offered the reward for any information leading to the culprits on Saturday.

National police meanwhile announced that they had found two rifles in a Cúcuta neighbourhood – an AK-47, and a 7.62 calibre rifle. which they say were used in the attack.

The 7.62 calibre rifle had “the marks of the Armed Forces of Venezuela”, national police chief General Jorge Vargas.

“We are after those responsible. We will not give up until we capture them,” he tweeted.

It is not yet known who carried out the attack.

Before the shooting Mr Duque had been attending an event in the Catatumbo region. The area spans the Colombian-Venezuelan border and is one of the main regions in the country for growing coca, the key ingredient in the drug cocaine.

Colombia has accused Venezuela of harbouring rebel fighters in the past, a claim the country denies. The nations broke off diplomatic relations after Mr Duque came to power in 2018.

The leftist National Liberation Army (ELN), Colombia’s largest rebel group, operates in the Catatumbo region.

Earlier this month the ELN denied any involvement in a car bomb attack on a military base in Cúcuta. The attack injured 36 people, including two US military advisers.

Rescue workers say they are searching “every bit of hope” as the hunt for survivors under the rubble of a collapsed Florida apartment block continues into a fifth day.

More than 150 people are still missing, with nine people confirmed to have died in Thursday’s early morning disaster.

Just four of the victims have been identified so far.

The cause of the collapse in Surfside, north of Miami, remains unclear.

An engineer’s report from 2018, which was made public on Saturday, highlighted “a major error” in the original design of the 12-storey seafront Champlain Towers. It said the fault prevented water draining away from the base of the building.

On Sunday, officials were keen to stress they were still hoping to find survivors. Teams have been working solidly since the building collapsed, and have now been joined by rescue workers from Israel and Mexico.

However, the initial efforts were slowed by a fire in the debris, which is thought to have been brought under control. Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett previously described how the building had “pancaked”, with spaces that were 10ft or more reduced to “just feet”.

A 125ft (38m) trench, which is 40ft deep, has now been dug to assist in the search for any pockets where people may have survived.

Miami-Dade Fire Chief Alan Cominsky acknowledged they were still facing an “extremely difficult situation” but were not prepared to give up.

“Our rescue teams are non-stop, doing all that we can, searching every area, every bit of hope to see if we can find a live victim,” he told reporters.

Four victims have been named by officials so far: Gladys Lozano, 79, and her husband Antonio, 83; Stacie Fang, 54; and Manuel LaFont, also 54.

Ms Fang’s son, 15, was pulled alive from the rubble.

The remains of the other five people pulled from the debris are undergoing DNA tests to establish their identities.

The building contained 136 apartments and 55 of them collapsed early on Thursday, leaving piles of debris.

Resident Barry Cohen was in bed in a section of the building that survived when the collapse happened. “It sounded like thunder, and my wife and I, we went out on the balcony; it looked like a bomb had exploded,” he told the BBC.

“When we opened the door, there was no building there, it was just a pile of rubble,” he said.

Eyewitnesses described hearing what sounded like thunder before seeing a huge cloud of dust in the aftermath of the collapse.

A full investigation into the collapse is set to begin after the rescue mission.

As the building has stood since 1980, it was due its standard 40-year review. It was undergoing its “recertification” process and required repairs, officials said.

The 2018 engineer’s report into the building flagged “major structural damage” to the concrete platform beneath the swimming pool deck. It also referred to “abundant cracking… of columns, beams and walls” in the garage.

The report didn’t suggest the 40-year-old building was at any imminent risk of collapse but its author, engineer Frank Morabito, urged that the concrete repairs be carried out in “a timely fashion”.

Meanwhile, a study from researchers at Florida International University published last year found that the building had been sinking at a rate of two millimetres per year in the 1990s, which may have affected the building structurally.

But the author has cautioned that the study was just a snapshot in time. The building was constructed on reclaimed wetland, which experts say is always of concern as the land underneath can compact over time, leading to shifts.

On the sinking, the author of the study, Prof Shimon Wdowinski, told the Miami Herald newspaper: “We’ve seen much higher than that, but it stood out because most of the area was stable and showed no subsidence.”

Prof Wdowinski said the research was not meant to suggest certainty about the latest incident.

BBC- Australian leaders will hold an emergency meeting on Monday after a spike in Covid infections.

An outbreak in Sydney linked to the highly contagious Delta variant has grown to 128 cases.

Cases have also been recorded in the Northern Territory, Queensland and Western Australia.

Officials say it is a “critical time” for the country, which has kept case numbers low with border closures and lockdowns.

This is the first time in months that cases have emerged in multiple parts of the country at the same time.

“I think we’re entering a new phase of this pandemic, with the more contagious Delta strain,” Treasurer Josh Frydenberg told ABC News on Monday.

The escalation in Covid infections has prompted lockdowns in the cities of Sydney and Darwin, as well as restrictions across four states.

