Latest news with #reliefefforts
National Post
2 days ago
- Business
- National Post
iA Financial Group, iA American Warranty Group, American Amicable, and Vericity Donate $75,000 to Support Texas Flood Relief Efforts
Article content AUSTIN, Texas — iA Financial Group, together with its U.S. subsidiaries iA American Warranty Group, American Amicable and Vericity, is donating $75,000 to the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country to support relief efforts in response to flash flooding in Texas. Article content 'Our hearts go out to the individuals, families and entire communities of Kerr County and surrounding areas who have been devastated by the recent flash flooding. We are profoundly saddened by the loss of life and the hardship so many are facing. At this difficult time, we stand in solidarity with all those affected, and we are committed to offering meaningful support to help them begin to rebuild and recover,' said Denis Ricard, President and Chief Executive Officer of iA Financial Group. Article content Donations to the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country will be used to assist those impacted by the flood with immediate and ongoing relief, including financial assistance, support to evacuees and the communities hosting them, and recovery and resilience efforts in response to the flooding. Article content About iA Financial Group Article content iA Financial Group is a North American insurance and wealth management group, with operations across Canada and the United States. As of March 31, 2025, iA Financial Group had total assets under management of $264 billion. Founded in 1892, it is an important Canadian public company and is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol IAG (common shares). Article content About iA American Warranty Group Article content With a history dating back to 1984, iA American Warranty Group is both a full-service administrator and an 'A' rated insurer for the finance and insurance industry. Thanks to complete vertical integration, every aspect of the business is controlled in-house, including insurance, products, wealth-building opportunities, retail technology, training, income development and performance marketing. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, the company maintains regional support offices throughout the USA. The parent company is iA Financial Group. Article content About American Amicable Group Article content American Amicable Group, based in Texas, is a national life insurance company that has been faithfully protecting American generations since 1910. AAG is a financially stable and agent-driven life insurance organization offering affordable and accessible policies to individuals seeking simplified or final expense coverage. American Amicable Group has been a subsidiary of iA Financial Group since 2010. Article content About Vericity Article content Vericity, based in Chicago, provides life insurance protection targeted to the middle American market. The company's operating subsidiaries consist of Fidelity Life and Efinancial. They focus on leveraging technology and data analytics to offer life insurance products directly to consumers. The company allows consumers to buy life insurance protection fully online, with the help of an agent, or a hybrid of both. Vericity is part of iA Financial Group. Article content Article content Article content Article content Contacts Article content Information: Article content Article content iA American Warranty Group Article content Article content Preston J. Haglin Article content Article content Office phone: Article content Article content 323-868-8169 Article content Article content Email: Article content Article content
Yahoo
14-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Chelsea Clinton And Megyn Kelly Go To War Over Texas Relief Efforts
and just went head-to-head in a heated exchange that erupted over social media, and it's safe to say, the gloves came off. The former Fox News anchor took aim at Clinton after the former First Daughter posted about her family's philanthropic response to . The clash between Megyn Kelly and Chelsea Clinton unfolded on X (formerly Twitter) in a heated showdown last week. "Members of the @ClintonGlobal community are on the ground in Texas, supporting families, communities, and ongoing search and rescue efforts," Chelsea wrote in a post, listing several organizations participating in the relief. But it didn't take long for critics to flood the replies with accusations. Social media users slammed the Clinton Foundation, reviving decade-old claims about alleged misuse of funds in post-earthquake Haiti and questioning the family's historic ties to , who, according to his lawyers, helped conceive the Clinton Global Initiative back in 2005. Megyn Kelly clearly enjoyed the pile-on, reposting Clinton's message with a jab of her own, 'The responses to this is AMAZING.' Chelsea didn't back down, tagging Kelly in a direct clapback. 