Digital Arkansas News

Fayetteville Library Reveals October Calendar https://digitalarkansasnews.com/fayetteville-library-reveals-october-calendar/ FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (KNWA/KFTA) — The Fayetteville Public Library has released its calendar of adult events for the month of October. Masks are recommended for unvaccinated patrons per city health guidelines. Masks are no longer required for those who are fully vaccinated. Visit faylib.org/events for registration links and more information on any of the following.  CLASSES, LECTURES & WORKSHOPS          Yoga @ FPL, Mondays, 6 p.m., Art & Movement Room. A team of volunteer yoga instructors will teach a variety of in-person yoga classes every week.  Mindfulness Meditation, Tuesdays, 5:30 p.m., Art & Movement Room. Instructor Nic Bellegarde will teach mindfulness through meditation every week.  Clases de GED, Viernes, 10 a.m. / Fridays, 10 a.m., Ann Henry Board Room. La instructora Ayme Villanueva de Crowder College dirigirá este curso de 32 semanas para preparar y obtener un diploma de equivalencia de secundaria. Este curso será dirigido completamente en español. Una tableta y los materiales de estudio de Desarrollo Educativo General (GED) son gratuitos para los participantes elegibles. Es necesario registrarse.  Instructor Ayme Villanueva from Crowder College will lead this 32-week course to prepare and earn a high school equivalency diploma. This course will be led completely in Spanish. A tablet and General Educational Development (GED) study materials are free for eligible participants. Registration is required. Citizenship Classes, Thursdays, starting October 20, 3:30 p.m., Ann Henry Board Room. Free citizenship classes will be offered by Fayetteville Adult Education instructor Ahu Gokdemir Johnson. Study materials will be provided by the instructor free of charge. The class and all materials will be presented in English. Registration is required.   Conquer the Kitchen: Curry Curiosity, Saturday, October 1, 2 p.m., Teaching Kitchen. Join the FPL kitchen crew to make dry rubbed curry chicken and goat. Registration is required. NWAAT Presents “The Taming of the Shrew”, Saturday, October 1, 3 p.m., Walker Community Room. The Northwest Arkansas Audio Theater (NWAAT) will present the audio play “The Taming of the Shrew” directed by Deborah Goff. Community Vaccine Clinic, Monday, October 3, 4–7 p.m., Walker Community Room. In partnership with the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, the library is hosting a community vaccine and health screening clinic. Free Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines will be available for anyone 5 years and older. Blood pressure, body mass index and A1C checks will also be available. Participants that take a short survey will receive a $20 gift card.  Cooking the Farmer’s Market: Hearty Season, Tuesday, October 4, 5 p.m., Teaching Kitchen. Join Visiting Artist Amanda Arafat to learn how to prepare seasonal produce locally available at the Fayetteville Farmers Market. Students will leave the class with delicious inspiration and wholesome, straightforward recipes to make the most of the market. Registration is required. “The U.S. and the Holocaust” – Ken Burns Film Excerpt & Panel Discussion, Thursday, October 6, 6 p.m., Walker Community Room. Courtesy of Arkansas PBS, the library will screen a 40-minute excerpt of the latest film by Ken Burns, “The U.S. and the Holocaust”. The film recounts the 1939 voyage of the M.S. St. Louis, a ship filled with Jewish refugees who were refused asylum in the United States. There will be a panel discussion after the film excerpt. Honey Harvesting, Tuesday, October 11, 6 p.m., Walker Community Room. Join Ed Levi as he explains each step in the honey harvesting process, including when to harvest, pulling the frame from the hive, extracting the honey and bottling. Computer Class: Basic File Management for PCs, Wednesday, October 12, 10 a.m., First Security Bank Board Room. Learn the basics of manipulating files and folders in Windows File Explorer. “Right Footed” – Film Screening & Discussion, Wednesday, October 12, 6 p.m., Walker Community Room. Join in for a film screening of Nick Spark’s “Right Footed” and a discussion led by representatives from Sources for Community Independent Living. Introduction to LinkedIn, Thursday, October 13, 6 p.m., First Security Bank Board Room. Learn the basics of LinkedIn, and explore tools for enhancing your profile and improving visibility to job recruiters. KUAF Presents The ‘R’ Word, Thursday, October 13, 6 p.m., Reception Room. Join us as KUAF presents part one of The ‘R’ Word Book Discussion. It will focus on “How to Fight Racism: Courageous Christianity and the Journey Towards Racial Justice” by Jemar Tisby. The author will talk about the book for an hour via zoom, and then Lowell Taylor (host of The ‘R’ Word podcast) will lead a thirty-minute book discussion. Figure Drawing, Saturday, October 15, 2 p.m., Art & Movement Room. Observational figure drawing has long been considered the most effective way to learn artistic anatomy. An instructor will be present to time the poses and offer guidance to those that want it. The model will be clothed in cyclist attire. Registration is required. YouTube – An Introduction, Saturday, October 15, 2 p.m., Reception Room. In this class, Gerald Lamont will teach participants YouTube basics, the second largest search engine in the world. The class will cover YouTube’s history, setup, searching, settings and tips to make using it easier and better. Mountain Street Stage: Rupert Wates, Sunday, October 16, 2 p.m., Event Center. Join in as the library hosts English singer-songwriter Rupert Wates. Since 1990, Wates has been a full-time songwriter touring the world playing music he describes as “an eclectic mix of acoustic, melodic art/folk with flavors of jazz, vaudeville and cabaret.” An Afternoon with the Composer: Giuseppe Verdi, Sunday, October 16, 2 p.m., Walker Community Room. This second in a series of three lecture recitals offers excerpts from Giuseppe Verdi’s operas “La Traviata” and “Rigoletto”, as well as an interview with the composer. Dr. Hyun Kim will perform alongside Theodore Rulfs and gifted singers from Arkansas. This multimedia musical event offers aficionados and novices an inspiring view into the world of opera and music. Author Talk: Frank Head, Tuesday, October 18, 5:30 p.m. Walker Community Room. Local author and longtime Fayetteville resident Frank Head will discuss his book, “The Possibility Of All Things”. Interspersed with Head’s reading from the book, John Joseph Ray – local musician, author and craniosacral therapist – will play music from the book’s playlist. The playlist includes songs by Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. When Earning More Means Having Less, Tuesday, October 18, 6 p.m., Event Center. The Cliff Effect disincentivizes economic growth, a strong workforce and job retention. Come learn about the Cliff Effect from Circles NWA and their Circle Leaders. Getting the Most Out of Your Library Card, Wednesday, October 19, 10 a.m., Ann Henry Board Room. Join in for a brief class that explores the library’s digital entertainment resources. Participants will have the option to download each app onto their device and explore the different functions. Registration is required. Author Talk: Judy Harrington, Thursday, October 20, 6 p.m., Walker Community Room. Join Fort Smith author Judy Harrington as she discusses her childhood dream to write after her retirement, and self-publishing and writing in multiple genres. Introduction to Genealogy, Saturday, October 22, 10 a.m., Ann Henry Board Room. Participants will learn about HeritageQuest and the genealogy tools available at the library, and will tour the Grace Keith Genealogy collection. Create a YouTube Channel, Saturday, October 22 & 29, 2 p.m., Reception Room. The classes will teach you how to start a channel and offer best practices that apply whether you want to start a vlog, share videos with family and friends, or tie in efforts to your business. Registration is required. Looking in the Stacks, Thursday, October 27, 6 p.m., Ann Henry Board Room. Join in for a comprehensive look into births, marriages and divorces as found in both church and court records online and in books. The Psychology of Card Magic, Saturday, October 29, 3 p.m., Walker Community Room. Psychologist Ph.D. Dar-Wei Chen will perform card tricks and then reveal some of the psychological concepts and techniques that power the tricks. NONPROFIT & SMALL BUSINESS RESOURCE CENTER  Through the NPSB program, FPL provides courses related to grant funding opportunities, nonprofit basics, research marketing trends and entrepreneurship. It offers online and print resources, free workshops and more. Practice Your Pitch, Thursday, October 6, 9:30–11 a.m., Podcasting Booth. Individuals from the business community have an opportunity to practice an “elevator pitch” to market their business or product, rehearse a speech or prepare for job interviews in a soundproof booth.   Professional Headshots, Thursday, October 6, 9:30–11 a.m., Photography Studio. Our photography studio will be available every first Thursday of the month for patrons to have a quality headshot taken. From Maker to Market Meetup, Sunday, October 23, 2 p.m., Center for Innovation. This casual meetup is designed to bring local small businesses, nonprofits and startups together to work out problems and share ideas. Registration is required.  FPL BOOK CLUBS        Book clubs have resumed in-person meetings. Copies of selected books are available at the Reference Desk and through curbside pickup. Book Talk at Night | “American Spy” by Lauren Wilkinson, Monday, October 3, 6:30 p.m., Ann Henry Board Room. Virtual: Book Chatter, Wednesday, October 5 & 19, 4 p.m., Zoom. Book Chatter is the place to share your favorite books and hear recommendations from others. This friendly discussion is the first and third Wednesday of e...

Obituaries In Burlington, IA | The Hawk Eye https://digitalarkansasnews.com/obituaries-in-burlington-ia-the-hawk-eye/ Steven Eugene Weigert, 64, died on August 30, 2022 after a lingering illness. He is preceded in death by his parents, Margaret Corso-Weigert and Stanley Weigert, and his brother David Weigert. Steve graduated from W. Burlington Arnold HS in 1976 and received an associate degree from Hennepin Technical College, Minneapolis, MN Growing up he enjoyed hunting and fishing with his father. He was lover of dogs and was adept at car repair working with several race car pit crews. He is survived by his sister Marla Weigert (Sue Dolphin), Belmont, NC, uncle John Corso, Burlington, IA and several cousins: Brad Stevenson & Family, Galesburg, Il; Brian Stevenson & Family, Gladstone, IL; Cathy Collins & Family, Scottsdale, AZ; Vicki Stone & Family, Little Rock, AR; and Sophia Corso-Antonczyk, Golden, CO. A graveside memorial will be held on October 6 at Sacred Heart Cemetery, Burlington at 10am. Posted online on September 30, 2022 Published in The Hawk Eye Service Information Graveside Memorial Sacred Heart Cemetery, Burlington, IA October 06, 2022 at 10:00 AM Read More…

Trevor Noah Says He https://digitalarkansasnews.com/trevor-noah-says-he/ FILE – Trevor Noah appears at the 74th Primetime Emmy Awards in Los Angeles on Sept. 12, 2022. Noah, host of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah,” announced Thursday that he is leaving the show. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File) NEW YORK — Trevor Noah says that he’s leaving “The Daily Show” as host, after seven years of a Trump and pandemic-filled tenure on the weeknight Comedy Central show. Noah surprised the studio audience during Thursday’s taping, dropping the news after discussing his “feeling of gratitude” that it was the seventh anniversary of when he took over for Jon Stewart. “I realized, after the seven years, my time is up,” Noah said. Neither Noah nor Comedy Central offered a timetable for his departure. The network said it was “grateful to Trevor for our amazing partnership” and indicated that it was excited “for the next chapter” of “The Daily Show.” Television late-night comedy’s ranks have been shrinking, with Conan O’Brien pulling the plug on his show last year and Samantha Bee ending hers this year. Noah, a relatively unknown comic from South Africa, was a bold choice to replace the popular Jon Stewart in 2015. But he slowly made the show his own and built a dedicated audience. “So many people didn’t believe in us,” he said. “It was a crazy bet to make. I still think it was a crazy choice — this random African.” He said hosting the show has been one of his greatest challenges and joys. “I wanted to say thank you to the audience for an amazing seven years,” he said. “It’s been wild. It’s been truly wild.” Like most of his fellow comedians, he dealt with the firehose of material during Donald Trump’s presidency and, when the pandemic started, found himself suddenly thrust into the challenge of producing a program without an audience. He said he realized there was more that he wanted to do recently when he was able to travel again. “I miss learning other languages,” he said. “I miss going to other countries and putting on a show.” Read More Here

Trump-Loving Senate Candidate Sues Women Who Charged And Arrested Him For Violating Protection Order https://digitalarkansasnews.com/trump-loving-senate-candidate-sues-women-who-charged-and-arrested-him-for-violating-protection-order/ Read More Here

Trump-Backed Dr. Oz Eating Into Biden https://digitalarkansasnews.com/trump-backed-dr-oz-eating-into-biden/ Over the summer, Dr. Mehmet Oz’s bid to represent Pennsylvania in the U.S. Senate seemed like a Quixotic quest all but destined to end in defeat. Fetterman is still the clear favorite—more than half of likely voters in the state, according to several polls evaluated by Newsweek, expect him to win. But with just over a month left in the race, Oz is not only competitive, he’s surging. In August, Fox News pollsters projected Democrat John Fetterman’s lead over Oz at about 11 points; it’s now 4. Franklin and Marshall College had Fetterman winning by more than a dozen points in August, but the gap has fallen into single digits. And where conservative pollsters had Fetterman with a slight advantage over the summer, the race—according to right-leaning pollsters like the Trafalgar Group and Emerson College—is now statistically tied, with the polling gap between the two reduced from a 12-point lean for Fetterman in mid-August to just six points entering the closing weeks of the campaign. Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz holds a press conference with U.S. Senator Pat Toomey on September 6, 2022, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In the November general election, Oz faces Democrat John Fetterman. Mark Makela/Getty Images According to those polls, the shift came largely from Oz’s increasing popularity among independents as well as the Black and Hispanic voter base that helped President Joe Biden to a 1.2 percent victory in the state in the 2020 presidential election. According to a 2020 study by the University of California-Los Angeles, only an estimated 17 percent of urban Hispanic voters in Pennsylvania voted for President Donald Trump in that year’s election, helping Biden achieve about 65 percent of the Hispanic vote nationally, according to exit polls. However, recent Emerson polling shows Oz currently outperforming Trump among that demographic, leading Fetterman’s support among Hispanic voters at 46 percent. And while Fetterman has a clear lead among Black voters—with roughly 65 percent of the vote, according to Emerson polling—Oz still has the support of 16 percent of Black voters in the state, according to an Insider Advantage poll published this week, outpacing Trump’s percentage of the New York Times’ estimated national Black vote in 2020 by more than 5 points. Fox News polling shows Oz’s support among non-white voters in the state at about 24 percent, a worrying indicator after a pro-Oz super PAC released an ad reviving an incident in which Fetterman pulled a gun on a Black jogger as mayor of Braddock roughly a decade earlier. “I think Fetterman is struggling a little bit with urban and non-white voters,” Franklin and Marshall pollster Berwood Yost told Newsweek. “They just don’t seem as motivated as they could be for this race. And I think that could be an important part of the story.” The independent vote could also be of concern for Fetterman. According to recent polling by Franklin and Marshall, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro holds a near 20-point lead over Republican nominee Doug Mastriano among independent voters. Fetterman’s lead among that demographic is just 11 percent despite significantly higher favorability ratings and his more popular stance on social issues. The key difference in the race? Economic issues. According to that same poll, nearly one-third of voters identified some economic concern—unemployment, taxes or the state of the economy—as their top concern entering the 2022 midterms. Overall, 39 percent of voters Franklin and Marshall surveyed believe Oz-backed policies will benefit them financially, compared to 32 percent for Fetterman. But the main thing that boosted the number, Yost told Newsweek, was a consolidation of support among Republicans who were previously tepid in their support. “Republicans have sort of warmed to his candidacy, I would imagine for a number of reasons, including economic reasons,” Yost said. “It’s hard for me to know which is more important in the race, but I think that the more Oz can turn the question to economic matters, the better off he is, because that is a top-of-mind concern to many people.” Read More Here

