| Attorneys for George Floyd's family refute claims he died from drug overdose: 'America saw what happened' Posted: 11 Sep 2020 01:41 PM PDT  Attorneys for George Floyd's family on Friday refuted defense claims that Floyd died of complications stemming from a drug overdose while in the custody of Minneapolis police officers in May.
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| Wildfires closing in on Portland suburbs force massive evacuations Posted: 11 Sep 2020 10:47 AM PDT  Dozens of wildfires in Oregon have forced the evacuation of 500,000-plus residents, prompting Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler to declare a state of emergency.
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| Trump Nevada rally: President says he is ‘probably entitled’ to more than two terms Posted: 13 Sep 2020 02:57 AM PDT  Crowd of several thousand – mostly maskless – people gathered in Minden for event
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| Pompeo says U.S. 'deeply concerned' over Turkey actions in east Med Posted: 12 Sep 2020 12:40 PM PDT  The United States remains "deeply concerned" about Turkey's actions in the eastern Mediterranean, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Saturday, urging a diplomatic end to a simmering crisis over offshore natural resources. Tensions in the eastern Mediterranean have risen over claims and counter claims pitting Turkey against Greece and Cyprus to maritime areas thought to be rich in natural gas. "Countries in the region need to resolve disagreements including on security and energy resource and maritime issues diplomatically and peacefully," Pompeo said in a fleeting trip to Cyprus on Saturday night, where he met with President Nicos Anastasiades.
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| Oregon's fire marshal resigned as wildfires rage near Portland and the state prepares for a 'mass fatality incident' Posted: 13 Sep 2020 07:14 AM PDT  A source told Oregon Live that the head of the Oregon State Police had "lost confidence" in Marshal Jim Walker's ability to lead through the crisis.
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| Dakotas lead US in virus growth as both reject mask rules Posted: 12 Sep 2020 07:41 AM PDT  Coronavirus infections in the Dakotas are growing faster than anywhere else in the nation, fueling impassioned debates over masks and personal freedom after months in which the two states avoided the worst of the pandemic. The argument over masks raged this week in Brookings, South Dakota, as the city council considered requiring face coverings in businesses. The city was forced to move its meeting to a local arena to accommodate intense interest, with many citizens speaking against it, before the mask requirement ultimately passed.
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| Children transmit the coronavirus, Utah study suggests, but don't get sick themselves Posted: 11 Sep 2020 12:27 PM PDT  The new findings could help shape the debate about how to reopen schools safely as the coronavirus continues to sicken thousands and kill hundreds daily.
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| Bloomberg to spend 'nine figures' in Florida, allowing Biden campaign to focus resources in other swing states Posted: 13 Sep 2020 05:31 AM PDT  Billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has set his sights on Florida as he attempts to help push the Democratic presidential nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden, into the Oval Office, The Washington Post reports.Bloomberg plans to spend at least $100 million campaigning for Biden in Florida, though his advisers refused to say if the total dollar figure would actually be higher, acknowledging only that it's a "nine figure" plan.Democratic strategists have been waiting to see how Bloomberg, who spent more than $1 billion of his own money on a failed bid for the White House earlier this year, would put his vast wealth to use this election cycle, and, for now at least, the Sunshine State is the beneficiary, with most of the money going toward television and digital ads in both English and Spanish. Bloomberg's adviser Kevin Stacey said the billionaire believes investing in Florida will allow the Biden campaign and other outside Democratic groups — who have generally shied away from advertising in Florida because it's too expensive, the Post notes — to spend in other states, especially Pennsylvania.Bloomberg is also reportedly hoping to encourage early voting in the state, which begins Sept. 24, so that a potential Biden win could be called soon after polls close since Florida reports early ballots shortly after voting ends. In that case, there would theoretically be less confusion among the public over who won not jut Florida, but the election overall. Winning Florida would go a long a way for Biden, the Post reports. If he does, he could likely win the presidency by retaining every state Hillary Clinton won in 2016 and win just one other toss up state among Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina.Biden is holding on to a lead in Florida, but some polls indicate it's shrinking as he struggles to win over Latino voters in the state. Read more at The Washington Post.More stories from theweek.com The true Election Day nightmare scenario The epistemic crisis of political polling Are the troops turning on Trump?