'Hi Megyn, I'm sure any of the organizations I mentioned which are on the ground in Texas would welcome your support," she said. "I'd be happy to put you in touch directly. We all need to support those impacted by the tragic floods in Kerr County and surrounding areas.' That only fueled Kelly's fire. 'Chelsea, what we are seeing in the replies to your post is that while you love to play fake philanthropist, absolutely no one wants your family of grifters anywhere near those suffering in Texas, Haiti or anywhere else,' she wrote. In a final attempt to defend herself and the foundation, Clinton replied, 'I don't receive a cent & never have from these or @ClintonFdn. Supporting vital work in Texas matters most now. Hope you will highlight relief efforts on your @x timeline, apologies if I missed them, and show.' Kelly didn't respond further, but the replies to Clinton's post stayed lit with criticism. Many doubled down on long-standing conspiracy theories, despite the fact that the Clinton Foundation was exonerated in 2019 following several federal investigations. As for the Epstein connection, his legal team once admitted he had a hand in launching the Clinton Global Initiative during plea negotiations in 2007. 'Mr. Epstein was part of the original group that conceived the Clinton Global Initiative, which is described as a project 'bringing together a community of global leaders to devise and implement innovative solutions to some of the world's most pressing challenges,'' attorneys Alan Dershowitz and Gerald Lefcourt wrote in a letter, per Daily Caller, that resurfaced years later. While Epstein's name was never officially listed in CGI's founding documents, Lefcourt doubled down on his client's role in the initiative's formation during a 2016 interview with ABC News. The initiative, launched in 2005 as a branch of the Clinton Foundation, was designed to connect world leaders to address major global issues. Epstein also donated $25,000 to the Clinton Foundation in 2006 through his own charity, following a close personal relationship with Bill Clinton that began during a high-profile trip to Africa in 2002. Epstein died in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking charges. While the online war of words between Megyn Kelly and Chelsea Clinton grabbed national attention, the situation on the ground in Texas remains dire. Just 10 days after catastrophic flooding claimed at least 132 lives across the state, central Texas was hit with another round of relentless rain over the weekend. In Kerr County alone, where Chelsea initially directed her relief message, 106 people were killed after the Guadalupe River surged more than 20 feet on July 4. The devastation has only continued. Over the weekend, an additional 6 to 10 inches of rainfall caused rivers like the Llano, Lampasas, and San Saba to overflow, prompting more evacuations and stalling ongoing search and rescue operations. As the flood crisis unfolds, it's clear the focus must return to the lives lost, the people still missing, and the families in urgent need of help.
South China Morning Post
12-07-2025
- Climate
- South China Morning Post
China ‘luckiest driver' survives after half of truck teetering on edge of collapsed bridge
Less than 10 days after a Chinese truck driver narrowly escaped a landslide that left his vehicle precariously balanced on a collapsed bridge, he returned to the disaster-stricken area to assist with relief efforts, moving many online. The 44-year-old driver from Jiangxi province, You Guochun, earned the title of 'China's luckiest driver' from the online community after miraculously surviving a landslide in southwestern Guizhou province. On that fateful day, incessant heavy rainfall triggered a landslide, causing a long bridge above a river to collapse. You was driving his heavy-duty truck on that very bridge when the disaster struck. He immediately applied the brakes, but nearly half of the truck surged over the broken bridge, leaving it suspended 30 metres in the air. During a live-stream, You revealed that he was transporting 22 tonnes of mineral powder that day, and it was the truck's weight that ultimately prevented it from plummeting. He noted he was driving slowly at only 50km/h, keeping his foot above the brake the entire time, which allowed him to stop the vehicle just in time.
