Day: August 23, 2021

Igor Vovkovinskiy, the tallest man in the United States, has died in Minnesota. He was 38.His family said the Ukrainian-born Vovkovinskiy died of heart disease on Friday at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. His mother, Svetlana Vovkovinska, an ICU nurse at Mayo, initially posted about his death on Facebook.Vovkovinskiy came to the Mayo Clinic in 1989 as a child seeking treatment. A tumor pressing against his pituitary gland caused it to secrete abnormal levels of growth hormone. He grew to become the tallest man in the U.S. at 2 meters, 34.5 centimeters (7 feet, 8.33 inches) and ended up staying in Rochester.His older brother, Oleh Ladan of Brooklyn Park, told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis that Vovkovinskiy was a celebrity when he arrived from Ukraine because of his size and the flickering Cold War of the late 1980s. But Ladan said Vovkovinskiy “would have rather lived a normal life than be known.”Vovkovinskiy appeared on “The Dr. Oz Show” and was called out by President Barack Obama during a campaign rally in 2009, when the president noticed him near the stage wearing a T-shirt that read, “World’s Biggest Obama Supporter.” In 2013, he carried the Ukrainian contestant onto the stage to perform in the Eurovision Song Contest.When he was 27, Vovkovinskiy traveled to New York City and was declared America’s tallest living person by a Guinness World Records adjudicator on Oz’s show. He edged out a sheriff’s deputy in Virginia by one-third of an inch.He issued a plea in 2012 to cover the estimated $16,000 cost for specially made shoes that wouldn’t cause him crippling pain. At the time, he said he hadn’t owned a pair for years that fit his size 26, 10E feet. Thousands donated more than twice what he needed. Reebok provided the custom shoes for free.Vovkovinskiy was born Sept. 8, 1982, in Bar, Ukraine, to Vovkovinska and Oleksandr Ladan, according to Ranfranz and Vine Funeral Home, which is holding a memorial service on Saturday. His father died earlier.
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given full approval to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.  “The public can be very confident that this vaccine meets the high standards of safety effectiveness and manufacturing quality the FDA requires of an approved product,” acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock said in a statement Monday.The vaccine produced by Pfizer-BioTech was approved for emergency use last December.  More than 200 million doses have been administered in the U.S. and hundreds of millions more worldwide.Information from AP and Reuters was used in this report.
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Parts of the northeastern United States braced for more heavy rains and the potential for flooding Monday as the storm that made landfall as Tropical Storm Henri slowly moved across the region. The bulk of the rain overnight was located over New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The National Hurricane Center expects the center of the storm, now downgraded to a tropical depression, to drift a short distance to the east during the day Monday before eventually making it back out over the Atlantic Ocean by Tuesday morning. Forecasters said total rainfall amounts across much of the region would be between 7 and 15 centimeters, with some locally higher amounts. The storm made landfall Sunday in the state of Rhode Island, and knocked out power to more than 130,000 homes in that state, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York. President Joe Biden said Sunday he had already approved emergency declarations for Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York, and that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had resources such as generators, food and water positioned in the region to help those in need. “We don’t know the full extent of the storm’s impact today, but we are acting to prepare for and prevent damage as much as possible, and to speed help to affected communities so they can recover as quickly as possible,” Biden said. Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee spoke of the need to get electricity service restored with warm temperatures forecast in the coming days. “We know that that’s an issue and that’s why getting power restored is critical for the health and safety of our residents, our economy, and our small businesses to make sure that they’re operating,” McKee said. Some information for this report came from the Associated Press. 
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Scores of firefighters backed by water-dropping aircraft battled a forest fire that broke out early Monday on the southern part of Greece’s Evia island, less than two weeks after an inferno decimated its northern part.   The fire was burning near the village of Fygia where two neighborhoods have been evacuated and was moving toward the coastal tourist village of Marmari, where authorities were preparing boats to evacuate people if needed, according to Athens News Agency.   Forty-six firefighters were battling flames fanned by high winds — assisted by 20 fire engines, three water-dropping airplanes and two helicopters, the Greek fire brigade said.    Authorities have boats on standby off Marmari. Evia is northeast of the capital Athens.   The civil protection authorities had announced on Sunday a “very high risk” of fire for many areas of Greece on Monday.  Wildfires since July have ravaged the islands of Evia and Rhodes as well as forests to the north and southeast of Athens, and parts of the Peloponnese peninsula. Three people have died as a result of the fires. The government has blamed the disaster on the worst heatwave the country has seen in decades.   Climate scientists warn extreme weather and fierce fires will become increasingly common due to man-made global warming, heightening the need to invest in teams, equipment and policy to battle the flames. 
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