Scientists monitoring new marine heat wave off West Coast

Federal scientists said Thursday they are monitoring a new ocean heat wave off the U.S. West Coast, a development that could badly disrupt marine life including salmon, whales and sea lions. The expanse of unusually warm water stretches from Alaska to California, researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Thursday . It resembles a similar heat wave about five years ago that was blamed for poorer survival rates for young salmon, more humpback whales becoming entangled in fishing gear as they hunted closer to shore, and an algae bloom that shut down crabbing and clamming.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2Lk3TP8

U.S. Treasury warns anyone fueling Iran tanker risks being blacklisted

The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday warned that anyone around the world who helps fuel Iranian vessels blacklisted by Washington runs the risk of being designated as well. The Treasury Department blacklisted the Adrian Darya, a tanker at the center of a confrontation between Washington and Tehran, on Aug. 30. Washington has warned that it would regard any assistance given to the ship as support for a terrorist group, namely, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2MVMDSn

Trump reportedly told a Coast Guard admiral to give a statement defending his Hurricane Dorian confusion

"I showed the President the official National Hurricane Center forecast," US Coast Guard Rear Admiral Peter Brown said in a statement.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/34CYLgS

Brazil to hire short-term environmental enforcers following Amazon fires

Budget restrictions mean Brazil cannot hire more permanent environmental enforcement agents in the wake of surging Amazon fires but will contract local environmental police on a short-term basis, Environment Minister Ricardo Salles told Reuters on Friday.

from Reuters: World News https://ift.tt/2ZUhYHl

Fake Invasion, Real Defense Cuts

By BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD from NYT Opinion https://ift.tt/2ZU46ks

A Cruel Parody of Antitrust Enforcement

By BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD from NYT Opinion https://ift.tt/2HPThFK

El Salvador launches anti-corruption commission, inspired by Guatemala

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Friday unveiled a new independent commission to tackle corruption, taking inspiration from a U.N.-backed body that toppled the previous president of neighboring Guatemala.

from Reuters: World News https://ift.tt/2LByFSu

Hurricane Dorian hits Outer Banks: How mid-Atlantic tourist spots are being affected

Now that Hurricane Dorian has finally made landfall, here's what's happening in the mid-Atlantic region this weekend.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2HT441I

Jeffrey Epstein gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to MIT's Media Lab, and its founder said he would accept the donations again if given the chance

"If you wind back the clock, I would still say, 'Take it,'" MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte reportedly said in an all-hands meeting.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2N10o23

'I don’t see any path for Biden to win the nomination without South Carolina'

The former vice president is betting it all on the black vote.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2Lu9f9w

Cheerleader accused of killing newborn told her dad 'I tried to cremate the baby'

Skylar Richardson is charged with aggravated murder and involuntary manslaughter. She's accused of deliberately killing her baby and burying her.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2HQFQVP

A Florida cop rescued a puppy from a flooded vehicle and named her 'Dorian' after the deadly hurricane

Dorian was originally meant to be handed over to the Orange County Animal Services, but is now "living her best life" with the deputy who rescued her.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2zZ9a8c

Nigerian Ruling Party Demands Takeover of South African Firms

(Bloomberg) -- Nigeria’s ruling party urged the government to nationalize South African companies operating in the West African nation in retaliation for xenophobic attacks on its nationals.Relations between Africa’s two biggest economies have been tense following attacks on businesses run by migrant Africans in Johannesburg, which sparked reprisal raids by mobs on the offices of the South African mobile-phone company MTN Group Ltd. and stores operated by Shoprite Holdings in the commercial hub of Lagos and the capital, Abuja.“Whereas South Africans continue to benefit from the Nigerian business environment and repatriating billions of dollars, the South African authorities appear jealous of the menial jobs which some Nigerians and other black people are involved in,” All Progressives Congress party Chairman Adams Oshiomhole said in a video clip broadcast on Friday by Lagos-based Channels Television. “It is worth it for the Nigerian government to take steps to take over the remaining shares of MTN that are owned by South Africans.”The APC chairman recommended similar measures for other South African companies, the boycott of their products and the revocation of landing rights for South African Airways.To contact the reporter on this story: Tope Alake in Lagos at talake@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Osae-Brown at aosaebrown2@bloomberg.net, Dulue Mbachu, Paul RichardsonFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2LyilSy