Arkansas Rice Industry Donates Over 214,900 Pounds Of Rice In Honor Of Rice Month | Stuttgart Daily Leader https://digitalarkansasnews.com/arkansas-rice-industry-donates-over-214900-pounds-of-rice-in-honor-of-rice-month-stuttgart-daily-leader/ Arkansas Rice Leadership representatives, Riceland Foods, Producers Rice Mill, and Arkansas Farm Bureau met with Governor Asa Hutchison as he proclaimed September Rice Month. (Photo courtesy of Arkansas Rice) Little Rock, Ark. – The Arkansas rice industry donated 214,900 pounds of rice to the Arkansas Foodbank in honor of National Rice Month today. The donation from seven mills will provide over 1.6 million servings of rice to help feed families, children, and seniors all across the state.   Participating rice mills are Arkansas River Rice of Pine Bluff, Farmers Granary, Inc. of McCrory, Producers Rice Mill of Stuttgart, Ralston Family Farms of Atkins, Riceland Foods, Inc. of Stuttgart, Specialty Rice, Inc. of Brinkley, and Windmill Rice Company of Jonesboro.  “Arkansas rice farmers grow over 50% of the nation’s total crop and will produce rice on approximately 1.1 million acres this year in over 40 counties, many of which are served by the Arkansas Foodbank,” said Arkansas Rice Executive Director Kelly Robbins. “As rice harvest continues, our growers, try to be good stewards by giving a portion of their crop to hunger relief efforts.” September is also Hunger Action Month. Arkansas ranks second in the nation for food insecurity. One in five children does not know where their next meal will come from. This rice donation will go directly to agency partners and will fill shelves at food pantries for families in need. “Arkansas rice farmers play a crucial role in the fight against hunger. We’re so grateful for their continued partnership and support as we provide nutritious food to Arkansans facing food insecurity,” said Arkansas Foodbank CEO Rhonda Sanders. “This record-setting donation will be distributed between the five other Feeding America food banks in our state who are working to provide food to our neighbors: River Valley Regional Food Bank in Fort Smith; Food Bank of Northeast Arkansas in Jonesboro; Harvest Regional Food Bank in Texarkana; Arkansas Foodbank in Little Rock; and Northwest Arkansas Food Bank in Springdale.” Read More Here

More Gunfire In Burkina Faso Capital After Junta Leader Urges Calm https://digitalarkansasnews.com/more-gunfire-in-burkina-faso-capital-after-junta-leader-urges-calm/ Military junta took power in January Junta leader talks of “confused situation” West, Central Africa has seen spate of coups since 2020 Islamist militants have killed thousands in recent years OUAGADOUGOU, Sept 30 (Reuters) – More gunshots rang out near Burkina Faso’s presidential palace on Friday afternoon, shortly after its military leader sought to quell fears of a second coup in eight months. Residents of the capital Ouagadougou woke to the sound of gunfire at dawn on Friday. Soon after, soldiers and military vehicles took to the deserted streets, cutting off access to administrative buildings. By mid-morning, the city, usually buzzing with motorbikes and cars, was quiet. Schools, businesses and banks were shut. State television stopped broadcasting. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com But heavy gunfire broke out again near the presidential palace in the early afternoon, two Reuters reporters said. It was not clear if a coup was underway, but security sources say there has been frustration within the military at a lack of progress in combating Islamist militants. Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, who took power in a coup in January, urged calm in a statement. Certain members of the armed forces overcome by “moods swings” had created a “confused situation,” he said. His whereabouts are unknown. “Since he [Damiba] took power, our soldiers die often and this does not sadden him,” said Marcelin Ouedraogo, who joined a protest in the city centre on Friday calling for the end of French military involvement in Burkina Faso, and for collaboration with Russia. The latest unrest bore the hallmarks of other power grabs that have swept across West and Central Africa since 2020, undoing years of democratic progress. The coups have been driven in part by violence committed by Islamist groups who have taken over large areas of northern Burkina Faso and parts of neighbouring Mali and Niger. Civilian populations have cheered military juntas in the hope that they would be more successful at containing the insurgents than their democratically-elected predecessors. Soldiers block the road to stop the advance of protesters against junta leader Paul-Henri Damiba, on a street in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso September 30, 2022. REUTERS/Vincent Bado As well as Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad, and Guinea have all seen coups since 2020. INSECURITY Friday’s unrest is a “damning indictment for the state of democracy in the region”, said Eric Humphery-Smith, Senior Africa Analyst at risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft. Another coup would mark the “sixth unconstitutional takeover in the Sahel in the past two years,” he said. Damiba’s takeover was largely celebrated by Burkinabe fed up with the inability of former President Roch Kabore’s government to rein in militants linked to Islamic State and al Qaeda. Burkina Faso has become the epicentre of the violence that began in neighbouring Mali in 2012 and has spread across the Sahel region south of the Sahara Desert. The militants have killed thousands of people in Burkina Faso in recent years. Damiba had pledged to restore security but attacks have worsened. The army is in disarray and frustrated, security sources say. Militants have blockaded areas of the north, leaving communities stranded. Government convoys and air drops deliver essential goods to trapped civilians. This week, unknown assailants killed 11 soldiers in an attack on a convoy taking supplies to a town in northern Burkina Faso. Fifty civilians are missing. read more Many cities and towns not under siege have seen their populations swell as people flee violence in the countryside. Protests against the military took place across Burkina Faso this week to demand the government do more to improve the security situation. Much of the country has become ungovernable since 2018. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Writing by Edward McAllister, Bate Felix and Sofia Christensen, Editing by Angus MacSwan, William Maclean and Toby Chopra Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. Read More Here

Elon Musk's Texts Show How His Relationship With Twitter Went Sideways | CNN Business https://digitalarkansasnews.com/elon-musks-texts-show-how-his-relationship-with-twitter-went-sideways-cnn-business/ 01:40 – Source: CNN Business 4 ways Twitter and Musk court battle could end, explained CNN  —  Days before publicly announcing his investment in Twitter, Elon Musk texted with Jack Dorsey. The former Twitter CEO suggested he no longer believed in the company he founded, according to new court filings in the legal battle between Musk and Twitter. Musk had begun quietly building up a large stake in Twitter (TWTR) in January. In a text on March 26, Dorsey told Musk, “a new platform is needed. It can’t be a company. This is why I left.” Musk, an avid Twitter user who was often seen as friendly with Dorsey, responded by asking what the platform should look like. Dorsey explained his view that it should be “an open source protocol” and not rely on “an advertising model,” as Twitter currently does. Dorsey added that Twitter “should never have been a company,” saying, “that was the original sin.” Musk expressed interest in advancing the idea. In a later text that day, he said: “I think it’s worth both trying to move Twitter in a better direction and doing something new that’s decentralized.” The private exchanges between Dorsey and Musk are among the many text messages released in court filings this week, offering new insight into the Tesla CEO’s agreement to buy Twitter for $44 billion and his attempt later to back away from the deal. The messages also offer a unique window into Silicon Valley deal-making, as a rotating cast of billionaires and industry execs — from Larry Ellison and Marc Benioff to members of the Murdoch family — slide into Musk’s text messages to discuss Twitter and, in some cases, casually offer financial backing for the deal. In the days following his private chat with Dorsey, Musk met with Twitter’s board and leadership. On April 5, Musk agreed to join the company’s board, a move that Dorsey championed publicly and privately. In a text exchange with Musk later that day, Dorsey expressed confidence in Parag Agrawal, his successor as Twitter’s CEO. Agrawal also expressed excitement in private texts about Musk joining the board. But the relationship between Musk and the Twitter CEO appeared to sour quickly. On April 9, Musk tweeted a question: “Is Twitter dying?” Agrawal followed up that day with a text letting Musk know such comments would make the CEO’s life difficult. “You are free to tweet ‘is Twitter dying?’ or anything else about Twitter,” Agrawal said in the text to Musk, “but it’s my responsibility to tell you that it’s not helping me make Twitter better in the current context. Next time we speak, I’d like you to provide [your] perspective on the level of internal distraction right now and how [it’s] hurting our ability to do work … I’d like the company to get to a place where we are more resilient and don’t get distracted, but we aren’t there right now.” Musk responded tersely: “What did you get done this week?” In two follow-up texts, he rescinded his agreement to join the board, saying, “I’m not joining the board. This is a waste of time.” He added: “Will make an offer to take Twitter private.” In a separate exchange on the same day with Twitter’s board chair Bret Taylor, Musk said: “Fixing Twitter by chatting with Parag won’t work,” Musk said. He added in a follow up text: “Drastic action is needed.” Musk and Twitter announced an acquisition agreement on April 25. A little more than two months later, Musk said he wanted out of the deal, citing concerns about the number of bot and spam accounts on the platform. Twitter then sued Musk to compel him to follow through with the deal. The two sides are set to go to trial over the deal next month. After Musk’s initial investment in Twitter was made public, and with speculation mounting about a possible takeover deal, the billionaire began to receive input from some prominent outside voices. In a text on April 23, two days before the deal was announced, the controversial podcast host Joe Rogan said to Elon Musk: “I REALLY hope you get Twitter. If you do, we should throw one hell of a party.” Musk also messaged with bankers and potential investors such as his brother, Kimbal Musk, and Ellison, the billionaire founder of Oracle, in an effort to line up financing for the deal, as well as potential leaders for the new company if his acquisition bid succeeded. Musk and investor Jason Calacanis discussed the latter becoming a strategic advisor or board member. Someone identified in Musk’s texts as “BL Lee” suggested venture capitalist Bill Gurley as Twitter’s new CEO. In the days after the acquisition deal was announced, Musk discussed ideas for the platform with a host of characters, including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and tech investor David Sacks. Sacks suggested that former Michigan congressman Justin Amash should be involved in Twitter’s content moderation efforts. Musk’s banker Michael Grimes suggested crypto billionaire wunderkind Sam Bankman-Fried as an investor who could also help advance Musk’s vision of a Twitter built on the blockchain, the technology underpinning cryptocurrencies. The new filing also includes a text from Musk to Grimes that was referenced in a hearing earlier this month by Twitter lawyers, who claim that Musk exited the deal not because of his worries about bots but because he was concerned about the stock market decline and geopolitical issues, neither of which would be legitimate reasons to terminate the agreement. In a May 8 message to Grimes, Musk said that the deal process should “slow down just a few days” ahead of a speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin the following day that many worried could escalate the war in Ukraine to other countries. “It won’t make sense to buy Twitter if we’re headed into WW3,” Musk said. Read More Here

Hurricane Ian Strengthens As Storm Takes Aim At South Carolina https://digitalarkansasnews.com/hurricane-ian-strengthens-as-storm-takes-aim-at-south-carolina/ Sept. 30, 2022, 9:39 AM UTC / Updated Sept. 30, 2022, 3:12 PM UTC Hurricane Ian strengthened as it barreled toward South Carolina’s coast Friday after pounding parts of Florida, where it left at least a dozen people dead, knocked out power for millions and devastated communities across the state. At least 12 people had been confirmed dead in the storm as of late Thursday, with seven of them in Charlotte County, near where Ian made landfall on Florida’s southwest coast Wednesday afternoon as a Category 4 hurricane. Florida’s Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie suggested the death toll could be higher on Friday, saying during a news conference that as many as 21 deaths had been reported in Ian’s wake. He said it still had yet to be confirmed whether many of those were related to the storm, however. Speaking after a briefing with Federal Emergency Management Agency officials, President Joe Biden had also warned Thursday night that Ian could be responsible for “substantial loss of life” and end up being the deadliest storm in Florida’s history. “I spoke with the commissioners, and they are worried,” he said. Boats sit scattered in a woodland area and along the side of the road after being propelled by rising waters from Hurricane Ian near Fort Myers Beach on Thursday.Win McNamee / Getty Images More than 2.2 million customers across Florida were still without power as of early Friday, with more than 400,000 customers in Lee County alone left in the dark. Striking videos and photos emerging from Florida have captured the level of devastation across the state, with some footage showing heroic rescues of people stranded in submerged cars and wading into floodwaters, while others portray the destruction left in Ian’s wake. Ian barreled toward South Carolina’s coast Friday morning, with the storm expected to make landfall later in the day. The hurricane was downgraded to a tropical storm Thursday, but strengthened again into a hurricane, with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph and higher gusts as of early Friday, according to the National Hurricane Center. Little change in strength is expected before Ian reaches South Carolina’s coast later Friday. People walk along the beach looking at property damaged in Bonita Springs, Fla., on Thursday.Sean Rayford / Getty Images As of early Friday, the storm was about 105 miles south-southeast of the South Carolina port city of Charleston and was moving northeast at 9 mph, the hurricane center said. While Ian is expected to hit the coast of the state later in the day, it isn’t clear when and where exactly it will make landfall. The hurricane center has warned of the possibility of “life-threatening storm surge and hurricane conditions” along the Carolina coast. Flooding rains are also likely across the Carolinas and southwestern Virginia, it said. The center of the storm is expected to move further inland across the Carolinas Friday night and Saturday, it said. A crowd watches as power lines are repaired Thursday after several days without electricity in El Cerro, Cuba. Adalberto Roque / AFP – Getty Images In Cuba, residents continue to grapple with the aftermath of Ian, that knocked out power across the country in sweeping outages. At least two hurricane-related deaths were reported in the island nation as of earlier this week. One woman died after a wall fell on her, while another was killed by a roof that collapsed. Meanwhile, cleanup efforts are underway in hard-hit parts of the country. Chantal Da Silva Chantal Da Silva is a breaking news editor for NBC News Digital based in London.  Read More Here

Omaha Man Who Had Escaped From Arkansas Jail Is Ordered Held Without Bail https://digitalarkansasnews.com/omaha-man-who-had-escaped-from-arkansas-jail-is-ordered-held-without-bail/ A 20-year-old man accused of fatally shooting another man in Omaha — and who later escaped from an Arkansas jail — was ordered Friday to be held on no bail. Wuanya Smith Wuanya Smith has been charged with second-degree murder and two firearms charges in connection with the Aug. 12 fatal shooting of 22-year-old Anthony Collins III. Collins was shot about 12:10 a.m. that day near 49th and Hamilton Streets. He died later that day. The murder charge means prosecutors think Smith intentionally killed Collins but without premeditation.  Collins was taken to Methodist Hospital by a private vehicle after he was shot at Hamilton Food Mart near 49th and Hamilton Streets. Witnesses said Smith had arrived at the store in a truck and shot Collins.  Omaha police found the driver of the truck, who said Smith was the shooter and described his unique tattoos.   Smith was arrested Sept. 7 by the U.S. Marshals Service Eastern Arkansas-Little Rock Task Force after he was found in Benton, Arkansas. But days after he was taken into custody, Smith climbed over an 12-foot fence topped with razor wire and an 8-foot barbed wire fence at the Saline County Jail and escaped. Smith fled into a wooded area and two people took him to somewhere in Little Rock, Saline County Sheriff Rodney Wright said. Officials arrested him nearly 24 hours later after receiving information on his whereabouts. Smith was taken to a hospital and got 25 staples in his leg and nine staples in his arm from cuts from the razor wire.  Sign up for our Crime & Courts newsletter Get the latest in local public safety news with this weekly email. Read More…

Arkansas Storm Tracker Shares Story About Hurricane Ian https://digitalarkansasnews.com/arkansas-storm-tracker-shares-story-about-hurricane-ian-2/ FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (KNWA/KFTA) — A storm tracker from Arkansas shares his experience of being in a Category 4 hurricane. Zachary Hall is from Fort Smith and has been storm chasing since 2016. Hall says there are hardly any words to describe the power and intensity of Hurricane Ian, a natural disaster that is hard to prepare for. “You can never fully prepare yourself for a Category 4 or 5 hurricane,” Hall said. Hall says this is not the first Category 4 hurricane he has experienced but says the power and magnitude of Hurricane Ian are like no other. “The winds really started ripping and we’re talking sustained gust over 100 miles an hour. A lot goes through your mind. It’s pretty scary,” Hall said. Hall says he stayed close to the shore where he could feel the intensity of the storm. “The smell of the salt, the sounds of the waves hitting the peers, the wind whistling through the fence posts,” Hall said. Hall says chasing the storm is not the hardest part. It’s seeing the aftermath of the damage it has caused to the community. “The destruction of Florida is horrible. It’s apocalyptic in some areas down there, and I just want people to remember those who have been impacted. We’ve dealt with death and destruction.” Hall said. Read More Here

