Digital Alaska News

Stock Futures Inch Lower After Wednesday's Big Market Rally https://digitalalaskanews.com/stock-futures-inch-lower-after-wednesdays-big-market-rally/ Stock futures inched lower on Thursday morning after the Dow Jones Industrial Average staged a comeback off its lowest level for the year. Futures tied to the Dow Jones slipped 22 points, or 0.07%, while S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures shed 0.08% and 0.2%, respectively. The overnight moves came following a broad rally for stocks as the Bank of England said it would purchase bonds in an effort to help steady its financial markets and the cratering British pound. Sterling has stooped to record lows against the U.S. dollar in recent days. It marked a stark shift from the aggressive tightening campaign many global central banks have undertaken to cope with surging inflation. During regular trading on Wednesday, the Dow gained 548.75 points, or 1.88%, to 29,683.74, while the S&P 500 rose 1.97% to 3,719.04, after hitting a new bear market low on Tuesday. Both indexes snapped a six-day losing streak. The Nasdaq Composite was up 2.05%, closing at 11,051.64. As stocks rose and the BOE shared its bond-buying plan, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note dropped the most since 2020 after briefly topping 4%. “If the market had a negative sign in front of it today, and not a positive sign, it wouldn’t surprise me,” said Liz Ann Sonders, Charles Schwab’s chief investment strategist. “The market’s going to do what it does on any single given day. You can attempt to sort of point to what might have sat behind it, but that’s just a parlor game. A lot of it is the market got really oversold and buyers stepped in.” Wednesday’s rally put the major averages on pace to eke out small gains for the week, but they are still on track to cap off their worst month since June. The Nasdaq Composite is leading the monthly losses, down about 6.5%, while the Dow and S&P are on pace to close 5.8% and 5.9% lower, respectively. On a quarterly basis, the Nasdaq is on track to break a two-quarter losing streak, while the Dow is headed for its third consecutive quarterly loss for the first time since the third quarter of 2015. The S&P is on pace for its third negative quarter in a row for the first time since its six-quarter negative streak that ended the first quarter of 2009. Earnings continue Thursday with results from Nike, Bed Bath & Beyond and Micron Technology. Initial jobless claims and more speeches from Federal Reserve leaders are also due.   Stocks may continue this ‘oversold bounce’ over the next few days, Wells Fargo’s Harvey says Wells Fargo’s Chris Harvey expects stocks to continue their upward move. “The spike in short interest, retail selling skew, and BOE’s action all suggest stocks will continue their oversold bounce for the next few days,” he said in a note to clients Wednesday. Stocks hit fresh lows earlier in the week, with the S&P 500 notching a new bear market. The sell-off was triggered by the Fed’s latest rate decision last week, which some investors believe steered the market into oversold conditions. As the cost of capital rises and prices hover near record highs, the consensus is increasingly coming to believe that a Fed-induced recession is unavoidable, Harvey said. “We look at a recession like a car crash,” he wrote. “You never know how bad it will be, but there is almost no ‘better-than-expected’ outcome — so policymakers need to be careful what they wish for.” — Samantha Subin Major averages on pace for a month of losses Just two trading days are left in September and all the major averages are on pace to cap off the month with losses. While Wednesday’s market comeback put the major averages on track for modest weekly gains, the Nasdaq Composite, Dow Industrial Averages and S&P 500 are slated to lose nearly 6% each in September. The end of the third quarter also comes Friday, with the Dow on pace to cap its third negative quarter in a row for the first time since the third quarter of 2015. The S&P is slated to post its third consecutive negative quarter since its six-quarter losing streak that ended the first quarter of 2009. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq is on track to snap a streak of two consecutive down quarters. Here’s where the major averages stand heading into Thursday: Dow Jones Industrial Average: Up 0.32% for the week On track to lose 5.8% this month Down 3.55% this quarter Down 18.31% this year S&P 500 Up 0.7% this week Set for a 5.97% September loss Down 1.75% for the quarter Down 21.97% this year Nasdaq Composite: Up 1.69% this week On pace for a 6.47% September loss Up 0.2% for the quarter Down 29.36% this year — Samantha Subin, Chris Hayes Futures open flat Futures opened flat following a broad market rally during Wednesday’s regular trading session. Futures tied to the Dow Jones rose 10 points, or 0.04%, while S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures were flat. — Samantha Subin Read More Here

Clergy Strive To Reconcile Politically Divided Congregations https://digitalalaskanews.com/clergy-strive-to-reconcile-politically-divided-congregations-2/ Thursday, September 29, 2022 By DAVID CRARY ~ Associated Press One member of Rabbi David Wolpe’s diverse congregation left because Wolpe would not preach sermons criticizing Donald Trump. Scores of others left over resentment with the synagogue’s rules for combating COVID-19. But Wolpe remains steadfast in his resolve to avoid politics when he preaches at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. Subscribe below or log in with your password here. For more than 115 years, the Southeast Missourian has written the first draft of local history. We have aspired to enrich, entertain, educate and inform. Our core values have remained firm: truth, service, quality, integrity and community. Support our mission. Join today Note: Special discounts available to new subscribers only. Print subscriptions may include up to 13 Premium Issues per year, which include special magazines. For each Premium Issue, your account balance will be charged an additional fee in the billing period when the section publishes. This will result in shortening the length of your billing period. Read More Here

Trump Lashed Out At George Stephanopoulos In Profanity-Laced Tirade After 2016 Interview, New Book Says | News Channel 3-12 https://digitalalaskanews.com/trump-lashed-out-at-george-stephanopoulos-in-profanity-laced-tirade-after-2016-interview-new-book-says-news-channel-3-12/ CNN By Oliver Darcy, CNN Business Donald Trump berated ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos, descending into a profanity-laced tirade after the journalist asked him in a 2016 interview about Russia, according to a forthcoming book set for release next week. The book, “Confidence Man” by Maggie Haberman of The New York Times, details the stunning behind-the-scenes episode that transpired after Stephanopoulos conducted a sit-down interview with Trump, who at the time was a presidential candidate. Haberman’s book is set to be released on Tuesday, but CNN obtained an excerpt detailing the incident between Stephanopoulos and Trump. Haberman wrote in the book that when the cameras turned off, “storm clouds came over Trump’s face.” “Trump summoned an ABC producer into a small area away from the cameras, where Trump was surrounded by Secret Service agents, and snarled, ‘That was bulls–t,’” Haberman wrote. The ABC News producer, John Santucci, asked what specific part of the interview Trump was referring to. “Russia,” Trump replied, according to Haberman. “Eight f–king follow-ups—are you f–king kidding me? It’s like asking me if I beat my wife. You ask me once, I say ‘F–k no,’ and we move on. You don’t then ask if I hit her with a f–king baseball bat or a f–king golf club! That was bulls–t and you better f–king fix it in the edit.’” Haberman reported that after he scolded Santucci, Trump called for Stephanopoulos. Trump, Haberman wrote, mentioned Russia and Stephanopoulos chuckled and said, “I know, my team says I didn’t ask you enough about it.” That set Trump off. “Are you f–king kidding me! Eighteen f–king follow-ups—how many different ways do I have to say I don’t know the guy?” Trump said, according to Haberman. Trump then walked away, Haberman wrote. ABC News declined to comment when asked Wednesday about the matter. While the incident is years old, it offers an extraordinary behind-the-camera view at how Trump treated the press, particularly after a contentious television interview. Asked for comment, Taylor Budowich, a Trump spokesperson, dismissed the reporting in broad terms. Budowich said that “coastal elites” are obsessed with “boring books” from “unreliable sources.” Haberman, however, has one of the most impressive records reporting on Trump. She has consistently broken news about Trump during his campaign for office and when he was in the White House. And she has continued to do so in the aftermath of his presidency. The-CNN-Wire & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved. Read More Here

Feds Want Psychological Tests For Parents Of Separated Kids https://digitalalaskanews.com/feds-want-psychological-tests-for-parents-of-separated-kids-2/ By LINDSAY WHITEHURST and COLLEEN LONG Associated Press Sep 29, 2022 Sep 29, 2022 Updated 6 min ago 0 Immigrants seeking asylum who were recently reunited arrive at a hotel in San Antonio on July 23, 2018.   Eric Gay | Associated Press The request comes in a lawsuit filed by migrants seeking compensation from the government after thousands of children were taken from parents in a policy maligned as inhumane by political and religious leaders around the world. Settlement talks with attorneys and the government broke down late last year. Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. Post a comment as anonymous Welcome to the discussion. Keep it Clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language. PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK. Don’t Threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated. Be Truthful. Don’t knowingly lie about anyone or anything. Be Nice. No racism, sexism or any sort of -ism that is degrading to another person. Be Proactive. Use the ‘Report’ link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts. Share with Us. We’d love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article. We’re always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what’s going on! Read More Here

Feds Want Psychological Tests For Parents Of Separated Kids https://digitalalaskanews.com/feds-want-psychological-tests-for-parents-of-separated-kids/ Immigrants seeking asylum who were recently reunited arrive at a hotel July 23, 2018, in San Antonio. The Biden administration is asking that parents of children separated at the U.S.-Mexico border undergo another round of psychological evaluations in an effort to measure how just traumatized they were by the Trump-era policy, court documents show. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File) WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is asking that parents of children separated at the U.S.-Mexico border undergo another round of psychological evaluations to measure how traumatized they were by the Trump-era policy, court documents show. The request comes in a lawsuit filed by migrants seeking compensation from the government after thousands of children were taken from parents in a policy maligned as inhumane by political and religious leaders around the world. Settlement talks with attorneys and the government broke down late last year. Justice Department attorneys are also reserving the right to have a psychologist examine the children who were separated, if necessary. The evaluations are routine in emotional-damages claims, but these cases are unusual because the government’s role in traumatizing parents and children by the separations has been well documented. “President Biden called the Trump family separations criminal and a moral stain on the nation, but now his administration is hiring doctors to try and claim the families didn’t suffer all that much,” said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project and a lawyer for plaintiffs in the effort to compensate migrants. Government attorneys argued that the migrants “allege that their mental and emotional injuries are ongoing and permanent in nature” and that their injuries are directly related to the government’s policy. They say it is necessary for the government to have its own opportunity to examine them. The requests came in two cases filed by 11 families. There are nearly two dozen similar cases pending in other courts, and some have already submitted to government-requested psychiatric evaluations. But the parents have already sat for hourslong depositions in which they recounted what happened in detail. Government investigators have said children separated from their parents showed more fear, feelings of abandonment and post-traumatic stress symptoms than children who were not separated. Some children believed their parents had abandoned them or had been killed. For some, the mental trauma caused physical symptoms, like chest or heart pain, according to a 2019 report from the inspector general’s office in the Department of Health and Human Services. Parents studied by Physicians for Human Rights, a nonprofit collective of doctors that works to document human rights violations, exhibited suicidal thoughts and suffered a raft of problems including nightmares, depression, anxiety, panic, worry and difficulty sleeping. Biden administration officials have decried the Trump-era policies. Biden, a Democrat, said during his presidential campaign the policies were “an outrage, a moral failing and a stain on our national character.” Justice Department attorneys acknowledge in court documents that parents have already undergone multiple mental health evaluations but say an adult-psychology expert found it was necessary to get another opinion, according to court documents. “It is standard practice for plaintiffs alleging severe emotional injury to be examined by the opposing party’s expert,” federal attorneys wrote. They point to a similar southern Florida case in which a father and child agreed to the same examination and say it’s “well within” what’s considered appropriate. An examination would take about eight hours, four hours for clinical interviews and four hours of emotional and trauma testing, federal attorneys wrote. It would not be invasive and would happen at an agreed-upon place and time. The previous evaluations were done by experts chosen by the parents’ lawyers. The two sides had been negotiating a settlement, but then Biden said that families of separated children deserve some form of compensation. An early proposal of $450,000 per person was reported and was heavily criticized by Republicans. When asked about the proposed figure, Biden said: “That’s not going to happen.” Talks ended shortly after. The settlement talks had also included discussion of granting the families legal U.S. residency and providing counseling services. There is a separate legal effort to reunite other families, and there are still hundreds who have not been brought back together. The Biden administration has formed a reunification task force that has reunited roughly 600 families. Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy meant that any adult caught crossing the border illegally would be prosecuted for illegal entry. Because children cannot be jailed with their family members, families were separated and children were taken into custody by Health and Human Services, which manages unaccompanied children at the border. No system was created to reunite children with their families. According to the government watchdogs, Trump administration leaders underestimated how difficult it would be to carry out the policy in the field and did not inform local prosecutors and others that children would be separated. They also failed to understand that children would be separated longer than a few hours, and when that was discovered, they pressed on, the watchdogs said. Read More Here