CNN
11-07-2025
- General
- CNN
In the face of tragedy, a pastor finds words — and a community listens
There was a rare and brief moment of stillness on Saturday –– after the last child waiting in the church was reunited with his parents –– when Rev. Jasiel Hernandez Garcia could sit with his staff and ask them: What do we say to the congregation? The leadership at First Presbyterian Church in Kerrville, Texas had originally planned to talk about celebrating independence and the importance of rest at their Sunday services on July 6. Then the flooding began. Starting Friday, the church staff spent 18 hours working on relief efforts. The building, just a few blocks from the Guadalupe River, served as a reunification center in the morning and as a shelter later in the day on Saturday. Then everyone learned that one of their own congregants had died in the flood. They scrapped all the readings, music, and the sermon. Instead, they put together a Sunday service that incorporated church members who volunteered to perform music they felt would be of comfort to their community. Garcia rewrote his whole sermon, focusing on the call to do what is right no matter what and to respond with hope and action. 'The amount of grief was something I had never experienced before,' said Garcia, the church's senior pastor. With at least 150 people missing and 120 people dead, including at least 27 children and counselors at a summer camp, from the flooding in Central Texas, people in Kerr County and across the country have been feeling sadness, anger and grief from the losses. Many people are turning to Garcia and other religious leaders to ask for guidance in the face of the devastation. What can they do with these feelings? When tragedy strikes, the messiness of pain, anger, sadness and fear of those experiencing loss don't need to be cleaned up quickly, said Rev. Shannon Johnson Kershner, senior pastor at Central Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, Georgia. 'God is not scared of all of those feelings,' Kershner said. 'I think anger is faithful. Doubt is faithful. All of that is faithful because it means that you actually care.' For the people not directly affected by the flood but struggling themselves, that is natural and human, too, said the Very Rev. Sarah Hurlbert, dean of the Cathedral of All Souls, an Episcopal church in Asheville, North Carolina. The cathedral was inundated and extensively damaged by floodwaters from Hurricane Helene last September. Maybe the news reports and images trigger your feelings around a horrible experience at a camp, a personal loss of a child, or even just a loss of feeling safe and in control of the world, said Hurlbert. 'Sending your kids to a camp, what you expect is that they're going to have a great time and … come back with some bumps and bruises, but they had a good time doing it,' Hurlbert said. 'It's part of how we get disabused as human beings of the notion of control.' Bad things happen every day to people around the world, and you can't always stop and fully feel the pain because you have to keep going, said Rev. Janet Maykus, transitional pastor of the United Christian Church in Austin, Texas. But sometimes, she noted, an event hits a little closer to home. After witnessing Helene's destruction, Hurlbert has a sense of how words can fail to provide the comfort needed in the aftermath of tragedy. Last year, her congregation gathered in a church that was not theirs for the first time since the storm. As the people filed in and laid eyes on their community members –– many of whom they could not contact to make sure they were safe –– they just clung to one another, Hurlbert said. 'I don't even think I had a sermon that day,' she said. 'We just hugged and held each other and cried. And really and truly, that was the sermon.' It is human and natural to not want to say the wrong thing, Kershner said. Or you may so badly want the person you are with to not feel pain that you say anything you can to fix it for them. Often, that can drive you away from the people who are suffering. 'There's no right thing to say, but to move towards those places of hurt, rather than away from them, I think that's what we're called as people to do,' she said. If you can't take the pain away from someone experiencing loss, your presence can still be of some benefit, said Don Burda, president of the Jewish Community of the Hill Country in Kerrville, who lost his wife and two daughters to a drunk driver years ago. Burda isn't a rabbi, and his community has a congregation so tiny that he considers it a full house if 10 people show up. He is planning Shabbat services this Friday, where they will say the Mourner's Kaddish, as they do every week for lost loved ones, and he will share pictures of those who have died in the floods. 'Each of us reacts to tragedy differently,' Burda said via email. 'Some will be silent, some will scream to the heavens, some will try to find someone to blame. None of these things will bring their loved one back and no amount of good wishes and kind words will make a dent in what they're feeling, nor do anything to fill that huge chasm in their soul caused by their loved ones being ripped from them.' 'The kind words do one important thing: They let those who are left behind know that they are not alone. And that –– knowing they're not alone –– is perhaps the greatest gift we can give to those who mourn,' he said. Members of Garcia's congregation have begun to reach out for support for the loss or continued uncertainty about their loved ones. But so far, he has found that they are not looking for answers as to why it happened or what to do with their grief. Most of them just want to talk, to connect and to find someone who will listen, he said. 