Recent Tour News: Muse, Death Cab For Cutie, Metronomy, Martina McBride, And More https://digitalarkansasnews.com/recent-tour-news-muse-death-cab-for-cutie-metronomy-martina-mcbride-and-more/ HAGERSTOWN (CelebrityAccess) – Fall is in the air and as September ends ԓ”Wake Me Up When September Ends”ԓ (sorry, couldn’t resist), the tour news keeps coming. Here is the latest. Metronomy – UK electric-pop group Metronomy have postponed their North American tour stating financial strain and prioritizing their home life as the reasons why. The band made the announcement via their Instagram feed. Dear North America and Canada…some bad news We’re very sorry to say that we will be postponing our upcoming October tour. It’s not something we do lightly, so in the spirit of transparency and decency! we want to explain why. Touring in America is one of the most exciting things a band can do. Since our first US tour in 2006 we’ve loved every trip we’ve made out there. The cities are inspiring, the venues are always welcoming and the dive-bars unparalleled…and the people, oh the people! At the same time, touring America is one of the most exhausting and expensive things a band can do, it’s a very big country and you can easily spend months and muchos ’s just playing a handful of the major cities. When you’re a young band, that time spent touring the states is the only way that you would want to spend it. But, when you’re a little older and little wiser, you start weighing up the time you spend on the road against the time you spend with loved ones at home. Right now, it doesn’t make sense for us to come I’m afraid. We’ve had an incredibly busy year of gigs and festivals and now need to afford some of the same time and attention to our home lives. We will still be playing at the WILTERN in LA and the Pepsi centre in Mexico. Some of the other dates have been rescheduled (tickets remain valid) and some have had to be cancelled altogether as no suitable alternative dates could be found (refunds should be automatic). We want to apologise to all the fans who’ve bought tickets to see us and for the short notice of this news, we hope you understand that moving the tour really isn’t something we want to do, but it’s the most sensible thing for us to do right now. Rescheduled Dates are as follows: 5/2/2023 New York, NY Avant Gardner 5/3/2023 Boston, MA House Of Blues 5/5/2023 Montreal, QUE MTELUS 5/6/2023 Toronto, ONT Danforth Music Hall 5/8/2023 Chicago, IL Metro 5/10/2023 Denver, CO Summit 5/12/2023 Oakland, CA Fox Theater _______________________________________________ Stray Kids – K-pop boyband Stray Kids have released a new batch of tour dates for their ‘Maniac’ world tour in Australia, Asia and the US. The band will play two stadium shows in Jakarta, Indonesia in November and arenas in Bangkok, Thailand, Singapore, Melbourne, and Sydney in February 2023. Stray Kids had to reschedule shows in Atlanta and Fort Worth while touring the US in July as three of their eight members tested positive for COVID-19. They’ve now confirmed rescheduled shows and added one additional show in each city. NOVEMBER 2022 Saturday 12 – Jakarta, Indonesia, Beach City International Stadium Sunday 13 – Jakarta, Indonesia, Beach City International Stadium FEBRUARY 2023 Thursday 2 – Bangkok, Thailand, Impact Arena Friday 3 – Bangkok, Thailand, Impact Arena Sunday 5 – Singapore, Singapore Indoor Stadium Saturday 18 – Melbourne, Australia, Rod Laver Arena Sunday 21 – Sydney, Australia, Qudos Bank Arena MARCH 2023 Wednesday 22 – Atlanta, Georgia, State Farm Arena (rescheduled) Thursday 23 – Atlanta, Georgia, State Farm Arena Sunday 26 – Fort Worth, Texas, Dickies Arena (rescheduled) Monday 27 – Fort Worth, Texas, Dickies Arena _____________________________________________ Muse – Muse have announced the details for their 2023 North American tour in support of the band’s new album Will of the People. The new dates get underway February 25 in Chicago and run through April 20 in Salt Lake City, with support from Evanescence. General on-sale will be available October 7. February 25, 2023 // Chicago, IL // United Center February 26, 2023 // Minneapolis, MN // Target Center February 28, 2023 // Austin, TX // Moody Center March 2, 2023 // Houston, TX // Toyota Center March 3, 2023 // Fort Worth, TX // Dickies Arena March 7, 2023 // Columbus, OH // Nationwide Arena March 9, 2023 // Toronto, ON // Scotiabank Arena March 11, 2023 // Quebec City, QB // Videotron Centre March 14, 2023 // Montreal, QB // Bell Centre March 17, 2023 // New York City, NY // Madison Square Garden March 19, 2023 // Philadelphia, PA // Wells Fargo Center April 2, 2023 // Glendale, AZ // Desert Diamond Arena April 4, 2023 // Denver, CO // Ball Arena April 6, 2023 // Los Angeles, CA// Crypto . com Arena April 8, 2023 // Las Vegas, NV // T-Mobile Arena April 10, 2023 // San Diego, CA // Pechanga Arena San Diego April 12, 2023 // Anaheim, CA // Honda Center April 16, 2023 // Portland, OR // Moda Center April 18, 2023 // Seattle, WA // Climate Pledge Arena April 20, 2023 // Salt Lake City, UT// Vivint Arena ______________________________________________ Death Cab for Cutie – Death Cab for Cutie is playing shows with Yo La Tengo, Real Estate, Thao and others in support of their latest album, Asphalt Meadows. Death Cab for Cutie: 09-27 Washington, D.C. – The Anthem ^ 09-29 Philadelphia, PA – The Met ^ 09-30 Queens, New York – Forest Hills Stadium = 10-01 Boston, MA – Leader Bank Pavilion ^ 10-03 Raleigh, NC – Red Hat Amphitheater ^ 10-04 Atlanta, GA – Coca-Cola Roxy ^ 10-06 Richmond, VA – Virginia Credit Union Live! ^ 10-07 Asheville, NC – Rabbit Rabbit ^ 10-08 Charleston, SC – Firefly Distillery ^ 10-10 Pittsburgh, PA – Stage AE ^ 10-11 Detroit, MI – The Masonic ^ 10-13 St. Louis, MO – The Factory ^ 10-15 Austin, TX – Austin City Limits Music Festival 10-17 Phoenix, AZ – The Van Buren 10-18 Anaheim, CA – House of Blues Anaheim # 10-19 Santa Barbara, CA – Santa Barbara Bowl # 10-21 Los Angeles, CA – The Greek Theatre # 10-22 San Diego, CA – Epstein Family Amphitheater # 10-23 Oakland, CA – Fox Theater # 10-24 Oakland, CA – Fox Theater # 10-26 Seattle, WA – Paramount Theatre % 10-27 Seattle, WA – Paramount Theatre % 01-27 Louisville, KY – Old Forester’s Paristown Hall & 01-28 Birmingham, AL – Iron City Bham & 01-29 Charlotte, NC – Ovens Auditorium & 01-31 St. Petersburg, FL – Jannus Live & 02-02 Orlando, FL – Hard Rock Live & 02-03 New Orleans, LA – Orpheum Theater & 02-04 Little Rock, AR – The Hall & 02-06 Kansas City, MO – Midland Theatre & 02-07 Tulsa, OK – Cain’s Ballroom & 02-09 Austin, TX – ACL Live at The Moody Theater & 02-11 Dallas, TX – The Factory in Deep Ellum & 02-14 Nashville, TN – Ryman Auditorium & 03-01 Milan, Italy – Fabrique * 03-02 Zurich, Switzerland – X-Tra * 03-05 Copenhagen, Denmark – Den Grå Hal * 03-06 Stockholm, Sweden – Filadelfia * 03-07 Oslo, Norway – Sentrum Scene * 03-09 Berlin, Germany – Columbiahalle * 03-10 Tilburg, Netherlands – 013 * 03-11 Amsterdam, Netherlands – Paradiso * 03-12 Cologne, Germany – E-Werk * 03-14 Antwerp, Belgium – De Roma * 03-15 Luxembourg, Luxembourg – Atelier * 03-16 Paris, France – Salle Pleyel * 03-18 Nottingham, England – Rock City * 03-19 Dublin, Ireland – Bord Gais Energy Theatre * 03-21 Birmingham, England – 02 Institute * 03-22 Edinburgh, Scotland – Usher Hall * 03-23 Glasgow, Scotland – Barrowland * 03-25 Manchester, England – O2 Apollo * 03-27 Brighton, England – Dome * 03-29 London, England – Royal Albert Hall * ^ with Thao = with Real Estate # with Yo La Tengo % with Chong the Nomad & with Momma * with Slow Pulp ______________________________________________ Jane’s Addiction – Dave Navarro will not be joining the band while on their ‘Spirits on Fire’ tour with The Smashing Pumpkins due to long-term COVID effects. Here is his statement. A message from Dave, get well soon pic.twitter.com/CA0UPTMiRF — Jane’s Addiction (@janesaddiction) September 30, 2022 Smashing Pumpkins and Jane’s Addiction 2022 Tour Dates: 10/02 — Dallas, TX @ American Airlines Center * 10/03 — Houston, TX @ Toyota Center * 10/05 — Austin, TX @ Moody Center * 10/07 — Tampa, FL @ Amalie Arena * 10/08 — Hollywood, FL @ Hard Rock Casino * 10/10 — Nashville, TN @ Bridgestone Arena * 10/11 — Atlanta, GA @ State Farm Arena * 10/13 — Uncasville, CT @ Mohegan Sun * 10/14 — Belmont Park, NY @ UBS Arena * 10/16 — Boston, MA @ TD Garden * 10/18 — Washington, DC @ Capital One Arena * 10/19 — New York City, NY @ Madison Square Garden * 10/21 — Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Center * 10/22 — Pittsburgh, PA @ PPG Paints Arena ^ 10/24 — Toronto, ON @ Scotiabank Arena * 10/26 — Montreal, QC @ Bell Center * 10/27 — Quebec City, QC @ Centre Videotron * 10/29 — Cleveland, OH @ Rocket Mortage Fieldhouse ^ 10/30 — Milwaukee, WI @ Fiserv Forum * 11/01 — St. Louis, MO @ Enterprise Center * 11/02 — Detroit, MI @ Little Caesars Arena * 11/04 — St. Paul, MN @ Xcel Energy Center * 11/05 — Chicago, IL @ United Center * 11/07 — Denver, CO @ Ball Arena * 11/09 — Spokane, WA @ Spokane Arena * 11/11 — Vancouver, BC @ Rogers Arena * 11/12 — Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena * 11/13 — Portland, OR @ Moda Center * 11/15 — San Francisco, CA @ Chase Center * 11/16 — Anaheim, CA @ Honda Center * 11/18 — Phoenix, AZ @ Footprint Center * 11/19 — Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Bowl * *= w/ Poppy ^ = w/ Meg Myers ______________________________________________ Martina McBride – Martina McBride has announced her 12th Annual ‘Joy of Christmas’ tour, which kicks off November 26 in Greensboro. “This is the 12th year of doing the ‘Joy Of Christmas Tour’ and I truly believe our 2022 version of the show is the best yet,” says McBride. “It is truly a night for the whole family to celebrate all the joyful things about the holiday season. We look forward to i...

Speak Out Reader Opinion: President Biden Has A Long List Of Accomplishments https://digitalarkansasnews.com/speak-out-reader-opinion-president-biden-has-a-long-list-of-accomplishments/ Speak Out allows readers to comment on the issues of the day. Email Speak Out at speakout@southtownstar.com or call 312-222-2427. Please limit comments to 30 seconds or about 120 words and give your first name and your hometown. Gary, you say President Biden has accomplished noting well here are some for you. The American Rescue Plan, COVID-19 relief package, Safer Communities Act, CHIPS and Science Act, reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act, rejoined Paris Climate Accords, strengthened NATO and finally the Inflation Reduction Act, which allows Medicare to negotiate drug prices, and caps spending at $2,000 per year for seniors. I also note that some of these got bi-partisian support, but most were passed solely by the Democrats. Paul, Tinley Park Jim from Mokena. Have you ever considered the source of some of the stress you mention? It’s part of the Trump effect. Imagine what the stress level in our country would be if he had been content to be best known for his time on “The Apprentice” where his antics didn’t have such profound effect on all others. If he really wants to make America great again he would just fade away. MJ, Worth To Jim, Mokena, the reason you didn’t hear compassionate, people friendly comments in big box and other retail stores when Trump was in office is because Trump would have berated and made fun of them like he does everything he doesn’t like, including the handicapped, and for theater. Trump doesn’t care about the common normal human, only those who are wealthy and/or contribute to his personal wealth and it will benefit him. Carl, Orland Park To Gary of Oak Forest. How about Trump and his supporters admit they lost? He still will not admit it or maybe his admission was in the top secret documents he was not supposed to have. Mark, Orland Park As I read the various comments, I don’t understand it. High prices and inflation are due to big business greed and Trump reducing business taxes causing huge deficits we are now paying for. Trump is a con-man, thief, liar and probably blackmailer with all the documents he stole. Look at the Republican Party platform, eliminate women’s rights, ban books, privatize Medicare and Social Security for profit, just to start. For 10 to 12 years they have done almost nothing including the border issue except for a useless wall that cost us billions then just blame Biden. How stupid are we? Mike, Mokena Who is the greatest threat to democracy? Last week 25-30 FBI and SWAT agents made a 7 a.m. raid on the Pennsylvania home of a pro-life activist, his wife and seven young children. The warrant by Garland’s alleged Justice Department was based on an incident that had previously been thrown out by a Pennsylvania court. The crime was not murder, rape or other violent crime. The pro-abortion crowd wants to silence pro-life voices and is not opposed to using terrorist tactics. David, Tinley Park The half page Southtown article says the “Left” state that the Oath Keepers are an extremist group who are ruining democracy. They believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Well, multi millions who have and can use common sense must be extremists, too. During their campaign, the facts are that Biden mostly hid in his basement and when he did speak, was clearly outdrawn at their rallies at least 2 to 1 by Trump. Yet, using common sense, we’re supposed to believe that suddenly Biden got seven million more votes than Trump? RHS, Oak Forest The Democrats wanted the open border because they wanted to make a ploy to get non-USA citizens to vote and they just naturally assumed they’d vote Democrat, which so did I. But in reality? These illegal aliens are doing the jobs in Hispanic neighborhoods for far less than the people who are there before they got there and now it turns out Hispanics don’t necessarily like this influx of illegal aliens into the country. Tom, Burbank I can’t wait for the November midterm elections in less than 40 days. This will be a powerful and decisive referendum on the incompetent and leftist Biden administration. Maybe not here in this Democratic drug state of Illinois, but nationally the GOP is going to win, crush and bury this anti-American agenda. Absolutely with the help of God. Leo, Orland Park To the person who thinks that the perpetrators of mass shootings purchased their weapons in Republican controlled states. I would like you to think about Highland Park, Illinois and Sandy Hook, Connecticut. Those are Democrat controlled states where the shooters legally purchased their weapons in their home state. Look at the mass shootings in California, another Democrat controlled state. The only Republican controlled state that has had mass shootings that comes to mind is Texas. Linda, Orland Park Hey, Gov. Pritzker. This SAFE-T Bill was rushed through in Springfield at what, 4:30, a.m., by the Black Caucus. Now when people have had time to read it, and found numerous mistakes in some of the wording, you now say it has to be modified before the new year. Well, if it wasn’t rushed through in the first place maybe you would not be back peddling now on making changes. Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday Bob, Oak Forest Good news was announced that Social Security will give out the biggest increase since the ‘80s. This will be very beneficial for those receiving Social Security benefits. But before we get so happy, we don’t know yet what’s waiting for us behind door number one. Last time we received a decent increase, Medicare raised its rates. Because of all the Alzheimer’s appeal that was not approved by the FDA. So this time who knows what’s in store. BJ, Hazel Crest The city of Chicago public school system is getting a great financial amount from the Chicago taxpayers who send their children to parochial and private schools. There should be some compensation to these taxpaying citizens. Mr. G, Chicago I keep waiting for the day I may finally encounter person as loving, loyal and caring as any of the dogs that have left my life. Guy, Oak Lawn Read More Here