EXPLAINER: Rare Sedition Charge At Center Of Jan. 6 Trial https://digitalalaskanews.com/explainer-rare-sedition-charge-at-center-of-jan-6-trial/ Thomas Caldwell of Berryville, Va., a defendant charged with seditious conspiracy in one of the most serious cases to emerge from the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, arrives at the federal courthouse, Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta) WASHINGTON — The founder of the Oath Keepers and four associates are on trial in the Capitol attack on charges that include seditious conspiracy — a rarely used Civil War-era accusation that strikes to the heart of what prosecutors say happened that day. Stewart Rhodes and his followers are the first Jan. 6 defendants to stand trial on such a charge for what prosecutors say was not a suddenly ignited riot but a coordinated plot to stop the transfer of presidential power. The stakes are high for the Justice Department, which hasn’t tried a seditious conspiracy case in a decade and hasn’t won a guilty verdict since the 1995 prosecution of Islamic militants who plotted to bomb New York City landmarks. Prosecutors say Rhodes and his far-right extremist group spent weeks preparing to use violence to stop Biden from becoming president. Rhodes, a Texan, recruited members to come to Washington, amassed weapons and organized armed teams to be on standby outside the city in case they were needed, authorities say. The plot came to a head, prosecutors say, on Jan. 6 when Oath Keepers were captured on camera shouldering their way through the mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters and storming the Capitol in military-style stack formation. The Oath Keepers, for their part, have said their preparations, training, gear and weapons were to protect themselves against potential attacks from left-wing antifa activists, or to be ready if Trump invoked the Insurrection Act to call up a militia to support his bid to stay in power. Rhodes has said there was no plan to attack the Capitol and the members who went inside went rogue. Jury selection started on Tuesday for the trial that is expected to last several weeks. Here’s a look at the charge of seditious conspiracy and its history: —— WHAT IS SEDITIOUS CONSPIRACY? The law was enacted after the Civil War to arrest Southerners who might keep fighting the U.S. government. In order to win a seditious conspiracy case, prosecutors have to prove that two or more people conspired to “overthrow, put down or to destroy by force” the U.S. government or bring war against it, or that they plotted to use force to oppose the authority of the government or to block the execution of a law. Rhodes, Kelly Meggs, Jessica Watkins, Kenneth Harrelson and Thomas Caldwell aren’t charged with conspiring to overthrow the government or levy war. Instead, prosecutors charge that they conspired to forcibly oppose the authority of the federal government and forcibly block the execution of laws governing the transfer of presidential power. Specifically, the Oath Keepers are accused of conspiring to forcibly obstruct the execution of the Electoral Count Act and the Twelfth Amendment of the Constitution, which address the counting of electoral votes. Seditious conspiracy calls for up to up to 20 years behind bars, if convicted. Rhodes and his associates also face several other serious charges. WHY CAN IT BE DIFFICULT TO PROVE? The charge has rarely been brought in recent memory, and with mixed results. It’s not enough to merely show the defendants advocated the use of force — prosecutors must show they conspired to use force. Seditious conspiracy cases are legally complex, and prosecutors are sometimes reluctant to file the charges because they can be difficult for juries to grasp. “Juries don’t understand them, then when you want to communicate that idea to a larger audience, the public doesn’t really understand,” said Jeffrey Ian Ross, a criminologist at the University of Baltimore. While seditious conspiracy has a broad definition, “sometimes juries want more than simple use of force against the government, because the term ‘sedition’ conjures an image of overthrowing the government,” said Barbara McQuade, who was U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan when a judge there cleared militia members of the charge in 2012. “In the case of Jan. 6, however, because the attack against the government took place at the U.S. Capitol, while it was certifying a presidential election, even these high expectations can be met,” McQuade, now a University of Michigan Law School professor, said in an email. Alan Rozenshtein, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, also said prosecutors shouldn’t have a difficult time proving seditious conspiracy in the Oath Keepers’ case. “If this is not sedition, I don’t know what is,” he said. WHO HAS FACED THE CHARGE BEFORE? The last time the Justice Department tried a seditious conspiracy case was in 2010 in an alleged Michigan plot by members of the Hutaree militia to incite an uprising against the government. A judge ordered acquittals of the sedition conspiracy charges at a 2012 trial, saying prosecutors relied too much on hateful diatribes protected by the First Amendment and didn’t, as required, prove the accused ever had detailed plans for a rebellion. Lawyer William Swor, who represented Hutaree militia leader David Stone, has said that prosecutors in the case failed to prove that group members were “more than just talking” and were “actively planning to oppose the government.” Stone’s “diatribes evince nothing more than his own hatred for — perhaps even desire to fight or kill — law enforcement; this is not the same as seditious conspiracy,” the judge said. The last successful seditious conspiracy trial was in the 1995, when Egyptian cleric Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and nine followers were convicted in plot to blow up the United Nations, an FBI building, and two tunnels and a bridge linking New York and New Jersey. Abdel-Rahman, known as the “Blind Sheikh,” argued on appeal that he was never involved in planning actual attacks and his hostile rhetoric was protected free speech. He died in federal prison in 2017. Prosecutors also secured seditious conspiracy convictions in another, now largely forgotten storming of the Capitol building in 1954. Four pro-independence Puerto Rican activists rushed the building and opened fire on the House floor, wounding several representatives. Also, Oscar Lopez Rivera, a former leader of a Puerto Rican independence group that orchestrated a bombing campaign that left dozens of people dead or maimed in New York, Chicago, Washington and Puerto Rico in the 1970s and early 1980s, spent 35 years in prison for seditious conspiracy before President Barack Obama commuted his sentence in 2017. And in 1988, jurors in Fort Smith, Arkansas, acquitted white supremacists charged with seditious conspiracy. The defendants were accused of plotting to overthrow the federal government and establish an all-white nation in the Pacific Northwest, and conspiring to kill a federal judge and FBI agent. WHO FACES SIMILAR CHARGES IN THE JAN. 6 ATTACK? A total of nine members or associates of the Oath Keepers are fighting seditious conspiracy charges. A second trial for the other Oath Keepers charged in the case is to begin at the end of November. Three other Oath Keepers have already pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy, are cooperating with investigators and could testify against Rhodes at trial. Rhodes’ lawyers have claimed in court documents that those Oath Keepers are lying and pleaded guilty only because they were pressured by the government and hoped to get lighter sentences. Several members of another far-right extremist group, the Proud Boys, have also been charged with the crime, including former chairman Henry “Enrique” Tarrio. They are scheduled to stand trial in December. ——– Richer reported from Boston. FILE – Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, speaks during a rally outside the White House in Washington, June 25, 2017. Jury selection is expected to get underway Tuesday in one of the most serious cases to emerge from the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol against the founder of the far-right Oath Keepers extremist group and four associates charged with seditious conspiracy.(AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File) Print Headline: EXPLAINER: Rare sedition charge at center of Jan. 6 trial Read More Here

Migrant Families Suing After Being Separated Under Trump Should Undergo More Evaluation: Justice Department https://digitalalaskanews.com/migrant-families-suing-after-being-separated-under-trump-should-undergo-more-evaluation-justice-department/ (WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department is asking a federal judge to approve a psychologist for a new round of exams on migrant parents whose children were separated from them by the Trump administration. The government’s request, filed last week, is part of an ongoing lawsuit in Arizona federal court on behalf of five mothers who were separated from their kids under then-President Donald Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy which mandated prosecutions for all illegal border crossings. The mothers are now seeking compensation from the U.S. government for the emotional and mental damages they say they endured after their children were taken from them. A lawyer representing the families said the women have already undergone psychological evaluations by experts they provided. But the Justice Department, in its court filing, said they would like their own expert, Dr. Ricardo Winkel, to make an assessment. “Plaintiffs intend to support their claims of injury through expert testimony and have each submitted to multiple mental health evaluations by their own expert. It is standard practice for plaintiffs alleging severe emotional injury to be examined by the opposing party’s expert,” the Justice Department’s filing states. President Joe Biden condemned and campaigned against Trump’s family separation policy, which Trump initially paused under intense backlash before a judge put an end to the program in June 2018. Biden previously said he was in favor of compensating families separated at the border. “If, in fact, because of the outrageous behavior of the last administration, you coming across the border, whether it was legally or illegally, and you lost your child — you lost your child — it’s gone. You deserve compensation no matter what the circumstance,” Biden said in November. “What that will be, I have no idea. I have no idea.” Around the same time, however, settlement discussions between some of the migrant families and the federal government broke down shortly after Biden dismissed reports that his administration was considering payments of up to $450,000 for families, according to sources familiar with the situation. “That’s not going to happen,” Biden said in November of that amount. Government lawyers said in court filings that they hope the additional exams will “develop findings on each Adult Plaintiff’s current psychological condition and prognosis, as well as on the cause or causes of each Adult Plaintiff’s presentation, all of which are central issues in this litigation and matters on which Plaintiffs themselves intend to introduce expert testimony.” American Civil Liberties Union attorney Lee Gelernt — who is working with some other migrant families who were separated under Trump — said he fears that subjecting them to more evaluations could be re-traumatizing. (The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment on its latest filing.) “The American Academy of Pediatrics called it child abuse. Reliving the events is triggering all that trauma, and the government knows that these families suffered severe trauma,” Gelernt told ABC News. Gelernt is the lead counsel in several cases dealing with family separation, including Ms. L v. ICE which led to a court ordering the Trump administration to halt the practice and reunite families. “This administration should not be hiring doctors to try to downplay the harm suffered by separated families under the Trump administration’s cruel policies,” Gelernt contended in a statement, “especially given that President Biden called those policies criminal and a moral stain on the nation.” The Justice Department proposed in its filing last week that its expert, Dr. Winkel, would conduct the additional examinations at a time and place “that is agreeable to all interested parties” and would consist of up to four hours for a clinical interview and four hours of testing. Parents would undergo personality and emotional functioning tests as well as trauma-specific exams. The ACLU has been working with the Biden administration’s Family Reunification Task Force to address the fallout from Trump’s separation policy, but the ACLU says they’re still searching for 151 families who are without their children. Gelernt said it was clear that the reunited families continue to be traumatized by their experience, adding that some of his clients start crying when they talk about what they went through. “There is such unbelievable guilt feeling like — could they have stopped the separation? Of course they couldn’t, but [what’s] heartbreaking is to see their little children blame them for not doing more to stop the separation,” Gelernt said. “In some cases, a child will say, ‘Daddy, why didn’t you stop them? Didn’t you love me enough?’” Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved. Read More Here

Live Updates: Flooding And Power Outages Grow As Ian Moves Inland https://digitalalaskanews.com/live-updates-flooding-and-power-outages-grow-as-ian-moves-inland/ FORT MYERS, Fla. — Jessica Cosden’s family was huddled together at home as roofs rattled, trees crashed down and surging waters filled the 400 miles of canals lacing their city. Then everything went dark. “We just lost power,” Ms. Cosden said. “My 3-year-old son is freaking out.” As Hurricane Ian charged ashore along Florida’s southwest coast on Wednesday, it turned a laid-back stretch of suburban shoreline known for tiki bars, golf-course retirement communities and stone-crab fishing havens into a strand of destruction and chaos. With no electricity, the Cosden family waited together into the night on Wednesday in a single candlelit room in their house in Cape Coral, a fast-growing city of 205,000 near Fort Myers. Hannah, 12, felt OK but worried about her family getting hurt. Jacob, 10 and living through his first real hurricane, stood in a corner and closed his eyes. “I’m super shaken up,” Jacob said. “I just want this to be over. I’d rather be at school.” Cities along Florida’s Southwest Coast, pounded by storm surge and 150 mile-per-hour wind gusts from Ian, can feel like sleepier cousins to the high-rise multicultural pulsations of Miami. The region skews older, whiter and more conservative than Florida’s denser Atlantic coast. Places like Cape Coral have long drawn Midwesterners hunting for an affordable slice of Florida shoreline. But on Wednesday, much of that had been shattered. There were reports of roofs ripped off homes in Cape Coral. In the wealthy coastal enclave of Naples, a resident said he had three feet of water in his home. In Everglades City, a mecca for stone-crab fishing, some residents who had barely finished rebuilding after the devastation of Hurricane Irma in 2017 had lost everything once more, said Holly Dudley, whose family runs a crabbing business. Ms. Dudley said streets were flooding, cars were floating and fishermen were anxious about whether their boats had survived. “I know God has a plan,” Ms. Dudley said. “We’re thick-skinned and he makes us resilient. But at some point, when will it end?” In Cape Coral, Hurricane Ian’s sprawling fury reminded some longtime residents of Hurricane Donna, which pummeled the city in 1960 when it was barely a developer’s dream on a map, marketed as a Waterfront Wonderland where hundreds of miles of canals had been carved into the land. “There was nobody here,” said Gloria Raso Tate, a city councilwoman whose family arrived in 1960, right in the middle of Hurricane Donna. On Wednesday, she had fled her home along the swelling Caloosahatchee River, which runs nearby, in the hopes of finding safety farther inland at her sister’s house in a different neighborhood of Cape Coral. Ms. Raso Tate said she worried her house might not survive the storm. “We’re in the middle of it,” she said. The hurricane posed a menacing test of whether a fast-growing city could handle one of the worst storms to strike the coast in decades. “We’re swamped with people,” Ms. Raso Tate said. “That’s the issue right now. Most of our residents are new and have never had to go through a hurricane. There’s been some panic.” Late Wednesday, city officials said there had been no reports of injuries or deaths in Cape Coral, but the toll of the storm was still unclear. Police officers, firefighters and medics were not responding to 911 calls on Wednesday until the winds eased off. Some city officials said they believed that as many as half of the city’s 205,000 residents may have decided to stay in their homes, despite mandatory evacuation orders for much of the city that had been issued on Tuesday. The brunt of the storm was initially expected to hit farther north, in Tampa. Shelters that could hold 40,000 people were only about one-tenth full, and some residents who stayed home had been calling to ask about shelters only after it was too dangerous to venture onto the roads, city officials said. “I think a lot of people just hunkered down,” said Melissa Mickey, a spokeswoman for Cape Coral. “That’s a concern.” As a storm surge forecast to reach 12 feet or more washed into nearby Fort Myers, churning whitecaps in people’s front yards, residents and city officials in Cape Coral were nervously watching the levels of the Caloosahatchee River and 400 miles of freshwater and saltwater canals across the city. The canals threaded through Cape Coral had been dug with no permits and little regard for the environment, city officials said, but they were crossing their fingers that the web of waterways normally used for boating and fishing might act as a shock absorber for the storm surge and help drain some of the rain and flooding. Officials in Lee County, which includes Fort Myers and Cape Coral, had been opening up low dams to drain waterways ahead of the storm. Real estate values in the Fort Myers area, where a majority of residents are white, peaked and then crashed in the 2008 recession, but the region has boomed in recent years. The area’s Latino residents have been growing in numbers, and big new corporate arrivals like Hertz and a medical-device manufacturer have revved up an economy that is still powered by tourism and housing. “When I was growing up it was all retired people,” said Ms. Cosden, who is on the Cape Coral City Council. “The population has quadrupled since I was born. It’s a lot more families, middle and working class.” In Charlotte Harbor, about 30 miles north, Jeannie Croke, 50, had decided to ride out the storm at her home along a canal, though it was a decision she made when Hurricane Ian was still expected to strike the Tampa Bay area. Some of her neighbors changed their minds and fled for safer ground as the storm barreled toward them earlier on Wednesday. “We just saw two of them in the past hour decide to leave. We may be one of the few remaining,” Ms. Croke said. “We’ve tied down the boat and did everything we could do. Pray for us.” Jennifer Reed reported from Fort Myers, Fla., Charles Ballaro from Lehigh Acres, Fla., and Jack Healy from Phoenix. Robert Gebeloff contributed reporting from New York. Read More Here

