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A sombre moment of silence marked the end of the two-week search for survivors of a Florida condominium collapse, as rescue workers stood at solemn attention and clergy members hugged a line of local officials while many of them sobbed.

The painstaking search for survivors shifted to a recovery effort at midnight Wednesday after authorities said they had come to the agonising conclusion that there was "no chance of life" in the rubble of the Champlain Towers South condo building in Surfside.

"We have all asked God for a miracle, so the decision to transition from rescue to recovery is an extremely difficult one," Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said at a news conference.

The death toll stood at 54 late on Wednesday. Officials said 86 people were unaccounted for, although detectives were still working to verify that each of those listed as missing was actually in the building when it collapsed.

Rescuers had spent two weeks digging through the rubble, searching in vain for any sign of life, Levine Cava said.

"They've used every possible strategy, and every possible technology available to them to find people in the rubble," she said.

Hours before the formal transition from rescue to recovery mission, those emergency workers joined local officials, rabbis and chaplains in a moment of silence.

An accordion player unseen on a nearby tennis court played Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, which was followed by a piccolo playing The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Firefighters from Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, the federal government and elsewhere were also present.

On a tall nearby fence, families and well-wishers had posted photos of the victims, supportive messages and flowers. Firefighters hung a banner atop the fence that read "Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Mourns With You."

Officials vowed to continue the recovery efforts until they find the remains of every one of the missing.

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Chief Alan Cominsky says he expects the recovery effort will take several more weeks.

Hope of finding survivors was briefly rekindled after workers demolished the remainder of the building, allowing rescuers access to new areas of debris.

Some of those voids did exist, mostly in the basement and the parking garage, but no survivors emerged. Instead, teams recovered more than a dozen additional victims. Because the building fell in the early morning hours, many were found dead in their beds.

No one has been pulled out alive since the first hours after the 12-storey building fell on June 24.

Twice during the search operation, rescuers had to suspend the mission because of the instability of the remaining part of the condominium building and the preparation for demolition.

After initially hoping for miraculous rescues, families had slowly braced themselves for the news that their relatives did not survive.

"For some, what they're telling us, it's almost a sense of relief when they already know (that someone has died) and they can just start to put an end to that chapter and start to move on," said Miami-Dade firefighter and paramedic Maggie Castro, who has updated families daily.

Authorities are launching a grand jury investigation into the collapse and at least six lawsuits have been filed by Champlain Towers families.

© RAW 2021

A penalty rebound converted by Harry Kane gave England a deserved 2-1 win over Denmark in their Euro 2020 semi-final to set up a home showpiece against Italy on Sunday.

Kane saw his 104th minute penalty - controversially not overturned by video review despite Raheem Sterling going down under minimal contact from Joakim Maehle - saved by Kasper Schmeichel but made no mistake with his second attempt.

England ended a 55-year wait to reach a major final and one more win will end the same drought since their one and only trophy, the 1966 World Cup - also lifted at Wembley.

Denmark's fairytale run since the collapse of Christen Eriksen with cardiac arrest in their opening game ended despite Mikkel Damsgaard's brilliant free kick giving them a 30th minute lead.

But Simon Kjaer's own goal levelled matters before the break and with England dominant, the winner was a matter of time in coming even if Denmark survived the initial 90 minutes.

The vast majority of the 65,000 crowd inside Wembley - the biggest attendance at a UK sporting event since the coronavirus pandemic began - could not hide their delight at seeing England continue their progress which was fully merited despite the disputed nature of the winning goal.

The influential Sterling cut in from the right and tumbled but was well on the way to the ground even before he was grazed by Maehle.

Contact, however slight, was enough to convince the review the decision was not clearly mistaken and Kane took full advantage for his fourth goal of the tournament.

Sterling insisted he "touched my leg so it was a clear penalty."

"It was a top performance - we had to dig in deep after the first goal we conceded in the tournament, and we regrouped well and showed a good team spirit to come back and win the game," Sterling added.

"It was difficult going behind but we knew we had to stay patient - we knew with the legs we've got, the aggressiveness and the power we have in the team, it would be a matter of time before we broke them down."

Denmark, playing on a wave of emotion since Eriksen's collapse, started slowy but gradually turned matters. Young talent Damsgaard had already curled wide before finding the net with a beautiful free-kick over the wall.

It was England's first goal conceded in the tournament and in a total of 691 minutes - though by then keeper Jordan Pickford had narrowly broken England's personal clean sheet record by six minutes of World Cup winning goalie Gordon Banks, who didn't concede for 720 minutes in May-July 1966.

Sterling was denied an equaliser by a point-blank Schmeichel save but his presence awaiting Bukayo Saka's cross forced Kjaer into a 39th minute own goal.

It was the 11th own goal of the tournament with only nine having been recorded combined at every previous edition since 1960.

Denmark's tiring legs conceded possession and territory to England, who did however struggle to create.

Defender Harry Maguire's header was superbly clawed out by Schmeichel - whose father Peter was a Denmark hero in their Euro title win of 1992 - and extra-time loomed.

Schmeichel denied captain Kane and substitute Jack Grealish while Sterling fired over from the edge of the box.

Eventually the pressure told though and England's Wembley exploded with equal measure of joy and relief.

© AP 2021

Haitian President Jovenel Moise, a former banana producer and political neophyte who ruled Haiti for more than four years as the country grew increasingly unstable under his watch, has been killed at age 53.

Moise was assassinated at his private home on Wednesday during "a highly co-ordinated attack by a highly trained and heavily armed group", interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph said. His wife, Martine, was injured in the attack.

"Haiti has lost a true statesman," Joseph said. "We will ensure that those responsible for this heinous act are swiftly brought to justice."

A businessman from northern Haiti, Moise had no political experience before being hand-picked by former president Michel Martelly as the ruling Tet Kale party's candidate in 2015 elections.

The soft-spoken Moise seemed like an unlikely politician, especially when compared with the bombastic Martelly, a musician and entertainer. While not poor, he was also far from elite. His father was a small-time farmer and businessman. His mother helped sell their crops and worked as a seamstress.

"I come from the countryside; I'm not from Port-au-Prince," he noted pointedly while on a visit to South Florida to meet the Haitian diaspora at the start of his presidential bid.

Campaigning under the nickname "Banana Man", he promoted achievements that included launching a banana-exporting joint venture with help from a $US6 million loan.

Moise won the 2015 presidential vote, but the results were thrown out following allegations of fraud, leading to a period of political limbo. Moise won the November 2016 elections, although voter turnout was only 21 per cent.

He took office in February 2017, pledging to strengthen institutions, fight corruption and bring more investments and jobs to the Western hemisphere's poorest nation.

He spoke often about wanting to improve the lot of Haiti's many small and subsistence farmers by increasing their access to water and other infrastructure.

"We have a lot of empty land, rivers that go straight to the sea. We have sun, and the people," he said at one point. "If you put these four items together - the land, the rivers, the people and the sun - you will have a rich country. This is why I am in politics."

But his administration was soon plagued by massive protests, and critics accused him of growing increasingly authoritarian.

At the time of his assassination, Moise had been ruling by decree for more than a year after parliament was dissolved and MPs failed to organise legislative elections. He was widely criticised for approving decrees, including one that limited the powers of a court that audits government contracts and another that created an intelligence agency that answered only to the president.

Political and economic instability had deepened in recent months, with widespread protests paralysing the country of more than 11 million people. Gangs in the capital of Port-au-Prince grew more powerful, driving away thousands as gangs set fire to their homes and ransacked them.

Moise is survived by his wife and three children.

© AP 2021