'They haven't really sat with their emotions. They're not really ready to really wrestle with the complexity of all that we experienced last weekend,' he said. An important place to start is to assure each other that feelings that come out of tragedy are OK, said Dr. Shelly Rambo, professor of theology at Boston University. What many people need in the aftermath is someone to sit beside them and hear their pain without being afraid of it or trying to tie it up and send it away, Rambo said. It isn't always natural for people to know how to stay in those difficult moments and allow others to grieve, she said. It takes intention to learn how to say, 'I am so sorry,' and then just sit there and say nothing else, Rambo added. You might hold the person if they want it, but you don't always have to. The important thing is that you are communicating to the person, 'I am here. I will be here for the long haul of this grieving. You have a safe place to put these feelings down,' she said. With the assurance of God's presence, or a call to the community to gather, or the promise of a listening ear, many religious leaders stressed the importance of those hurting not feeling alone. 'When we are just on our own, it can feel very daunting, very hopeless, very overwhelming,' Garcia said. 'But when we mourn and grieve together with other people that we can trust … then that allows for a kind of transformation in the community, a sense of love that is tangible.' In the 18 years Maykus worked as a hospital and hospice chaplain, she found that losing a loved one often upended a person's entire reality. She thinks of lives as a great web of all the communities you exist in and the people you love. When you lose someone, a critical chord is snapped and everything is unsteady for a time, she said. The web will never be the same again, but as you mourn and move forward, you will weave a new version, Maykus said. Having people by your side and supporting you in your grief helps hold the web in place while you work to rebuild your reality, she said. 'Your existence is now completely different, and everyone is walking around you like everything's the same and it's not,' Maykus said. 'Just knowing there's someone there, it's kind of a grounding thing.' It is important to allow others to support you when you are struggling and to show up when others suffer loss –– however you can do that, Maykus said. 'Some of us are really good at sitting in silence with someone, some of us are really good at listening, some of us have great things to say, and some of us don't have any of those things,' she said. Can you bring food? Mow the lawn? Clean the refrigerator? These things may not feel as important as the conversations, but they are, Maykus said. The presence and help in keeping life going sends a profound message, she said. 'It's saying to that person, 'You are a person. You are alive. You are here. We care about you,'' she said. The truth is that religious leaders are dealing with the grief and pain, too. Coming together as a community gives Kershner a place to hold her faith and hope when she is having trouble, just as she holds it for the people in the pews when they are suffering, she said. 'Sometimes we have to borrow faith from each other,' Kershner said. 'We don't go through any of this by ourselves.'
CNN
11-07-2025
- General
- CNN
In the face of tragedy, a pastor finds words — and a community listens
Storms ReligionFacebookTweetLink Follow There was a rare and brief moment of stillness on Saturday –– after the last child waiting in the church was reunited with his parents –– when Rev. Jasiel Hernandez Garcia could sit with his staff and ask them: What do we say to the congregation? The leadership at First Presbyterian Church in Kerrville, Texas had originally planned to talk about celebrating independence and the importance of rest at their Sunday services on July 6. Then the flooding began. Starting Friday, the church staff spent 18 hours working on relief efforts. The building, just a few blocks from the Guadalupe River, served as a reunification center in the morning and as a shelter later in the day on Saturday. Then everyone learned that one of their own congregants had died in the flood. They scrapped all the readings, music, and the sermon. Instead, they put together a Sunday service that incorporated church members who volunteered to perform music they felt would be of comfort to their community. Garcia rewrote his whole sermon, focusing on the call to do what is right no matter what and to respond with hope and action. 'The amount of grief was something I had never experienced before,' said Garcia, the church's senior pastor. With at least 150 people missing and 120 people dead, including at least 27 children and counselors at a summer camp, from the flooding in Central Texas, people in Kerr County and across the country have been feeling sadness, anger and grief from the losses. Many people are turning to Garcia and other religious leaders to ask for guidance in the face of the devastation. What can they do with these feelings? When tragedy strikes, the messiness of pain, anger, sadness and fear of those experiencing loss don't need to be cleaned up quickly, said Rev. Shannon Johnson Kershner, senior pastor at Central Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, Georgia. 'God is not scared of all of those feelings,' Kershner said. 'I think anger is faithful. Doubt is faithful. All of that is faithful because it means that you actually care.' For the people not directly affected by the flood but struggling themselves, that is natural and human, too, said the Very Rev. Sarah Hurlbert, dean of the Cathedral of All Souls, an Episcopal church in Asheville, North Carolina. The cathedral was inundated and extensively damaged by floodwaters from Hurricane Helene last September. Maybe the news reports and images trigger your feelings around a horrible experience at a camp, a personal loss of a child, or even just a loss of feeling safe and in control of the world, said Hurlbert. 'Sending your kids to a camp, what you expect is that they're going to have a great time and … come back with some bumps and bruises, but they had a good time doing it,' Hurlbert said. 