First On CNN: European Security Officials Observed Russian Navy Ships In Vicinity Of Nord Stream Pipeline Leaks | CNN Politics https://digitalalaskanews.com/first-on-cnn-european-security-officials-observed-russian-navy-ships-in-vicinity-of-nord-stream-pipeline-leaks-cnn-politics/ CNN  —  European security officials on Monday and Tuesday observed Russian Navy support ships in the vicinity of leaks in the Nord Stream pipelines likely caused by underwater explosions, according two Western intelligence officials and one other source familiar with the matter. It’s unclear whether the ships had anything to do with those explosions, these sources and others said – but it’s one of the many factors that investigators will be looking into. Russian submarines were also observed not far from those areas last week, one of the intelligence officials said. Three US officials said that the US has no thorough explanation yet for what happened, days after the explosions appeared to cause three separate and simultaneous leaks in the two pipelines on Monday. Russian ships routinely operate in the area, according to one Danish military official, who emphasized that the presence of the ships doesn’t necessarily indicate that Russia caused the damage. “We see them every week,” this person said. “Russian activities in the Baltic Sea have increased in recent years. They’re quite often testing our awareness – both at sea and in the air.” But the sightings still cast further suspicion on Russia, which has drawn the most attention from both European and US officials as the only actor in the region believed to have both the capability and motivation to deliberately damage the pipelines. US officials declined to comment on the intelligence about the ships on Wednesday. Both Denmark and Sweden are investigating, but a site inspection has yet to be done and details on exactly what caused the explosions remains sketchy. One European official said that there is a Danish government assessment underway and it could take up to two weeks for an investigation to properly begin because the pressure in the pipes makes it difficult to approach the site of the leaks — although another source familiar with the matter said the probe could begin as soon as Sunday. The prime ministers for both Denmark and Sweden said publicly on Tuesday that the leaks were likely the result of deliberate actions, not accidents, and Sweden’s security service said in a statement Wednesday that it cannot be ruled out “that a foreign power is behind it.” US national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Tuesday evening also called the leaks “apparent sabotage” in a tweet. But senior Western officials have so far stopped short of attributing the attack to Russia or any other nation. The Kremlin has publicly denied striking the pipelines. A spokesman called the allegation “predictably stupid and absurd.” CNN has reached out to the Russian Ministry of Defense for comment on the presence of the ships. The Danish government is taking the lead on the investigation and has put in place an exclusion area of five nautical miles and a 1 kilometer no-fly-zone, according to European sources familiar with the matter. Other than Sullivan, US officials have been far more circumspect than their European counterparts in drawing conclusions about the leaks. “I think many of our partners have determined or believe it is sabotage. I’m not at the point where I can tell you one way or the other,” a senior military official said Wednesday. “The only thing I know there is that we think the water is between 80 and 100 meters [deep] at that location where the pipeline is. Other than that, I don’t know anything more.” But one senior US official and a US military official both said Russia is still the leading suspect – assuming that the European assessment of deliberate sabotage is borne out – because there are no other plausible suspects with the ability and will to carry out the operation. “It’s hard to imagine any other actor in the region with the capabilities and interest to carry out such an operation,” the Danish military official said. Russia has requested a UN Security Council meeting on the damaged pipeline this week – something the senior US official said is also suspicious. Typically, the official said, Russia isn’t organized enough to move so quickly, suggesting that the maneuver was pre-planned. If Russia did deliberately cause the explosions, it would be effectively sabotaging its own pipelines: Russian state company Gazprom is the majority shareholder in Nord Stream 1 and the sole owner of Nord Stream 2. But officials familiar with the latest intelligence say that Moscow would likely view such a step as worth the price if it helped raise the costs of supporting Ukraine for Europe. US and western intelligence officials believe Russian President Vladimir Putin is gambling that as electricity costs rise and winter approaches, European publics could turn against the Western strategy of isolating Russia economically. Sabotaging the pipelines could “show what Russia is capable of,” one US official said. Russia has already taken steps to manipulate energy flows in ways that caused itself economic pain, but also hurt Europe. Russia slashed gas supplies to Europe via Nord Stream 1 before suspending flows altogether in August, blaming Western sanctions for causing technical difficulties. European politicians say that was a pretext to stop supplying gas. “They’ve already shown they’re perfectly happy to do that,” one of the sources said. “They weight their economic pain against Europe’s.” The new Nord Stream 2 pipeline had yet to enter commercial operations. The plan to use it to supply gas was scrapped by Germany days before Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February. US, European and Ukrainian officials have been warning for months, however, that critical infrastructure – not only in Ukraine but also in the US and Europe – could be targeted by Russia as part of its war on Ukraine. The US warned several European allies over the summer, including Germany, that the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines could face threats and even be attacked, according to two people familiar with the intelligence and the warnings. The warnings were based on US intelligence assessments, but they were vague, the people said – it was not clear from the warnings who might be responsible for any attacks on the pipelines or when they might occur. The CIA declined to comment. Der Spiegel was the first to report on the intelligence warnings. Read More Here

Contact Lens Wearers At Higher Risk Of Rare Eye Infection – Are You Caring For Your Lenses The Right Way? | Life https://digitalalaskanews.com/contact-lens-wearers-at-higher-risk-of-rare-eye-infection-are-you-caring-for-your-lenses-the-right-way-life/ A rare, but serious, eye infection can be avoided in contact lens wearers who practice simple, healthy habits. Contact lens use has become the leading cause of a type of eye infection in people with otherwise healthy eyes. A new study has found that people with reusable contact lenses are more likely to develop a rare, but serious eye infection than those who wear daily disposable lenses. Different factors can cause it, including wearing them in the shower, and can result in a sight-threatening infection. People who wear reusable contact lenses are nearly four times more likely to develop a rare, sight-threatening eye infection than those wearing daily disposables, a new study has found. Multiple factors increase the risk of acanthamoeba keratitis (AK), including reusing lenses or wearing them overnight or in the shower, say the researchers from University College London. READ MORE | 6 top tips to keep your eyes healthy AK is a condition that results in inflammation of the cornea. The rare but serious eye infection can result in permanent visual impairment or blindness, explains the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). While it is most common in people who wear contact lenses, anyone can develop the infection, it adds. “Contact lenses are generally very safe but are associated with a small risk of microbial keratitis, most commonly caused by bacteria, and which is the only sight-threatening complication of their use,” lead author, professor John Dart from the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, says in a university news release.  READ MORE | GRAPHIC: Woman has 14 worms pulled from eye after rare infection Dart adds: “Given that an estimated 300 million people across the globe wear contact lenses, it is important that people know how to minimise their risks for developing keratitis.” AK causes the front surface of the eye (cornea) to become painful and inflamed, explain the authors. The most severely affected typically end up with less than 25% of vision or become blind following the disease and face prolonged treatment. Overall, 25% of people affected require corneal transplants to treat the disease or restore sight. What they found The team recruited more than 200 patients from Moorfields Eye Hospital. Each patient was asked to complete a survey, including 83 people with AK. This was compared with a control group of 122 participants who came to eye care clinics with other conditions. People who wore reusable soft contact lenses (such as monthly pairs) had 3.8 times the odds of developing AK compared to those who wore daily disposable lenses.  Here’s what else they found: Showering with lenses increased the odds of AK by 3.3 times.  Wearing lenses overnight increased the odds by 3.9 times.  Among daily disposable wearers, reusing their lenses increased their infection risk. Having had a recent contact lens check with a health professional reduced the risk. READ MORE | Optometrist on good eye health Previous studies have linked AK to wearing contact lenses in hot tubs, swimming pools or lakes, but the latest research adds showers to that list, and underlines that “exposure to any water when wearing lenses should be avoided,” says study author, associate professor Nicole Carnt. Dart believes that all contact lens packaging should include basic information on lens safety, even a simple sticker warning stating ‘no water’ on each case. That said, here are important safety tips for taking care of your contact lenses the right way. Always wash and dry your hands before handling your contact lenses. Before putting in your lenses, check that the edges aren’t torn as that could cut into your eye. Replace your contact lenses on schedule: If you generally buy the monthly pairs, ensure you change them every month. Change to a new contact lens case when you open a new bottle of solution. Remove your lenses when showering, as per the current study’s suggestions. Remove your lenses when swimming unless you’re wearing well-fitted goggles. This is because the water you swim in may be contaminated. Don’t wear your lenses beyond the recommended wear time. Avoid sleeping in your lenses unless your lens type is specifically meant to wear to bed. Always use a fresh solution when cleaning your lenses, and never rinse them with tap water. “Basic contact lens hygiene measures can go a long way in avoiding infections, such as by thoroughly washing and drying your hands before putting in your lenses,” says Dart. Read More Here

MacKenzie Scott, Billionaire Philanthropist, Files For Divorce https://digitalalaskanews.com/mackenzie-scott-billionaire-philanthropist-files-for-divorce/ Less than two years after announcing the marriage and their intent to give money away together, Ms. Scott has parted ways with her second husband, a teacher. Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share. MacKenzie Scott married Dan Jewett early last year.Credit…Evan Agostini/Invision, via AP Sept. 28, 2022Updated 10:08 p.m. ET Less than two years after announcing their intention to give away a vast fortune together, the billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott and her husband, Dan Jewett, a former science teacher, are parting ways. Ms. Scott filed a petition for divorce in the King County Superior Court in Washington State on Monday, according to a copy of the filing. The breakup punctuates an eventful period for Ms. Scott, who in less than four years got divorced from her longtime husband, the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, gave away more than $12 billion to nonprofits and married an instructor at the prestigious school attended by her children. Court records show Mr. Jewett did not contest the divorce. The petition says any division of property is laid out in a separation contract, agreed to by the couple, which is not public. Both still live in King County, the filing says, which includes the city of Seattle. Their marriage, which garnered significant public attention after Ms. Scott’s divorce from the world’s richest man, had also been a philanthropic partnership, with Mr. Jewett publicly promising to join her in donating their enormous fortune to good causes. But there were recent signs that the partnership was no more. Previously, grateful nonprofits that had received grants from Ms. Scott and Mr. Jewett thanked them both, but recent recipients thank her alone. In the past week his name vanished from her philanthropic endeavors. On the site for the Giving Pledge, where billionaires promise to give away half of their wealth before they die, his letter no longer appeared with hers. Without fanfare, his name was recently edited out of a Medium post Ms. Scott had written last year about their gifts. Ms. Scott, a novelist, also deleted Mr. Jewett from her author bio on Amazon, the online retailer that is the source of her vast wealth. She rocketed to global attention as she began giving away money at a pace rarely seen in the philanthropic world. After her divorce from Mr. Bezos, Ms. Scott assembled a team of advisers and began quietly making multimillion-dollar donations to nonprofit groups that totaled more than $12 billion in just three years. In her May 2019 letter on the Giving Pledge, Ms. Scott promised to “keep at it until the safe is empty.” Bloomberg has estimated her net worth as high as $62 billion, but between her billions of dollars in contributions and the decline in the stock market, it now gauges her fortune at $27.8 billion. Two years later, in his own Giving Pledge letter, Mr. Jewett sounded full of enthusiasm. “I am married to one of the most generous and kind people I know — and joining her in a commitment to pass on an enormous financial wealth to serve others,” he wrote. Yet he also noted that he had not previously considered making any kind of public statement about his charitable priorities because he had “never sought to gather the kind of wealth required to feel like saying such a thing would have particular meaning.” As recently as last week, according to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which preserves old versions of web pages, his letter was still twinned with hers on the site, accompanied by a photo of the two of them looking as though they were out for a hike together. Today there is just a headshot of Ms. Scott, along with her letter. Ms. Scott has refused to speak publicly about her giving, declining repeated interview requests from news organizations including The New York Times. Her lawyer did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday. Attempts to reach Mr. Jewett through friends, family and former colleagues and at an address associated with him in Seattle were unsuccessful. His lawyer declined, through a legal assistant, to comment on the divorce. Ms. Scott made her charitable announcements in long posts on Medium that listed the names of organizations that received billions of dollars cumulatively. Last month, Ms. Scott gave two homes in Beverly Hills, valued at a combined $55 million, to the California Community Foundation. The foundation’s affordable housing grant-making functions will receive 90 percent of the value of the properties. Mr. Jewett’s name, which had been in recent gift announcements, was nowhere in the news release. The Health Forward Foundation in Kansas City, Mo., announced on Tuesday that it had received a $15 million gift from Ms. Scott. The Episcopal Health Foundation in Houston also recently announced that it had received a $20 million grant from Ms. Scott. Neither announcement mentioned Mr. Jewett. Mr. Jewett taught at the Lakeside School, the prestigious Seattle private school attended by the Bezos children, where he was popular among students and fellow teachers alike. “He’s earnest, not very edgy,” said Angela Loihl, who met Mr. Jewett through a mutual friend. Ms. Loihl, who spent weeks in 2014 with Mr. Jewett driving in a small-motored car from London to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, recalled how that mutual friend had told her years later, after he married Ms. Scott, “He’s the perfect person to end up with this money to give away — no sense of greed at all.” According to the divorce filing, the couple married in California in 2021. The news of their marriage took even Mr. Jewett’s friends and colleagues by surprise — producing a whirlwind of news coverage far beyond his expectations, as reporters even appeared on the Lakeside campus. Though he finished the term there, Mr. Jewett felt his presence on campus was a distraction. His new wife had become arguably the most influential philanthropist in the world with an approach that emphasized huge grants — often the largest single gift a group had received — with no strings attached. In his Giving Pledge letter published in March 2021, Mr. Jewett wrote that he was “grateful for the exceptional privilege it will be to partner in giving away assets with the potential to do so much good when shared.” In June 2021, Ms. Scott posted about her giving on Medium, where she wrote: “Me, Dan, a constellation of researchers and administrators and advisers — we are all attempting to give away a fortune that was enabled by systems in need of change.” Sometime in the past week, searches on the Internet Archive showed, the post was edited, and Mr. Jewett’s name removed from there as well. Kitty Bennett contributed research. Read More Here

