Researchers heading to Ottawa area to document damage from tornado

LONDON (AP) — A damning report on a deadly London high-rise fire concluded Wednesday that decades of failures by government, regulators and industry turned Grenfell Tower into a “death trap” where 72 people lost their lives.

The public inquiry into the 2017 blaze found no “single cause” of the tragedy, but said a combination of dishonest companies, weak or incompetent regulators and complacent government led the building to be covered in combustible cladding that turned a small apartment fire into the deadliest blaze on British soil since World War II.

The inquiry’s head, retired judge Martin Moore-Bick, said the deaths were avoidable and “all contributed to it in one way or another, in most cases through incompetence but in some cases through dishonesty and greed.”

Prime Minister Keir Starmer apologized on behalf of the British state, saying the tragedy “should never have happened” and promising to act on the report’s recommendations.

“Today is a long-awaited day for truth but it must now lead to a day of justice,” he told Parliament.

While the report may give survivors some of the answers they have long sought, they must wait to see whether anyone responsible will be prosecuted. Police will examine the inquiry’s conclusions before deciding on charges, which could include corporate or individual manslaughter.

They say prosecutions are unlikely before late 2026.

Natasha Elcock of the group Grenfell United urged authorities to deliver justice.

“We paid the price for systematic dishonesty, institutional indifference and neglect,” said Elcock, a survivor who lost her uncle in the fire.

The fire broke out in the early hours of June 14, 2017, in a fourth-floor apartment and raced up the 25-story building like a lit fuse, fueled by flammable cladding panels on the exterior walls.

The tragedy horrified the nation and posed one central question, the report said: “How was it possible in 21st century London for a reinforced concrete building, itself structurally impervious to fire, to be turned into a death trap?”

The search for answers focused on a refurbishment completed in 2016 that covered the 1970s building in aluminum and polyethylene cladding — a layer of foam insulation topped by two sheets of aluminum sandwiched around a layer of polyethylene, a combustible plastic polymer that melts and drips on exposure to heat.

The report was highly critical of companies that made the cladding. It said they engaged in “systematic dishonesty,” manipulating safety tests and misrepresenting the results to claim the material was safe.

It said insulation manufacturer Celotex was unscrupulous, and another insulation firm, Kingspan, “cynically exploited the industry’s lack of detailed knowledge.” Cladding panel maker Arconic “concealed from the market the true extent of the danger,” the report said.

The three companies expressed sympathies to the bereaved, but all denied responsibility for the deaths. Arconic said its products were not unsafe. Kingspan said its “historical failings” were not “causative of the tragedy.” Celotex said the decision to combine its insulation with combustible cladding panels had been made by others.

The inquiry said the combustible cladding was used because it was cheap and because of “incompetence of the organizations and individuals involved in the refurbishment” -– including architects, engineers and contractors — who all thought safety was someone else’s responsibility.

It concluded the failures multiplied because bodies in charge of enforcing building standards were weak, the local authority was uninterested and the “complacent” U.K. government — led in the seven years before the fire by the Conservative Party — ignored safety warnings because of a commitment to deregulation.

The inquiry has held more than 300 public hearings and examined around 1,600 witness statements.

An initial report published in 2019 criticized the fire department for initially telling residents to stay put and await rescue. By the time the advice was changed, it was too late for many on the upper floors to escape.

London Fire Brigade came in for further criticism for a “chronic lack of effective management and leadership,” poor training in high-rise fires and outdated communications equipment.

The Grenfell tragedy prompted soul-searching about inequality in Britain. Grenfell was a public housing building set in one of London’s richest neighborhoods, near the pricey boutiques and elegant houses of Notting Hill. The victims, largely people of color, came from 23 countries and included taxi drivers and architects, a poet, an acclaimed young artist, retirees and 18 children.

The report said the inquiry had “seen no evidence that any of the decisions that resulted in the creation of a dangerous building or the calamitous spread of fire were affected by racial or social prejudice,” though it said the public body that managed Grenfell had failed to treat residents with “understanding and respect.”

The prime minister said the tragedy “poses fundamental questions about the kind of country we are, a country where the voices of working class people and of those of color have been repeatedly ignored and dismissed.”

After the fire, the U.K. government banned metal composite cladding panels for new buildings and ordered similar combustible cladding to be removed from hundreds of tower blocks across the country. But the work hasn’t been carried out on some apartment buildings because of wrangling over who should pay.