They Survived Dorian but Wonder How Many More Hurricanes They Can Withstand

By BY JACK HEALY AND NICHOLAS BOGEL-BURROUGHS from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2ZUfl8r

Elaine La Roche, a Power Despite Wall Street’s Barriers, Dies at 70

By BY GLENN RIFKIN from NYT Business https://ift.tt/2UA8GPy

Islamic State fighters have reportedly used cows strapped with bombs in place of their suicide missions

A suicide bomber with a donkey killed three NATO troops in Afghanistan in 2013. Two cows were used recently, according to a New York Times report.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2MWwFra

British woman rescued in Bahamas amid fears Dorian's death toll will be 'staggering'

A British woman who had been trapped beneath the rubble for days in one of Bahama’s worst hit islands has been rescued by the Royal Navy.   The unnamed woman was taken on board a ship and stabilised before being airlifted to hospital in Nassau, the capital of the island nation, where they were receiving treatment on Thursday night. She is one of the thousands of people who were awaiting rescue on the islands of Abaco and Grand Bahama, which have been largely flattened by Hurricane Dorian. The death toll on Thursday night stood at 30, but it is feared that it  will be significantly higher as people search for their missing loved ones. "Let me say that I believe the number (dead) will be staggering," Health Minister Duane Sands was quoted by The Nassau Guardian as telling Guardian radio. "... I have never lived through anything like this and I don’t want to live through anything like this again." The RFA Mounts Bay crew, which have been stationed in the Caribbean since June in preparation for hurricane season, have so far delivered shelter kits, ration packs and water. Damaged cars and trucks sit in a field following landfall by Hurricane Dorian, in the Bahamas Credit: Reuters The Royal Navy said its Wildcat helicopter also evacuated an American woman along with her two children and a baby to Nassau. The Wildcat will also be airlifting relief to outlying, cut off communities in liaison with the Royal Bahamian Defence Force and is stationed off Abaco. Distraught survivors described the horror of crossing unattended corpses as they made their way to safety. Hurricane Dorian barrels towards US after battering Bahamas, in pictures Ronnie Archer, 71, told The Telegraph many more of the hurricane's victims lay in the streets of Marsh Harbour, Abaco, while looters raid shops for food and water. “The morgue is full and there are bodies floating in the water,” she said after being evacuated. "A friend of mine bumped into the body of a woman which was just floating in the streets.   “There is now lots of looting happening. There are people taking rice, juice, everything they can get their hands on. I don’t know if they are armed." An aerial view of damage caused by Hurricane Dorian is seen on Great Abaco Island Credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images She was at her home of 30 years when the wind started to get stronger and stronger. “I sat in the wheelchair and I watched my house drop to pieces,” she told this newspaper. “I heard a bang and I looked around and saw that the windows had blown in from the force. The next time that I looked up I saw the sky and I realised that the roof had gone.” Her family, including a seven month old granddaughter, are staying behind to see what they can save as local officials confirmed reports of rampant looting. The United Nations estimates more than 76,000 people were in need of humanitarian relief after the most damaging storm ever to hit the Bahamas. The British Humanitarian and Disaster Relief team  removing debris and providing aid assistance to the Islanders of Great Abaco Credit:  Paul Halliwell/BRITISH MINISTRY OF DEFENCE Gaylele Laing broke down in tears and embraced her niece after she was rescued from Abaco on Thursday. As a diabetic who had run out of medicine she was given a priority evacuation, but she was barely able to speak as she revealed that she had to leave her family members, including her grandchildren aged 11 and 12 behind. The Treasure Quay resident told The Telegraph through tears: “It was terrible, there is total devastation, there is nothing left. “We hid in the bathroom as the eye of the storm passed and then the water surge came. We never expected it to be that bad. We had to break the window and swim to safety. The whole family, the kids included. At that point I thought we were going to die. “We did as much as we could to prepare and if we had known it was going to be that bad we would have left Abaco, we have been though hurricanes before but nothing like this. Everything is gone.” Another survivor on the Abaco Islands, Ramond King, said he watched as swirling winds ripped the roof off his house, then churned to a neighbour's home to pluck the entire structure into the sky. Nothing is here, nothing at all. Everything is gone, just bodies," he said. A perfect storm | How climate change has made Hurricane Dorian worse Dorian continued to cause substantial damage as it hit the US coastal states of South and North Carolina on Thursday leaving 239,000 homes and businesses without power.   The US National Hurricane Centre warned it remained a category 2 hurricane with winds reaching 110mph and the risk of life-threatening storm surges, winds and flash flooding. Tornadoes spun off by Dorian's outer bands were also reported along the coast, including Emerald Isle, North Carolina, where several homes were destroyed. The beach town said on its website that the tornado hit at around 9 am on Thursday leaving dozens of mobile homes upturned and power lines down. Charleston, in South Carolina had more than 100 roads closed due to severe flooding, with up to 20 inches of rain forecast to hit the historic port city. The map appeared to have been altered with a black marker to include Alabama Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty  Meanwhile Donald Trump, the US president, was mocked for showing a map of the storm's projected path that appeared to have been altered with a black marker pen to include the state of Alabama, which was never in harm's way. Mr Trump had incorrectly claimed in a tweet at the weekend that Alabama was one of the US states that could be hit by the hurricane, leading the National Weather Service to deny that in a tweet of its own. "Alabama will NOT see any impacts from Dorian. We repeat, no impacts from Hurricane Dorian will be felt across Alabama. The system will remain too far east," the National Weather Service in Alabama tweeted. When reporters later asked Mr Trump whether the chart had been altered with a pen, the president said: “I don’t know; I don’t know.” But he doubled down on his claims, saying: "I know Alabama was in the original forecast, they thought it would get a piece of it".