McConnell Backs Election Law Revisions Due To Jan. 6 https://digitalalaskanews.com/mcconnell-backs-election-law-revisions-due-to-jan-6/ WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday he will “proudly support” legislation to overhaul rules for certifying presidential elections, bolstering a bipartisan effort to revise a 19th century law and avoid another Jan. 6 insurrection. The legislation would clarify and expand parts of the 1887 Electoral Count Act, which, along with the Constitution, governs how states and Congress certify electors and declare presidential winners. The changes in the certification process are in response to unsuccessful efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to exploit loopholes in the law to overturn his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden, and the violent attack on the Capitol by his supporters as Congress counted the votes. “Congress’ process for counting the presidential electors’ votes was written 135 years ago,” McConnell said. “The chaos that came to a head on Jan. 6 of last year certainly underscored the need for an update.” McConnell made the remarks just before the Senate Rules Committee voted 14-1 to approve the bill and send it to the Senate floor, where a vote is expected after the November election. The only senator to vote against the legislation was Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, one of two senators to stand and object to Biden’s certification last year. The GOP leader’s endorsement gave the legislation a major boost as the bipartisan group pushes to pass the bill before the end of the year and ahead of the next election cycle. Trump is still pushing false claims of election fraud and saying he won the election as he considers another run in 2024. McConnell’s support for the law could put him even more at odds with Trump, who frequently berates the GOP leader and has encouraged Republicans to vote against it. The House has already passed a more expansive bill overhauling the electoral rules, but it has far less Republican support. While the House bill received a handful of GOP votes, the Senate version already has the backing of at least 12 Republicans — more than enough to break a filibuster and pass the legislation in the 50-50 Senate. As he announced his support, McConnell noted that Democrats also objected to legitimate election results the last three times that Republicans won the presidency. “The situation obviously called for careful, methodical and bipartisan work,” he said, noting that the bipartisan group that negotiated the bill worked on the language for months. McConnell called the House bill a “non-starter” in the Senate because of the bipartisan compromise on the Senate language. “We have one shot to get this right,” he said. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the Democratic chairwoman of the Senate Rules panel, expressed a similar sentiment. The Senate legislation is the bill that “will achieve a strong bipartisan consensus,” she said. Cruz, who stood with Trump as he made false claims of fraud in 2020, called the legislation a “bad bill” and said it would make it harder for Congress to challenge fraudulent elections. He questioned why any Republican would support it. The bill is all about “Democratic rage” at Trump, Cruz said. Cruz was the lone dissenter. Among the Republicans who voted for the bill after McConnell’s statement was Mississippi Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith — one of only eight senators to oppose Biden’s certification in January 2021. Missing the committee vote was GOP Sen. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Trump’s ambassador to Japan who was in Tokyo attending the state funeral of former Prime Minster Shinzo Abe. Senators made minor tweaks to the legislation at Tuesday’s meeting but kept the bill largely intact. The bill, written by Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, would make clear that the vice president only has a ceremonial role in the certification process, tighten the rules around states sending their votes to Congress and make it harder for lawmakers to object. The changes are a direct response to Trump, who publicly pressured several states, members of Congress and then-Vice President Mike Pence to aid him as he tried to undo Biden’s win. Even though Trump’s effort failed, lawmakers in both parties said his attacks on the election showed the need for stronger safeguards in the law. If it becomes law, the bill would be Congress’ strongest legislative response yet to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, in which hundreds of Trump’s supporters beat police officers, broke into the Capitol and interrupted the joint session as lawmakers were counting the votes. Once the rioters were cleared, the House and Senate rejected GOP objections to the vote in two states. But more than 140 Republicans voted to sustain them. Differences between the House and Senate bills will have to be resolved before final passage, including language around congressional objections. While the Senate bill would require a fifth of both chambers to agree on an electoral objection to trigger a vote, the House bill would require agreement from at least a third of House members and a third of the Senate. Currently, only one member of each chamber is required for the House and Senate to vote on whether to reject a state’s electors. Today’s breaking news and more in your inbox Read More Here

Despite Hurricane Ian, Trump Pushed To Be Deposed At Mar-A-Lago On Friday: Report https://digitalalaskanews.com/despite-hurricane-ian-trump-pushed-to-be-deposed-at-mar-a-lago-on-friday-report/ As Hurricane Ian pummels Florida, Donald Trump is pushing ahead to be deposed at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach on Friday. “Former President Donald Trump’s deposition in an investors’ class-action fraud lawsuit over his promotion of a failed desktop video phone was delayed by Hurricane Ian that’s ravaging large parts of Florida,” Bloomberg News reported. “The investors’ lawyer sought a postponement saying the Category 4 hurricane that slammed the west coast of Florida Wednesday made questioning Trump under oath unsafe at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Trump opposed the delay.” Palm Beach County suffered power outages on Wednesday and remains under a tropical storm warning, The Palm Beach Post reports. US Magistrate Judge Sarah Cave ended up telling both sides to come to a new agreement on when to hold the deposition, with an Oct. 31 deadline. The lawsuit is also against Donald Trump, Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump. “Trump fought for years to avoid the deposition but ultimately agreed earlier this year to answer questions under oath, after his attempt to dismiss the suit failed,” Bloomberg reported. “The case is one of the lesser known yet significant legal disputes facing the former president as he weighs possible 2024 run for the White House.” Read More Here

Trump Objects To Verifying List Of Property Seized From Florida Estate – Court Filing https://digitalalaskanews.com/trump-objects-to-verifying-list-of-property-seized-from-florida-estate-court-filing/ Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, U.S., September 3, 2022. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly Sept 28 (Reuters) – Lawyers for former President Donald Trump are resisting a federal judge’s instruction to submit a sworn declaration on whether they believe the government’s list of property taken from Trump’s Florida estate is accurate. According to a letter publicly filed by Trump’s lawyers on Wednesday, the former president’s legal team told Senior U.S. Judge Raymond Dearie, who is reviewing the materials taken in the federal raid of the Florida property, that they don’t believe Dearie has the authority to require them to make such a filing. The former president has repeatedly claimed without evidence that the FBI planted evidence. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com The Trump lawyers’ letter, dated Sept. 25, says the order by another federal judge appointing Dearie to conduct the outside review of the materials only requires that the government file a declaration on the accuracy of the inventory list, and not Trump. Trump’s lawyers also said they could not verify the accuracy of the property list because they do not currently have access to information taken in the raid that was marked as classified. Dearie had ordered the former president to make the filing by Oct. 7. Dearie has not yet addressed the objection. Dearie’s order asked Trump to list any items that were seized, but not listed in the inventory, any items that were not seized and erroneously included on the list, as well as any possible errors in the inventory about the location of seized items. Trump’s attorneys also said in a letter filed in court Wednesday that the roughly 11,000 records seized by federal agents consist of almost 200,000 pages. They said the volume is hindering their ability to hire an outside vendor who can upload and host the documents so parties involved in the case can see them. Dearie was appointed by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon at Trump’s request, and over objections from the Justice Department, to review the more than 11,000 records seized from Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8. He is required to weed out any records that could be subject to claims of attorney-client privilege or executive privilege, a legal doctrine that can shield some White House communications from disclosure. Initially Cannon ordered Dearie to include in his review about 100 documents marked as classified, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit reversed this decision after the Justice Department appealed. The appellate court also ruled that the Justice Department can immediately resume using those classified records for its ongoing criminal probe, after Cannon had barred them from doing so. Trump had resisted efforts to carve out material with classified markings from the review. Trump said in a recent Fox News interview he had declassified it all, but his lawyers have not made this claim in official court filings. Trump could still appeal the 11th Circuit’s ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, but thus far has not done so. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Reporting by Jacqueline Thomsen; editing by Richard Pullin Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. Jacqueline Thomsen Thomson Reuters Jacqueline Thomsen, based in Washington, D.C., covers legal news related to policy, the courts and the legal profession. Follow her on Twitter at @jacq_thomsen and email her at jacqueline.thomsen@thomsonreuters.com. Read More Here

R https://digitalalaskanews.com/r-2/ The Shell by Mammoth Liquor: $6.25/gallon. The Shell off Old Mammoth: $6.35/gallon. The Chevron: $6.45/gallon.  The 76: $6.45/gallon.  Moral of the story: fuel up on the south side of Main Street.  A recent article in the Wall Street Journal penned that this is the 13th consecutive week that gas prices have dropped across the country. The national average: $3.70/gallon.  That’s almost three dollars cheaper than the gas in Mammoth.  “Most of it has to do with California,” says Russ Norton of Norco Service Center-Goodyear and 76. “Has to do with the regulations.”  Regulations like an excise tax of gas that costs California drivers 53.9 cents a gallon at the pump, according to a recent article by Lara Korte at Politico. California says the revenue goes to road repair, bridge repair, and public transport.  In addition, California uses a special blend of gasoline that costs more to refine. The gas, which helps keep California’s air clean, evaporates slower than typical gasoline. This specific blend can be harder to obtain and can cost 5 to 10 cents more per gallon at the pump, according to an article from FOX11 Los Angeles. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has also caused retail gas prices to spike “by at least one dollar in the U.S.,” the CATO Institute found.  Another factor affecting prices: six out of twelve oil refineries in the state of California are out of operation due to maintenance, according to Politico. Low supply and high demand means higher prices.  “Under Trump, we had plenty of fuel,” says Karl Teller of Mammoth’s Chevron station. Teller blames the current administration for the high prices. “It’s a vindictive move by the Democrats,” he says. The party isn’t following through with the idea of U.S. energy independence, according to Teller.  Supposing that energy independence means that the U.S. produces more energy than it consumes, as defined by Forbes Senior Contributor Robert Rapier, then the United States has remained energy independent through 2021. The country’s net exports of crude oil and petroleum products for 2021 was 62,000 barrels per day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. In 2020, that number was 635,000. Still, Teller is right to some degree – the situation is political, and clean air is costly. According to Politico, conservatives want to suspend the gas tax to offer Californians relief at the pump. Instead, the state is mailing out refunds to taxpayers based on their filing status and income. Checks ranging from $200 to $1,050 should arrive in mailboxes come October, writes Politico’s Korte.  “The margins are as bad as I’ve ever seen them,” says Teller. He saw a 25 cent jump on Tuesday in the cost for the fuel he purchases for his station. Teller, who stocks up on fuel every three days, decided to wait the jump out and see if prices would fall come Wednesday.  Norton saw his price jump by 37 cents last week. “I get gas prices everyday,” says Norton, “and they are going up everyday… Nobody tells me why. All they do is email me my prices in the morning.”  Ken Sample, owner of Mammoth’s Shell stations, declined to comment on the town’s high gas prices. It seems that gas prices are high for an array of reasons. Norton sums it up like this: “It’s just doing business in California. Everything’s expensive.” Read More Here