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| Turkish vessel leaves contested waters in eastern Med: report Posted: 13 Sep 2020 02:15 AM PDT  The Turkish research ship at the centre of a row between Greece and Turkey over gas exploration in the eastern Mediterranean returned to a port in southern Turkey, local media reported Sunday.
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| The Oregon wildfires are 'knocking on the doorstep' of Portland, authorities warn Posted: 12 Sep 2020 08:05 AM PDT  Areas surrounding the city have already been evacuated, and a state of emergency was declared for Portland on Thursday.
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| Japan PM Abe plan for land-attack counterpunch could mark major military shift for Japan Posted: 11 Sep 2020 11:31 AM PDT  Months before he announced his resignation, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe set in motion a policy change that could for the first time allow Japan's military to plan for strikes on land targets in China and other parts of Asia.
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| The US Postal Service has reportedly used outdated systems for years that left the agency vulnerable to hackers and a potential $1 billion loss Posted: 11 Sep 2020 12:34 PM PDT  An audit of the USPS found flaws "that increase the risk of disclosure of sensitive information and potential impact to business operations."
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| 'Finally over': DNA brings arrest in teen's 1984 rape, death Posted: 11 Sep 2020 12:49 PM PDT |
| Californian residents defying evacuation orders despite deadly fires sweeping state Posted: 12 Sep 2020 10:23 AM PDT  'I don't feel it's going to come this way'
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| Soldier Awarded Medal of Honor on Anniversary of 9/11 Attacks That Inspired Him to Fight Posted: 11 Sep 2020 02:00 PM PDT  Sgt. Maj. Thomas "Patrick" Payne is the first living member of Delta Force to receive the nation's highest award for valor.
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| Colombia protests against police brutality leave at least 10 dead Posted: 11 Sep 2020 10:31 AM PDT  * Unrest sparked by police killing of lawyer in Bogotá * Disturbances spread to Medellín, Cali and ManizalesAt least 10 people have been left dead in cities across Colombia after a second night of protests against police brutality. The unrest was sparked by the killing on Tuesday night in Bogotá of an unarmed lawyer, Javier Ordóñez, by police who pinned him down and repeatedly shocked him with a Taser for over two minutes as he begged "please, no more".Footage of the incident swiftly went viral.Two nights of demonstrations then racked the capital, with 17 police kiosks torched on Wednesday night. Police beat protesters and fired teargas and "less-lethal" baton rounds. Some demonstrators launched rocks towards the police, which officers in riot gear returned. The government supplied the figure of 10 dead but no details of where, when and how they died. A total of 209 civilians were reported injured along with 194 police.Most of the unrest took place in Bogotá, though on Thursday night it spread to Medellín, Cali and Manizales – all cities in the country's western interior.The Bogotá newspaper El Espectador on Friday reported that authorities had determined that Ordóñez died from a blow to his head while in custody. He had been detained for drinking alcohol in public, which can lead to a fine in the capital.In La Soledad, a middle-class neighbourhood in the city, protesters gathered on Thursday evening in front of the remains of a police kiosk that had been torched the night before, as heavily armoured riot police stared them down. While the demonstrators were largely peaceful – with people holding signs and playing drums – when one woman approached the police barricade, officers responded with flash-bangs and teargas."Cerdos asesinos", or "murderer pigs", was the cry from protesters as they ran for cover."We're sick of them," said Laura, a government employee who did not give her full name. "We're sick of them killing us with impunity, of demanding bribes when we walk down the street, of acting like they own us."Bogotá's mayor, Claudia López, on Friday morning tweeted that police had not been authorized to fire on protesters, saying that officers had "disobeyed direct instructions".In the wake of López's revelations, analysts worried about a rogue police force. "Evidently there is confusion over the role of the police and who is in charge of the police," said Sergio Guzmán, a Bogotá-based political risk analyst. "And that doesn't bode well for restoring public safety or trust in the police."Colombia's defence minister on Friday apologised on behalf of the police for the killing of Ordóñez, though it is unlikely to quell wider discontent that first appeared late last year in a spate of protests, which were interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic."This is a consequence of systematic abuse of power, not only in the police but across the board," said Mafe Carrascal, an activist who has been protesting this week. "People are sick of the fact that if the Covid-19 doesn't kill them, the government will."President Ivan Duque said all the deaths in the protests would be investigated swiftly and no abuse by security forces would be tolerated.