YDR, 2 Other Media Organizations Request Documents In Seizure Of Scott Perry https://digitalarkansasnews.com/ydr-2-other-media-organizations-request-documents-in-seizure-of-scott-perry/ Three central Pennsylvania news organizations filed a petition today in federal court, asking the government to unseal records related to the seizure of U.S. Rep. Scott Perry’s cell phone. Perry, R-York County, became an early target of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Requests for testimony and documents from him were the first public initiatives the committee made to gather information from a Republican member of Congress involved in President Donald Trump’s effort to remain in office after he was voted out. As part of the committee’s work, Perry’s cell phone was seized Aug. 9 by the FBI. The York Daily Record, PennLive and The York Dispatch are asking the United States District Court for the Middle District, in Harrisburg, to unseal the warrant and related documents used to seize that phone. “The York Daily Record joined this effort to unseal the search warrant for our congressman’s cell phone because, as the court documents note, there is a compelling public interest in transparency here,” said Scott Fisher, USA Today Network Central Pennsylvania regional content director. “Mr. Perry has been a central figure in the Jan. 6th committee’s investigation, and his constituents have a right to understand the reasons for the seizure of his phone.” Perry compared the capture of his phone to the search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, describing it as “banana republic tactics.” Scott Perry vs. Shamaine Daniels: Some barbs, but little fireworks in 10th District debate Jan. 6 commission: Why is the panel so interested in PA Rep. Scott Perry? Perry’s record: 12 things to know about U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, who is a focus of the Jan. 6 probe “They made no attempt to contact my lawyer, who would have made arrangements for them to have my phone if that was their wish,” Perry said. “I’m outraged — though not surprised — that the FBI under the direction of Merrick Garland’s DOJ, would seize the phone of a sitting member of Congress.” He has since filed suit against the U.S. Department of Justice, demanding his phone data be returned and asking for a temporary restraining order to keep the DOJ from searching the data until the judge rules in this motion. “The seizure of Congressman Perry’s phone is a subject of enormous public interest,” the application to unseal the documents says. “Any search of the property of a member of Congress is a matter of paramount public concern.” The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which wrote the application to the court, provides legal representation and other resources to protect First Amendment freedoms and the newsgathering rights of journalists. “News organizations and the House committee investigating Jan. 6 have also already put a lot of information about Congressman Perry’s involvement, or not, in those events in the public domain. So we think it’s untenable that the government would insist on wholesale secrecy with respect to these court records when we already know a substantial amount about the nature and scope of the investigation that they relate to,” said Grayson Clary, an attorney for the Reporters Committee. Kim Strong can be reached at kstrong@gannett.com. Read More Here

Trump Says Claims That He Wanted To Fire Ivanka And Jared Were A Lie https://digitalarkansasnews.com/trump-says-claims-that-he-wanted-to-fire-ivanka-and-jared-were-a-lie/ September 30, 2022 10:51 AM Former President Donald Trump has denied claims that he wanted to fire his daughter and her husband from the White House, calling it “pure fiction.” A book written by reporter Maggie Haberman, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, notes that Trump considered firing Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, who were White House aides at the time, several times throughout his presidency, even going so far as to wanting to announce their departure from the White House on social media. The former president said the story was false and that Haberman’s book contained stories “with zero fact checking or confirmation by anyone who would know, like me,” he wrote on Truth Social. “In one case she lies about me wanting to fire my daughter, Ivanka, and Jared,” Trump wrote. “WRONG, pure fiction. Never even crossed my mind. Just have to fight trouble making creeps like Maggie, and all the rest!” ELON MUSK LAWYERS SOUGHT ‘TRUMP’ WORD SEARCH TO CONFIRM TWITTER SPAM COUNT Former President Donald Trump listens to applause from the crowd as he steps up to the podium at a rally Friday, Sept. 23, 2022, in Wilmington, N.C. (AP Photo/Chris Seward) According to the book, Trump shared his thought of firing the two with then-chief of staff John Kelly and then-White House counsel Don McGahn, both of whom resisted the idea. Ivanka Trump and Kushner remained in the White House throughout Trump’s term. Haberman’s book also contains other stories about the Trump administration, including one that details how Trump internally threatened to gain access to her phone records in order to identify possible leakers inside the White House. Another story in the book claimed that the former president had engaged in bizarre conversations in preparation for candidate debates in 2016. Trump called Haberman’s book “another Fake book” that is “supposedly very boring and stale.” CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America is scheduled to be released next Tuesday. Read More Here

Fri. 9 A.m.: Jackson Set To Make Supreme Court Debut In Brief Ceremony https://digitalarkansasnews.com/fri-9-a-m-jackson-set-to-make-supreme-court-debut-in-brief-ceremony/ In this April 8 photo, Ketanji Brown Jackson speaks during an event on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington celebrating the confirmation of Jackson as the first black woman to reach the Supreme Court. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is making her first appearance on the Supreme Court bench in a brief courtroom ceremony three days ahead of the start of the high court’s new term. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File) WASHINGTON (AP) — Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is making her first appearance on the Supreme Court bench in a brief courtroom ceremony three days ahead of the start of the high court’s new term. President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and their spouses are expected today at the invitation-only ceremonial investiture for Jackson, the first black woman on the Supreme Court. During the ceremony the 52-year-old Jackson will follow the custom of every other new justice since 1972 and sit in a chair that once belonged to John Marshall, who served as chief justice for 34 years in the early 1800s. Marshall also was a slaveholder, perhaps adding a special poignancy to Jackson taking her place in his onetime possession. She is only the third black justice in the court’s history, along with her new colleague Justice Clarence Thomas and the late Justice Thurgood Marshall. Today’s ceremony includes the reading of the proclamation appointing Jackson to the court. She will also repeat the oath she took when she formally joined the court in June, just after the retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer. Jackson was confirmed in April on a 53-47 vote in the Senate, with three Republican senators joining all Democrats to support her. Biden had pledged during his presidential campaign that he would nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court. Jackson is the first justice appointed by a Democratic president since Justice Elena Kagan joined the court in 2010. Kagan was appointed by former President Barack Obama, who also appointed Justice Sonia Sotomayor in 2009. It appeared Obama would get a third high court pick when Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016. But Senate Republicans refused to take up Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland, then serving as a federal appeals court judge. Garland, now Attorney General, will also participate in today’s ceremony. Former President Donald Trump eventually chose Justice Neil Gorsuch, the first of his three Supreme Court appointees, to fill Scalia’s seat. Today’s breaking news and more in your inbox Read More Here

Trump Records Probe: Tensions Flare Over Special Master https://digitalarkansasnews.com/trump-records-probe-tensions-flare-over-special-master-3/ ERIC TUCKER  Associated Press The parallel special master process spawned by the FBI search of Donald Trump’s Florida estate has slowed the Justice Department’s criminal investigation and exposed simmering tensions between department prosecutors and lawyers for the former president. As the probe into the presence of top-secret information at Mar-a-Lago continues, barbed comments in recent court filings have laid bare deep disagreements related to the special master’s work — not just among lawyers but judges, too. And the filings have made clear that a process the Trump team initially asked for has not consistently played to the ex-president’s advantage. A look at where things stand: WHO IS THE SPECIAL MASTER AND WHAT IS HIS ROLE? A federal judge in Florida appointed at the Trump team’s request an independent arbiter to inspect the thousands of documents seized from Mar-a-Lago and to weed out from the investigation any that might be protected by claims of either attorney-client privilege or executive privilege. That arbiter, formally known as a special master, is Raymond Dearie. He’s a former federal prosecutor who was appointed a U.S. District judge in Brooklyn by then-President Ronald Reagan. He also has served on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. He was initially tasked by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, with reviewing all of the records taken from Mar-a-Lago. But a federal appeals court shrunk the scope of his duties last week, ruling that the Justice Department did not have to share with him the roughly 100 documents with classified markings that were taken during the Aug. 8 search. That leaves for his evaluation the roughly 11,000 other, unclassified documents — which a Trump lawyer said actually total roughly 200,000 pages — recovered by the FBI. Cannon, meanwhile, has also reined in some of Dearie’s work. WHAT HAS HAPPENED SINCE THEN REGARDING CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS? The past week has revealed stark divisions in how both sides envision the process playing out, as well as the precise role the special master should have. An early hint surfaced when the Trump team resisted Dearie’s request for any information to support the idea that the documents had been declassified, as Trump has repeatedly asserted. A lawyer for Trump, James Trusty, said that inquiry was “premature” and “a little beyond” what Cannon had in mind at the time she appointed the special master. The following day, in a setback for the Trump team, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit overruled an order from Cannon that had temporarily halted the Justice Department’s ability to use the seized classified documents in its probe. Besides restoring the department’s access, the order also lifted Cannon’s mandate that investigators give the special master those records. More conflict followed, this time related to the scanning and processing of non-classified government records that were seized. Government lawyers revealed in a letter Tuesday that none of the five document-review vendors they had recommended for the job was “willing to be engaged” by the Trump team. The Justice Department said it was confident it would be able to secure the arrangements on its own while noting that it continued to expect the Trump team to pay. But Trusty responded with his own letter Wednesday attributing the difficulty in securing a vendor to the sheer quantity of documents, which he said totaled roughly 200,000 pages — a number the Justice Department has not itself stated in court filings. He said the department’s deadlines for the production of documents was overly “aggressive” — “It would be better to base deadlines on actual data and not wistful claims by the Government,” he noted at one point — and scolded the department for what he said were “antagonistic” comments. “DOJ continues to mistake itself as having judicial authority. Its comments are not argument, but proclamations designed to steamroll judicial oversight and the Plaintiff’s constitutional rights,” Trusty wrote. WHAT IS LIKELY TO HAPPEN NEXT? The FBI’s investigation took a major step forward when the appeals court lifted Cannon’s hold on its ability to scrutinize the seized classified documents as it evaluates whether Trump or anyone else should face criminal charges. Dearie’s work as special master will continue alongside that probe, though there’s little chance any action he takes at this point could substantially alter the outcome of the FBI investigation or affect major decisions that lie ahead. But early disagreements between Cannon and Dearie over the scope of his duties also bear watching. For instance, Cannon on Thursday overturned a directive from the special master that would have required the Trump team to say whether it had any objections to a detailed FBI property inventory cataloging all of the items agents removed from the home. That response could have been illuminating given that Trump and some of his allies have raised unsupported suggestions that the agents who searched his home may have planted evidence. If his lawyers were to affirm the inventory’s accuracy, they would likely be contradicting their own client’s claims while also acknowledging the presence of classified materials in the home. The Justice Department this week made what it called minor revisions to the inventory, but said it was an otherwise full and accurate accounting of what was taken. Yet newly disclosed correspondence showed the Trump team balking at being forced to assess the inventory’s accuracy. Trusty said in a letter Sunday that the directive that it do so goes beyond what Cannon had envisioned when she appointed Dearie. Cannon herself agreed, canceling Dearie’s requirement Thursday and writing that her “appointment order did not contemplate that obligation.” The Justice Department, for its part, had earlier suggested that the Trump team should not be able to avoid stating its position on the record or following other of Dearie’s directives. “The Special Master needs to know that he is reviewing all of the materials seized from Mara-Lago on August 8, 2022 — and no additional materials — before he categorizes the seized documents and adjudicates privilege claims,” the department said in one filing. The letter Tuesday ended with this tart reminder to Trump and his lawyers: “Plaintiff brought this civil, equitable proceeding. He bears the burden of proof.” Follow Eric Tucker on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP Read More Here

Newsletter: Midterm Races Tighten As Election Enters The Final Stretch https://digitalarkansasnews.com/newsletter-midterm-races-tighten-as-election-enters-the-final-stretch/ WASHINGTON —  The 2022 midterm election so far has unfolded in three chapters. In the spring, rising prices, falling approval for President Biden and growing concern about crime combined to create a very favorable environment for Republican campaigns. Half a dozen Democratic senators appeared at risk of losing their reelection bids, and a Republican sweep through contested House races seemed all but inevitable. Then, in June, the Supreme Court released its decision overturning Roe vs. Wade and ending the nationwide guarantee of abortion rights that had prevailed for half a century. That outraged Democratic activists as well as millions of previously disengaged voters who suddenly realized that a right they had taken for granted had been abolished by five conservative justices. Over the course of the summer, that anger grew. At the same time, gasoline prices began what would ultimately be 99 consecutive days of decline and Democratic lawmakers managed to break a long stalemate in the Senate to pass legislation on climate change and healthcare, enacting some major elements of the party’s agenda. Talk of a Republican wave subsided, and Biden’s approval rating began to tick back upward from dreadful to mediocre. If they could control the schedule, Republicans might have wanted to hold the midterm election in April. Democrats would have liked August. But the calendar sets the election for November, and now we’ve entered chapter three — with Republicans still favored to win a fairly narrow majority in the House and control of the Senate very much up for grabs. “The sugar high Democrats were on before Labor Day has dissipated, but they’re still in far better position than many people, including many Democrats, would have expected in the spring,” said Jessica Taylor, who analyzes Senate and gubernatorial races for the the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “This is a unique election cycle.” A shrinking battlefield Typically, two big things happen in the final weeks of the fall campaign: pruning and consolidating. Pruning takes place as the major party campaign committees and other big election players make final bets about which races to invest in and which to abandon. Consolidating involves previously undecided or disengaged voters starting to focus on their choices. Typically, most of them drift back to the party they usually support, causing races to tighten. Arizona provides a good example of pruning. Back in the spring, Sen. Mark Kelly, the incumbent Democrat, looked vulnerable in a state that Biden carried in 2020 by just three-tenths of a percentage point. But the Supreme Court’s abortion decision hit hard in the state, which has a large share of college-educated, politically independent suburban voters — the group that nationwide has been most prone to shifting their votes because of abortion politics. In addition, Republican primary voters chose a nominee, Blake Masters, who was backed by former President Trump and had never before run for office. Masters has crammed a lifetime’s worth of offensive statements into his 36 years, giving Democrats multiple targets. Since he won the nomination, his efforts to whitewash his record, by scrubbing his website to remove support for stringent antiabortion measures, for example, have done little good, opening him to accusations of inauthenticity and flip-flopping. Earlier this month, the Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC run by allies of Sen. Mitch McConnell, the GOP Senate leader, pulled millions of dollars of advertising it had reserved in the state. And Masters’ former boss, the billionaire Peter Thiel, who financed his primary campaign, has shown no willingness to invest further. Multiple recent polls show Kelly with around 50% of the vote and Masters trailing, although they disagree about the size of the margin. The average shows the Republican behind by about 7 percentage points. A similar dynamic has taken hold in New Hampshire, another state with a large number of independent, college-educated voters. Incumbent Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan was once a prime Republican target. She has benefited greatly from Republican primary voters’ decision to nominate retired Gen. Don Bolduc, who said people should “rejoice” at the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling and who has also strongly backed Trump’s lies about fraud in the 2020 election. Hassan leads Bolduc by 8 points in the most recent poll of the race, released Thursday by Suffolk University in Boston. Her lead is driven by a 16-point edge among independents, the poll found. “Independents are the swing votes in these elections. The way the party out of power wins is by having a unified independent wave,” said David Paleologos, who directs the Suffolk poll and has surveyed voters in several battleground states this year. Earlier this year, a wave seemed to be building, he said, but “Democrats have a line of defense” mostly from independent women, “who are selecting the Democratic candidate primarily because the Republican candidate is out of touch with their values on abortion.” Pennsylvania illustrates the other trend — consolidation. Earlier this year, several polls showed the Democratic candidate, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, with a double-digit lead over Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz in the race to replace GOP Sen. Pat Toomey, who is retiring. The polls showed many Republican voters undecided about Oz. But a win that large would be highly unusual in a state as closely divided as Pennsylvania — Biden carried the state by 1 percentage point, and Trump won it in 2016 by a similar margin. And, sure enough, more recent polls have shown a tighter race, including a Fox news survey released Thursday that showed Fetterman leading 45% to 41%. Oz has started to do better mostly because Republican voters have started to close ranks behind him, even though they’re not especially happy about it: The Fox poll found 61% of Fetterman supporters said they were enthusiastic about their candidate, compared with 38% of Oz supporters. Fetterman’s major vulnerability remains his health — he suffered a stroke in May shortly before the primary. He and Oz are scheduled to debate in late October, an event that could quiet lingering doubts about his recovery — or worsen them. If Democrats can win the Republican-held seat in Pennsylvania and successfully defend both Arizona and New Hampshire, Republicans would have to defeat two Democratic incumbents to regain a majority in the Senate. The two most vulnerable remain Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada and Raphael Warnock in Georgia. Both of those races seem likely to go down to election day as too close to call. Democrats could get an extra cushion if they could pick up another Republican-held seat. In Ohio, polls have continued to show the race between Republican J.D. Vance and Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan as a tossup, despite the state’s Republican tilt. Similarly, in Wisconsin, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson faces a strong challenge from Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes. Recent polls have shown Johnson with a small edge. Abortion politics also has played a role in some major races for governor. Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan and the party’s candidate in Pennsylvania, state Atty. Gen. Josh Shapiro, both benefit from being paired against Republican candidates who strongly oppose abortion rights in states where the majority of voters support them. In Pennsylvania, the Republican candidate, Doug Mastriano, a conservative Christian whose campaign is nearly out of money and has aired no television ads, used its Facebook page this week to announce a new strategy: 40 days of prayer and fasting. Check out “The Times” podcast for essential news and more. These days, waking up to current events can be, well, daunting. If you’re seeking a more balanced news diet, “The Times” podcast is for you. Gustavo Arellano, along with a diverse set of reporters from the award-winning L.A. Times newsroom, delivers the most interesting stories from the Los Angeles Times every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. The latest from the campaign trail — Four years after voters set a modern record for turnout in a midterm election, they seem poised to do so again. Or at least come close, Mark Barabak wrote. The latest evidence comes from the most recent NBC News poll, which found 64% of those responding had a high interest in voting in the Nov. 8 election, registering a “9″ or “10″ on a 10-point scale. That’s more than the poll found at the same point in 2018, when 114 million voters cast ballots in the highest turnout rate for a midterm election since 1914. The latest from Washington Enjoying this newsletter? Consider subscribing to the Los Angeles Times Your support helps us deliver the news that matters most. Become a subscriber. — The Supreme Court opens a historic term Monday by welcoming the first Black woman justice as it faces challenges to past liberal rulings on race, affirmative action and voting rights, David Savage wrote. At issue this year is a long-standing dispute over the role of race in the law. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joins a court whose conservative majority has put itself on a collision course with progressives and civil rights advocates who insist that equal opportunity and fair representation requires considering race. — Savage also took an overall look at the major cases to be heard by the high court in the term that begins Oct. 3. — The Biden administration has narrowed its pledge to forgive up to $20,000 in federal student loans, disqualifying some loans that appeared to have been eligible for relief, Jon Healey wrote. The basic contours of the debt relief program remain the same. Borrowers with incomes of less than $12...