Starmer said the work had been “far, far too slow.”

The report made multiple recommendations, including tougher fire safety rules, a national fire and rescue college and a single independent regulator for the construction industry to replace the current mishmash of bodies.

The ruined tower, which stood for months after the fire like a black tombstone on the west London skyline, still stands, covered in white sheeting. A green heart and the words “Grenfell forever in our hearts” are emblazoned at the top.

Sandra Ruiz, whose 12-year-old niece, Jessica Urbano Ramirez, died in the fire, said that “for me, there’s no justice without people going behind bars.”

“Our lives were shattered on that night. People need to be held accountable,” she said. “People who have made decisions putting profit above people’s safety need to be behind bars.”

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Associated Press writers Danica Kirka and Pan Pylas contributed to this report.

The two presidential nominees are using the week before their debate to sharpen their economic messages about who could do more for the middle class. Vice President Kamala Harris will discuss her policy plans on Wednesday in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, while Donald Trump will address the Economic Club of New York on Thursday.

Harris will use the New Hampshire campaign stop to propose an expansion of tax incentives for small businesses, a pro-entrepreneur plan that may soften her previous calls for wealthy Americans and large corporations to pay higher taxes. Trump, meanwhile, is betting that Americans crave trillions of dollars in tax cuts — and that growth will be so fantastic that it’s not worth worrying about budget deficits.

The candidates will debate next week in what will be their first meeting ever. The nation’s premier swing state, Pennsylvania, begins in-person absentee voting the week after. By the end of the month, early voting will be underway in at least four states with a dozen more to follow by mid-October.

In just 62 days, the final votes will be cast to decide which one of them will lead the world’s most powerful nation.

Follow the AP’s Election 2024 coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.

Here’s the Latest:

Takeaways from AP’s report on JD Vance and the Catholic postliberals in his circle of influence

Ohio Sen. JD Vance’s 2019 conversion to Catholicism helped shape his political worldview, he has written.

It has also put him in close touch with a Catholic intellectual movement, viewed by some critics as having reactionary or authoritarian leanings, that has been little known to the American public.

That’s changing with Vance’s rise to the national stage as the Republican vice presidential nominee and running mate to former President Donald Trump.

The professors and media personalities in this network are generally known as “postliberal.” Vance has used that term to describe himself as well.

▶ Here are some takeaways from the AP’s reporting.

Harris is visiting New Hampshire, away from bigger swing states, to tout her small business tax plan

Vice President Kamala Harris is using a New Hampshire campaign stop on Wednesday to propose an expansion of tax incentives for small businesses, a pro-entrepreneur plan that may soften her previous calls for wealthy Americans and large corporations to pay higher taxes.

She wants to expand from $5,000 to $50,000 tax incentives for small business startup expenses, to eventually spur 25 million new small business applications over four years.

Harris is expected to stop at Throwback Brewery in North Hampton, outside Portsmouth, and meet with co-founders Annette Lee and Nicole Carrier. Their brewery got support to open its current location through a small business credit and installed solar panels using federal programs championed by the Biden administration, according to the Harris campaign.

The New Hampshire trip is a rare deviation for a candidate who is spending most of her time in Midwest and Sun Belt states with pivotal roles in November’s election.

▶ Read more here.

JD Vance’s Catholicism helped shape his views. So did this little-known group of Catholic thinkers

By his own account, Ohio Sen. JD Vance’s 2019 conversion to Catholicism provided a spiritual fulfillment he couldn’t find in his Yale education or career success.

It also amounted to a political conversion.

Catholicism provided him with a new way of looking at the addictions, family breakdowns and other social ills he described in his 2016 bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.”

“I felt desperate for a worldview that understood our bad behavior as simultaneously social and individual, structural and moral; that recognized that we are products of our environment; that we have a responsibility to change that environment, but that we are still moral beings with individual duties,” he wrote in a 2020 essay.

His conversion also put Vance in close touch with a Catholic intellectual movement, viewed by some critics as having reactionary or authoritarian leanings, that was little known to the American public until Vance’s rise to the national stage as the Republican vice presidential nominee.

▶ Read more here.

Federal judge rejects Donald Trump’s request to intervene in wake of hush money conviction

A federal judge on Tuesday rejected Donald Trump’s request to intervene in his New York hush money criminal case, thwarting the former president’s latest bid to overturn his felony conviction and delay his sentencing.