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| What is the path of Tropical Storm Sally? It could hit the U.S. coast as a hurricane Posted: 12 Sep 2020 01:08 PM PDT  The National Hurricane Center has issued an alert for residents of the northern Gulf Coast given the projected path of Tropical Storm Sally, which formed Saturday afternoon about 35 miles southeast of Naples, Florida.
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| Professor who used racial slur in class is put on leave Posted: 12 Sep 2020 12:34 PM PDT  "I want to thank students for using their voices to share the troubling and disturbing language that was used by your professor in class," a university official wrote to students.
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| Pressure mounts on foreign media in China after evacuation of Australian reporters Posted: 11 Sep 2020 10:22 PM PDT  Michael Smith, a reporter for an Australian newspaper, was jolted from his sleep in his Shanghai apartment last week by six state intelligence officers who questioned him under a bright spotlight. Almost 800 miles away Beijing, meanwhile, as drinks flowed in the middle of a party at his flat, Bill Birtles, correspondent for Australia's state broadcaster, received an almost identical visit. The message from authorities was the same: pack your bags. Details were sketchy but Mr Smith and Mr Birtles were now 'persons of interest' in a case and were subject to an exit ban. The reality is more nuanced. The Australian pair had become the latest journalists to be swept up in the growing animosity between China and the West – casualties of a spiralling row that is now rapidly closing our window into a rising global superpower. A collapse in cordial relations has triggered expulsions of a group of US journalists too and sewed a culture of fear among the shrinking number of foreign reporters left inside. Recalling his interrogation, Mr Smith wrote: "I wondered if ... I was about to be 'disappeared' to one of China's notorious black jails."
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| Undecided Michigan voters weigh President Trump vs. Joe Biden Posted: 11 Sep 2020 04:52 PM PDT  Michigan voters discuss issues that could sway their vote with Martha MacCallum on 'The Story.'
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| Greece announces major arms purchase as Turkey tension rises Posted: 12 Sep 2020 01:09 PM PDT  Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Saturday announced a "robust" arms purchase programme and an overhaul of the country's military amid rising tension with Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean.
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| Dakotas become fastest-growing pandemic hotspot as mask debates rage on Posted: 12 Sep 2020 12:41 PM PDT  States become pandemic hotspots as debates over masks rage on
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| Fauci says Americans need to 'hunker down and get through this fall and winter,' or else play a game of whack-a-mole with the COVID-19 virus Posted: 11 Sep 2020 10:14 AM PDT  The US did not shut down nearly as much as the European Union, according to indicators like grocery visits, park visits, and workplace attendance.
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| Prosecutor looking into the origins of Russia probe resigns Posted: 11 Sep 2020 12:54 PM PDT  A federal prosecutor who was helping lead the investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe has resigned from the Justice Department, a spokesman said Friday. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office in Connecticut confirmed Dannehy's departure, which was first reported by The Hartford Courant, but declined to comment further.
