GAZIANTEP, Turkey (AP) — With hope fading to find survivors, stretched rescue teams toiled through the night in Turkey and Syria, searching for signs of life in the rubble of thousands of buildings toppled by a catastrophic earthquake. The death toll rose Wednesday to more than 11,000 in the deadliest quake worldwide in more than a decade.

Amid calls for the government to send more help to the disaster zone, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was to travel to town of Pazarcik, the epicenter of the quake, and to the worst-hit province of Hatay on Wednesday.

Turkey now has some 60,000 aid personnel in the quake-hit zone, but with the devastation so widespread many are still waiting for help.

Nearly two days after the magnitude 7.8 quake struck southeastern Turkey and northern Syria, rescuers pulled a 3-year-old boy, Arif Kaan, from beneath the rubble of a collapsed apartment building in Kahramanmaras, a city not far from the epicenter.

With the boy’s lower body trapped under slabs of concrete and twisted rebar, emergency crews lay a blanket over his torso to protect him from below-freezing temperatures as they carefully cut the debris away from him, mindful of the possibility of triggering another collapse.

The boy’s father, Ertugrul Kisi, who himself had been rescued earlier, sobbed as his son was pulled free and loaded into an ambulance.

“For now, the name of hope in Kahramanmaras is Arif Kaan,” a Turkish television reporter proclaimed as the dramatic rescue was broadcast to the country.

A few hours later, rescuers pulled 10-year-old Betul Edis from the rubble of her home in the city of Adiyaman. Amid applause from onlookers, her grandfather kissed her and spoke softly to her as she was loaded on an ambulance.

But such stories were few more than two days after Monday’s pre-dawn earthquake, which hit a huge area and brought down thousands of buildings, with frigid temperatures and ongoing aftershocks complicating rescue efforts.

Search teams from more than two dozen countries joined the Turkish emergency personnel, and aid pledges poured in.

But with devastation spread multiple several cities and towns — some isolated by Syria’s ongoing conflict — voices crying from within mounds of rubble fell silent, and despair grew from those still waiting for help.

In the Turkish city of Malatya, bodies were placed side by side on the ground, covered in blankets, while rescuers waited for funeral vehicles to pick them up, according to former journalist Ozel Pikal who saw eight bodies pulled from the ruins of building.

Pikal, who took part in the rescue efforts, said he believes at least some of the victims may have frozen to death as temperatures dipped to minus 6 degrees Celsius (21 Fahrenheit).

“Today isn’t a pleasant day, because as of today there is no hope left in Malatya,” Pikal told the AP by telephone. “No one is coming out alive from the rubble.”

Pikal said a hotel building collapsed in the city, and more than a hundred people may be trapped.

There was a shortage of rescuers in the area he was in, and the cold hampered rescue efforts by volunteers and government teams, he said. Road closures and damage in the region have also impeded mobility and access.

“Our hands cannot pick up anything because of the cold,” said Pikal. “Work machines are needed.”

In Syria, the shaking toppled thousands of buildings and heaped more misery on a region wracked by the country’s 12-year civil war and refugee crisis.

On Monday afternoon in a northwestern Syrian town, residents found a crying newborn still connected by the umbilical cord to her deceased mother. The baby was the only member of her family to survive a building collapse in the small town of Jinderis, relatives told The Associated Press.

Turkey is home to millions of refugees from the war. The affected area in Syria is divided between government-controlled territory and the country’s last opposition-held enclave, where millions rely on humanitarian aid.

As many as 23 million people could be affected in the quake-hit region, according to Adelheid Marschang, a senior emergencies officer with the World Health Organization, who called it a “crisis on top of multiple crises.”

Many survivors in Turkey have had to sleep in cars, outside or in government shelters.

“We don’t have a tent, we don’t have a heating stove, we don’t have anything. Our children are in bad shape. We are all getting wet under the rain and our kids are out in the cold,” Aysan Kurt, 27, told the AP. “We did not die from hunger or the earthquake, but we will die freezing from the cold.”

Erdogan said 13 million of the country’s 85 million people were affected, and he declared a state of emergency in 10 provinces. More than 8,000 people have been pulled from the debris in Turkey, and some 380,000 have taken refuge in government shelters or hotels, authorities said.

Turkey’s disaster management agency said the country’s death toll had risen to 7,108, bringing the overall total to 9,638, including fatalities reported in neighboring Syria, since Monday’s earthquake and multiple aftershocks. Another 40,910 people have been injured.

The death toll in government-held areas of Syria has climbed to 1,250, with 2,054 injured, according to the Health Ministry. At least 1,280 people have died in the rebel-held northwest, according to volunteer first responders known as the White Helmets, with more than 2,600 injured.

In Syria, aid efforts have been hampered by the ongoing war and the isolation of the rebel-held region along the border, which is surrounded by Russia-backed government forces. Syria itself is an international pariah under Western sanctions linked to the war.