Georgia Election Officials Discuss Breach, Security Measures https://digitalalaskanews.com/georgia-election-officials-discuss-breach-security-measures/ ATLANTA The Georgia State Election Board held a meeting Wednesday meant to reassure board members and the general public that the state’s elections remain secure following the revelation of a breach of voting equipment in one county. The meeting included a presentation on state election law, an explanation of how the state’s voting machines work and a description of post-election audits. It also included a report on the breach of voting equipment in rural Coffee County. “I think what happened in Coffee County was despicable,” board Chairman William Duffey, a retired federal judge, said after the meeting. If the investigation finds evidence of crimes, the penalties should be significant “to let people there and in other counties know that we are not going to put up with that,” he said. While acknowledging the serious concerns raised by that breach, the board members said they remain confident in the state’s election system. Sara Tindall Ghazal, the state Democratic Party’s appointee to the board, said elections have to balance three “sometimes-competing interests” — security, accessibility and efficient administration. “Georgia’s system reflects an attempt to balance these issues and interests,” she said. “I have trust in our election officials and in our voters to ensure that our elections will proceed smoothly and securely and that the outcome will reflect the will of the voters.” A computer forensics team hired by allies of then-President Donald Trump traveled to the elections office in Coffee County, about 200 miles southeast of Atlanta, on Jan. 7, 2021, and made complete copies of data and software on elections equipment, according to documents and deposition testimony produced in response to subpoenas in a long-running lawsuit challenging the security of the state’s voting machines. Security camera video from the elections office shows that local Republican Party and county election officials were present when the copying took place. The video also shows that two men who have participated in efforts to question the results of the 2020 election in several states repeatedly visited the Coffee County elections office later that month, spending hours inside. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the secretary of state’s office are looking into the breach. Since similar activity has happened in other states, the FBI has also been contacted, Duffey said. An Atlanta-based prosecutor looking into attempts by Trump to overturn his loss in the state is also seeking to question people involved. A group of computer and election security experts earlier this month sent a letter to the State Election Board saying the breach poses “serious threats” to the state’s voting system. The experts include academics and former state election officials who aren’t associated with efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. They urged the board to replace the state’s Dominion Voting Systems touchscreen voting machines with hand-marked paper ballots. During a presentation on state election law, Republican election board member Matt Mashburn said the board can only mandate such an emergency measure in cases of “imminent peril to public health, safety, or welfare.” The ballots printed by Georgia’s voting machines include a QR code — a barcode that is read and tabulated by a scanner — and a human-readable list representing the voter’s selections. Dominion CEO John Poulos appeared by videoconference and described how the voting system works. He highlighted various security measures, including encryption, passwords, scanned backups of paper ballots, physical seals and testing publicly before elections. He said it’s very important for voters to verify that the list on the ballot reflects their selections. Blake Evans, elections director for the secretary of state’s office, walked board members through the process for the audits that Georgia now uses to check one statewide race during even-year general elections. The “risk-limiting audits” rely on statistics, mathematics and a hand count of a sample of ballots to ensure that the machine-tabulated result is accurate. Critics of the voting machines have said studies show voters rarely check their ballots. They say that means there’s no guarantee the ballots accurately reflect voter intent, making any audit meaningless. University of Michigan computer science professor J. Alex Halderman, an expert witness in the voting machines lawsuit that exposed the breach in Coffee County, identified what he says are security vulnerabilities in Georgia’s voting machines. The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in June issued an advisory based on Halderman’s findings that includes measures to mitigate the risks. Dominion commissioned its own review of Halderman’s findings by the MITRE Corporation. An executive summary of that report deems the potential attacks identified “operationally infeasible.” The Halderman and MITRE reports were filed under seal in federal court. The election board unanimously endorsed a motion to urge the judge overseeing the case to release the reports with necessary redactions. Board member Ed Lindsey, a former Republican state lawmaker, said that would allow the public to “evaluate and have confidence in our election system.” Read More Here

Myanmar Beauty Queen Who Decried Junta Seeks Asylum In Canada https://digitalalaskanews.com/myanmar-beauty-queen-who-decried-junta-seeks-asylum-in-canada/ A Myanmar beauty queen who publicly criticized her country’s military junta, and later became stranded at the Bangkok airport, arrived Wednesday in Canada, where she is seeking asylum. Thaw Nandar Aung, also known as Han Lay, landed in Toronto and said she was going to live on Prince Edward Island, a province off Canada’s Atlantic coast, Reuters reported. It was unclear what her status was, but Han Lay, 23, told Radio Free Asia she was granted permission to stay with the help of Canadian officials and the U.N. refugee agency. “Everything happened so fast, and I only have a few pieces of clothing,” she told the broadcaster before departing for Canada. But, she said, “I have spoken out for Myanmar wherever I go. Since Canada is a safe place for me, I will have more opportunities to speak out on the issue.” Han Lay first garnered worldwide attention last year when, at the Miss Grand International beauty pageant in Thailand, she used her time on the stage to speak out against Myanmar’s military rulers. At the time, the junta, known as the Tatmadaw, had just seized power and anti-military protests were raging. The military and police confronted demonstrators with deadly force. On one particularly bloody day, March 27, security forces killed over 160 protesters. That same day, Han Lay was on a stage in Bangkok wearing a traditional white gown as one of 20 finalists in the pageant. “Today in my country, Myanmar, while I am going to be on this stage, there are so many people dying; more than 100 people died today,” she told the audience and cameras, wiping away tears. “I am deeply sorry for all the people who have lost their lives.” “Every citizen of the world wants the prosperity of their country and the peaceful environment,” she added. “In doing so, the leaders involved should not use their power and selfishness.” The speech put Han Lay in the spotlight and also drew condemnation and threats on social media, she said. After the pageant, she stayed in Thailand to avoid potential arrest in her home country, where thousands have been injured or killed since the military takeover. Thousands more are in prison, and in July the military junta executed four pro-democracy activists, including two of the resistance’s most prominent leaders. But on Sept. 21, after a brief trip to Vietnam, Han Lay was denied entry at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport. Thai officials said her Myanmar-issued travel documents were invalid, Reuters reported. She wrote on Facebook the next day that Myanmar police officials were also at the airport and had attempted to reach out to her. “I will refuse to meet with the Myanmar police by using my human right,” she wrote, adding that she had requested help from Thai authorities and the United Nations. According to Human Rights Watch, the move was “a deliberate political act by the junta to make her stateless.” “There is no doubt that what transpired was a trap to try to force Han Lay to return to Myanmar, where she would have faced immediate arrest, likely abuse in detention, and imprisonment,” the group’s deputy Asia director, Phil Robertson, said in a statement Wednesday. He said that governments should be “on guard” against attempts by Myanmar’s military junta to use “similar tactics against overseas dissidents traveling on Myanmar passports in the future.” “This is hardly the first time repressive Burmese military dictatorships have sought to use their control over Myanmar passports as a weapon against their own people’s rights to travel internationally,” Robertson said. Read More Here

Trump Blamed His Supporters In 'the Radical Right' As The Reason He Didn't Get The Credit He Thought He Deserved For COVID Vaccines While Advising Politicians Not To 'make A Big Deal' Out Of The Pandemic, Book Says https://digitalalaskanews.com/trump-blamed-his-supporters-in-the-radical-right-as-the-reason-he-didnt-get-the-credit-he-thought-he-deserved-for-covid-vaccines-while-advising-politicians-not-to-make-a-big-de/ A new book reveals that former President Donald Trump told his aides not to wear masks in his presence. The book, by reporter Maggie Haberman, also said Trump told aides to avoid discussing the pandemic on TV. Haberman’s book also reported that he told then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo not to “make such a big deal out of this.” Loading Something is loading. Former President Donald Trump had conflicting approaches to the coronavirus pandemic, New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman wrote in her upcoming book. Haberman, also a CNN political analyst, has done extensive reporting on the former president. In her book, “Confidence Man,” Haberman reported that Trump would tell White House aides to remove face masks in 2020, the height of the pandemic, according to a Washington Post report detailing parts of the book ahead of its release. “Get that fucking thing off,” Trump once said during a meeting referring to the mask, Haberman wrote. By contrast, the former President also sought credit for COVID-19 vaccines but argued that the “radical right” was in the way of that, Haberman reported, according to The Post. The report, citing Haberman’s book, also said that Trump would discourage White House aides from discussing the pandemic publically while downplaying the seriousness of the crisis.  The Post, pointing to Haberman’s book, added that Trump did so because he believed the virus was “a political loser for him.” Reuters reported that his approval ratings decreased by 22 points in October 2020, sitting at a record-low 37% approval, as much of the public was displeased with how he handled the virus. “Don’t talk about it on TV,” Trump reportedly told Republican National Committee’s chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, the Post said quoting Haberman’s book. The report added that the MAGA President, who has claimed that he “did a great job” tackling the issues brought on by the pandemic, also told Andrew Cuomo, the former New York Governor, not to “make such a big deal out of this,” per Haberman’s book. “You’re gonna make it a problem,” he added. Read More Here

Oakland School Shooting Leaves 6 Adults Injured, Police Searching For Suspect https://digitalalaskanews.com/oakland-school-shooting-leaves-6-adults-injured-police-searching-for-suspect/ Six people were injured in a school shooting Wednesday in Oakland’s Eastmont Hills, police said. Oakland police officials said the shooting took place at the King Estate campus on Fontaine Street, which houses multiple schools. Officers are looking for at least one shooter, but add other suspects might be involved. “Today’s gun violence at Sojourner Truth school shocks the soul,” Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said in a tweet. “Our schools are sanctuaries for our children.” Today’s gun violence at Sojourner Truth school shocks the soul — our schools are sanctuaries for our children. Our investigators report all six victims are adults + being treated for injuries at hospitals now. The school is now clear + all children being reunited w/ families. — Libby Schaaf (@LibbySchaaf) September 28, 2022 The school has since been cleared by police. Highland Hospital in Oakland confirms it is treating three of the victims, who all are in critical condition with gunshot wounds. The other three victims were transported to Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley, according to the hospital. Police in a late afternoon briefing said all victims are adults affiliated with the school and provided the following updates on their conditions: two are suffering from life-threatening injuries one victim has been released from the hospital two victims are pending release from the hospital one victim has injuries that are non-life threatening Aerial coverage from NBC Bay Area’s SkyRanger showed students being evacuated from the campus and a heavy police presence, with some officers canvassing the complex. “I just hear the shooting and I saw this lady getting out from the car and she was running inside the school and I was thinking the worst,” witness Alejandra said in an interview with NBC Bay Area. Six people were injured in a school shooting Wednesday in Oakland, police said. The Oakland Unified School District provided the following statement Wednesday afternoon: “There was an incident today at the King Estate campus on Fontaine Street, which houses the co-located Rudsdale Continuation and Newcomer high schools, BayTech Charter School, and the headquarters of Sojourner Truth Independent Study, which has no students at the site. The campus is near Oakland Academy of Knowledge (OAK), but it is important to note the incident was NOT at OAK, nor did it have anything to do with that elementary school. We currently do not have any information beyond what Oakland Police are reporting.” California Gov. Gavin Newsom called the shooting “a horrifying act of violence that has grown too familiar.” The governor in a tweet added “This cannot continue — gun violence has taken too much from our communities.” Today’s shooting at an Oakland school was a horrifying act of violence that has grown too familiar. Yet again, our kids were in the crossfire. This cannot continue — gun violence has taken too much from our communities. — Office of the Governor of California (@CAgovernor) September 28, 2022 Parents were asked to meet their children at the church on Mountain and Fontaine for reunification. The California Highway Patrol also shut down both eastbound and westbound Keller Avenue off-ramps in Oakland while police responded to the scene. NBC Bay Area’s Pete Suratos has the latest on the Oakland school shooting investigation, including what a 10-year-old student, from a nearby elementary school, experienced. NBC Bay Area’s Velena Jones speaks with Oakland Councilmember Treva Reid, who provides an update on the shooting that occurred at a complex that houses multiple schools. NBC Bay Area’s Elizabeth Campos, Brendan Weber, Cheryl Hurd, Christie Smith, Pete Suratos, Diana San Juan and Stephanie Guzman contributed to this report. Read More Here

A https://digitalalaskanews.com/a-29/ Access to this page has been denied because we believe you are using automation tools to browse the website. This may happen as a result of the following: Javascript is disabled or blocked by an extension (ad blockers for example) Your browser does not support cookies Please make sure that Javascript and cookies are enabled on your browser and that you are not blocking them from loading. Reference ID: #ea1d6b1d-3f94-11ed-8386-516d6c667a57 Read More Here

Guns Surrendered In Buyback Programs Plummeted Over A Decade https://digitalalaskanews.com/guns-surrendered-in-buyback-programs-plummeted-over-a-decade/ The number of firearms citizens turned into authorities under buyback and amnesty schemes declined significantly in the first three years of the current government compared to the same period of its predecessor, official data shows. Via a freedom of information request, the newspaper El Universal obtained federal government data that showed that 9,975 guns were surrendered to the army and destroyed between 2019 and 2021, an 86% decline compared to the three-year period between 2013 and 2015, when 71,785 firearms were turned in by citizens. The decline had begun by the second half of former president Enrique Peña Nieto’s six-year term and continued after President López Obrador took office. The number of firearms surrendered in the past three years is 55% lower than the 22,355 turned in between 2016 and 2018. Just 1,167 were handed in last year, compared to more than 31,000 in 2013. Under different programs, citizens have been able to exchange firearms for cash, vouchers, domestic appliances and furniture. Prices paid range from less than 200 pesos (about US $10) to more than 16,000 pesos (almost US $800) depending on the kind of weapon. Surrendered guns are destroyed by military personnel. Twitter: SedenaMX While the number of guns surrendered between 2019 and 2021 declined 86% compared to the first three years of Peña Nieto’s term, the number of homicides committed with firearms increased 120% from 27,632 between 2013 and 2015 to 60,718 in the 36 months to the end of December 2021. The inference is that people haven’t turned in weapons in great numbers in the last three years because they are worried about the high levels of gun violence and want to be able to protect themselves if need be. José Andrés Sumano Rodríguez, an academic at the College of the Northern border who researches violence, told El Universal that people in some parts of the country decide to get a gun to protect their family and assets because the government’s security strategy isn’t working. Gun ownership is legal in Mexico, but firearms can only be legally bought at one army-run store in Mexico City. They are, however, widely available on the black market. A 2021 study concluded there were firearms in at least 1.89 million Mexican homes, a figure that represents 5.5% of all households in the country. The purpose of gun buyback programs is ultimately to reduce violence, but Sumano says they firearms surrendered in Mexico are “not the rifles or pistols” generally used in homicides. Citizens generally hand in guns that are very old or don’t work, he said. “[The purpose of] these kinds of programs is to disarm people, but they haven’t yielded the expected results,” Sumano said. “We’re not going to find a Barrett rifle or an AK-47” among the weapons turned in, he added. The newspaper Milenio, which also obtained data on surrendered firearms, reported that very few guns have been handed in recent years in highly violent states such as Baja California, Guerrero and Guanajuato. The numbers have been much higher in Mexico City, although there was a reduction there in 2020 and again in 2021. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in 2019 that more than more than 200,000 guns are smuggled into Mexico every year. It also said that firearms from the United States are used in seven out of every 10 high-impact crimes. With reports from El Universal and Milenio Read More Here