'It's part of how we get disabused as human beings of the notion of control.' Bad things happen every day to people around the world, and you can't always stop and fully feel the pain because you have to keep going, said Rev. Janet Maykus, transitional pastor of the United Christian Church in Austin, Texas. But sometimes, she noted, an event hits a little closer to home. After witnessing Helene's destruction, Hurlbert has a sense of how words can fail to provide the comfort needed in the aftermath of tragedy. Last year, her congregation gathered in a church that was not theirs for the first time since the storm. As the people filed in and laid eyes on their community members –– many of whom they could not contact to make sure they were safe –– they just clung to one another, Hurlbert said. 'I don't even think I had a sermon that day,' she said. 'We just hugged and held each other and cried. And really and truly, that was the sermon.' It is human and natural to not want to say the wrong thing, Kershner said. Or you may so badly want the person you are with to not feel pain that you say anything you can to fix it for them. Often, that can drive you away from the people who are suffering. 'There's no right thing to say, but to move towards those places of hurt, rather than away from them, I think that's what we're called as people to do,' she said. If you can't take the pain away from someone experiencing loss, your presence can still be of some benefit, said Don Burda, president of the Jewish Community of the Hill Country in Kerrville, who lost his wife and two daughters to a drunk driver years ago. Burda isn't a rabbi, and his community has a congregation so tiny that he considers it a full house if 10 people show up. He is planning Shabbat services this Friday, where they will say the Mourner's Kaddish, as they do every week for lost loved ones, and he will share pictures of those who have died in the floods. 'Each of us reacts to tragedy differently,' Burda said via email. 'Some will be silent, some will scream to the heavens, some will try to find someone to blame. None of these things will bring their loved one back and no amount of good wishes and kind words will make a dent in what they're feeling, nor do anything to fill that huge chasm in their soul caused by their loved ones being ripped from them.' 'The kind words do one important thing: They let those who are left behind know that they are not alone. And that –– knowing they're not alone –– is perhaps the greatest gift we can give to those who mourn,' he said. Members of Garcia's congregation have begun to reach out for support for the loss or continued uncertainty about their loved ones. But so far, he has found that they are not looking for answers as to why it happened or what to do with their grief. Most of them just want to talk, to connect and to find someone who will listen, he said. 'They haven't really sat with their emotions. They're not really ready to really wrestle with the complexity of all that we experienced last weekend,' he said. An important place to start is to assure each other that feelings that come out of tragedy are OK, said Dr. Shelly Rambo, professor of theology at Boston University. What many people need in the aftermath is someone to sit beside them and hear their pain without being afraid of it or trying to tie it up and send it away, Rambo said. It isn't always natural for people to know how to stay in those difficult moments and allow others to grieve, she said. It takes intention to learn how to say, 'I am so sorry,' and then just sit there and say nothing else, Rambo added. You might hold the person if they want it, but you don't always have to. The important thing is that you are communicating to the person, 'I am here. I will be here for the long haul of this grieving. You have a safe place to put these feelings down,' she said. With the assurance of God's presence, or a call to the community to gather, or the promise of a listening ear, many religious leaders stressed the importance of those hurting not feeling alone. 'When we are just on our own, it can feel very daunting, very hopeless, very overwhelming,' Garcia said. 'But when we mourn and grieve together with other people that we can trust … then that allows for a kind of transformation in the community, a sense of love that is tangible.' In the 18 years Maykus worked as a hospital and hospice chaplain, she found that losing a loved one often upended a person's entire reality. She thinks of lives as a great web of all the communities you exist in and the people you love. When you lose someone, a critical chord is snapped and everything is unsteady for a time, she said. The web will never be the same again, but as you mourn and move forward, you will weave a new version, Maykus said. Having people by your side and supporting you in your grief helps hold the web in place while you work to rebuild your reality, she said. 'Your existence is now completely different, and everyone is walking around you like everything's the same and it's not,' Maykus said. 'Just knowing there's someone there, it's kind of a grounding thing.' It is important to allow others to support you when you are struggling and to show up when others suffer loss –– however you can do that, Maykus said. 'Some of us are really good at sitting in silence with someone, some of us are really good at listening, some of us have great things to say, and some of us don't have any of those things,' she said. Can you bring food? Mow the lawn? Clean the refrigerator? These things may not feel as important as the conversations, but they are, Maykus said. The presence and help in keeping life going sends a profound message, she said. 'It's saying to that person, 'You are a person. You are alive. You are here. We care about you,'' she said. The truth is that religious leaders are dealing with the grief and pain, too. Coming together as a community gives Kershner a place to hold her faith and hope when she is having trouble, just as she holds it for the people in the pews when they are suffering, she said. 'Sometimes we have to borrow faith from each other,' Kershner said. 'We don't go through any of this by ourselves.'