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein ruled that Trump had not satisfied the burden of proof required for a federal court to take control of the case from the state court where it was tried.

Hellerstein’s ruling came hours after Manhattan prosecutors raised objections to Trump’s effort to delay post-trial decisions in the case while he sought to have the federal court step in.

In a letter to the judge presiding over the case in state court, the Manhattan district attorney’s office argued that he had no legal obligation to hold off on post-trial decisions and wait for Hellerstein to rule.

Read more here.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The lower house of Mexico’s Congress approved contentious legislation Wednesday that would launch the most sweeping judicial overhaul of the century by requiring all judges to stand for election.

In a marathon session in which legislators were forced to meet in a gymnasium after protesters blocked the Congress building, the lower chamber approved the constitutional measure 359-135 in a party-line first vote. The measure, which requires a two-thirds majority, was expected to pass by a similar margin in a necessary second-round vote later Wednesday before going to the Senate.

Mexico’s ruling party says judges in the current court system are corrupt, and wants the country’s entire judicial branch — some 7,000 judges – to stand for election.

Critics say the constitutional changes would deal a severe blow to the independence of the judiciary, and they question how such massive elections could be carried out without having drug cartels and criminals field their own candidates.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has long railed against courts that blocked some of his building projects and policy measures because they ran afoul of constitutional and legal norms. The president has vowed for months to rush through a raft of measures like the judicial overhaul — as well as a proposal to eliminate almost all independent oversight and regulatory agencies.

The vote was expected to be extremely tight in the Senate, though the president’s party looked poised to win over the single vote it lacked there. If passed by the Senate, the constitutional proposal would be sent to Mexico’s 32 state congresses where it must be approved by most of them. López Obrador’s party controls a majority of the states.

Critics say the measure will devastate Mexico’s system of checks and balances.

“We should inaugurate a wall of shame that says: ‘Today begins the fall of our Republic.’ And it should have the date and all the faces of the Morena congressmen,” shouted Paulina Rubio Fernández, a PAN congresswoman, before the vote.

The vote Wednesday was made possible by López Obrador’s Morena party and its allies winning overwhelming majorities in the June 2 elections.

The all-night session came after protesters blocked the entrance to Mexico’s Congress on Tuesday in an attempt to demand debate on the judicial overhaul.

The overhaul has fueled a wave of protests by judges, court employees and students across Mexico in recent weeks, and reached another inflection point on Tuesday when protesters strung ropes across entrances to the lower house of Congress to block legislators from entering. That came as the country’s Supreme Court voted 8-3 to join strikes, adding more weight to the protests.

“The party with the majority could take control of the judicial branch, and that would practically be the end of democracy,” said protester Javier Reyes, a 37-year-old federal court worker. “They want to own Mexico.”

Under the current system, judges and court secretaries, who act as judges’ assistants, slowly qualify for higher positions based on their record. But under the proposed changes, any lawyer with minimal qualifications could run, with some candidacies decided by drawing names from a hat.

Mexico’s courts have long been plagued by corruption and opacity, but in the last 15 years they have been subject to reforms to make them more open and accountable, including changing many closed-door, paper-based trials for a more open, oral-argument format.

Voices both at home and abroad say the new changes could mark a setback in the effort to clean up courts.

U.S. Ambassador Ken Salazar said Tuesday that “there is a great deal of concern,” claiming the changes “could damage relations a lot, and it’s not just me saying that.” Salazar has pointed to the election of judges as his main qualm with the overhaul, noting that it would negatively affect investment and the Mexican economy.

López Obrador said last week he has put relations with the United States and Canadian embassies “on pause” after the two countries voiced concerns over the proposed judicial overhaul.

President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, López Obrador’s close ally, on Tuesday night once again defended the reform, writing on the social media platform X that it “does not affect our commercial relations, nor national or foreign private investments. On the contrary, there will be more and better rule of law and more democracy for all.”

“If judges, magistrates, and ministers are elected by the people, where is the authoritarianism?” she added.

The proposed changes would cover about 7,000 judges at various levels and would introduce a time limit for judges to rule on many cases to combat a tendency for some trials to stretch out over decades. More controversially, the reforms would also introduce “hooded judges” to preside over organized crime cases; their identities would be kept secret in order to prevent reprisals.

And the courts would be largely stripped of their power to block government projects or laws based on appeals by citizens. It would also almost certainly assure that the president’s party continues with significant political power long after López Obrador leaves office at the end of this month.

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