The study found that the city’s concrete flood walls are sinking faster than sea levels are rising, reducing capacity to block storm surges in some neighborhoods.

“There is certainly a potential in the future, if these rates continue, to degrade our level of protection of the flood protection system,” Tulane professor Mead Allison, a co-author on the study, told CBS News.

This summer marks 20 years since Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast, leaving more than 1,300 people dead and displacing more than a million people across the region. 

Following the destructive storm, $15 billion was spent to reinforce a levy system designed to keep water out. New Orleans, much of which lies below sea level, relies on this elaborate system of levees, pumps and drainage canals. 

The study, published in the journal Science Advances, used satellite radar data to track shifts in ground elevation across the Greater New Orleans area between 2002 and 2020. It found that while most of the city remains stable, some neighborhoods, wetlands, and even sections of the region’s post-Katrina flood protection system are sinking by more than an inch per year — with some areas experiencing up to 47 millimeters, or nearly 2 inches, of elevation loss annually.

“In a city like New Orleans, where much of the land is already near sea level, even minor drops in elevation can increase flood risk,” said Simone Fiaschi — lead author of the study and a former researcher with Tulane’s Department of River-Coastal Science and Engineering, now employed at TRE-Altamira — in a statement. 

“These results are a wake-up call,” Allison said. “We need ongoing monitoring and maintenance to ensure that our flood defenses don’t lose their level of protection beneath us.”

If trends continue, and infrastructure is left unchecked, the study found wetlands east of the city could transform marshes into open water within the next 10 years if trends continue — effectively eliminating critical storm surge buffers to the Louisiana coast. 

The study also identified some potential causes of the sinking hotspots. It found pockets of land are sinking around industrial sites, the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, and newer residential developments — areas where soil compression and groundwater withdrawal are likely contributors.

Researchers said the findings also underscore a few potential solutions to better protect New Orleans and other coastal communities across the globe, including frequent upgrades to the flood protection system and satellite monitoring.

Some residents living in the Michoud neighborhood on the city’s east side — one of the areas identified in the study as sinking more rapidly than others — are concerned that maintenance won’t be prioritized. Michoud resident Synthia Viltus pointed out that potholes and other smaller infrastructure issues in her neighborhood have remained unresolved for months.    

“I have zero faith in state federal leaders to keep the levies updated,” Viltus said. 

The study did find a positive — some areas where industrial activities had been halted had actually caused the land to lift back up. 

The study’s authors also hope their work will help guide other coastal cities who may be facing similar challenges to New Orleans.   

“This research shows that land movement isn’t uniform, and understanding these patterns is crucial for protecting lives and property in a city where inches truly matter,” Fiaschi said in the statement. “However, it’s crucial to remember that our results still require careful ground-truthing. This is especially true for critical areas like the floodwalls, where on-site verification was not possible during this project.” 

When reached by CBS News, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said the levies are designed to last for at least another 25 years. USACE added it is already in the process of upgrading the levies so they can last another 50 years. 

The post Some sections of New Orleans’ flood walls sinking at rate of nearly 2 inches per year, study finds appeared first on My Blog.

“We’re bringing a massive technology effort to transform the servicing agenda,” Bisignano said. “We’re gonna bring AI into the phone system…I intend it to be completed this year.” 

The agency gets about 390,000 calls per day, according to SSA data. The average wait time for those calls as of April was 68 minutes, down from 112 minutes in January. 

“I say, we’re gonna meet our beneficiaries where they want to be,” said Bisgnano, who was CEO of financial services company Fiserv before being tapped by President Trump in December to lead the SSA. “You want to come into a field office? We we’ll always be there. You want to meet us on the web? We will be there. And you want to meet us on the phone, we’ll be there.”

The SSA announced in March that it would require in-person identity checks at field offices for new and existing beneficiaries, with some limited exemptions.

Following backlash to the move, however, the White House in April backed off that requirement, saying that seniors and other recipients could verify their identities over the phone.

About six million seniors would have faced a 45-mile trip to reach an SSA office, according to an analysis from the Center on Budget and Public Policies. 