Putin Declares Four New Regions Of The Russian Federation; Ukraine Says Civilian Convoy Hit By Russian Strike https://digitalarkansasnews.com/putin-declares-four-new-regions-of-the-russian-federation-ukraine-says-civilian-convoy-hit-by-russian-strike/ Ukrainian officials say a humanitarian convoy in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia was hit by a Russian strike, killing at least 23 people. Those in the convoy were heading into Russian-occupied territory to pick up their relatives, the city’s governor said. Moscow has issued a statement saying the attack was carried out by Ukraine. It comes just days after Russia announced the results of a widely-criticized sham referendum that Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to use as a justification to annex four occupied regions of Ukraine. Putin is expected to hold a ceremony announcing the official annexations today. Nord Stream gas leaks sees methane spewing into the atmosphere Climate scientists described the shocking images of gas spewing to the surface of the Baltic Sea as a “reckless release” of greenhouse gas emissions that, if deliberate, “amounts to an environmental crime.” Anadolu Agency | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images Climate scientists described the shocking images of gas spewing to the surface of the Baltic Sea this week as a “reckless release” of greenhouse gas emissions that, if deliberate, “amounts to an environmental crime.” Researchers acknowledge that it is difficult to accurately quantify the size of the emissions and say the leaks are a “wee bubble in the ocean” compared to the massive amounts of methane emitted around the world every day. Nonetheless, environmental campaigners argue that the incident shows the risk of sabotage or an accident makes fossil infrastructure a “ticking time bomb.” Here’s the story. — Sam Meredith Putin says Russia is not aiming for the return of the Soviet Union Russia is not seeking the return of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Putin said during his speech to Russian lawmakers announcing the annexation of four of Ukraine’s territories. “People born after the tragedy of the end of the Soviet Union, they wanted unity in 1991,” Putin said. “There was a decision by representatives of the leading party to dissolve the USSR. And this has destroyed the connections between different parts of our country.” Putin has long held that the dissolution of the USSR was a mistake and the most catastrophic event in history. “The Soviet Union is no longer there, and cannot return to the past,” he said. “For Russia we don’t need this anymore, we are not aiming for that. But there is nothing stronger than the will of mission of people who decided they want to be part of Russia. For generations they lived in a single country and there is nothing stronger than the will of these people to return to their historic roots.” — Natasha Turak Putin declares four new regions of the Russian Federation Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting on agriculture issues via video link in Sochi, Russia September 27, 2022. Sputnik/Gavriil Grigorov/Pool via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS – THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. Gavriil Grigorov | Sputnik | Reuters Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the annexation of four regions of Ukraine under its occupation during a speech in front of lawmakers in Moscow. “People have made a definitive choice, today we are signing a decree on Luhansk People’s Republic, Donetsk People’s Republic, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson,” Putin said. “I am sure the Federal Assembly will support the laws of creating four new subjects of the Russian Federation because this is the will of millions of people.”  “It is the self determination of people, the right that is based on the historical unity which was defended by generations of our people, people who for generations protected Russia,” he said. The speech follows a widely-criticized sham referendum held by Russia in the occupied territories, which make up roughly 18% of Ukraine’s land, that resulted in what Moscow said were overwhelming votes to join the Russian Federation. — Natasha Turak Kremlin says attacks on any part of Ukraine that Russia is set to annex is an attack on Russia itself Attacks on any part of Ukraine that Russia is about to annex will be considered an attack on Russia itself, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. Russian President Vladimir Putin is slated to officially declare the annexations of four Ukrainian regions during a ceremony today, for which celebrations at Red Square are planned. The classification raises the stakes for the conflict as Putin has threatened the use of nuclear weapons in the event of any attacks on Russian territory. And just as the annexations are to be announced, Ukrainian forces have surrounded thousands of Russian troops in the strategic town of Lyman in northern Donetsk, one of the territories set for annexation. The situation raises the question of exactly what parts of these territories — Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia — Russia can actually annex and control. Altogether, they constitute roughly 18% of Ukraine’s land. Peskov said that all of Donetsk would be under Ukrainian control, but did not specify whether all of Kherson of Zaporizhzhia would be. “We will clarify everything today,” he said. — Natasha Turak Russian forces face potential imminent defeat in Ukraine’s Lyman Ukrainian soldiers rest at their position near Lyman, eastern Ukraine, on April 28, 2022, amid Russian invasion of Ukraine. ( Yasuyoshi Chiba | AFP | Getty Images Ukrainian forces have almost fully surrounded Russian troops occupying Lyman, a town in the north of Ukraine’s Donetsk province, raising the possibility of another Russian loss just as President Vladimir Putin is set to announce the province’s annexation. “Ukrainian troops have likely nearly completed the encirclement of the Russian grouping in Lyman and cut critical ground lines of communication (GLOCS) that support Russian troops in the Drobysheve-Lyman area,” a tweet from the Institute for the Study of War read. Roughly 5,500 Russian troops are reported to be in the town, which has been occupied since May. The town is home to a strategic railway junction. Ukrainian forces have made rapid advances in the area in recent days and are now positioned to fire on the only route out of Lyman. This is part of the enormous swathe of eastern and southern Ukrainian territory, encompassing four regions, that Putin is set to annex after holding a sham referendum entirely controlled by Russia that concluded in majority votes to join the Russian Federation. Putin has warned that any threats to the territory of Russia would justify its use of nuclear weapons. — Natasha Turak Russian strikes hit civilian convoy multiple times outside Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine says Ukrainian servicemen walk by a crater left by a missile strike near Zaporizhzhia on September 30, 2022, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Genya Savilov | AFP | Getty Images Russian strikes hit a civilian convoy multiple times outside the city of Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainian officials said. The strikes, which hit a convoy of people who were heading to Russian-occupied territory to pick up their relatives, killed at least 23 people and wounded at least 28, Zaporizhzhia Regional Governor Oleksandr Starukh said in a post on Telegram. “There are dead and wounded. Rescuers, medics, and all relevant services are currently working at the site,” Starukh wrote. EDITORS NOTE: Graphic content / Ukrainian policemen check cars damaged by a missile strike on a road near Zaporizhzhia on September 30, 2022, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  Genya Savilov | Afp | Getty Images Ukraine’s Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai wrote on Telegram, “Near Zaporizhzhia, the Russians fired rockets at a convoy heading to the occupied territory. It should be noted that the departure of 34 vehicles with residents of Luhansk region was planned. More detailed information about the victims is being clarified.” Members of the red cross checks bodies of people killed by a missile strike near Zaporizhzhia on September 30, 2022, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Genya Savilov | AFP | Getty Images CNBC has not been able to independently verify the details. Images posted by Starukh and others on social media show disturbing scenes of burnt cars and bodies on the road. A Russian-appointed leader of occupied Zaporizhzhia, Volodymyr Rogov, was quoted by Russian state news agency RIA as blaming Ukrainian forces for the attack, saying “Ukrainian militants hit a convoy with dozens of civilian cars queuing.” A couple hug each other near cars damaged by a missile strike on a road near Zaporizhzhia on September 30, 2022, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Genya Savilov | Afp | Getty Images Putin to officially announce Ukraine annexations during ceremony A view shows banners and constructions ahead of an expected event, dedicated to the results of referendums on the joining of four Ukrainian self-proclaimed regions to Russia, near the Kremlin Wall and the State Historical Museum in Red Square in central Moscow, Russia September 28, 2022. Banners read: “Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson. Together forever!”  Evgenia Novozhenina | Reuters Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to hold a ceremony today officially declaring the annexation of four regions of Ukraine, where sham referendums were held by Russian-appointed authorities over the last week. The referendum’s results, which have been rejected by much of the international community, showed large majorities of each territory — Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia — voting to join the Russian Federation. The regions, making up the country’s eastern and southern flanks, form roughly 18% of Ukraine’s territory. A municipal worker casts her ballot during a referendum on the secession of Zaporizhzhia region from Ukraine and its joining Russia, in the Ru...

EU Countries Approve Energy Windfall Levies, Turn To Gas Price Cap https://digitalarkansasnews.com/eu-countries-approve-energy-windfall-levies-turn-to-gas-price-cap/ EU approves energy windfall profit levies Countries eye gas price caps as their next move States split over how to contain sky-high prices BRUSSELS, Sept 30 (Reuters) – European Union countries agreed on Friday to impose emergency levies on energy firms’ windfall profits, and began talks on their next move to tackle Europe’s energy crunch – possibly a bloc-wide gas price cap. Ministers from the 27 EU member countries met in Brussels on Friday, where they approved measures proposed earlier this month to contain an energy price surge that is stoking record-high inflation and threatening a recession. The package includes a levy on fossil fuel companies’ surplus profits made this year or next, another levy on excess revenues low-cost power producers make from soaring electricity costs, and a mandatory 5% cut in electricity use during peak price periods. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com With the deal done, countries began talks on Friday morning on the EU’s next move to contain the price crunch, which many countries want to be a broad gas price cap, though others – most notably Germany – remain opposed. “All these temporary measures are very well, but in order to find the solution to help our citizens in this energy crisis, we need to cap the gas price,” Croatian economy minister Davor Filipovic said on his arrival at Friday’s meeting. Fifteen countries, including France, Italy and Poland, this week asked Brussels to propose a price cap on all wholesale gas transactions to contain inflation. The cap should be set at a level that is “high and flexible enough to allow Europe to attract the required resources”, Belgium, Greece, Poland and Italy said in a note explaining their proposal seen by Reuters on Thursday. The countries disputed the Commission’s claim that a broad gas price cap would require “significant financial resources” to finance emergency gas purchases should market prices break the EU’s cap. Belgian energy minister Tinne Van der Straeten said only 2 billion euros ($1.96 billion) would be required, as most European imports fall under long-term contracts or arrive by pipeline with no easy alternative buyers. That would be a fraction of the 140 billion euros the EU expects its windfall profit levies on energy firms to raise. Czech Republic’s Deputy Prime Minister Jozef Sikela and European Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson hold a news conference after a European Union Energy Ministers meeting on high energy prices, in Brussels, Belgium September 30, 2022. REUTERS/Yves Herman But Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and others warn broad gas price caps could leave countries struggling to buy gas if they cannot compete with buyers in price-competitive global markets. A diplomat from one EU country said the idea posed “risks to security of supply” as Europe heads into a winter with tight energy supplies after Russia slashed gas flows to Europe in retaliation for Western sanctions against Moscow for invading Ukraine. The European Commission has also raised doubts and suggested the EU instead move ahead with narrower price caps, targeting Russian gas alone, or specifically gas used for power generation. “We have to offer a price cap for all Russian gas,” EU energy policy chief Kadri Simson said. Brussels suggested that idea earlier this month, but it hit resistance from central and eastern European countries worried Moscow would retaliate by cutting off the remaining gas it still sends to them. By introducing EU-wide measures Brussels hopes to overlay governments’ uneven national approaches to the energy crunch, which have seen richer EU countries far outspend poorer ones in handing out cash to ailing companies and consumers struggling with bills. Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, set out a 200 billion euro package on Thursday to tackle soaring energy costs, including a gas price brake. Luxembourg energy minister Claude Turmes urged Brussels to change EU state aid rules to stop the “insane” spending race between countries. “That’s the next frontier, to get more solidarity and to stop this infighting,” Turmes said. ($1 = 1.0182 euros) Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Reporting by Kate Abnett and Gabriela Baczynska; Additional reporting by Philip Blenkinsop, Bart Meijer and John Chalmers; Editing by Jan Harvey Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. Read More Here

What’s Happening In Central Arkansas This Weekend? https://digitalarkansasnews.com/whats-happening-in-central-arkansas-this-weekend-2/ LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – As fall swoops through the Natural State, there is not shortage of events in central Arkansas that you can enjoy in the wonderful weather. Friday and Saturday the North Pulaski Community Fest & Car Show will be taking place at North Pulaski Community Park in Jacksonville. On Friday there will be a spaghetti supper from 5-8 p.m. with fireworks at 7:30 p.m. and on Saturday there will be a car show, fishing tournament, bbq dinner, live music and much more. All weekend long Bark Bar will be hosting BARKtoberfest from 4-9 p.m. There will be food specials, local Octoberfest beers and lots of furry friends. On Friday and Saturday, Argenta will be home to the Haunted Argenta Ghost Tours. The one and a half hour walking ghost tour will teach you all about the areas history, plus introduce you to a few haunted hang-outs. The tours run from 7 p.m. until 8:30 p.m. Saturday, Millennium Bowl will be having their Bowl for the Cure event in support of the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. Each team will consist of eight bowlers and the entry fee per bowler is $25. The event runs from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m. Also on Saturday, Unity Martial Arts will be hosting their Community Fall Fest from 12 p.m. until 4 p.m. at their location at 1524 Garfield Drive in Little Rock. There will be free seminars, demonstrations and activities for the kids as well as games and food trucks. Finally, the 2nd annual Sparks in the Park will be happening Friday and Saturday at Guy City Park in Guy. There will be live music, food, games, a car show and of course fireworks. The event starts at 4 p.m. To stay on top of all the big events coming to central Arkansas and the Natural State, check out our Local Events calendar. Read More…