The United Nations said it was “exploring all avenues” to get supplies to the rebel-held northwest.

The region sits on top of major fault lines and is frequently shaken by earthquakes. Some 18,000 were killed in similarly powerful earthquakes that hit northwest Turkey in 1999.

MIAMI (NewsNation) — A 31-year-old Miami real estate influencer was charged with fraudulently obtaining COVID-19 relief loans and grants under the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Relief Program, according to the Department of Justice.

Daniela Rendon was accused of stealing $381,000 from the federal government through COVID-19 relief funds originally intended for struggling businesses, the Miami Herald reported.

The DOJ said that “Rendon submitted fraudulent applications seeking COVID-19 relief funds from the Small Business Administration and PPP,” allegedly falsifying her revenue and payroll as well as submitting false IRS tax forms.

Rendon was charged with seven counts of wire fraud, two counts of money laundering and one count of aggravated identity theft, and faces up to 20 years in federal prison if she is convicted, according to the DOJ.

The funds were allegedly used to “lease a 2021 Bentley Bentayga, rent a luxury Biscayne Bay apartment, pay for cosmetic dermatology procedures and refinish her designer shoes,” the DOJ said. The large purchases caught the attention of the federal government.

The Miami Herald said that Rendon’s defense attorney Sam Rabin was able to overcome the prosecution’s effort on Friday to detain her, in which Magistrate Judge Alicia Otazo-Reyes granted Rendon a $150,000 bond.

Rendon is expected back in court on Thursday for her arraignment.

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives sought to deliver on a campaign promise to their most hardline supporters on Tuesday, with a public hearing on a laptop computer said to belong to Democratic President Joe Biden’s businessman son, Hunter.

Even before the proceedings began, the White House denounced the hearing as “a bizarre political stunt” motivated by denial of Biden’s 2020 election victory over Republican former President Donald Trump. Trump continues to claim falsely that his defeat was the result of fraud.

A day after Biden offered to work with Republicans on some of the nation’s toughest problems in his State of the Union address, the House Oversight Committee heard former Twitter executives testify under subpoena about the social media platform’s efforts to limit discussion of the laptop’s alleged contents two weeks ahead of the 2020 election.

Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell has denied in a statement any connection between his client and what he called the “so-called laptop,” including contents that Republicans “allege to be Mr. Biden’s personal data.”

The hearing marked the first public proceedings of an investigation into the Biden family’s business dealings led by committee Chairman James Comer, who has accused Hunter Biden of leveraging his father’s political influence to pursue lucrative international business deals.

“This appears to be the latest effort by the House Republican majority’s most extreme MAGA members to question and re-litigate the outcome of the 2020 election,” White House spokesperson Ian Sams said in a statement.

The proceedings focused on Twitter’s decision to temporarily block tweets about a New York Post article on the laptop, which the former Twitter executives said they mistakenly believed contained hacked material in violation of its policy.

Republicans described the decision as part of a conspiracy to suppress revelations about Hunter Biden and his father ahead of the 2020 election, saying it coincided with a letter by former intelligence officers describing the laptop as Russian disinformation.

“America witnessed a coordinated campaign by social media companies, mainstream news, and the intelligence community to suppress and de-legitimize the existence of Hunter Biden’s laptop and its contents,” Comer said.

Democrats on the committee dismissed Republican claims as a trivial pursuit about a topic that has captivated hardline conservative for more than two years.

“Silly does not even begin to capture this obsession,” said Representative Jamie Raskin, the committee’s top Democrat.

The former Twitter executives acknowledged that blocking the New York Post tweets was an error and said they reversed the decision within 24 hours.

Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s former chief legal officer, said the tweets of the New York Post article included images that looked like they might have been obtained through hacking.

“We had developed a policy intended to prevent Twitter from becoming a dumping ground for hacked materials. We applied this policy to the New York Post’s tweets and blocked links to articles,” Gadde said.

The former executives said Twitter’s policies were intended to mitigate content that could lead to political violence, such as what later occurred in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump’s supporters.

“I am here to tell you that doing nothing is not an option. If we continue to do nothing, violence is going to happen again,” said Anika Collier Navaroli, a former member of Twitter’s U.S. safety policy team.

The social platform has since been purchased by billionaire Elon Musk, who many Republicans view as a champion of free speech.

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Eight people, including children, were seriously injured and taken to hospital on Wednesday morning after a bus ran into a daycare center in the Montreal-area suburb of Laval, authorities said.

“We’re talking about serious injuries, some are critical,” an ambulance official told reporters in Laval, declining to give more information. Local news media reported five children were among those hospitalized.

The cause or circumstances around the crash or the children’s ages were not immediately clear, but the Canadian Broadcasting Corp reported that the bus driver had been taken into custody by police.

About 80 kids under the age of 5 attend that daycare facility, CBC said.