The situation remains most concerning in Sydney, where some five million residents are subject to a stay-at-home order.

The New South Wales (NSW) state government on Sunday expanded a lockdown to cover all of Greater Sydney, the Blue Mountains, Central Coast and Wollongong.

Many businesses and venues have been ordered shut.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian on Monday reported 18 new cases, down from the 30 reported the previous day. Nearly 59,000 people had been tested in the past 24 hours.

“We have to be prepared for the numbers to bounce around and we have to be prepared for the numbers to go up considerably because with this strain, we are seeing almost 100% of transmission within households,” she said.

Frances Mao, BBC News Sydney

Just a week ago Sydney was still in near Covid-free bliss – with people packed into restaurants and dancing in clubs in the city.

But the swift spread of Delta has upended months of the city, and the country’s ” new normal”. The strain is now linked to three of four clusters affecting Australia.

Experts say the nation’s defences have been beaten, multiple times, by the powerful variant. It’s breached hotel quarantine several times raising concerns about air transmission.

It’s also managed to break through relaxed distancing rules in society, latching onto unprotected workers. Mask-wearing is now back in almost every state in Australia.

In Sydney, officials say the virus is infecting 100% of household contacts when it’s brought into a home. It’s too early to tell if this lockdown will contain it, according to experts.

Low vaccination rates have also left Australians vulnerable.

One expert told me it’s a “perfect storm” for “what is now easily the most dominant variant in the world”.

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard has described the Delta variant which was first detected in India as a “very formidable foe”.

“No matter what defensive steps we’re taking at the moment, the virus seems to understand how to counter-attack,” he said.

While the two cases in Western Australia have been traced to the Sydney outbreak, the positive cases in Queensland and the Northern Territory have been linked to people who became infected despite completing hotel quarantine.

The remote Northern Territory has recorded seven cases, prompting authorities to extend a lockdown of the capital, Darwin on Monday until Friday.

The Delta outbreak there had spread from a mining camp and now posed significant risk to the community, officials said.

“For the first time, we do have public exposure sites in the Northern Territory,” said Chief Minister Michael Gunner.

Authorities are also on alert after a member of cabin crew staff for Virgin Australia worked on five domestic flights while infected with the Delta variant. The airline has contacted all affected passengers and crew.

The outbreaks have prompted some inter-state and international border closures.

New Zealand paused its quarantine-free travel bubble with all of Australia until at least Tuesday because of the latest outbreak.

The travel corridor between the two neighbours was opened in April. Travel between New Zealand and specific Australian regions has been closed for short periods as outbreaks emerged, but this is the first time the bubble has been shut with all of Australia.

Australia has maintained very low rates of Covid transmission throughout the pandemic due to a closed-border policy, stringent quarantine and swift testing and tracing systems.

It has recorded no deaths this year, but 910 deaths and 30,450 cases overall.

The newer, more infectious Covid variants however, have strained the nation’s defences – with several small outbreaks this year.

Sydney’s outbreak first emerged two weeks ago in Bondi, the famous beach suburb, before spreading rapidly across the city.

Its origin has been linked to an unvaccinated driver who transported international arrivals from the airport.

The NSW government has urged people to get their vaccine – noting that in one of the Sydney clusters, 24 of 30 people at a party became infected and those who didn’t had been vaccinated.

“If you’re vaccinated, you are much more likely to not be infected with Covid-19,” Mr Hazzard told reporters on Monday.

The recent outbreaks have renewed criticism of the nation’s slow vaccination rollout – which falls under the federal government’s purview.

So far, just under 5% of Australia’s adult population have been fully vaccinated under a phased rollout, and roughly 30% have received a first dose of either the Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccine.

However, significant levels of hesitancy have been recorded around the AstraZeneca vaccine due to its link to a rare blood clotting syndrome. Meanwhile, Pfizer supplies have been limited to certain age groups.

Government critics have argued that cities would not need to endure lockdowns if a majority of the population was vaccinated.

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White House faces calls to embrace vaccine passports

By Nathaniel Weixel -The Hill

Health experts are calling on the Biden administration to do more to encourage and promote the use of vaccine mandates and passports.

So far, the White House has stayed out of what they view as an issue for private employers.

The Biden administration has repeatedly said vaccine passports won’t be implemented at the federal level but has not discouraged individual companies from making the personal choice of implementing one.

Officials have also shied away from using mandates among federal employees or among military forces.

“If a company, a business wants to take steps to keep their workers and their passengers safe, I would think that, from a government perspective, we want to do everything we can to encourage that,” Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said recently.

There is no way to tell who is vaccinated and who is not without asking for proof, but the federal government has not given any kind of guidance or support to businesses that want to require proof of vaccination for customers and employees.

With the nation poised to miss President Biden‘s July 4 goal of 70 percent partial vaccination, experts argue that more vocal support of mandates and passports could help to boost lagging vaccination rates.

