Thursday, June 15, 2017
GOP frustrated by Trump’s labeling of health care bill
WASHINGTON
President Donald Trump’s labeling of a House-passed health care bill as “mean” is aggravating some of the conservatives he pressed to back it, even as Senate attempts to reshape the measure increasingly threaten to spill into July.
“In terms of strategery, I hope he’s just trying to motivate the Senate,” Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., said Wednesday, employing a mangled word used by former President George W. Bush. “Because he put all sorts of pressure on us to move the bill we passed.”
Congressional sources said Trump described the House bill as mean at a closed-door White House lunch Tuesday with 15 Republican senators. It was an extraordinary slap at a bill Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., guided through the House and that Trump himself had championed and praised. At a Rose Garden ceremony minutes after the bill’s 217-213 House passage on May 4, Trump called it “a great plan.”
“To call a bill that he pushed ‘mean’ leaves us scratching our heads,” Brat said.
Death toll rises to 12 in London apartment inferno
LONDON
They banged on windows, screamed for help, dropped children from smoky floors in a desperate attempt to save them. Terrified residents of the Grenfell Tower said there was little warning of the inferno that engulfed their high-rise apartment building and left 12 people dead – a toll that officials said would almost certainly rise.
The blaze early Wednesday in the 24-story building in west London’s North Kensington district also injured 74 others, 18 of them critically, and left an unknown number missing. A tenants’ group had complained for years about the risk of a fire.
More than 200 firefighters worked through the night and were still finding pockets of fire inside later in the day. A huge plume of smoke wafted across the London skyline and left a burned-out hulk in the working class, multi-ethnic neighborhood.
Teens rescued after 3 days lost in Paris catacombs
PARIS
Two teenage boys have been rescued after three days underground in the skeleton-lined labyrinth of the Catacombs of Paris.
Paris police said they alerted firefighters early Wednesday that the boys, age 16 and 17, were missing. Police said teams of rescuers, including climbers and sniffer dogs, set out to search for the youths and found them beneath southern Paris a few hours later suffering from slight hypothermia.
It was unclear how the boys got lost.
Wallenda discusses hanging by teeth over Niagara Falls
NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y.
The aerialist wife of daredevil Nik Wallenda will perform a series of maneuvers – including hanging by her teeth and toes – while on a hoop suspended from a helicopter above Niagara Falls in a stunt that will break a record set by her husband, the family said Wednesday.
Erendira and Nik Wallenda said they are excited to again showcase Niagara Falls on the fifth anniversary of Nik Wallenda’s televised tightrope walk over the brink. The stunt is planned for this morning.
“She’s a ballerina in the air,” Nik Wallenda said during a press conference with his wife at the Seneca Niagara Casino.
Associated Press