It’s Monday, July 12th - and NBC 6 has the top stories for the day.
No. 1 - Hundreds of people packed SW 8th Street in Little Havana in solidarity with the growing protests in Cuba Sunday.
SW 8th Street was shut down from 32nd Avenue to 37th Avenue as the crowd grew during the afternoon rain. "People here are crying because there is no medicine, there is no health, there is no food," said one protest goer in Miami as she pled for people to share the news of what is happening in Cuba on social media. Protesters also held a moment of silence as some got word that a person had been killed in the protests on the island. This has many worrying about the well being of their loved ones on the island.
No. 2 - As recovery workers enter the 18th day to find victims in the rubble of the Surfside condo collapse, the death toll rose to 90.
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At a news conference Sunday, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said 31 people remain potentially unaccounted for. "Our hearts and minds are always with those we've lost and with the families who are grieving and those that are still waiting," Levine Cava said. The mayor added that the rescue operations were uninterrupted throughout the night and morning as teams worked tirelessly to make progress on the collapsed site.
No. 3 - A ceremony held to honor Israeli search crews, and give families impacted by the collapse of Champlain Towers South an opportunity to thank first responders, took place Saturday night in Surfside.
Miami-Dade Fire Rescue says the Israeli crew members are scheduled to return home on Sunday, after weeks of searching the rubble for possible survivors. Miami-Dade County Mayor, Daniella Levine Cava, and Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Chief, Alan Cominsky, were among the local and state leaders to present Israeli crew members with individual honors. Following the presentation ceremony, local leaders, Israeli crew members, and impacted families, began a several-block march beginning at 89th street and Collins Avenue. First responders from around the country lined 89th street, as families walked by, expressing gratitude.
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No. 4 - The latest suspect detained amid the search for the masterminds and assassins in the killing of President Jovenel Moïse is a Haitian in his 60s living in Florida who identifies himself as a doctor and has accused the leaders of his homeland of corruption.
Police identified the man on Sunday night as Christian Emmanuel Sanon and said Moïse's alleged killers were protecting the suspect as the supposed president of Haiti. The head of Haiti's police, Léon Charles, accused Sanon of working with those who plotted and participated in Moïse’s killing, which stunned the nation of more than 11 million people. He gave no information on the purported masterminds.
No. 5 - Swashbuckling billionaire Richard Branson hurtled into space aboard his own winged rocket ship Sunday, bringing astro-tourism a step closer to reality and beating out his exceedingly richer rival Jeff Bezos.
The nearly 71-year-old Branson and five crewmates from his Virgin Galactic space-tourism company reached an altitude of 53.5 miles (86 kilometers) over the New Mexico desert — enough to experience three to four minutes of weightlessness and witness the curvature of the Earth — and then glided back home to a runway landing. “The whole thing, it was just magical," a jubilant Branson said on his return aboard the gleaming white space plane, named Unity. The brief, up-and-down flight — the space plane's portion took only about 15 minutes, or about as long as Alan Shepard's first U.S. spaceflight in 1961 — was a splashy and unabashedly commercial plug for Virgin Galactic, which plans to start taking paying customers on joyrides next year.
No. 6 - Ashleigh Johnson has punched her ticket to Tokyo. The goalie is dominating in the pool for USA Water Polo as she gets ready for the Olympics once again.
"Hearing that I made my second Olympic team was so exciting. I called my mom, I called my sister, I called all my friends and family. It’s something special and something different to be a part of the U.S. Women’s Water Polo Olympic team," said water polo goalie Ashleigh Johnson. Tokyo will be Johnson's second Olympics after she helped her team win gold in Rio in 2016. She says the team is focused after waiting five years for this moment since the global pandemic pushed back the Olympics to 2021. "No one in our lifetime has experienced anything like this so it’s going to be a really interesting opportunity to show how resilient we all are," said Johnson.