D.C.-Area Forecast: Rains From Ian Arrive Today, Linger Through Weekend https://digitalarkansasnews.com/d-c-area-forecast-rains-from-ian-arrive-today-linger-through-weekend/ A somewhat subjective rating of the day’s weather, on a scale of 0 to 10. 6/10: Despite clouds we have dry conditions until perhaps mid- or late afternoon when #Ian’s rains start arriving. Today: Mid-to late-afternoon rain chances. Highs: Mid-60s. Tonight: Rain and breezes increase. Lows: Low to mid-50s. Tomorrow: Cloudy, breezy, damp. Highs: Low to mid-60s. Sunday: Mostly cloudy with breezes, showers. Highs: Near 60 to mid-60s. Ian’s remnants likely bring us a rainy weekend. Slowly and lightly, rains move in later today, with intensity and coverage increasing after sunset. Heaviest and most widespread rains start tonight, especially around and after midnight. Patchy flooding is possible as waves of rain move through. Some dry moments are also possible. We may keep cloudy and damp conditions into Tuesday, but at least rain coverage and intensity isn’t constant or persistently heavy. Today (Friday): Any partial morning sun gives way to cloudy skies, likely turning overcast by early afternoon. Light showers and waves of rain become possible by mid-afternoon and especially toward sunset. High temperatures may only make it into the mid-60s unless we see more sunshine and drier afternoon conditions than currently expected. Rain amounts should stay light during the day. A couple of northeasterly wind gusts near 25 mph are possible late day. Confidence: Medium-High Tonight: Breezes, showers and waves of rain become steadier and heavier with time. The heaviest rains, which may add up to a quick inch or more overnight, arrive around midnight and into the early morning hours. Northeasterly winds gust around 30 mph before dawn. Low to mid-50s are likely the coolest temperatures we see overnight. Confidence: Medium-High Follow us on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for the latest updates. Keep reading for the forecast into next week … Tomorrow (Saturday): Rain may be steadiest during the morning hours. Intensity should tend to diminish with time, but additional downpours can’t be ruled out most any time of day. Skies likely remain cloudy. Gusty northeast winds may hit 35 mph once or twice. Rain may amount to another inch in the wettest spots, while others don’t see a whole lot. High temperatures top out in the low to mid-60s. Confidence: Medium-High Tomorrow night: Breezes continue to slowly diminish, similar to rain intensity. It may be light with intermittent waves of showers. Skies stay mostly cloudy as temperatures bottom out in the low to mid-50s. Confidence: Medium Sunday: Occasional showers are likely, and perhaps a storm. A few waves may be moderate in intensity. Skies are mostly cloudy, with a few peeks of sunshine possible. Breezes could kick up again toward 25 mph, but we will monitor. High temperatures are also a bit less certain, perhaps as cool as near 60 to mid-60s. Confidence: Medium Sunday night: Showers and even a thunderstorm or two are possible. We’ll have to see when Ian’s remnant low pressure center makes its closest pass to our region. Low temperatures may hover in the mid-50s with skies staying mostly cloudy. Confidence: Medium Breezes and rain intensity may only slowly wane on Monday and Tuesday. High temperatures should be near 60 to the mid-60s, as it appears now. This assumes showers, breezes and mostly cloudy skies continue. If Ian slows, we could have a bit more rain than currently anticipated. Confidence: Low-Medium Read More Here

PREP VB Lady Wolverines Avenge Earlier Five-Set Loss To Lady Tigers https://digitalarkansasnews.com/prep-vb-lady-wolverines-avenge-earlier-five-set-loss-to-lady-tigers/ CENTERTON — Bentonville West avenged a five-set loss to rival Bentonville earlier this season and took down the Tigers 25-21, 25-16, 22-25, 25-15 on Thursday night at Wolverine Arena. The Wolverines celebrated senior night prior to the match’s start, and the five players honored rose to the occasion. Seniors Ana Bastos, Riley Richardson and Trinity Luckett each had double-digit kills, and the three combined for 42 on the night. “I feel like they came to play,” Bentonville West coach Julie Rowan said. “We had a rough outing on Tuesday at Har-Ber, so I think that kind of helped fuel the fire tonight, You know, that feeling of not playing up to your potential really stinks. And so they were ready to fix it.” Bentonville West played with high energy and stormed out to an early lead in the first set. Riley Richardson sent an emphatic block over the net to make the score 14-8, causing the Tigers to call their first timeout. West kept its good streak of play going, and after a Trinity Luckett spike made the score 17-11, Bentonville spent another timeout. The Tigers then composed a 10-5 run, capped with a kill from Victoria Otter, to close the gap to 22-21. From there, West scored four straight points to win the set, 25-22, a stretch highlighted by kills from three different players. The Wolverines never trailed in the opening frame. It was deja vu for Bentonville West early in the second period. The Wolverines bolted out to an 13-7 advantage after Luckett scored off two aces. Then it became the Richardson show, who had a flurry of three kills to put West ahead 17-10. “She’s hitting at such a high level,” Rowan said. “And she just finds a way to get the kill and keeps her errors low. That’s her biggest thing right now, is that she keeps her errors low and then just keeps on swinging. She is very aware of what’s going on. If she gets blocked once she’s gonna make a change.” Olivia Thornton finished the job, getting back-to-back aces to end a dominant 25-16 set win for the Wolverines. Bentonville finally got its first lead of the match during the third set, going ahead 2-0. The advantage didn’t last long. West went on an 11-3 run to take a sizeable lead and forced the Tigers to call a timeout. That was when Bentonville took over. After falling behind 19-13, the Tigers scored seven unanswered to take a 20-19 lead. They kept the dominant stretch rolling, highlighted by a pair of kills from Madison Hooper, and won 25-22 to force a fourth set. Not only did Bentonville overcome a slow start in the period, but also some mental blocks. Four different questionable calls in the middle of the set seemed to all go West’s way, which looked to put a dent in Bentonville’s chances of make a comeback. “We talked about that in the locker room (after the game),” Bentonville coach Allison Venable said. “They were very proud of the way that they kept themselves composed, and they kept fighting.” The Tigers kept the momentum rolling in the next set, taking a 3-0 lead, then West turned the tide. After putting a string of six straight points together, the Wolverines grabbed a 9-6 advantage which forced a Bentonville timeout. Richardson kept the Wolverines kept rolling with four kills in the set, and shut the door on Bentonville, winning 25-15. Rowan said it was pertinent her team show resiliency and bounce back from the third set loss. “It was super critical at this point in the season,” she said. “Because we haven’t done that. Like on Monday night, we had Southside down two sets to none and then we lost the last three. So, I feel like that’s been a little bit of a weakness, and it was nice to overcome that.” Richardson led the team in hitting percentage (48%) and finished the night with 13 kills. She said getting a win over Bentonville on senior night was special. “It feels amazing,” Richardson said. “Exhilarating, really, like I could cry. This team, and this game, it’s my favorite thing in life. It has my heart.” West had 55 kills on the game, directly a result of great setting from Nandhini Praveen who was credited with 51 assists. Luckett led the way with 16 kills. “We’re besties,” Richardson said of Praveen. “You know, we love each other, and it carries over to the court for sure. She’s super great whenever she gets a great pass she will always set us up.” Olivia Thornton had a solid game for the Wolverines, chipping in 10 kills and 5 aces. Anneliese Schonaur led the team with 22 digs. Bentonville was led by Madison Hooper’s 11 kills. Gloria Cranney and Audrey Adair both had 17 assists, and Ella Aprea had 22 digs. Reagan Tunnell and Otter both had five blocks for the Tigers. Springdale Har-Ber 3, Rogers Heritage 0 Brooklyn Ware hammered 11 kills and Korlynn Hall added eight to lead the Lady Wildcats to a 25-7, 25-13, 25-11 win over the Lady War Eagles. Ridglee Thompson dished out a team-best 17 assists to go with five aces, while Kinley Cobb added four aces for Har-Ber (12-5, 8-2 6A-West). Galatia Andrew also anchored the defense with 20 digs. Fayetteville 3, Fort Smith Northside 0 Brooke Rockwell blasted 19 kills and Maddie Lafata added 10 to lead the Lady Purple Bulldogs to a 25-13, 25-16, 25-16 win over the Lady Bears. Ashley Ruff finished with 11 digs to surpass 1,000 for her career. Kennedy Phelan also dished out 33 assists and added five aces for Fayetteville (23-1, 10-0 6A-West). Rogers 3, Springdale 0 Loryn Elkins and Brooklyn Weaver finished with 11 kills each to lead the Lady Mounties to a 25-18, 25-22, 25-7 win. Dahana Tuomala and Olyvia Hall chipped in five kills each. Marissa Milbrodt dished out 17 assists. Madison Rhea led Roers with 22 digs and Hailey Prendes added 11. Shiloh Christian 3, Gravette 0 Ryan Russell put up 16 kills to go with six aces to lead the Lady Saints to a 25-23, 25-17, 25-12 win. Caroline Ramsey added eight kills for Shiloh Christian (14-3, 9-0 4A-Northwest), while Laila Creighton contributed 19 assists and four aces. Bella Bonanno also finished with 21 digs and four aces. Greenbrier 3, Van Buren 2 The Lady Pointers fell in a tough 5A-West Conference clash in five sets. Greenbrier defeated Van Buren 27-29, 25-23, 25-21, 22-25, 15-9. Aubrie McGhee led Van Buren with 14 kills, but Bri Ball registered a double-double with 10 kills and 20 assists. Avary Smith chipped in nine kills and Maddie Feeny contributed 26 digs for the Lady Pointers (10-6, 6-2). Read More Here

Friday Briefing: Ian To Hit Carolinas; Ukraine Annexation Plan; Tua Tagovailoa Injury; Student Debt Lawsuits; ALS Drug; And More https://digitalarkansasnews.com/friday-briefing-ian-to-hit-carolinas-ukraine-annexation-plan-tua-tagovailoa-injury-student-debt-lawsuits-als-drug-and-more/ 1 Ian is strengthening again as it heads toward South Carolina. The forecast: The storm is expected to hit near Charleston today as a Category 1 hurricane, with dangerous storm surge, flooding and winds. Expect effects along the East Coast. In Florida: Millions of people are still without power, and major flooding is expected to continue across the central part of the state. The damage so far: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said there was massive destruction along the southwest coast. There have been over 700 rescues, and search efforts continue. 2 Russia will illegally annex four regions of Ukraine today. Voronezh BELARUS RUSSIA Four regions where staged referendums on joining Russia were held Chernihiv Belgorod Sumy Valuyki Kyiv Kharkiv LUHANSK Cherkasy Slovyansk Luhansk Dnipro Donetsk Kirovohrad DONETSK Zaporizhzhia ZAPORIZHZHIA Area held by Russia- backed separatists since 2014 Mariupol Mykolaiv Melitopol KHERSON MOL. Kherson Odessa RUSSIA Kerch CRIMEA Krasnodar Annexed by Russia in 2014 100 MILES ROM. Novorossiysk Sevastopol Black Sea Control areas as of Sept. 28 Sources: Institute for the Study of War, AEI’s Critical Threats Project Ukrainian reclaimed territory through counteroffensives Voronezh BELARUS Four regions where staged referendums on joining Russia were held RUSSIA Chernihiv Belgorod Sumy Kyiv Kharkiv Poltava LUHANSK Cherkasy Kramatorsk Dnipro Uman DONETSK Zaporizhzhia ZAPORIZ. Area held by Russia-backed separatists since 2014 Mykolayiv Melitopol KHERSON Kherson Odessa Crimea Annexed by Russia in 2014 Sevastopol 100 MILES Control areas as of Sept. 28 Sources: Institute for the Study of War, AEI’s Critical Threats Project Ukrainian reclaimed territory through counteroffensives Four regions where staged referendums were held on joining Russia BEL. Chernihiv Belgorod Sumy Kyiv Kharkiv LUHANSK Cherkasy Dnipro DONETSK ZAPORIZ. Mykolayiv Area held by Russia-backed separatists since 2014 KHERSON Kherson Odessa Crimea Annexed by Russia in 2014 100 MILES Sevastopol Black Sea Sources: Institute for the Study of War President Vladimir Putin is set to hold a signing ceremony to claim the territory, which Russia does not fully control militarily or politically. This violates international law. Why it matters: Annexation could give Russia an excuse to label Ukrainian attacks in those areas as attacks on Russia itself, raising the threat of nuclear retaliation. 3 Congress must act today to avoid a government shutdown. Why? It’s the last day of the government’s fiscal year. Without new funding, key Social Security and IRS services would be disrupted, national parks would shut down and more. What’s going to happen? The House is expected to pass a bill to keep the government running until Dec. 16. It passed the Senate late yesterday. 4 A judge ruled in favor of Donald Trump’s lawyers yesterday. The issue: Whether the former president’s lawyers must say if they believe his statements that FBI agents lied about documents seized from Trump’s home. What’s new? A judge yesterday said the lawyers don’t need to follow last week’s order to clarify the claims. In other news: Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, discussed her efforts to overturn the 2020 election with the Jan. 6 committee yesterday. 5 A legal battle has begun over the plan to cancel some student debt. The Miami Dolphins’ quarterback got a head injury in last night’s game. A new treatment for ALS was approved yesterday. Want to catch up quickly with “The 7” every morning? Download The Post’s app and turn on alert notifications for The 7 or sign up for the newsletter. Read More Here