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2zV6kkN

A Fast-Moving Wildfire Has Burned 2,000 Acres in Southern California. What to Know About the Tenaja Fire

Fire officials have issued mandatory evacuation orders to over 400 homes in Riverside County

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2PPcr56

Taliban supporters cheer US withdrawal plans

Taliban loyalists are cheering the prospect of a deal with the US that after 18 years of gruelling conflict will see "defeated" American "invaders" finally go home. While details of the deal have not been announced, it is widely expected the Pentagon will slash its troop presence in Afghanistan in return for various Taliban commitments. AFP spoke to several Taliban fighters and supporters in and around Kandahar -- the southern Afghan province that is the birthplace of the Islamist movement and a key stronghold.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2ZEXPd1

'Bye, Mom. I love you!' Family torn apart in aftermath of Hurricane Dorian

On the Abacos Islands of the Bahamas, Alicia Cook held her daughters, Lacy, 8, and Lyric, 4, close -- and then, surrounded by devastation as far as the eye could see, said a heart-wrenching goodbye to her girls.The sisters soon boarded a helicopter with their aunt to be evacuated to Nassau, the capital city of the Bahamas. Their parents would be staying behind, as there was no room for them on the helicopter."Bye, Mom. I love you!" one of the girls called from the helicopter."I had to send them with my sister. I couldn't fit. My babies, I had to send them. This is just a disaster. Everything's gone. There's just so much heartache and death everywhere. I just don't know what we're going to do," Cook told AccuWeather correspondent Brandon Clement through tears. "[I'm] leaving my hearts. Don't know when I'll see them again." Alicia Cook hugs her daughter Lyric as they say goodbye. Cook and her husband are having their two daughters evacuated from the Abacos Islands after Hurricane Dorian. (Brandon Clement) The family of four survived Hurricane Dorian, which dealt a historic blow to the Bahamas on Sunday, Sept. 1, when it made landfall as Category 5 hurricane. With sustained winds of 185 mph at the time of landfall, Hurricane Dorian was tied for the second most powerful hurricane by wind speed in the Atlantic basin since 1851 behind Hurricane Allen in 1980 with 190 mph winds.The death toll in the Bahamas has risen to around 30 and is expected to rise as search and rescue operations continue.Cook told Clement that she had to get her children off of the island, which was in a state of "total devastation." The flight was paid for by the Discovery Land Company, a real estate developer that is currently sharing resources like private helicopters.The powerful winds of Hurricane Dorian had stripped even concrete buildings of their integrity. Supposedly sturdy buildings were broken like pottery pieces, the long bent fingers of rebar stripped of the concrete and exposed."This isn't cheap construction. This is one-inch rebar [reinforcement bar], eight-inch-thick concrete, just pulverized," Clement said while filming.That's just what the buildings in the Abaco Islands are after Dorian: pulverized.A woman stood crying on the second story of a building: the walls and roof having been torn away during the Category 5 storm. Around the skeleton of the house lay the carnage of debris, trees stripped of all leaves and an overturned boat. The beach is nowhere in sight. A pickup truck and an SUV were strapped to a barge to keep them tied down. Though battered, they remain remain in place. The same could not be said of the beached boat. A handful of small boats were deposited on the shore, a few landing at the doorsteps of houses. A pickup truck and an SUV were strapped to a barge to keep them tied down. The vehicles were damaged during the storm, and the boat they were aboard beached. (Brandon Clement) Some of the cars on the island made it out of the storm with just some shattered glass, while others sit partially submerged in ponds of water that have yet to recede. Footage shows residents of the Bahamas walking down a street, their belongings in plastic bags. The still partially flooded road is littered with tree debris and downed power poles."I've been through many, many hurricanes and seen devastation, but nothing ever, ever compared to this," Cook said. "I've never even