DHS Approves Jones Act Waiver To Ensure Diesel For Puerto Rico After Hurricane Fiona – Local News 8 https://digitalalaskanews.com/dhs-approves-jones-act-waiver-to-ensure-diesel-for-puerto-rico-after-hurricane-fiona-local-news-8/ By Geneva Sands and Maegan Vazquez, CNN Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Wednesday approved a federal waiver opening up the potential for additional diesel to be shipped to Puerto Rico following the devastation of Hurricane Fiona last week. The announcement of the Jones Act waiver approval comes after the Biden administration faced increasing pressure to approve it to allow a British Petroleum ship loaded with diesel to enter one of Puerto Rico’s ports. The Jones Act — also known as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 — requires all goods ferried between US ports to be carried on ships built, owned and operated by Americans. But those ships are far more expensive to buy and operate than foreign ones, making just about everything in Puerto Rico more expensive. DHS may grant a waiver when American vessels are not available to meet national defense requirements. On Tuesday, Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell said DHS was “actively” working on the approval process, but emphasized that the request needed to meet legal requirements put in place by Congress. Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi had asked the DHS secretary to personally intervene in the matter, and eight members of Congress, led by New York Democratic Rep. Nydia Velazquez, issued a letter to Mayorkas calling for a temporary waiver. Republican Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Mike Lee of Utah also called on the federal government to issue a waiver. Mayorkas said in a Wednesday statement that DHS would approve a “temporary and targeted” waiver. “In response to urgent and immediate needs of the Puerto Rican people in the aftermath of Hurricane Fiona, I have approved a temporary and targeted Jones Act waiver to ensure that the people of Puerto Rican have sufficient diesel to run generators needed for electricity and the functioning critical facilities as they recover from Hurricane Fiona,” the secretary said. Puerto Rico has before received a disaster-related Jones Act waiver when then-President Donald Trump issued a waiver after Hurricane Maria hit the island in 2017. The-CNN-Wire & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved. Read More Here

Sanders, Kaine Hail US Senate https://digitalalaskanews.com/sanders-kaine-hail-us-senate/ With just four days to go until the first round of Brazil’s presidential contest, a pair of U.S. senators on Wednesday hailed the upper chamber’s passage of a resolution calling on officials in the South American giant to ensure the election is “conducted in a free, fair, credible, transparent, and peaceful manner.” “With this vote, the Senate sent a powerful message.” “It is imperative that the U.S. Senate make it clear through this resolution that we support democracy in Brazil,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who co-sponsored the resolution with Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.). “It would be unacceptable for the United States to recognize a government that came to power undemocratically, and it would send a horrific message to the entire world.” “It is important for the people of Brazil to know we’re on their side, on the side of democracy,” Sanders added. “With passage of this resolution, we are sending that message.” Without mentioning far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro by name, the resolution—which passed by unanimous consent—notes “efforts to incite political violence [and] encourage the armed forces of Brazil to intervene in the conduct of the electoral processes,” as well as to “question or subvert the democratic and electoral institutions of Brazil.” Bolsonaro, an open admirer of the former U.S.-backed 1964-85 military dictatorship in whose army he served as an officer, has warned he may not accept the results of the election in the likely event he loses. Polls show former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party leading Bolsonaro by 15-20 points heading into Sunday’s first-round presidential election. Brazilian pollster IPEC gives the democratic socialist challenger a commanding 48% to 31% lead over the incumbent, just two points shy of the total needed to avert a runoff round by outright victory. “Only god will remove me,” defiantly declared during a speech on September 7, Brazil’s bicentennial. There are widespread fears in Brazil and beyond that a beaten Bolsonaro may attempt to foment a coup or an insurrection inspired by the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of defeated former President Donald Trump. Kaine asserted that “at a time when democracy is under attack in Brazil, the United States, and in countries around the world, we all have a responsibility to stand up for peoples’ fundamental right to have a voice in their government, free from fear of retribution or political retaliation.” “With this vote, the Senate sent a powerful message that we are committed to linking arms with the people of Brazil in support of their country’s democracy and remain confident that Brazil’s electoral institutions will ensure a free, fair, and transparent vote,” he added. Read More Here

Don't Take Our Word That Trump Is A Fascist. His Bigoted Chief Of Staff Mark Kelly Called Him One. https://digitalalaskanews.com/dont-take-our-word-that-trump-is-a-fascist-his-bigoted-chief-of-staff-mark-kelly-called-him-one/ While Maggie Haberman is enjoying the rush of publishing her background stories on Donald Trump’s Presidency, there was a nugget that CNN decided to share with the rest of us not wanting to reward Haberman by buying her book:  bigoted former Chief of Staff Mark Kelly called Trump a “fascist.”  What is so special about that fact is that Mark Kelly was fine with Trump’s racism, especially when it came to separating undocumented immigrant children from their families. Let’s take a stroll down memory lane: President Trump’s chief of staff John Kelly defended the technique of separating undocumented immigrants from their children as a necessary evil in the administration’s effort to increase border security during an interview with National Public Radio Thursday. Kelly told NPR that “the vast majority” of the immigrants “are not bad people.” “They’re not criminals. They’re not MS-13,” Kelly said. “But they’re also not people that would easily assimilate into the United States into our modern society. They’re overwhelmingly rural people.” He said they are poorly educated, don’t speak English — “obviously that’s a big thing” — and don’t have skills, so they “don’t integrate well.” “They’re not bad people,” Kelly repeated. “They’re coming here for a reason. And I sympathize with the reason. But the laws are the laws.” In the effort to enforce U.S. border laws, “a big name of the game is deterrence,” he explained. And separating families “could be a tough deterrent.” Kelly disputed the notion that such action was cruel. “The children will be taken care of — put into foster care or whatever,” Kelly said. “But the big point is they elected to come illegally into the United States and this is a technique that no one hopes will be used extensively or for very long.” Emphasis is mine.  Rural people that are poorly educated, don’t speak English, and don’t have any skills.  Except for the speaking English bit, the same description can be thrown at white rural Americans, at least some of the ones I know.  The ones I know are not wealthy, and I know for a fact that most of their kids did not value education.  I know because I tried to teach them as a high school teacher.   And while they could speak English, more than a few of them in Kentucky are functionally illiterate. And believe it or not, it was the kids who couldn’t speak English who BELIEVED in education and wanted to learn English.  The kids who were ESL (English as a Second Language) actually behaved in class and wanted to learn to improve their lives.  Their parents wanted them to have a better life in America, so obtaining an American education was invaluable to those parents.  Oh, and those kids were primarily from war torn areas, so they were from all walks of life:  urban and rural.  It was a mixed group, but the one thing they all shared was that they want to be Americans and never go back to the violence they were escaping from.  Their parents are not bums.  They had the courage to risk their lives and save their kids. And Mark Kelly is also a liar.  “The childern will be take care of-”.  How about we take care of Kelly like we did those kids?  How would Kelly like to be put in a cage with a hard floor to sleep on?   I’d imagine a man his age would not fair well, even if he was a marine. But Kelly NEVER spoke out like this against Trump.  I don’t remember him calling Trump a fascist.  I think that would have made news before the 2020 Election.  Instead, we get to read about it from CNN more than 18 months after Trump left office. So you can see why I do not put a lot of value in Mark Kelly’s calling Trump a fascist.  A cruel racist is calling another cruel racist a fascist.  I’m sure we could get a childish rebuttal from Trump like, “You’re the fascist!”   Wasn’t that  whatTrump did with Hillary Clinton during one of those debates?  “I’m not a puppet.  You’re the puppet!”  Difference was that Hillary Clinton is a decent human being, while Mark Kelly disgraced his uniform working for a vile bastard like Trump. So thanks Mark Kelly for confirming what we already know about Trump.  Now, go fuck yourself. Read More Here

Feds Want Psychological Tests For Parents Of Separated Kids – The Paper. https://digitalalaskanews.com/feds-want-psychological-tests-for-parents-of-separated-kids-the-paper/ Published September 28th, 2022 at 5:09 pm By LINDSAY WHITEHURST and COLLEEN LONG Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is asking that parents of children separated at the U.S.-Mexico border undergo another round of psychological evaluations to measure how traumatized they were by the Trump-era policy, court documents show. The request comes in a lawsuit filed by migrants seeking compensation from the government after thousands of children were taken from parents in a policy maligned as inhumane by political and religious leaders around the world. Settlement talks with attorneys and the government broke down late last year. Justice Department attorneys are also reserving the right to have a psychologist examine the children who were separated, if necessary. The evaluations are routine in emotional-damages claims, but these cases are unusual because the government’s role in traumatizing parents and children by the separations has been well documented. “President Biden called the Trump family separations criminal and a moral stain on the nation, but now his administration is hiring doctors to try and claim the families didn’t suffer all that much,” said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project and a lawyer for plaintiffs in the effort to compensate migrants. Government attorneys argued that the migrants “allege that their mental and emotional injuries are ongoing and permanent in nature” and that their injuries are directly related to the government’s policy. They say it is necessary for the government to have its own opportunity to examine them. The requests came in two cases filed by 11 families. There are nearly two dozen similar cases pending in other courts, and some have already submitted to government-requested psychiatric evaluations. But the parents have already sat for hourslong depositions in which they recounted what happened in detail. Government investigators have said children separated from their parents showed more fear, feelings of abandonment and post-traumatic stress symptoms than children who were not separated. Some children believed their parents had abandoned them or had been killed. For some, the mental trauma caused physical symptoms, like chest or heart pain, according to a 2019 report from the inspector general’s office in the Department of Health and Human Services. Parents studied by Physicians for Human Rights, a nonprofit collective of doctors that works to document human rights violations, exhibited suicidal thoughts and suffered a raft of problems including nightmares, depression, anxiety, panic, worry and difficulty sleeping. Biden administration officials have decried the Trump-era policies. Biden, a Democrat, said during his presidential campaign the policies were “an outrage, a moral failing and a stain on our national character.” Justice Department attorneys acknowledge in court documents that parents have already undergone multiple mental health evaluations but say an adult-psychology expert found it was necessary to get another opinion, according to court documents. “It is standard practice for plaintiffs alleging severe emotional injury to be examined by the opposing party’s expert,” federal attorneys wrote. They point to a similar southern Florida case in which a father and child agreed to the same examination and say it’s “well within” what’s considered appropriate. An examination would take about eight hours, four hours for clinical interviews and four hours of emotional and trauma testing, federal attorneys wrote. It would not be invasive and would happen at an agreed-upon place and time. The previous evaluations were done by experts chosen by the parents’ lawyers. The two sides had been negotiating a settlement, but then Biden said that families of separated children deserve some form of compensation. An early proposal of $450,000 per person was reported and was heavily criticized by Republicans. When asked about the proposed figure, Biden said: “That’s not going to happen.” Talks ended shortly after. The settlement talks had also included discussion of granting the families legal U.S. residency and providing counseling services. There is a separate legal effort to reunite other families, and there are still hundreds who have not been brought back together. The Biden administration has formed a reunification task force that has reunited roughly 600 families. Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy meant that any adult caught crossing the border illegally would be prosecuted for illegal entry. Because children cannot be jailed with their family members, families were separated and children were taken into custody by Health and Human Services, which manages unaccompanied children at the border. No system was created to reunite children with their families. According to the government watchdogs, Trump administration leaders underestimated how difficult it would be to carry out the policy in the field and did not inform local prosecutors and others that children would be separated. They also failed to understand that children would be separated longer than a few hours, and when that was discovered, they pressed on, the watchdogs said. Read More Here