There are questions about how Bisgnano plans to implement changes despite a smaller workforce. In February, the agency said it intended to cut its staffing levels down from about 57,000 to 50,000, a 12% reduction. The website for the White House’s Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has identified more than a dozen field offices for closure.

Bisignano argues that the cuts won’t prevent the SSA from increasing its efficiency, which he believes can be achieved “through technology and process engineering.”

The SSA turns 90 this year, but as the U.S. ages, the gap between benefit payments and revenue is widening. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that by 2033, the fund used to pay retirement and survivor benefits will be exhausted.

“There’s lots of senators that I’ve heard from that have all ideas about how to fix it,” Bisignano said. “So, we need to just go to work on how to fix it.”

Bisignano is seeking to reassure Americans who are planning to file for Social Security in 10 years that they will still receive their full benefits, not just a portion of them.

“Everybody is committed to Social Security for the rest of time.”  

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“We have to make sure as a special agent for IRS Criminal Investigation that we treat every single person exactly the same,” said Gary Shapley, a 14-year veteran of the agency, who spoke exclusively to CBS News chief investigative correspondent Jim Axelrod on Tuesday. “And that just simply didn’t happen here.”

Shapley’s comments come a week after the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for Delaware, David Weiss, who has been leading the probe, announced a plea deal in the case against Hunter Biden. A Republican who said he has no political motive and has never been engaged in politics, Shapley told CBS News he believes stronger charges could have been brought.

According to a Justice Department filing made public last week, Hunter Biden reached a tentative deal with the U.S. attorney in Delaware, agreeing to enter guilty pleas to two misdemeanor tax charges and admitting to felony gun possession. 

Hunter Biden’s plea will include an acknowledgement that drug use was a contributing factor in his gun crime, and he will enter into a pretrial diversion agreement on that charge, according to the filing. It is expected that for two years, Hunter Biden must remain drug-free and must not commit additional crimes. If he fulfills this successfully, the gun count would be dismissed. This does not amount to a guilty plea.

A federal judge has yet to approve the deal. A hearing has been scheduled on July 26 before Judge Maryellen Noreika at the federal courthouse in Wilmington. 

Shapley said the five-year investigation uncovered conduct that he says could have resulted in additional charges.

“Based on my experience, if this was a small business owner or any other non-connected individual, they would have been charged with felony counts,” Shapley said.

Legal experts are split about whether the plea agreement was too strong, or not strong enough.

“It is almost embarrassing that the tax division of the Department of Justice apparently approved this sweetheart of tax deals,” says former federal prosecutor Gene Rossi. “Should he have gotten a felony? Absolutely yes.”

Others, like former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti disagree. He tweeted, “If anything, Hunter Biden was treated harshly — those crimes are rarely charged.”

Shapley told CBS News that Hunter Biden wrote off as business expenses the money he paid for “prostitutes, sex club memberships, travel for the prostitutes, hotel rooms for purported drug dealers, no show employees.” Hunter has admitted to the drug use in his memoir “Beautiful Things,” published by an imprint of Simon & Schuster, a division of CBS News’ parent company. 

Hunter Biden’s criminal attorney, Christopher Clark, did not respond to a request for comment regarding Shapley’s allegations. But in an earlier statement, issued at the time the plea arrangement was announced, he said “as his attorney through this entire matter, I can say that any suggestion the investigation was not thorough, or cut corners, or cut my client any slack, is preposterous and deeply irresponsible.”

In 2021, Hunter Biden repaid more than $2 million in past-due taxes after receiving a loan from one of his private attorneys.

A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware declined to comment.

Last week, the GOP House Ways and Means Committee chairman released transcripts of congressional interviews with two IRS whistleblowers, including Shapley, who both questioned whether the U.S. attorney overseeing the case was free to bring charges he saw fit. 

“The testimony we have just released details a lack of U.S. attorney independence, recurring unjustified delays, unusual actions outside the normal course of any investigation,” Chairman Jason Smith, a Republican from Missouri, told reporters. 

