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Spain’s worst floods in a century kill almost 100 in Valencia region, with some victims still trapped in cars
Dramatic flooding killed at least 95 people in Spain between Tuesday night and Wednesday, and the toll was expected to rise as search and rescue operations continued Thursday morning. Roads transformed into raging rivers with little warning as flash floods tore through the eastern region of Valencia, with muddy rapids flinging parked cars around like tin cans in the worst natural disaster to hit the European nation in a century.
Some areas got more than a typical year’s worth of rainfall in just eight hours.
There were dramatic rescues, including a couple who were left trapped on the second floor of a house until they were scooped to safety by a front end loader. Denis Hlavaty braved the muddy onslaught trapped overnight inside a gas station.
“I’m smiling so I don’t cry,” he said as he walked away from the site of his refuge. “It was a living hell.”
The Valencia suburb of Barrio de la Torre looked like it had been hit by a hurricane on Thursday. Cars were stacked on top of each other on mud-choked roads, with uprooted trees and downed power lines woven through the mess. Most of the confirmed deaths as of Thursday morning were in the town.
“The neighborhood is destroyed, all the cars are on top of each other, it’s literally smashed up,” local bar owner Christian Viena told The Associated Press.
The rains had stopped by late Wednesday, leaving rescue workers to turn largely to the grim task of recovering victims.
“Unfortunately, there are dead people inside some vehicles,” national Transport Minister Óscar Puente said.
Spanish authorities deployed about 1,000 soldiers to help search for survivors and recover victims from under the mud-caked debris.
The country’s defense minister said soldiers had recovered 22 bodies and rescued 110 people by Wednesday night.
“We are searching house by house,” military rescue unit leader Ángel Martínez told the RNE national radio network Thursday from the northern Valencian town of Utiel, where there were at least six people confirmed dead.
“The sorrow is the people who have died, and there have been many,” said Encarna, a teacher in Utiel, as she surveyed the ruins of her home. “These are my savings, my efforts, my life. But we are alive.”
Climate scientists blame the scale of the disaster on a confluence of factors linked to human-caused climate change; the warmer atmosphere enables storm systems to retain more moisture, a slowing jet stream didn’t push the storm away quickly, and the parched, drought-stricken Valencian soil couldn’t absorb the catastrophic downpour.
The inundation left train lines and major roads impassable, leaving Valencia still partly isolated on Thursday.
The high-speed rail service linking the provincial capital of Valencia city to the national capital of Madrid was unlikely to be back in service before the weekend, officials said.
While Valencia was left mired in debris and devastation that was sure to take many weeks to clean up, the entire country was mired in grief.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was heading to the region Thursday — the first day of a three-day official mourning period — to see the destruction himself.
CBS News
How “Here” brought Tom Hanks and Robin Wright together again
Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, who first starred together in “Forrest Gump” 30 years ago, are reuniting in the new film “Here,” directed by “Forrest Gump” director Robert Zemeckis and written by Eric Roth.
The movie follows a couple, Richard and Margaret Young, through love and loss in the same living room over decades, capturing the evolution of their lives and the families that follow.
Shot entirely from the same camera angle, the film captures changes in the lives of its characters and the transformations in the world outside.
“This really is a meditation in passing, everything passes. And the only constant we have in our life is change,” Wright said, describing Zemeckis’ vision for how one place evolves over generations. “Which is what we all experience. So I think everyone will relate to one aspect or 12 in this movie,” she said.
Hanks and Wright said they were eager to work together again on such an unusual project.
“When Bob [Zemeckis] mentioned getting the band back together, I was like, yes, for sure,” Wright said. “And he’s like, this has never been done before. I said, let’s go, let’s take the ride. We have such faith in him because his imagination is pretty incredible.”
Hanks said the film’s approach required a new style of acting, with short scenes showing the characters at various stages of their lives.
“We were making jokes when we were doing it because a lot of these scenes, they only last like two minutes or, you know, and our job was to make them as lively as possible and real as possible. And I said, well, look, if, look, if it gets boring, Bob will just have a stegosaurus walk by the window,” Hanks said.
The film uses subtle digital effects to show Hanks and Wright at different ages, with scenes that create a sense of time passing.
“It was both strange and profound to watch myself go through different life stages on screen,” Hanks said.
Wright and Hanks said the physical demands of portraying young, energetic characters in their 60s were challenging. In a lighthearted moment during the interview, they reenacted a scene by jumping from their seats, pretending to be teenagers. “We had to bring youthful energy to every take, which was harder than it sounds!” Wright said.
Reflecting on what he hopes audiences take away, Hanks said, “I hope they see themselves … I go to the movies, no matter the gender of the characters or the culture that it’s shot at, I wanna see some aspect of my own struggles up there because when I do, it’s like, I’m going through that same exact thing.”
“Here” comes out on Nov. 1, 2024.
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Half of teens spending 4+ hours looking at screens each day, CDC says
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“Win With Black Women” founder Jotaka Eaddy on how the group is embracing its role in a historic election
The founder of the viral “Win With Black Women” livestream that had 90,000 participants nationwide as Vice President Kamala Harris entered the race for the White House in July said as a child, she “always was that kid that just wanted to fight for anybody who I felt was being mistreated.”
Jotaka Eaddy said she felt that way after hearing negative comments made about Black women named as possible vice presidential candidates in 2020, when President Biden was on the campaign trail.
“Every last one of those women were receiving racist, sexist attacks,” Eaddy told CBS News. “No one was challenging their policies, their agendas. It was, ‘she was too ambitious.'”
Eaddy’s mentor, former White House political director Minyon Moore, encouraged Eaddy to do something. And in 2020, Eaddy created “Win With Black Women,” a virtual network that started meeting every Sunday during the pandemic via zoom with the goal of supporting and advancing the policy agenda of Black women. Since July, it’s raised more than $2.6 million for the Harris campaign.
When Mr. Biden opted to leave the race in July, endorsing Harris as his successor, the group’s routine call went viral, as around 90,000 Black women and allies came together to strategize — and to embrace the history that could be made.
“Remember this moment, remember where you were, remember how you felt,” Eaddy said at the time.
Eaddy said when the call came to a close at 1 a.m., around 20,000 women remained, in what she said “felt like a hug that you just did not want to let go.”
The group’s work inspired others to form virtual groups, while raising millions of dollars for the shared cause. And it inspired a “Unite for America” livestream in September with Oprah Winfrey, featuring Harris herself, who thanked Eaddy for her work.
“She started it, Jotaka started it,” Harris said.
According to CBS News polling, more than nine in 10 Black women voters are backing Harris in the 2024 presidential election. The support comes as Black women helped propel Mr. Biden to victory in 2020, like in Georgia, with 92% supporting him and helping a Democrat to win the state for the first time in 28 years.
The effort comes after a long history of Black women organizing, according to historian and professor Martha S. Jones.
“When we look back across not just decades, but more than a century, what we recognize is that Black women have always been knocking on the door, rattling the gates, insisting on a place at the table in American politics,” Jones said.
Jones, the author of “Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All,” was part of the zoom call in July, and noted the importance of getting out the vote — which she called “the heart of democracy.”
For Eaddy, she recognizes the new standard that “Win With Black Women” has set on voter outreach, which she hopes will make an impact in decades to come.
“What we are seeing is a level of energy united around our collective, our collective absolute need to ensure that this country is a place where we can all thrive and live and be free,” Eaddy said.