Trump Offers To Head Up Nord Stream Talks For Biden Amid Crisis https://digitalalaskanews.com/trump-offers-to-head-up-nord-stream-talks-for-biden-amid-crisis/ Nord Stream: Swedish Coast Guard captures gas leak Invalid email We use your sign-up to provide content in ways you’ve consented to and to improve our understanding of you. This may include adverts from us and 3rd parties based on our understanding. You can unsubscribe at any time. More info Donald Trump has called on Joe Biden to remain “cool, calm and dry” through the current crisis surrounding the Nord Stream pipelines. The former US President told his successor to be “smart” and orchestrate a negotiated deal, and offered to head up the talks. His intervention comes after a leak was discovered in the natural gas pipelines earlier this week, which was believed to have started three days earlier. Both Nord Stream 1 and 2 – which run along the Baltic Sea floor – are said to be affected. Both EU and Russian figures have suggested that sabotage of the underwater pipes – which until recently carried natural gas from Russia into Germany – was behind the leak. Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said: “Any deliberate disruption of European energy infrastructure is utterly unacceptable and will be met with a robust and united response.” READ MORE: CIA raised alarm over Nord Stream attack WEEKS ago Trump: ‘This is a big event that should not entail a big solution, at least not yet’ (Image: Getty) It is as yet unclear who would be responsible for such an attack, though subtle fingers have been pointed in various directions since the leak was discovered. A British defence source told Sky News this evening that it was likely premeditated, involving underwater explosives that could be detonated remotely. They added that any devices could have been lowered using a boat or aquatic drone potentially months or even years ago. The source said it was possibly the work of Russian actors, but downplayed speculation that it was a military submarine that had caused an explosion along the pipeline, as it would likely have been detected. A leak was discovered in the natural gas pipelines earlier this week, raising claims of sabotage (Image: Danish defence ministry) Meanwhile, Kremlin officials have reportedly suggested the US may have been behind the gas leak, after Mr Biden said in February he would end Nord Stream if Russia invaded Ukraine. Maria Zakharova, a Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, said the US President was “obliged” to answer whether Washington was to blame. On Tuesday, top officials in the Biden administration spoke to counterparts in Denmark about the “apparent sabotage” of the pipeline. Morten Bodskov, Denmark’s defence minister, said after a meeting with NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg today there was reason to be concerned about the security situation in the region. DON’T MISS:  Sunak sends veiled swipe at Truss and tells her to ‘own the moment’ [REVEAL] Truss faces challenge as MPs send confidence letters over budget issue [INSIGHT] Truss faces Tory MP’s unease after poll hands Labour 17-point lead [ANALYSIS] Bodskov said there was reason to be concerned about the security situation in the region (Image: Getty) Norway has said it is upping its military presence at oil and gas installations, and Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin told reporters this evening that the nation would be watching its waters closely following the incident. Writing on Truth Social – Mr Trump’s own version of Twitter he produced after being banned from the latter social media site – earlier today, the former President said Mr Biden “should remain ‘cool, calm, and dry’ on the SABOTAGE of the Nord Stream pipelines”. He said: “This is a big event that should not entail a big solution, at least not yet.” He urged Mr Biden to “not make matters worse”, and instead to “be strategic, be smart (brilliant!), [and] get a negotiated deal done NOW. Both sides need and want it.” EU officials accused Russia of using maintenance as a pretext to shut off gas supply to Europe (Image: Getty) Mr Trump claimed that the crisis “could lead to a major escalation, or war”, and argued that the “catastrophe” between Russia and Ukraine “would definitely not have happened if I were President”. Though both pipelines were impacted, one was only ever used to carry natural gas to Europe; Nord Stream 2 was built and ready to go online before the invasion started. As part of a raft of sanctions, both Germany and the EU mothballed the project. The EU also later announced that it would be divesting itself from all Russian fossil fuel imports in the coming months and years, after being dependent on Vladimir Putin for around 40 percent of its gas. But after announcing the first Nord Stream pipeline would have its supply shut off for a few days from the end of August into September, state-owned energy firm Gazprom said it was not ready to bring it back online and gave no indication of when it would. EU officials have accused Russia of using it as a pretext to shut off gas supply to Europe as it heads into the winter, leaving European leaders scrambling to shore up energy supplies. However, Putin may be harming Russia more than Europe: a recent Yale report found that Russia’s economy was collapsing from a lack of lucrative exports into Europe, and was struggling to sell fossil fuels in Asia for the same price. Neither does it have similar infrastructure into Asia as it did with Europe, the study said. Read More Here

Clergy Strive To Reconcile Politically Divided Congregations https://digitalalaskanews.com/clergy-strive-to-reconcile-politically-divided-congregations/ DAVID CRARY, AP National Writer Sep. 28, 2022Updated: Sep. 28, 2022 6:10 p.m. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 1of3Rabbi David Wolpe speaks to congregants at Sinai Temple Friday, Sept. 23, 2022, in Los Angeles. One member of Rabbi David Wolpe’s diverse congregation left because Wolpe would not preach sermons criticizing Donald Trump. Scores of others left over resentment with the synagogue’s rules for combating COVID-19. But Wolpe remains steadfast in his resolve to avoid politics when he preaches.Marcio Jose Sanchez/APShow MoreShow Less 2of3Rabbi David Wolpe speaks to congregants at Sinai Temple Friday, Sept. 23, 2022, in Los Angeles. “It is not easy to keep people comfortable with each other and as part of one community,” he says. “A great failing of modern American society is that people get to know each other’s politics before they get to know their humanity.”Marcio Jose Sanchez/APShow MoreShow Less 3of3 One member of Rabbi David Wolpe’s diverse congregation left because Wolpe would not preach sermons criticizing Donald Trump. Scores of others left over resentment with the synagogue’s rules for combating COVID-19. But Wolpe remains steadfast in his resolve to avoid politics when he preaches at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. “It is not easy to keep people comfortable with each other and as part of one community,” he said. “A great failing of modern American society is that people get to know each other’s politics before they get to know their humanity.” Wolpe — whose congregation includes liberal Democrats and hundreds of conservative Iranian Americans — is far from alone in facing such challenges. Though many congregations in the U.S. are relatively homogeneous, others are sharply divided. In some cases, divisions are becoming more pronounced as midterm election season heats up, leaving clergy to keep the peace while still meeting the spiritual needs of all of their members. A Black pastor in Columbus, Ohio — Bishop Timothy Clarke of the First Church of God — says there are “deep divides” in his predominantly African American congregation of more than 2,000. He cited abortion as a particularly divisive topic in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling in June allowing states to ban the procedure. “There are good people on both sides,” said Clarke, who addressed the congregation’s differences in a recent sermon. “I talked about the fact God loves everybody, even those you disagree with,” he said. The Rev. Paul Roberts, senior pastor of Eastminster Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, said his congregation – like many others — is dealing with one contentious issue after another. “The whole thing with Trump, Black Lives Matter, the pandemic really has highlighted a sense of uneasiness when you’re covering all these different topics as a church,” he said. “It just seems there isn’t anything that doesn’t have tension over it.” His church has about 140 regular attendees, a politically and theologically diverse group that’s about half Black and half white. He said a few people left the church over its support for the Black Lives Matter movement, but for the most part it has stayed together. He attributes that in part to hours of patient dialogue over such issues as mask-wearing and vaccines, which some Black members were wary of because of the history of medical maltreatment of African Americans. Rabbi Judith Siegal is asking members of her politically divided congregation in Coral Gables, Florida, to sign a code of ethics pledging to respect those with different views. Newly displayed signs at the synagogue, Temple Judea, hammer home this message. “No matter who you vote for, your skin color, where you are from, your faith, or who you love, we will be there for one another,” one sign says. “That’s what a community means.” Siegal said she and her assistant rabbi, Jonathan Fisch, are often asked by members of the Reform congregation to address certain issues “We’re careful about doing that in a way that’s value-driven, preaching from our tradition and our Torah,” she said. “For example, we know that welcoming immigrants is something that’s important to us as Jews — but we’re never going to tell anyone how to vote.” The Rev. Sarah Wilson said her congregation at St. Barnabas Lutheran Church in Cary, Illinois, includes Republican business leaders and liberal nurses and teachers. There are partisan differences, as well as conflicting views on abortion, but she aspires to keep political debate out of the church and avoid partisan rhetoric of her own. “Politics are very important to me — I vote in every election,” she said. “But I’m not here to tell a person how to vote or who to vote for. If people ask me, even for city council, I don’t do that.” The congregation at the Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and its connected Catholic school community is diverse ethnically, economically, and politically, said the Rev. David Boettner, rector of the cathedral and vicar general of the Diocese of Knoxville, Tennessee. Mass is celebrated in five languages, and parishioners and student families speak more than a dozen at home; some are financially well off while others struggle to get by, he said. “We’ve definitely got folks that belong to the Democratic Party and folks that belong to the Republican Party, and folks that probably don’t belong to either,” Boettner said. Political issues crop up in conversations at church, but Boettner suspects members are less likely to share polarizing views with him because he is their priest. They share more freely on social media, and he has noticed an increase in political posts as the midterm elections approach. Abortion and religious liberty, including the recent Supreme Court rulings, are prominent, he said. Boettner said he strives for consistency in preaching about the Catholic teachings on moral, social and economic justice issues, while steering clear of endorsing specific policies. Prayers are offered for all leaders, not just those from a particular party. “The church is not partisan,” Boettner said. “The Catholic Church is probably a great example of a church that offends both Democrats and Republicans alike.” In Bluefield, West Virginia, the Rev. Frederick Brown said he has sought “the middle of the road” during nearly three decades as pastor of a diverse but collegial congregation at Faith Center Church. “Staying in the middle of the road means God thinks it’s all important,” he said. “When you vote, you can vote your convictions — but don’t attack anyone else’s convictions because they’re different from yours.” At Sinai Temple, Rabbi Wolpe strives to encourage mutual respect within his congregation. He cites the men’s book club as a positive example: In a recent initiative, it alternated reading a book by a left-of-center author, then a book by a conservative. Yet Wolpe, 64, says political divisions have become deeply entrenched. “When I was born, people objected to their children marrying someone from another race but didn’t object to marrying someone from a different political party,” he said. “Now it’s the reverse.” ___ Associated Press writers Holly Meyer, Luis Andres Henao and Peter Smith contributed to this report. ___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. Read More Here