But three weeks ago in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Weiss asserted that he was granted “ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland told reporters Friday that Weiss had “complete authority to make all decisions on his own” and required no permission from Justice Department headquarters to bring charges.

“Mr. Weiss was appointed by President Trump. As the U.S. attorney in Delaware and assigned this matter during the previous administration, [he] would be permitted to continue his investigation and to make a decision to prosecute any way in which he wanted to and in any district in which he wanted to,” Garland said, reiterating sworn statements he has made to Congress.

Shapley, however, told CBS News: “I documented exactly what happened. And it doesn’t seem to match what the attorney general or the U.S. attorney are saying today.” 

Shapley says he provided lawmakers with contemporaneous e-mail correspondence he wrote after an October 7, 2022 meeting, where he says the U.S. attorney communicated the opposite. “Weiss stated that he is not the deciding person on whether charges are filed,” Shapley wrote to his supervisor.

“There were really earth-shaking statements made by David Weiss that really brought to light some of my previous concerns. And the first one was that he is not the deciding person on whether or not charges are filed,” Shapley said. “It was just shocking to me.”

Shapley, who is still a supervisory special agent with the IRS, says he was prevented from pursuing any leads that involved President Joe Biden, including the now-infamous 2017 email from James Gilliar, a business associate of Hunter Biden’s, which bore the subject line “Expectations” and outlined a “provisional agreement” for “equity” in a deal with a Chinese energy company. 

Two of Hunter Biden’s former business partners who received the message told CBS News that a line in the email — “10 held by H for the big guy?” — was shorthand for 10% held by Hunter Biden for his father.

Shapley told CBS News that his efforts to look further into money trails that involved “dad” or “the big guy” were blocked by a senior prosecutor working for Weiss. 

“I would say that they limited certain investigative leads that could have potentially provided information on the president of the United States,” Shapley said. 

When the email became public in 2020, Gilliar told the Wall Street Journal that Joe Biden was not involved. And in one of the interviews FBI agents conducted during the investigation, another partner of Hunter Biden’s said the same. “I certainly never was thinking at any time that [then-Vice President Biden was] a part of anything we were doing,” businessman Rob Walker told agents, according to a transcript released by Congress.   

President Biden has denied involvement in his son’s business affairs. 

“I have not taken a penny from any foreign source, ever, in my life,” Mr. Biden said in October 2020 at a presidential debate.

Shapley’s requests to look into those details came in late 2020, when Trump Attorney General William Barr had instituted a policy requiring he personally approve any investigation of a president or presidential candidate. Asked by CBS News if it was possible he was simply not read-in to all the reasoning for decisions by the prosecutors, Shapley acknowledged that was possible.

“I documented what I saw, and ultimately that’s the evidence. If they want to explain how that’s wrong, they can,” Shapley told CBS News. “All of the things that I’ve testified in front of the House Ways and Means Committee is from my perspective, but it’s based on the experience I’ve gained over 14 years.”

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Taylor Givens, 29, and Collin Kobelja, 34, received heart transplants on the same day at Virginia’s Inova Fairfax hospital in 2011 and were recovering in neighboring rooms. It was Givens’ first transplant after she suffered viral cardiomyopathy, while Kobelja was receiving his second transplant after he was born with a chronic heart condition. 

“There were really no romantic sparks at first because we were both miserable,” Givens said. 

Five years later, they reconnected on the anniversary of their heart transplants. Kobelja was back in Virginia visiting doctors at the hospital and reached out to Givens. 

They went to dinner and caught up on what had happened since they saw each other in the hospital. The two hit it off, Kobelja said. 

“It was cute because we had to take our medicine at the same time, the same medicine,” said Givens. “I definitely felt a spark and I wasn’t expecting that at all.” 

They started dating and married in 2019. They now live in Maryland. 

“It was great to start dating someone who you don’t have to explain anything to,” said Kobelja. “You can just live your life in a normal way.” 