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| Gazans living on Emirates-funded estate rue normalisation deal with Israel Posted: 13 Sep 2020 03:20 AM PDT |
| Wildfires are striking closer and closer to cities. We know how this will end Posted: 12 Sep 2020 03:22 AM PDT  The climate crisis is a factor, but so are efforts to fight fires - which have had the opposite effect We call them wildfires, but that might not be the right word any more.In recent days, at least five whole towns have been destroyed by fire in Oregon. So has much of Malden, Washington, and swathes of Big Creek and Berry Creek, both in California.To many people this will seem like deja vu. In 2018, another town was also wiped off the map, in the most dramatic recent example of this horrible genre. Paradise, California, was much larger, home to 27,000, and it was destroyed in just a few hours. Eighty-five people were killed.The places now being ravaged are not forests or chaparral located somewhere out there, in the wilds. Instead the current wildfires demonstrate how easy it has become for fires to invade our suburbs and towns, with their 7-11s, gas stations and doctors' offices, and lay them to waste. Where will this end? The prospects are disturbing.To understand how we got here, it is important to know that we have come to expect control over such conflagrations relatively recently. Prior to European settlement in the West, fire flowed freely, sparked by lightning or intentionally by Native Americans to encourage the growth of favored plants or clear areas for easier hunting. As much as 4.5m acres of California's 105m acres might burn every year. These low-intensity fires did not kill large trees, and some plants even came to depend on fire to regenerate themselves. A shrub called chamise appears to encourage fire by releasing combustible gases in the presence of flames.The shift to a different approach occurred after several instances in which wildfires became appalling urban fires. In October 1871, railway workers sparked a brush fire in northern Wisconsin, which swept into the city of Peshtigo and killed 1,500 people there and elsewhere across a gargantuan footprint of 1.2 million acres. And in the great fires of 1910, fires burning across several Western states killed hundreds and razed a number of towns. People escaped by train as the fires virtually licked at their heels.After this the US sought to suppress all wildfires before they could gain a foothold. In the 1930s, the US Forest Service instituted its so-called 10am policy, according to which fires had to be stamped out by that time the next day. Later came the "10-acre policy", dictating that fires should not be permitted to grow beyond that size. Fire was the enemy, an idea catalyzed by wartime imagery of firebombed cities such as Dresden, Hamburg and Tokyo. Smokey Bear helped to reinforce it, too.This strategy had a pronounced effect – though not necessarily in ways that were intended. Fire activity decreased, it is true, but with scouring flames removed from the environment, forests grew far denser and brushier than they had been before. In one Arizona forest, 20 trees per acre became 800 trees per acre. These forests can and will burn more severely. In addition the climate crisis is rendering vegetation ever drier, and by 2050 up to three times more acreage in Western forests will burn as a result of global warming. Meanwhile 60m homes can now be found in or close to high-risk areas where wildfires have previously burned.Cue urban fires. The fire that obliterated Paradise on the morning of November 8, 2018 was sparked in a rural river canyon several miles to the east of town. As we describe in our new book, Fire in Paradise: An American Tragedy, it approached the community at speeds previously thought impossible, chewing through almost 400 American football fields' worth of vegetation per minute. It hit like a hurricane. Strikingly, many of the hundreds of thousands of trees in the town were spared – it was the homes that became matches setting fire to the next. The fire was so quick, so hot, that people died seeking shelter under their cars, in the driveways of their homes while holding a hose, or huddled in their bathtub.Lincoln Bramwell, the chief historian of the US Forest Service, told us that the story of Paradise "reads like these accounts from the late 19th century", of fires like Peshtigo, back before we had sought to bring wildfire under our command. "I see us going back to the future," he added. "Going back to a time when fire was not under our control."As Americans in California, Washington and Oregon are discovering, wildfires do not only impact the wilderness. Towns and suburbs are not inviolate. With so many of our Western paradises now under threat, experts are begging us to bring controlled fire back into the ecosystem in the form of prescribed burns. To ensure buildings meet stringent fire codes. And to prepare city evacuation plans so we do not repeat the gridlock in which many of those escaping Paradise were trapped. We must, it almost goes without saying, get a handle on the climate crisis.Witnessing the urban fire in Paradise, some of those we interviewed for our book no longer thought it fanciful that a fire that could maraud into the very heart of a major city, such as Los Angeles, San Diego or the communities of the San Francisco Bay.University of California scientist Faith Kearns recounted to us that she lives in the Berkeley flatlands, in a part of the Bay that is as thoroughly urbanized as can be. Suddenly she was considering the prospect that a fire might one day reach her home."My neighborhood is full of Victorians. My neighbor's window is about six feet away from my own…" she said, pausing in thought. "I think we'll see it. I think we'll see it." * Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano are the authors of Fire in Paradise: An American Tragedy, available from WW Norton. Read an excerpt here
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| Australian optometrist suspended for altering prescriptions Posted: 13 Sep 2020 03:58 AM PDT  The Australian optometrist is found to have altered over 400 prescriptions, undermining a colleague.