Hurricane Ian Makes Landfall In Southwest Florida As Category 4 Storm https://digitalalaskanews.com/hurricane-ian-makes-landfall-in-southwest-florida-as-category-4-storm/ Hurricane Ian made landfall Wednesday in southwest Florida as one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in the U.S.Here’s the latest on Hurricane Ian: Hurricane Ian made landfall near Cayo Costa around 3:05 p.m. ET as an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane, according to the National Hurricane Center.As of 6 p.m. ET, Ian has maximum sustained winds of 130 mph and is moving north northeast at 8 mph. Ian was located 15 miles east northeast of Punta Gorda, Florida, and 110 miles south-southwest of Orlando as of 6 p.m. ET. More than 1 million homes and businesses were without electricity, and Florida Power and Light warned those in Ian’s path to brace for days without powerThe NHC said Ian is battering the Florida peninsula with catastrophic storm surge, winds and flooding The center of Ian is forecast to move across central Florida Wednesday night and Thursday morning and emerge over the western Atlantic by late Thursday.Hurricane Ian knocked out Cuba’s power grid and work is underway to restore service to the country’s 11 million people.Watch live video coverage above from sister station WESH in Orlando.Live storm coverage is also available for free on your connected TV from Very Local. Download the app hereTracking Ian: The latest cone, models and satellite imagesLATEST CONELATEST MODELSLATEST SATELLITEIan makes landfall in Florida The hurricane’s center struck Wednesday afternoon near Cayo Costa, a protected barrier island just west of heavily populated Fort Myers. The massive storm was expected to trigger flooding across a wide area of Florida as it crawls northeastward across the peninsula.The Category 4 storm slammed the coast with 150 mph winds and pushed a wall of storm surge accumulated during its slow march over the Gulf of Mexico. Ian’s windspeed at landfall tied it for the fifth-strongest hurricane to strike the U.S., along with several other storms. Among them was Hurricane Charley, which hit almost the same spot on Florida’s coast in August 2004, killing 10 people and inflicting $14 billion in damage.Ian made landfall more than 100 miles south of Tampa and St. Petersburg, sparing the densely populated Tampa Bay area from its first direct hit by a major hurricane since 1921. Officials warned residents that Tampa could still experience powerful winds and up to 20 inches of rain.Isolated tornadoes spun off the storm well ahead of landfall. One tornado damaged small planes and a hangar at the North Perry Airport, west of Hollywood along the Atlantic coast. Impacts in Florida More than 1 million homes and businesses were without electricity, and Florida Power and Light warned those in Ian’s path to brace for days without power.In Naples, the first floor of a fire station was inundated with about 3 feet of water and firefighters worked to salvage gear from a firetruck stuck outside the garage in even deeper water, a video posted by the Naples Fire Department showed. Naples is in Collier County, where the sheriff’s department reported on Facebook that it was getting “a significant number of calls of people trapped by water in their homes” and that it would prioritize reaching people “reporting life threatening medical emergencies in deep water.” Details about IanThough expected to weaken to a tropical storm as it marched inland at about 9 mph, Hurricane Ian’s hurricane-force winds were likely to be felt well into central Florida.Before making its way through the Gulf of Mexico to Florida, Ian tore into western Cuba as a major hurricane Tuesday, killing two people and bringing down the country’s electrical grid.The center of the massive Category 4 storm lingered offshore for hours, which was likely to mean more rain and damage from a hurricane that was trudging on a track that would have it making landfall north of the heavily populated Fort Myers area. Catastrophic storm surges could push 12 to 18 feet of water across more than 250 miles of coastline, from Bonita Beach to Englewood, forecasters warned.Fueled by warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico, Ian grew to a Category 4 hurricane overnight with top winds of 155 mph, on the threshold of the most dangerous Category 5 status, according to the National Hurricane Center.Florida braces for catastrophic damageAbout 2.5 million people were ordered to evacuate southwest Florida before the storm hit. Off the coast on Sanibel Island, just south of where Ian made landfall, traffic cameras hours earlier showed swirling water that flooded streets and was halfway up mailbox posts. Seawater rushed out of Tampa Bay as the storm approached, leaving parts of the muddy bottom exposed, and waves crashed over the end of a wooden pier at Naples.Ian had strengthened rapidly overnight, prompting Fort Myers handyman Tom Hawver to abandon his plan to weather the hurricane at home and head across the state to Fort Lauderdale.”We were going to stay and then just decided when we got up, and they said 155 mph winds,” Hawver said. “We don’t have a generator. I just don’t see the advantage of sitting there in the dark, in a hot house, watching water come in your house.” Video below: Hurricane Ian makes landfall in Florida, tracks into North Carolina this weekendFlorida residents rushed ahead of the impact to board up their homes, stash precious belongings on upper floors and join long lines of cars leaving the shore.Some chose to stay and ride out the storm. Jared Lewis, a Tampa delivery driver, said his home has withstood hurricanes in the past, though not as powerful as Ian.”It is kind of scary, makes you a bit anxious,” Lewis said. “After the last year of not having any, now you go to a Category 4 or 5. We are more used to the 2s and 3s.”Video below: Key West rain Tuesday morning from Hurricane Ian Emergency response at the readyBarely an hour after the massive storm trudged ashore, a coastal sheriff’s office reported that it was already getting a significant number of calls from people trapped in homes. Flash floods were possible across all of Florida. Hazards include the polluted leftovers of Florida’s phosphate fertilizer mining industry, more than 1 billion tons of slightly radioactive waste contained in enormous ponds that could overflow in heavy rains.Isolated tornadoes spun off the storm well ahead of landfall. One tornado damaged small planes and a hangar at the North Perry Airport, west of Hollywood along the Atlantic coast.More than 450,000 homes and businesses were without electricity, and Florida Power and Light warned those in Ian’s path to brace for days without power.The federal government sent 300 ambulances with medical teams and was ready to truck in 3.7 million meals and 3.5 million liters of water once the storm passes.Gov. DeSantis issues warning Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the state has 30,000 linemen, urban search and rescue teams, and 7,000 National Guard troops from Florida and elsewhere ready to help once the weather clears.Catastrophic storm surges could push as much as 12 to 18 feet of water over a nearly 100-mile stretch of coastline, from Bonita Beach north through Fort Myers and Charlotte Harbor to Englewood, the hurricane center warned. Rainfall near the area of landfall could top 18 inches.”It’s time to hunker down and prepare for the storm,” DeSantis said. “Do what you need to do to stay safe. If you are where that storm is approaching, you’re already in hazardous conditions. It’s going to get a lot worse very quickly.”Ongoing closuresAirports in Tampa, St. Petersburg and Key West were closed Wednesday.Walt Disney World announced on Tuesday evening that the parks would be closing due to Hurricane Ian. The parks will be closed Wednesday and Thursday.Universal Orlando and Busch Gardens Tampa Bay also announced they will close on Wednesday and Thursday.NASA rolled its moon rocket from the launch pad to its Kennedy Space Center hangar, adding weeks of delay to the test flight.Video below: Space station flies over Hurricane IanPresident Biden declares emergencyAt the White House, President Joe Biden said his administration was sending hundreds of Federal Emergency Management Agency employees to Florida and sought to assure mayors in the storm’s path that Washington will meet their needs. He urged residents to heed to local officials’ orders. The federal government sent 300 ambulances with medical teams and was ready to truck in 3.7 million meals and 3.5 million liters of water once the storm passes.“We’ll be there to help you clean up and rebuild, to help Florida get moving again,” Biden said Wednesday. “And we’ll be there every step of the way. That’s my absolute commitment to the people of the state of Florida.”Video below: Hurricane Ian FEMA announcement at White House press briefingBiden previously declared an emergency, authorizing the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate disaster relief and provide assistance to protect lives and property. FEMA has strategically positioned generators, millions of meals and millions of liters of water, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.Georgia, South Carolina watch Ian’s pathParts of Georgia and South Carolina also could see flooding rains and some coastal surge into Saturday. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp preemptively declared an emergency, ordering 500 National Guard troops on standby to respond as needed.Cuba without electricity after storm hits power gridHurricane Ian knocked out power across all of Cuba and devastated some of the country’s most important tobacco farms when it slammed into the island’s western tip as a major hurricane.Cuba’s Electric Union said work is being done to gradually restore service to the country’s 11 million people between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.Ian made landfall as a Category 3 hurricane early Tuesday. It devastated Pinar del ...

Hurricane Ian Makes Landfall In Southwest Florida As Category 4 Storm With 150-Mph Winds | CNN https://digitalalaskanews.com/hurricane-ian-makes-landfall-in-southwest-florida-as-category-4-storm-with-150-mph-winds-cnn-2/ Editor’s Note: Affected by the storm? Use CNN’s lite site for low bandwidth. You also can text or WhatsApp your Ian stories to CNN +1 332-261-0775. CNN  —  Hurricane Ian made landfall along the southwestern coast of Florida near Cayo Costa around 3:05 p.m. ET Wednesday with winds near 150 mph, making it a strong Category 4 hurricane, according to the National Hurricane Center. The storm is delivering a catastrophic trifecta of high winds, heavy rain and historic storm surge to the state and is set to cause significant power outages and flooding as it moves at a slow pace across central Florida over the next day or two. Hurricane Ian is tied for the strongest storm to make landfall on the west coast of the Florida peninsula, matching the wind speed of Hurricane Charley in 2004. Already, over a million Florida utility customers were without power as of 3:45 p.m., according to PowerOutage.us. Officials in Cape Coral and Punta Gorda reported significant impacts, and the storm surge set records for the highest water levels ever observed in Fort Myers and Naples. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida NOAA/AP A satellite image shows the eye of Hurricane Ian approaching the southwest coast of Florida on Wednesday, September 28. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Naples Police The streets of Naples, Florida, are flooded on Wednesday. City officials asked residents to shelter in place until further notice. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Pedro Portal/El Nuevo Herald/TNS/Abaca/Reuters Sailboats anchored in Roberts Bay are blown around in Venice, Florida, on Wednesday. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Crystal Vander Weit/TCPalm/USA Today Network Melvin Phillips stands in the flooded basement of his mobile home in Stuart, Florida, on Wednesday. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty Images A man walks where water was receding from Tampa Bay due to a negative storm surge on Wednesday. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel/AP Utility trucks are staged in a rural lot Wednesday in The Villages, a Florida retirement community. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Marco Bello/Reuters Traffic lights are blown by strong gusts of wind in Fort Myers, Florida, on Wednesday. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Greg Lovett/The Palm Beach Post/USA Today Network Damage is seen at the Kings Point condos in Delray Beach, Florida, on Wednesday. Officials believe it was caused by a tornado fueled by Hurricane Ian. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Marco Bello/Reuters A TV crew broadcasts from the beach in Fort Myers on Wednesday. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Shannon Stapleton/Reuters Highways in Tampa, Florida, are empty Wednesday ahead of Hurricane Ian making landfall. Several coastal counties in western Florida were under mandatory evacuations. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Wilfredo Lee/AP An airplane is overturned in Pembroke Pines, Florida, on Wednesday. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Joe Cavaretta/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP Zuram Rodriguez surveys the damage around her home in Davie, Florida, early on Wednesday. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Ramon Espinosa/AP People play dominoes by flashlight during a blackout in Havana, Cuba, on Wednesday. Crews in Cuba have been working to restore power for millions after the storm battered the western region with high winds and dangerous storm surge, causing an islandwide blackout. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Chris O’Meara/AP Workers board up windows on the University of Tampa campus on Tuesday, September 27. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Yamil Lage/AFP/Getty Images People walk through a flooded street in Batabano, Cuba, on Tuesday. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Chris O’Meara/AP Southwest Airlines passengers check in near a sign that shows canceled flights at the Tampa International Airport on Tuesday. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Ramon Espinosa/AP Maria Llonch retrieves belongings from her home in Pinar del Rio, Cuba, on Tuesday. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Willie J. Allen Jr./Orlando Sentinel via AP Traffic builds along Interstate 4 in Tampa on Tuesday. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters A man carries his children through rain and debris in Pinar del Rio on Tuesday. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters People drive through debris in Pinar del Rio on Tuesday. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Joe Raedle/Getty Images Frederic and Mary Herodet board up their Gulf Bistro restaurant in St. Pete Beach, Florida, on Tuesday. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Yamil Lage/AFP/Getty Images People stand outside a flooded warehouse in Batabano on Tuesday. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images NASA’s Artemis I rocket rolls back to the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Tuesday. The launch of the rocket was postponed due to the impending arrival of Hurricane Ian. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida NASA via AP Hurricane Ian is seen from the International Space Station on Monday, September 26. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Yamil Lage/AFP/Getty Images A Cuban family transports personal belongings to a safe place in the Fanguito neighborhood of Havana on Monday. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Shannon Stapleton/Reuters Local residents fill sandbags in Tampa on Monday to help protect their homes from flooding. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Adalberto Roque/AFP/Getty Images A family carries a dog to a safe place in Batabano on Monday. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Phelan M. Ebenhack/AP People wait in lines to fuel their vehicles at a Costco store in Orlando on Monday. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Mike Lang/USA Today Network Ryan Copenhaver, manager of Siesta T’s in Sarasota, Florida, installs hurricane panels over the store’s windows on Monday. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Kevin Morales/AP A woman takes photos while waves crash against a seawall in George Town, Grand Cayman, on Monday. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Yamil Lage/AFP/Getty Imagaes A man helps pull small boats out of Cuba’s Havana Bay on Monday. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Gregg Newton/AFP via Getty Images Shelves are empty in a supermarket’s water aisle in Kissimmee, Florida, on Monday. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Martha Asencio-Rhine/Tampa Bay Times via ZUMA Press Wire Cathie Perkins, emergency management director in Pinellas County, Florida, references a map on Monday that indicates where storm surges would impact the county. During a news conference, she urged anyone living in those areas to evacuate. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida NOAA/NASA This satellite image, taken Monday at 1 p.m. ET, shows Hurricane Ian near Cuba. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Andrew West/USA Today Network Sarah Peterson fills sandbags in Fort Myers Beach, Florida, on Saturday, September 24. Photos: Hurricane Ian barrels into Florida Andrew West/USA Today Network Besnik Bushati fills gas containers at a gas station in Naples on Saturday. The station had only premium gas that morning. “The storm surge is very significant. We’re seeing cars and boats float down the street. We’re seeing trees nearly bent in half,” Frank Loni, an architect from California staying in Fort Myers Beach for the storm, said midday Wednesday. “There’s quite a bit of chaos on the streets.” Water levels in Fort Myers have risen more than 6 feet over the past seven hours and still rising as strong winds continue to push water from the Gulf of Mexico ashore, according to CNN Meteorologist Brandon Miller. “I’ve been here since the mid-70s, this is actually – by far – the worst storm I have ever seen,” Fort Myers Mayor Kevin Anderson told CNN’s Jake Tapper. The Collier County Sheriff’s Office, south of Fort Myers, reported people being trapped in their homes, according to the department’s post on Facebook. The Sheriff’s Office said it’s in “call triage mode” and getting numerous calls of people trapped by water. “Some are reporting life threatening medical emergencies in deep water. We will get to them first. Some are reporting water coming into their house but not life threatening. They will have to wait. Possibly until the water recedes,” the post read. To make matters worse, the Lee County’s 911 system is down and calls are be rerouted to Collier County Sheriff, according to the post. “You can’t imagine the calls,” the post read. The Olde Naples Seaport, a community of condos that overlooks the Naples Bay in southern Florida, has been consumed by storm surge, according to video shot by Graham Pederson. Pederson experienced knee-high water trying to escape. In another video shot from the second floor, wind is seen whipping trees and trucks nearly submerged by the water. Pederson retreated to the second floor to wait out the storm, his brother-in-law Kyle Wendel told CNN. FOLLOW LIVE UPDATES Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis requested President Joe Biden approve a major disaster declaration for all 67 counties in the state due to Hurricane Ian, his office said in a news release. DeSantis is also requesting that President Biden grant FEMA the authority to provide 100% federal cost share for debris removal and emergency protective measures for the first 60 days from Ia...

Police Charge Man With Murder In Muldoon Homicide Case https://digitalalaskanews.com/police-charge-man-with-murder-in-muldoon-homicide-case/ ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – After finding the body of a woman lying in a tent near Muldoon Road, Anchorage police are charging a man with murder in connection to the investigation, which was recently ruled a homicide. The Anchorage Police Department charged 26-year-old William Gonzalez III with second-degree murder Wednesday, six days after he was brought into the Anchorage Jail for questioning. Police responded to reports of an unresponsive woman lying in a tent near Muldoon Road and East 32nd Avenue shortly after 5 a.m. on Sept. 22. Officers report that the woman, who was dead when they arrived, had injuries on her body. Anchorage police say they contacted Gonzalez later that same day and brought him in for questioning. He was later jailed for probation violation offenses, according to police. Detectives with the department classified the woman’s death Tuesday as a homicide, five days after finding her body and after determining she “died from injuries sustained during an assault committed by Gonzalez.” If you are facing threatened or actual domestic violence, please discreetly call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or Abused Women’s Aid in Crisis in Anchorage at 907-272-0100. Copyright 2022 KTUU. All rights reserved. Read More Here