For both of them, their physical limitations and mental outlook were barriers to dating. But they had no need to explain to each other why they couldn’t do something or why they had a lot of doctors appointments because they already understood. 

The couple has since faced serious health challenges and know more are ahead. Kobelja had his fourth heart transplant last year and Givens is in remission from lymphoma. 

But having each other makes facing the challenges easier, they said. 

“Having him beside me, I’m not as afraid of things, even things like my mortality,” Givens said. “I see him existing and making it through these transplants and thriving, and it gives me a new sense of hope and purpose.” 

Kobelja said they’re stronger because of it.

“We’ve both been through essentially one of the worst experiences you can go through in life,” he said. “It definitely feels like anything else life throws at us, we can handle.” 

The post They received heart transplants on the same day in the same hospital. Then they fell in love. appeared first on My Blog.

“My grandson, he comes in and he says, ‘Nana, we should be on lunchtime by now.’ And I said, ‘No. We actually skipped lunch. We’re on dinner,'” Thompson said. 

She shops for groceries at Dollar General, where new data suggests overall prices are up almost 24%, according to Numerator. At nearby ALDI, prices are up nearly 17%. 

Both discount stores are often relied on by families in lower income neighborhoods. 

Leo Feler, chief economist at Numerator, which tracks hundreds of millions of shopping receipts, says food inflation is hitting lower income people disproportionately because higher income communities have more options. 

“You can go from a Whole Foods to a Walmart, from a Walmart to a Dollar General,” Feler said. “Once you’re a low income consumer, you are already at the cheapest place that you can possibly buy food. And that just means that these stores have more pricing power.” 

Discount stores raised prices for meat, poultry, fish, eggs and dairy products at a higher rate compared to many other grocers. 

Milk prices at a single Dollar General store in Texas shot up 20% over a year ago.

“Like many other retailers, we have been forced to pass along certain product cost increases, although not of the magnitude suggested by Numerator,” Dollar General said in a statement to CBS News. 

ALDI did not respond to a request for comment. 

Still, discounters are cheaper than most other supermarkets that can only jack up prices so high. 

“You can’t raise prices if people are going to shift away from you,” Feler said. “Except at a Dollar General or ALDI, people aren’t shifting away. More people are still coming to these stores, despite the higher prices.” 

Researchers also found that when grocery money starts to run out, cash-strapped consumers turn to less healthy options, like dollar menus at fast food restaurants. 

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In an exclusive interview with “CBS This Morning” co-host Gayle King, one of the jurors in the trial — who asked to only be identified by his first name, Drew — explained how the group reached their decision.

King: The jury convicted on criminal sexual act in the first degree and third degree rape.

Drew: That’s correct.

King: How did you all reach that conclusion?

Drew: It was our deduction and interpretation of the law […]  regardless of behaviors before or after an alleged incident — on this day at this time and that place. Can you do that? And the answer for the convictions is no, and that’s a crime.

King: And it was that simple?

Drew: No – there was nothing simple about it. Nothing simple about it.

King: But you were saying the before and after — you said you didn’t really take that into account, you really focused on this particular act on this particular day?

Drew: 100%. 

King also asked Drew about how the jury managed to keep the news out of their deliberations. 

King: You know, we always hear, “Do not read about this case, do not discuss this case with anyone.” How are you able to do that in a world where everything is 24/7 everywhere?

Drew: Oh, to not read the news?

King: Yes, not read the news, to not —

Drew: It was actually kind of nice. Challenging, don’t get me wrong. But, you know —

King: So you didn’t watch television? You didn’t read the paper? You didn’t —

Drew: Definitely didn’t read the paper, the only paper that I read was the crossword puzzle in the morning, you know, on the subway, and stuff like that. It’s important, like every other aspect of it.

King: So you didn’t read the paper, you didn’t watch TV — or did you?

Drew: I watched TV, but I watched the Rangers game, you know? DVR of programs that I like, I definitely didn’t, you know, put on cable news in the background and kind of clean up, or something like that, which I would normally do.

Watch King’s full interview with the juror Friday on “CBS This Morning.” 

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