experienced anything -- I watched movies and I see this on the news, but you don't know it until you go through it. You lose everything in an instant. Just everything you've ever worked for, your whole life's gone," Cook said. "Just what do you do? And nobody should have to go through this. It's like a bad dream. You just can't wake up."The people of the Bahamas pick through what has become marshes of debris, trying to find any of their belongings that they could salvage.Clement stopped to speak with a woman who had been looking around the remains of her home, trying to find a scrap of the life that had been torn from her by Dorian: a backpack with her passport. People in the Bahamas scour through the wreckage that Hurricane Dorian left behind in its wake, trying to find any of their belongings they can savage. This woman was looking for a backpack with her passport in it, which she had lost in the chaos of the storm. (Brandon Clement) "Harbour View Marina collapsed, and the water came to my roof," a woman told Clement, standing in front of the demolished walls of her baby blue house. She, her son, her best friend and two others staying with her escaped out the back window and clung to a Suzuki until the eye passed two hours later."It was awful," the woman said after Clement asked what it had been like. While hanging on for their lives, a young boy with them suffered a five-inch gash in the back of his head and fell unconscious. She said debris beat up against them all, bruising them.When the water subsided and the worst of the wind calmed, Dorian had left behind a skeleton of what she once had."I have nothing. Everything is gone. It's either there," the woman said, gesturing off at the debris to one side of her, "there ..." she gestured to more debris behind her. "And I don't know, it's just awful," she said, beginning to cry. Homes flattened by Hurricane Dorian are seen in Abaco, Bahamas, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2019. The storm's devastation has come into sharper focus as the death toll climbed to 20 and many people emerged from shelters to check on their homes. (AP Photo/Gonzalo Gaudenzi) "I've been through many of a hurricane, this was, I don't know. A tidal wave, a tornado, a hurricane, everything in one," she said. "I've never seen anything like this in my life. It's just devastating. I don't know if we'll ever come back from it. I don't know if I want to leave, if I want to stay. I don't know."For the Cook family, the aftermath of Dorian brought the most heartache as they said their goodbyes. After the helicopter doors slammed shut, Cook and her husband watched as the craft lifted off, taking their children away from the carnage left behind by Dorian.Reporting by Brandon Clement and Jonathan Petramala in the Bahamas.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/34osZnA

Pope Francis says it is ‘an honour that the Americans attack me'

In an offhand remark on the papal plane en route to Mozambique, Pope Francis acknowledged the sharp opposition he has faced from conservative Catholic detractors in the United States, calling it an “an honour that the Americans attack me”.His remark came at the start of a six-day trip to Africa, as the pope shook hands in the back of the plane with a French reporter who handed him a copy of his new book How America Wanted to Change the Pope.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2zZxTcA

California says tax return law doesn't bar ballot access

California's attorney general is urging a federal judge not to halt a state law requiring presidential candidates release their tax returns, arguing it doesn't bar anyone from accessing the ballot or deprive voters of their rights. Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, made his arguments in a Thursday filing in response to a Trump campaign request for an injunction, which would stall the law from taking effect as lawsuits proceeds. The new California law says candidates for president and governor must release five years-worth of tax returns to appear on the state's primary ballot.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/310MYqd

Stunning satellite images show Hurricane Dorian's floodwaters engulfing The Bahamas

A satellite image taken Monday shows the floodwaters that engulfed Grand Bahama Island after Hurricane Dorian struck the Bahamas.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2PGJyrK