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| The sole survivor of the Kenosha protest shootings says he might not be alive today if he hadn't brought his own medic kit Posted: 11 Sep 2020 10:40 AM PDT  Gaige Grosskreutz is the sole survivor among three men who were shot during a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on August 25.
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| Philippines deports US Marine pardoned for transgender killing Posted: 12 Sep 2020 09:38 PM PDT  A US marine convicted of killing a transgender woman in the Philippines was deported on Sunday after being pardoned by President Rodrigo Duterte.
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| Nine protesters confronted by gun-toting couple backed by Trump issued trespassing citations Posted: 12 Sep 2020 12:52 PM PDT  'I had a gun waved in my face by them but trespassing is what matters?' protester asks
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| Chinese-American students fire back at Republican Senate nominee's 'disrespectful' claim that they're pawns in a vast communist plot Posted: 13 Sep 2020 05:20 AM PDT  "Just because I'm Chinese-American, is he saying that it makes me dangerous because of that connection to China," one student asked Insider.
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| Trump supporters are freaking out and "baffled" as his campaign shows signs of weakness: report Posted: 13 Sep 2020 05:19 AM PDT  "There is actually a lot of frustration out there with the Trump campaign being dark"
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| U.S. 'deeply concerned' about Hong Kong activists held in China: Pompeo Posted: 11 Sep 2020 03:30 PM PDT  U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday Washington is deeply concerned about 12 Hong Kong democracy activists being held in China, saying they have been denied access to lawyers and local authorities have not provided information on their welfare or the charges against them. The United States questions the Hong Kong leadership's commitments to protecting citizens' rights, Pompeo said in a statement. The activists were arrested about two weeks ago off the coast of Hong Kong, according to the statement.
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| Tropical depression nears south Florida, set to intensify Posted: 11 Sep 2020 03:41 PM PDT |
| California governor signs bill giving prisoners battling wildfires a shot at becoming pro firefighters Posted: 11 Sep 2020 09:26 PM PDT  Gov. Gavin Newsom passed a bill that will give prisoners battling California's massive wildfires a chance to become firefighters after their release.
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| Osama bin Laden's niece says she will 'never forget' what happened on 9/11 Posted: 12 Sep 2020 12:31 PM PDT  Noor bin Ladin tweeted a statement on September 11 saying she wll "never forget" the terror attacks that took place 19 years ago.
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| Israel is about to enter a second nationwide lockdown after its COVID-19 cases saw a major surge since reopening in May Posted: 12 Sep 2020 10:45 AM PDT  Israel is reportedly the first nation to impose a second full, nationwide shutdown as it grapples with 145,000 cases and 1,100 reported deaths.
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| New Yahoo News/YouGov poll: Trump slips 10 points behind Biden amid reports he misled U.S. about COVID-19 and disparaged U.S. soldiers Posted: 11 Sep 2020 04:37 PM PDT  President Trump has fallen further behind Joe Biden following bombshell reports that the president knowingly misled Americans about the dangers of COVID-19 and privately disparaged dead U.S. soldiers as "suckers" and "losers," according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll.
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| Colorado sues USPS and Postmaster General for potentially misleading voters Posted: 12 Sep 2020 01:22 PM PDT  Postmaster general Louis DeJoy, a Trump supporter, already under fire for cost-cutting measures that slowed mail processing
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