US President Donald Trump cupped a boy’s face in his hands and then gave him a high-five. He snapped on latex gloves to hand out boxed lunches of hot dogs and potato chips, loaded relief supplies into vehicles, patted storm victims on the shoulder and declared the work “good exercise.”
An upbeat and optimistic trump on Saturday visited victims of Harvey, touring a Houston megashelter housing hundreds of displaced people and briefly walking streets lined with soggy, discarded possessions.
Trump met the scene with positivity, congratulating officials on an emergency response still in progress and telling reporters that he had seen “a lot of love” and “a lot of happiness” in the devastation the storm left behind.
“As tough as this was, it’s been a wonderful thing,” Trump said of the Harvey response, after spending time with displaced children inside NRG Center, an emergency refuge housing about 1,800 evacuees.
The trip to Houston, Texas and Lake Charles, Louisiana, was Trump’s second to survey Harvey’s wake and a chance for the president to strike a more sympathetic tone.
He had on Tuesday rushed to Texas, heading to Corpus Christi and Austin to talk to first responders.
He had minimal interaction with residents, saw no damage and offered few expressions of concern while on the ground. That made Saturday something of a do-over.
Joined by US first lady Melania Trump, Trump went directly to the shelter and was greeted by volunteers and children. They brought coloring books and crayons, and sat with families. Trump lifted one little girl into his arms and gave her a kiss. He signed his name on the cement wall by the children’s artwork.
With a wide smile and quick banter, Trump served food in the lunch line — at one point joking about his hands being too big for the sanitary gloves — and then moved on to First Church in the Houston suburb of Pearland.
The Trumps greeted a group of volunteers and lavished praise on Texas Governor Greg Abbott for his state’s response.
“I want to congratulate the governor,” he said. “I want to congratulate everybody that’s worked so hard. It’s been an incredible five days, six days. It seems like it’s been much longer than that, but actually it’s going so well that it’s going fast, in a certain sense.”
As Trump visited, the Houston area was still burying its dead and trying to contain the mess. Nearby, the city of Beaumont, Texas, with a population of 120,000 was struggling to restore its drinking water.
Firefighters in Crosby, outside of Houston, were warily eyeing the Arkema chemical plant, twice the scene of explosions.
Floodwaters had inundated at least seven highly contaminated toxic waste sites in the Houston area, raising concerns about creeping pollution.
Harvey is blamed for more than 40 deaths and believed to have damaged at least 156,000 dwellings in Harris County.
The American Red Cross said more than 17,000 people have sought refuge in Texas shelters such as the one Trump visited.
The White House has asked Congress to approve a US$7.9 billion Harvey relief downpayment when lawmakers return to Washington on Tuesday.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of