Brazil Faces “Moment Of Truth” With Upcoming Election https://digitalarkansasnews.com/brazil-faces-moment-of-truth-with-upcoming-election/ Welcome to today’s Morning Brief, where we’re looking at Brazil’s looming election, Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian territories, and Paraguay and Taiwan’s shaky alliance. If you would like to receive Morning Brief in your inbox every weekday, please sign up here. Brazil Braces for High-Stakes Vote  Welcome to today’s Morning Brief, where we’re looking at Brazil’s looming election, Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian territories, and Paraguay and Taiwan’s shaky alliance. If you would like to receive Morning Brief in your inbox every weekday, please sign up here. Brazil Braces for High-Stakes Vote  As Brazil’s presidential election looms, there are widespread fears that current President Jair Bolsonaro will borrow tactics from the Trump playbook in the likely event that he loses his re-election bid. His main challenger—and the favorite to win—is former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, widely known as Lula, a leftist leader who has maintained a steady lead in the polls. As Lula’s popularity grew, Bolsonaro appeared to lay the groundwork to contest an unfavorable outcome, by questioning voting machines, engaging the military, and making unfounded claims that government workers could “manipulate election results.”   Brazil is facing “the moment of truth” over how Bolsonaro voters respond to the outcome of the election, said Oliver Stuenkel, an associate professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo. “The big question is whether this election is a moment of turning the page, or if it’s a traumatizing event which will lead Brazil to continue the downward spiral it’s on right now,” he added.  Brazilians will head to the polls on Sunday for the first round of voting, where they have their choice of 11 candidates—though polling suggests that eight out of ten Brazilians will back either Lula or Bolsonaro. If nobody receives at least 50 percent of the vote on Sunday, the two politicians will head to a runoff on October 30.  When Lula’s presidency ended over a decade ago, he had an 87 percent approval rating and Brazil had lower poverty rates. He was later mired in a corruption scandal that left him facing a 12-year prison sentence. After a year and a half behind bars, his conviction was overturned on procedural grounds—amid reports of judicial bias and prosecutorial misconduct and a Supreme Court finding that the initial prosecution had been motivated by political animus—paving the way for his potential return to power now.  As Lula took a commanding lead in polls, Bolsonaro urged his supporters to prepare to take radical action in the event of an election loss. “There’s a new type of thief, the ones who want to steal our liberty,” he said in June, adding that “if necessary, we will go to war.”  In recent months, violence has gripped Brazil while gun ownership has also surged. This year, Brazil’s Observatory of Political and Electoral Violence has recorded over 200 instances of politically-driven violence. More than two-thirds of Brazilians said they are afraid of facing attacks over political differences, according to the polling organization Datafolha.  This rise in violence, as well as Bolsonaro’s efforts to cast doubt on the country’s electoral systems, has further fueled uncertainty over what could happen after the election.  “If Bolsonaro loses and leaves power … the democracy will essentially survive,” said Stuenkel. “But if he wins, I would be very pessimistic about the future of Brazil’s democracy.” What We’re Following Today Russia’s annexation plans. Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to hold a signing ceremony today to annex four partially occupied Ukrainian territories: Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson. Their Russian-installed leaders had previously held sham referendums to join Russia, despite global criticism and their illegality under international law. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the move as a “dangerous escalation” that “would have no legal value.” The annexations come as at least 200,000 people flee Russia in reaction to Putin’s partial mobilization order.  Shaky Paraguay-Taiwan ties. Paraguay has appealed to Taiwan for $1 billion worth of investments in order to help it withstand financial pressure to shift its alliance to China, the Financial Times reported. Only 14 nations—including Paraguay—have established formal ties with Taipei rather than Beijing. “That will help us to build the argument about the importance of this strategic alliance with Taiwan,” President Mario Abdo Benítez told the Financial Times. Keep an Eye On The costs of Pakistan’s floods. Nearly 3 million children across Pakistan may be forced to forgo a semester of school because their schools were destroyed by months of extreme flooding, authorities told the Associated Press. In one of the country’s most hard-hit regions, the deluge has impacted 15,000 schools.  North Korea’s missile tests.  North Korea test-fired two short-range ballistic missiles after U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’s trip to South Korea and the Demilitarized Zone. Pyongyang had also launched missiles before her departure for the trip and during her visit to Japan earlier in the week. Thursday’s Most Read • Russia’s Stripped Its Western Borders to Feed the Fight in Ukraine by Robbie Gramer and Jack Detsch • Russia’s Defeat Would Be America’s Problem by Stephen M. Walt • Liz Truss Wants to Be Thatcher. She’s Not. by Garvan Walshe Odds and Ends  A cow herd in Germany has adopted a lost wild boar piglet after it became separated from its group. The piglet, which was nicknamed Frieda, will stay in the same shed as the herd’s mother cows during the winter, local farmer Friedrich Stapel told the dpa news agency.  “To leave it alone now would be unfair,” he said.  Read More Here

From The Desk Of… Trump’s Magical Misery Tour https://digitalarkansasnews.com/from-the-desk-of-trumps-magical-misery-tour/ I used to think self-styled “progressives” and Black Lives Matter activists had coined the dumbest political slogan of the 21st century: “Defund the Police.” Democratic strategist James Carville called it “the three worst words ever in the English language.” Not for nothing has President Joe Biden gone out of his way to declare, as reported by The New York Times’ Charles Blow, that “when it comes to public safety in this nation, the answer is not ‘defund the police.’ It’s ‘fund the police.’” Ordinary citizens may have mixed feelings about cops, but everybody wants help fast when they dial 911 — a point so elementary only the smuggest kind of intellectual could fail to understand it. So, naturally, MAGA Republicans have gone them one better. “Defund the FBI,” chants Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. The Georgia Republican insists that “Joe Biden has weaponized the FBI and DOJ against President Trump and his supporters.” She’s selling T-shirts and ball caps with the motto for $30 each on her campaign website. Amazon has a page offering anti-FBI gear for half that price. Be the first on your block to offer support for bank robbers, kidnappers, Russian spies and your friendly neighborhood terrorist cell. Reps. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., and Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., and other members of the Mighty Trump Art Players have endorsed similar notions. There’s even a guy running for the Florida legislature who posted a notice on Twitter to the effect that “Under my plan, all Floridians will have permission to shoot FBI, IRS, ATF and all other feds on sight!” Remember when Texas led the nation in deluded right-wing cranks? The Sunshine State’s definitely catching up. Maybe that’s why God sent this hurricane — to wet them down. See, anybody can play at being a prophet, ascribing divine intent to random, unconnected events. All that’s necessary is absolute shamelessness. There’s an irreducible number of superstitious fools who need end times melodrama to keep them stimulated. Me, I prefer baseball. Speaking of melodrama, there’s Donald J. Trump, the former president who can’t seem to make up his mind. One minute, he says he’s being persecuted by FBI agents who planted classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate, and the next he tells Fox News’ Sean Hannity, “If you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying it’s declassified, even by thinking about it. Because you’re sending it to Mar-a-Lago or to wherever you’re sending it.” Never mind that, historically speaking, the FBI has long been by far the most politically conservative agency of the U.S. government. Even if you buy the mental telepathy angle, these things cannot both be true. A rational observer would see Trump’s alibi as a de facto confession. So naturally Trump has turned away from rational observers and toward QAnon, the religio-political millenarian cult that claims, among other things, that the Democratic Party and the “Deep State” are controlled by a cabal of cannibalistic pedophiles led by Hillary Clinton, and that Trump (along with long-deceased John F. Kennedy Jr.) is leading a heroic, clandestine war against it. Things were supposed to have come to a head on Inauguration Day 2021 — the “Great Awakening,” adepts called it — when Trump would be reinstated, JFK Jr. would emerge from hiding and Hillary’s monstrous allies would be arrested and publicly executed. Needless to say, the failure of this prophecy occasioned a certain amount of recalculating, but true believers throughout history have risen to the challenge. Cults tend to fade out gradually, rarely all at once. Over time, ridicule has greater force than reason. With Citizen Trump leading the parade, QAnon is currently riding high. No doubt partly due to his growing legal peril — the Jan. 6 grand jury investigation, the New York lawsuit aimed at putting the Trump Organization out of business, and the DOJ’s criminal probe into stolen top-secret documents — the former president’s political rallies have grown increasingly otherworldly. He, his family and his supporters, Trump told an impassioned crowd last week in Wilmington, North Carolina, all face “torment, persecution and oppression.” Recorded music similar to what some called “the QAnon theme song” induced hundreds to raise their arms in a one-finger salute signifying unity. “Where we go one, we go all,” cultists assure each other. Absent clinical paranoia, it’s not clear how Trump’s impassioned followers imagine themselves personally threatened. Nevertheless, millions do imagine exactly that. But are they prepared to go to war for him? To threaten large-scale civic violence to rescue his mangy orange hide from criminal prosecution? That’s the implied threat. I, for one, seriously doubt it. QAnon is essentially an online phenomenon, an aggregation of cranks sitting at home alone getting all worked up over silly fantasies. Political pornography. Nobody with anything to lose is going to risk it to save Trump from himself. Soon enough, he’ll be history, and QAnon with him. Arkansas Times columnist Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of “The Hunting of the President” (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). You can email Lyons at eugenelyons2@yahoo.com. Read More Here

FYI: An Entertainment Calendar Featuring Harvest Homecoming In Harrison https://digitalarkansasnews.com/fyi-an-entertainment-calendar-featuring-harvest-homecoming-in-harrison/ Celebrate Latinx Heritage Month — With SoNA Beyond’s Duo Capriccioso and salsa band Son Sin Gnero, 3 p.m. Saturday, outdoors at Springdale Public Library. Free. springdalelibrary.org. Today Junk at the Mill — 8 a.m.-5 p.m. today and Saturday, 501 S. Mock St. in Prairie Grove. Art Night Out — “Hamilton!,” 6-9 p.m., Crystal Bridges Museum. Free. Get performance tickets at 657-2335 or crystalbridges.org. Broadway In Bentonville — 7 p.m., Thaden School in Bentonville. $40. www.eventbrite.com/e/broadway-in-bentonville-tickets-410978717407 “The Nobody Academy of Misfit Magic” — 7 p.m. today; 2 and 7 p.m. Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday, Arts Live Theatre, 818 N. Sang Ave. in Fayetteville. $10-$12. artslivetheatre.com. “This B*tch: Esta Sangre Quiero” — By M.F.A. playwright Adrienne Dawes, 7:30 p.m. today & Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday; again Oct. 5-9, University Theatre on the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville. $5-$20. uarkartstickets.com. “Murder on the Orient Express” — Presented by JBU students, 7:30 p.m. today & Saturday, 7:30 p.m. Oct. 7-8; with a 2 p.m. matinee Oct. 8, Berry Performing Arts Center on the John Brown University campus in Siloam Springs. $7-$16. www.jbu.edu/tickets. “The Music Man” — A revival of the classic tale of a traveling con man and a beautiful librarian, 8 p.m. today & Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, Arkansas Public Theatre at the Victory in downtown Rogers. $25 & up. 631-8988 or arkansaspublictheatre.org. __ Saturday Harvest Homecoming — With music, food, kids’ areas, a dog parade and 90-plus vendors, 8 a.m.-6 p.m., downtown square in Harrison. Super Saturday — With Momandpop, 10 a.m., Event Center at Fayetteville Public Library. Free. faylib.org. Hispanic Heritage Story Time — 10 a.m., Rogers Public Library. Free. rogerspubliclibrary.org. Asian Pacific Islander Celebration — 10:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m., 5 Star Productions, 100 N. Eighth St. in Fort Smith. Free, but tickets required at https://bit.ly/3frzbW5 “Lifted” — An acrobatics performance by female-led, UK-based Mimbre, noon & 4 p.m. Saturday & 4 p.m. Sunday, The Momentary in Bentonville. $5-$15. themomentary.org. Celebrate Latinx Heritage Month — With SoNA Beyond’s Duo Capriccioso and salsa band Son Sin Gnero, 3 p.m., outdoors at Springdale Public Library. Free. springdalelibrary.org. “The Taming of the Shrew” — Presented by NWA Audio Theater, 3 p.m., Fayetteville Public Library. Free. faylib.org. — Becca Martin-Brown [email protected] Read More Here

As Putin Prepares To Illegally Annex Territory, Ukraine Is Hit With Deadly Strikes https://digitalarkansasnews.com/as-putin-prepares-to-illegally-annex-territory-ukraine-is-hit-with-deadly-strikes/ Image President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia chairing a Security Council meeting via a video link in Moscow on Thursday.Credit…Gavriil Grigorov/Agence France-Presse, via Sputnik KYIV, Ukraine — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is set to sign decrees on Friday to declare four regions of Ukraine to be part of Russia, as the Kremlin seeks to solidify its tenuous hold over parts of the country through a widely denounced illegal annexation. As the Kremlin planned an elaborate ceremony, Russia launched a whirlwind of strikes against Ukrainian towns and cities overnight Thursday to Friday, including an attack on Zaporizhzhia that Ukrainian officials said killed 25 civilians — a reminder of its determination to continue to pursue the war. The decrees are part of a carefully orchestrated process designed to provide a veneer of legality for the annexation of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces in eastern Ukraine and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces in the south. Friday’s events include a celebration on Red Square and a speech by Mr. Putin. Official ratification of the decrees will happen next week, said Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman. But Ukraine and its Western partners already have called the annexation illegal, with the Biden administration saying that it is ready to impose additional sanctions on Russia if it proceeds. Friday’s decrees follow staged referendums that Ukraine, the European Union and the United States have condemned as a sham because they were held in occupied territory during a war in defiance of international law. Much of the provinces’ civilian populations has fled fighting since the war began in February and people who did vote sometimes did so at gunpoint. Even so, the annexations serve the Kremlin’s interest. Russia only partly occupies the four provinces and Mr. Putin and his top aides have asserted that Moscow will then be defending its own territory from attacks by Ukraine, rather than the other way around. Cementing Russia’s hold over the two eastern regions, an area collectively known as the Donbas that Mr. Putin considers his primary prize, could allow the Kremlin to declare a victory at a time when hawks in Russia have criticized Russian forces for not doing enough to prevent recent breakneck gains by Ukrainian forces in the south and northeast of the country. But Mr. Putin nevertheless faces huge hurdles to reassert his control over an increasingly chaotic war, including a recent draft of hundreds of thousands of civilians into military service that has encountered opposition in Russia. The move to subsume Ukrainian territory also amplifies the stakes for the West as Mr. Putin rides roughshod over the international order that has governed Europe for decades. Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly last week, President Biden said that “if nations can pursue their imperial ambitions without consequences,” then the global security order established to prevent the horrors of World War II from repeating will be imperiled. Despite widespread international condemnation, the Kremlin has continued apace with its carefully choreographed process. Russia had already recognized Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states shortly before its invasion of Ukraine in February. In decrees that Russian state news agencies published early Friday, Mr. Putin additionally recognized Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Provinces as independent. Military analysts are watching which borders Russia will claim for the annexed territory as a signal of how its army could fight in the coming weeks. The decrees said Russia recognized the independence of “Kherson Province” and “Zaporizhzhia Province,” suggesting the existing Ukrainian administrative boundaries of the two regions, though this was not explicitly stated. The move furthers a long-cherished political ambition of Mr. Putin to return to rule by Moscow of land that was once part of the Soviet Union or the Russian Empire. But his army has been losing ground to counter-strikes by a motivated and Western-armed Ukrainian military. The Russian army controls about two-thirds of the Zaporizhzhia region but not its provincial capital. It has a tentative hold on most of the Kherson region, including the provincial capital, but Ukraine has blown up all bridges over the broad Dnipro River that Russia used to resupply forces on the river’s western bank, cutting off thousands of Russian troops from resupply. Image A Ukrainian serviceman covering a body of a civilian killed by a missile strike near Zaporizhzhia on Friday.Credit…Kateryna Klochko/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images KYIV, Ukraine — Russia launched a flurry of rocket, drone and missile strikes against Ukrainian towns and cities overnight Thursday to Friday, creating scenes of destruction inside Ukraine as the Kremlin planned an elaborate, and widely rejected, annexation ceremony in Moscow. The most lethal strike hit in Zaporizhzhia, one of the four Ukrainian provinces that Moscow plans to declare part of Russia on Friday as part of an annexation process that is widely seen as a sham. The attack killed at least 25 civilians who were waiting at a checkpoint and bus stop, and injured about 50, according to Ukraine’s prosecutor general — which would make it one of the deadliest single attacks against civilians in recent weeks. The wave of overnight strikes came as Russia plans to declare regions where battles are raging — in Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Luhansk and Donetsk — to be Russian territory. Moscow says it would then be defending rather than attacking the territory, its stated justification to use any means necessary, in a thinly veiled nuclear threat. A strike also hit residential neighborhoods in Mykolaiv, killing at least three and wounding 19, the regional governor said. Russian strikes also hit a bus depot in the city of Dnipro, and Ukraine’s military said that at least half a dozen Iranian-made kamikaze drones had been fired at targets in southern Ukraine. The governor of Zaporizhzhia, Oleksandr Starukh, said a rocket had hit a convoy of cars lined up at a checkpoint on the outskirts of the city. People in the convoy were waiting to be allowed into Russian-occupied territory to pick up relatives and deliver humanitarian aid, he said. “All were civilians, our compatriots,” Mr. Starukh said in a message on the Telegram social media app. He declared Saturday a day of mourning. Zaporizhzhia, a large regional center on the Dnipro River, is often the first port of call for civilians fleeing Russian-controlled territory further south, a place where they can find food and shelter before moving to other parts of the country, usually farther west away from the fighting. But every day there are also long convoys of vehicles headed the other direction, into Russian-controlled territory. Those are typically people going to check on older relatives, and volunteers in trucks carrying humanitarian aid, particularly medicines, which are largely unavailable in occupied territories or can be purchased only at exorbitant prices. Because the checkpoint at a highway crossing on the outskirts of town does not operate on a schedule, people line up early in the morning and sometimes wait all day for a chance to pass through, leading to long lines of vehicles. Image A giant poster in Luhansk, Ukraine, on Wednesday declared, “With Russia forever!” as Russia appeared poised to try to annex the region.Credit…Associated Press As President Vladimir V. Putin plans to carry out his threat on Friday to declare that some 40,000 square miles of eastern and southern Ukraine will become part of Russia, it is not clear whether even Russia’s staunchest allies will recognize his claim to the territory. Russian forces only partly control the land Mr. Putin is seeking to add to the Russian Federation, and the announcement is expected as Ukrainian forces press ahead with attacks in the very regions that Mr. Putin will claim are part of Russia. But by annexing the parts of Ukraine that his troops occupy and then framing the war as an existential fight for the survival of the Russian state, Mr. Putin can try to shift the political focus from his army’s frontline losses to a plane where he seems to feel most confident: a battle of wills with the West. “He thinks he can win,” Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said in a telephone interview from Moscow. “He is provoking an escalation of the war, transferring it to some new status.” In a brief televised appearance on Thursday, Mr. Putin did not mention his annexation plans but sought to portray himself as being on the right side of history, asserting that “the formation of a more just world order is taking place.” “Unipolar hegemony is inexorably collapsing,” Mr. Putin said. “This is an objective reality that the West categorically refuses to accept.” Image Russian soldiers on Red Square in Moscow on Thursday. The square was sealed before a ceremony on Friday to announce the annexation of Ukrainian territories by Russia. Credit…Alexander Nemenov/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Once Mr. Putin declares Ukrainian territory to be an inextricable part of Russia — a declaration that Russia’s rubber-stamp Parliament and constitutional court are expected to approve by next week — he will rule out any negotiations over that area’s future status, analysts said. And after going through with the annexation, Mr. Putin may also declare that any future Ukrainian military action there threatens Russian territorial integrity — a threat, he said last week, to which Russia’s nuclear-armed military may respond with “all the means at our disposal.” “This is not a bluff,’’ he added. In recent days, Mr. Putin and the Russian state n...