Quebec Premier Francois Legault expressed condolences to families after the incident. “It’s terrible what happened this morning in Laval … all my thoughts are with the children, with the parents and with the employees,” Legault said.

Laval is about 30 km (20 miles) northwest of Montreal in Quebec, Canada’s second most populous province.

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Five children were seriously injured and taken to hospital on Wednesday morning after a bus crashed into a daycare center in the city of Laval, just north of Montreal, Canadian media reported.

The cause or circumstances around the crash were not immediately clear, but the bus driver was taken into custody by Laval police, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp reported.

Details of the injuries or the children’s ages were not immediately available, but CBC said that about 80 kids under the age of five attend that daycare facility.

“It’s terrible what happened this morning in Laval … all my thoughts are with the children, with the parents and with the employees,” Quebec Premier Francois Legault said.

Laval is located about 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) northwest of Montreal in Quebec, Canada’s second most populated province.

Russia hit dozens of U.S. politicians and officials with sanctions on Wednesday in what it said was a retaliatory move for Washington’s support for Kyiv and a response to the West’s own unprecedented package of sanctions against Moscow.

Russia’s foreign ministry said it was permanently barring some 77 U.S. citizens from entering Russia, as it attacked Washington’s “hostile actions”.

The list is made up of 33 governors of U.S. states and a host of other mid-ranking state and federal officials.

The United States and its allies, including Britain and the European Union, have added hundreds of members of Russia’s political and business elites to their own sanctions lists since Moscow invaded Ukraine last February.

The West’s measures have frozen any assets of those named that are located in their jurisdictions and banned those people from entering their countries.

Global shares fell and the dollar was steady on Wednesday as the Federal Reserve’s mantra that interest rates will stay higher for longer overshadowed the notion that the U.S. central bank will soon pause its tightening cycle as the economy slows.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell provided fuel for both sides of the argument at the Economic Club of Washington on Tuesday, saying rates might need to move higher if the U.S. economy remained strong, but he reiterated “disinflation” is underway.

MSCI’s U.S.-centric index of stock performance in 47 countries (.MIWD00000PUS) shed 0.56% as stocks on Wall Street slipped. The dollar index rose 0.116% and Treasury yields moved higher.

Financial markets are being driven by excessive liquidity at a time when both bond and equity markets are expensive, said Steven Ricchiuto, U.S. chief economist at Mizuho Securities USA LLC in New York.

“People are beginning to realize these markets are expensive. I don’t think we’re going to be able to sustain a move significantly above 4,100,” Ricchiuto said, referring to the benchmark S&P 500 (.SPX) index.

“As people come to the realization that the Fed is going to be higher for longer and we don’t yet know what the higher is, even if they pause I still think the next move is a rate hike, not a rate cut,” he said.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) fell 0.58%, the S&P 500 (.SPX) lost 1.13% to around 4,120 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) dropped 1.73%.

Major bourses in Europe were mostly higher, with the pan-European STOXX 600 index (.STOXX) up 0.32%.

“The market is looking for a dovish message where it can almost regardless. Powell said effectively the terminal rate could be higher than the market expects, but the Nasdaq and S&P500 were up (on Tuesday),” said Ben Jones, director of macro research at Invesco.

Aggressive rate hikes by the Fed and other central banks last year to tame inflation hurt equities and boosted the dollar. But those trends have reversed this year on signs that inflation has started to slacken, raising hopes of rate cuts toward the end of 2023.

Futures are pricing in the Fed’s overnight lending rate to peak at 5.173% in July, about 25 basis points higher than last week, and that by December it will have declined to 4.852%, a jump of about 40 basis points since a week ago.

“At the moment (markets are) all about the Fed, but at some point it has to morph into being about growth and earnings growth as well,” said Jones.

U.S. Treasury yields held near one-month highs as investors adjusted for the likelihood that the Fed will hike rates further than previously expected, following the blockbuster U.S. jobs report for January.

The yield on 10-year Treasury notes rose 0.9 basis points to 3.683%, while those on two-year notes eased 0.6 basis points to 3.683%

The Treasury curve measuring the gap between yields on two- and 10-year Treasury notes , seen as a recession harbinger when the short end is higher than longer-dated securities, was inverted at -78.4 basis points.

In Europe, bonds continued to sell off following a sharp tumble the previous day after the European Central Bank said it would cut the interest rate it pays governments on deposits.

Two-year German yields , the most sensitive to any shifts in expectations for interest rates and inflation, rose by as much as 11 bps to 2.725% in early trading, their highest since Jan. 3.

Oil rose for a third straight day as an industry report pointed to a drop in U.S. crude inventories.

U.S. crude was 0.54% higher at $77.56 per barrel and Brent was at $84.01, up 0.38% on the day.

Spot gold added 0.1% to $1,876.52 an ounce.

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