“The Biden administration shouldn’t be so squeamish about vaccine verification,” said Leana Wen, a public health professor at George Washington University and former health commissioner of Baltimore.

Wen said the administration should have supported a standardized verification system, calling it a “missed opportunity” to increase vaccine uptake.

Some people may just be waiting for the right incentive, and a mandate may push them in the right direction, she said.

“There are a lot of people in the middle. They’re not eager to get the vaccine, but they’re also not anti-vaxxers. They need an additional push. And that push is still not there, because we have not been requiring proof of vaccination in order to return to normal,” Wen said.

Polls show that young adults in particular would be motivated to get vaccinated if it was required in certain instances.

The Kaiser Family Foundation’s vaccine tracker found about 40 percent of young adults ages 18 to 29 would get vaccinated if it was a requirement for large gatherings like sporting events or concerts, flying on an airplane, or for international travel.

According to Kaiser, the people who would get the vaccine only if it was required mainly say they don’t feel they want or need the vaccine. They are not opposed to it, they just might not do it unless someone forced their hand.

For employers, experts said it is easier for certain industries to mandate vaccinations over others, especially in health care.

But on the flip side, they will also need to be prepared for the fallout, especially if a large proportion of the staff refuses to be vaccinated. Larger businesses will be better equipped to handle it than smaller ones.

For example, Houston Methodist terminated or accepted the resignations of 153 workers after a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit over its mandatory vaccination policy. It was one of the first hospital systems in the nation to impose a COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said he expects more employers will mandate vaccinations once the vaccines are fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Both Moderna and Pfizer have applied for full approval, and a decision is expected later this summer.

“I think that the administration needs to really push on the FDA to get full licensure of these vaccines, because I think that’s one thing that’s holding back those mandates,” Adalja said.

Adalja also faulted the Biden administration for not having a standardized vaccine certificate or electronic app for companies or venues that want one.

“The idea of trying to have a kind of vaccine certificate or some way to prove your vaccination status, I think this is something that the government should have anticipated and thought through early on … and made some way to make this easy to verify, instead of those flimsy cards they give you,” Adalja said.

The idea of mandates and vaccine passports is politically fraught though, and there is concern that any comments from the White House could backfire, especially in the rural, conservative areas of the country that have some of the lowest vaccination rates in the nation.

Many Republican governors have banned mandates and passports in any form, including from private employers, emphasizing that vaccination is a personal choice.

In addition, well-funded anti-vaccination groups are eager to challenge any kind of vaccine requirement.

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WORLD STATS

Latest News

June 28 (GMT)

Updates

• 20,694 new cases and 423 new deaths in Indonesia

• 2,243 new cases and 46 new deaths in Oman [source]

• 52 new cases in Poland [source]

• 1,284 new cases and 12 new deaths in Japan [source]

• 12 new cases in Slovenia [source]

• 15 new cases and 4 new deaths in Slovakia [source]

• 30 new cases in Latvia [source]

• 84 new cases in Finland [source]

• 63 new cases and 1 new death in Austria [source]

• 21,650 new cases and 611 new deaths in Russia [source]

• 20 new cases in Timor-Leste [source]

• 5,604 new cases and 84 new deaths in the Philippines [source]

• 132 new cases and 9 new deaths in Hungary [source]

• 9 new cases in Singapore [source]

• 15 new cases in Estonia [source]

• 1 new case in China, Macao SAR [source]

• 352 new cases and 9 new deaths in Georgia [source]

• 15 new cases in Lithuania [source]

• 60 new cases and 3 new deaths in Taiwan [source]

• 57 new cases in Czechia [source]

• 54 new cases and 2 new deaths in Armenia [source]

• 241 new cases and 2 new deaths in Fiji [source]

• 883 new cases and 16 new deaths in Cambodia [source] [source]

• 285 new cases and 9 new deaths in Ukraine [source]

• 469 new cases and 2 new deaths in Uzbekistan [source]

• 1,081 new cases and 5 new deaths in Kyrgyzstan [source]

• 703 new cases and 6 new deaths in Honduras [source]

• 30 new cases in Australia [source] [source] [source] [source] [source]

• 368 new cases in India [source] [source]

• 1,811 new cases and 15 new deaths in Mongolia [source]

• 1,628 new cases and 10 new deaths in Kazakhstan [source]

• 914 new cases and 20 new deaths in Pakistan [source]

• 9 new cases in New Zealand [source]

• 97 new cases in Vietnam [source]

• 5,406 new cases and 22 new deaths in Thailand [source]

• 922 new cases and 30 new deaths in Bolivia [source]

• 2,384 new cases and 43 new deaths in Mexico [source]

• 501 new cases and 2 new deaths in South Korea [source]

• 21 new cases in China [source]

June 27 June 26 June 25 June 24 June 23 June 22 June 14 April 15 

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