Friday Football Schedule Includes MHHS Hosting Pulaski Academy https://digitalarkansasnews.com/friday-football-schedule-includes-mhhs-hosting-pulaski-academy/ High school football dominates the local Friday schedule, and Mountain Home will be back on the home turf for another conference outing. The Bombers are set to welcome in Pulaski Academy from Little Rock. Mountain Home is currently 0-5 on the season and 0-2 in the 6A-West. The Bombers suffered a 10-point loss last week at Russellville. P.A. in currently the top-ranked team in Class 6A and ranked fifth overall by the Arkansas Sports Media. The Bruins are 4-0 and 2-0 after breezing past Little Rock Christian a week ago. Over the years, P.A. has been known nationally for playing an unconventional style of football, and Mountain Home head coach Steve Ary says it’s worked wonders for the Bruins. Listen: https://dehayf5mhw1h7.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/683/2022/09/30103429/Wireready_09-30-2022-10-34-23_00095_93576.mp3 click to download audio     Kickoff at Bomber Stadium is scheduled for 7. Friday’s game will be on Classic Hits 101.7 and streaming live at ktlo.com and on the Bomber Sports Network on YouTube. Coverage begins around 5:30 with Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas High School Gameday. Elsewhere in the 6A-West, Greenbrier hosts Greenwood, Russellville travels to Siloam Springs, and Van Buren entertains Lake Hamilton. Little Rock Christian is idle this week. Yellville-Summit is looking to bounce back from its first loss last week. The Panthers will return to the road to meet Melbourne. Yellville-Summit is 4-1 on the year and 0-1 in the 3A-2. The Panthers began conference play last week with a loss to Perryville. Melbourne is currently the fourth-ranked team in Class 3A by the Arkansas Sports Media as they play their first league game of the year. The Bearkatz are 4-0 after beating Hoxie two weeks ago. Kickoff at Bearkatz Stadium is set for 7. Also in the 3A-2, Salem is home against Newport, and Atkins makes the trip to Perryville. Quitman steps outside of the conference as they head to England. Elswhere on the local Arkansas schedule, Harrison travels to Prairie Grove. On the eight-man level, Izard County hosts Rector, and Marshall plays at Mountain View’s homecoming. The Yellowjackets are the top-ranked team in Classes 4A/3A. There is one game matching up teams in the Arkansas Sports Media Top 10. Second-ranked Conway entertains No. 10 North Little Rock. Among the area schools in Missouri, West Plains travels to Springfield to face Kickapoo, Hollister is home against Logan-Rogersville, Forsyth hosts Diamond, Branson makes the trip to Neosho, Ava entertains Houston, Willow Springs is home against Salem, Missouri, and Mountain View-Liberty entertains Mountain Grove. WebReadyTM Powered by WireReady® NSI Read More…

Hurricane Ian To Make Landfall In South Carolina Today; Will Bring Rain, Winds To Our Area https://digitalarkansasnews.com/hurricane-ian-to-make-landfall-in-south-carolina-today-will-bring-rain-winds-to-our-area/ Hurricane Ian to make landfall in South Carolina Friday: Latest track and timing PARELLA: GOOD MORNING. IT IS 6:36 A.M.. HERE IS A LIVE LOOK FROM THE ISLAND. YOU CAN BARELY SEE ANYTHING. WE ARE TALKING ABOUT A WALL OF RAINFALL. THAT IS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE. THAT IS SIDEWAYS RAIN. YOU COULD HEAR THAT RAIN COMING DOWN. ALONG WITH GUSTY WINDS, 40 TO 50 MILES PER HOUR, BUT THAT IS A LOT STRONGER IN THE COMING HOURS AS THE CENTER OF IAN APPROACHES THIS AREA AND MAKES LANDFALL. LATER IN THE AFTERNOON, BETWEEN CHARLESTON AND MYRTLE BEACH, WE HAVE A LIVE REPORTER THERE. IN CHARLESTON, WE ARE BRINGING UPDATES THROUGHOUT THE MORNING. LET’S GET YOU CAUGHT UP ON THE LATEST HERE. WE HAVE GUSTY WINDS ACROSS NORTH CAROLINA, PARTS OF GEORGIA AS WELL. 30 TO 50 MILE-PER-HOUR WINDS, AND RAIN WILL START MIDMORNING. NOTHING TO WRITE HOME ABOUT, BUT HEAVY RAIN BEGINS LATER IN THE AFTERNOON AND TONIGHT, GIVING ONE TO THREE INCHES OF RAINFALL, BUT CURRENT WIND SPEEDS ARE IN THE WESTERN PART OF OUR VIEWING AREA, HARDLY ANYTHING AT ALL. IF YOU GET CLOSER, IAN WILL TRACK. THAT IS WHERE THE WINDS AND GUSTS ARE GOING UP. WIND GUSTS OF 20 TO 30 MILES PER HOUR. WE SEE THEM AS HIGH AS 40. THE DAY WILL FLUCTUATE, AND IT WILL BE AS HIGH AS 50 FOR SOME OF OUR AREA LATER THIS AFTERNOON. HERE IS THE LATEST ON HURRICANE IAN. WINSLET 85 MILES PER HOUR. EIGHT CATEGORY ONE HURRICANE, STILL EXPECTED TO MAKE LANDFALL NEAR CHARLESTON IT SOMEWHERE BETWEEN CHARLESTON AND MYRTLE BEACH, BUT IT WILL TAKE A BIGGER HIT FROM THE INITIAL IMPACT. ON THE EAST SIDE OF THAT STORM, THAT IS WHERE MYRTLE BEACH IS, SO EVERYONE WILL BE IMPACTED BY THE HEAVY RAINFALL AND WIND THAT IS STILL YET TO COME. THE REMNANTS WILL POLICE. LOOK AT THAT. EAST OF CHARLOTTE. WE ARE STILL IN THAT RANGE WHERE WE WILL BE IMPACTED BY WIND AND RAIN. AS WE GO INTO THE LATER DAY, HURRICANE MORNINGS ACROSS GEORGIA. AS SOME WIND GUSTS ARE UPWARDS OF THE 90’S, IF NOT 100 MILE-PER-HOUR WIND GUSTS, AND WE HAVE A TROPICAL STORM WARNING OR CAROLINA COAST. THE EXTENT THROUGH THE MIDLANDS AND PART OF THE UPSTATE. WE ARE TALKING ABOUT TROPICAL STORM WARNINGS IN TERMS OF WIND, AND GUSTS. FLOODING HAS STARTED IN PARTS OF CHARLESTON AND MYRTLE BEACH. THESE AREAS FLOOD, BUT THE TOPOGRAPHY IS LOWER THAN THE UPSTATE. IT COULD TAKE SIX TO SEVEN DAYS FOR THE WATER TO RESEED, OR WE COULD GET A SOAKING IN THE UPSTATE. IT TAKES THREE ON AVERAGE. FLOODING UNDERWAY RIGHT NOW. SUPER DOPPLER FOR HAS THE CORE OF THE EYEWALL WHERE THE STRONGEST WIND IS, SO WE HAVE THE STRONGEST RAIN, BUT STRONGER WINDS ARE YET TO COME IN OUR AREA AS WELL. FUTURE WIND GUSTS ARE 30 TO 50 MILES PER HOUR. THAT IS WHAT WE ARE EXPECTING. THE FURTHER EAST YOU GO, THE MORE RAIN YOU HAVE, THE STRONGER RAIN YOU HAVE BECAUSE THAT WILL BE WHERE THE REMNANTS OF IAN PULL THROUGH. THE CLOSER TO THAT YOU ARE, THE MORE IMPACT YOU WILL HAVE. BY 8:00, THOSE WINDS WILL BEGIN TO DIE DOWN. HERE IS THE I. HERE’S THE CENTER OF IAN. AS WE GO TO 1:00 OR 2:00, THAT WILL INCREASE AS IS MOVES ON SHORE. IT WILL PUSH THIS WALL OF WIND AND RAIN. IT WILL INCREASE TONIGHT. AS WE GO THROUGHOUT THE DAY. LET’S TAKE A CLOSER LOOK. HERE’S 2:00. WE GOT SOME RAINFALL, SOME OF THAT WILL BE HEAVY, BUT THAT WILL INCREASE ALL THE WAY UNTIL 9:00. IT WILL GRADUALLY PUSH TO THE NORTH. AT 3:00, THAT SHOULD PULL TO THE NORTH, AND A LOT OF MOISTURE GOES WITH IT, SO THERE WILL BE BREEZY CONDITIONS TOMORROW MORNING, AND THERE WILL BE SPOTTY BUT WE WILL SEE THAT PAPER OFF AS WE GO. THE DAY ON SATURDAY AND SUNDAY. HOW MUCH RAIN WILL FALL TODAY? ONE TO THREE INCHES. HALF AN INCH TO AN INCH. IF YOU LIVE IN GREENVILLE, IT WILL BE A GOOD AVERAGE, AND THE FURTHER EAST YOU GO, THE MORE RAIN YOU WILL SEE. POCKETS IN THE MOUNTAINS, WITH 45 INCHES OF RAIN POSSIBLE. HERE WE GO. A COLD RAIN. HIGHS IN THE LOW 60’S. MID 60’S TOMORROW. WE WILL STAY BELOW THE SEASONAL AVERAGE THROUGH THE EARLY TO MIDDLE PART OF NEXT WEEK. MOUNTAINS LIGHTER I GET LOCAL BREAKING NEWS ALERTS The latest breaking updates, delivered straight to your email inbox. Privacy Notice Hurricane Ian to make landfall in South Carolina Friday: Latest track and timing (On this page, you will find the latest on where Ian is, what we can expect in our area, the latest track, radar, “spaghetti” models, hurricane alerts, storm surge alerts, tropical storm advisories and the latest video from the storm’s destruction.) Hurricane Ian will make landfall in South Carolina on Friday. The latest track shows the storm making landfall between Charleston and Myrtle Beach, then moving north.(Watch the latest video forecast above)South Carolina schools announce Friday changes due to Ian impacts Below is a timeline for impacts on the Upstate:Friday: Ian moves in for a second landfall in South Carolina as a Category 1 hurricane. Here in the Upstate, we will see wind gusts between 30 mph to 50 mph. The further east you travel in South Carolina, the higher the wind gusts. Rain begins in the Upstate mid morning and will get heavier through the day. The rain comes in waves, and temperatures will be cooler, with highs in the 60s.Saturday: Ian pulls north, leaving scattered showers through Sunday. Potential Severe Impacts: All said, 1 to 3 inches of rain is possible in the Upstate. Wind gusts of 30 to 50 mph could cause some downed trees, which could lead to power outages. Impacts for SC, Georgia coast and North Carolina: Strong winds will hammer South Carolina and Georgia’s coasts into Friday afternoon. Gusts of up to 90 mph will be possible as Ian makes its second landfall along the SC coast. North Carolina’s coast will have strong winds with a slight chance of severe weather, but the strongest winds stay south. Storm surge of 2-5 feet is possible Friday.Latest track, path, spaghetti models below: More maps, models and radar here.Latest video: (Newest video will be at the top)Charleston braces for Hurricane IanDrove video of Fort Myers destruction after Hurricane IanBradenton international airport damageRaw footage of Ian in downtown Sarasota, FloridaFlooded car rescue in NaplesHurricane Ian tears roof from Florida homeHurricane Hunter Describes His Flight Into the Eye of Hurricane IanTime-lapse of storm surge on Sanibel IslandWater recedes from Tampa Bay ahead of Hurricane IanRelated stories: GREENVILLE, S.C. — (On this page, you will find the latest on where Ian is, what we can expect in our area, the latest track, radar, “spaghetti” models, hurricane alerts, storm surge alerts, tropical storm advisories and the latest video from the storm’s destruction.) Hurricane Ian will make landfall in South Carolina on Friday. The latest track shows the storm making landfall between Charleston and Myrtle Beach, then moving north. (Watch the latest video forecast above) South Carolina schools announce Friday changes due to Ian impacts Below is a timeline for impacts on the Upstate: Friday: Ian moves in for a second landfall in South Carolina as a Category 1 hurricane. Here in the Upstate, we will see wind gusts between 30 mph to 50 mph. The further east you travel in South Carolina, the higher the wind gusts. Rain begins in the Upstate mid morning and will get heavier through the day. The rain comes in waves, and temperatures will be cooler, with highs in the 60s. Saturday: Ian pulls north, leaving scattered showers through Sunday. Potential Severe Impacts: All said, 1 to 3 inches of rain is possible in the Upstate. Wind gusts of 30 to 50 mph could cause some downed trees, which could lead to power outages. Impacts for SC, Georgia coast and North Carolina: Strong winds will hammer South Carolina and Georgia’s coasts into Friday afternoon. Gusts of up to 90 mph will be possible as Ian makes its second landfall along the SC coast. North Carolina’s coast will have strong winds with a slight chance of severe weather, but the strongest winds stay south. Storm surge of 2-5 feet is possible Friday. Latest track, path, spaghetti models below: More maps, models and radar here. Latest video: (Newest video will be at the top) Charleston braces for Hurricane Ian Drove video of Fort Myers destruction after Hurricane Ian Bradenton international airport damage Raw footage of Ian in downtown Sarasota, Florida Flooded car rescue in Naples Hurricane Ian tears roof from Florida home Hurricane Hunter Describes His Flight Into the Eye of Hurricane Ian Time-lapse of storm surge on Sanibel Island Water recedes from Tampa Bay ahead of Hurricane Ian Related stories: Read More Here