"The Trump administration has rejected California's request for a disaster declaration for six destructive wildfires that burned hundreds of thousands of acres across the state, including a massive central California wildfire that has become the single largest in state history." Because of course they did.
"About 40,000 homes and businesses across Northern California were without power Thursday as PG&E Corp. shut the lights off to curtail wildfire risks during severe winds."
"The oxygen supply system has failed in a module on the Russian segment of the International Space Station (ISS) but the crew is in no danger, Russian space agency Roscosmos said Thursday."
"Japan will release more than a million tons of treated radioactive water from the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea in a decades-long operation, reports said Friday, despite strong opposition from environmentalists, local fishermen and farmers. The release of the water, which has been filtered to reduce radioactivity, is likely to start in 2022 at the earliest, said national dailies the Nikkei, the Yomiuri, and other local media."
"One of the new studies specifically found that COVID-19 patients with Type O or B blood spent less time in an intensive-care unit than their counterparts with Type A or AB. They were also less likely to require ventilation and less likely to experience kidney failure."
"For the second day in a row, the state saw a record-breaking number of new coronavirus cases reported Thursday statewide… However, Trumbull County moved down to the orange level on the state’s scale for risk of virus spread to join Columbiana County. Mahoning County remains at the higher red level."
"The study, which was not peer-reviewed, found that four treatments tested — remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, lopinavir/ritonavir and interferon — had 'little or no effect' on whether or not patients died within about a month or whether hospitalized patients recovered."
"'Human challenge' trials of potential COVID-19 vaccines, where volunteers are deliberately infected with the disease, could become a reality after a British biotech firm said it was in advanced talks with the government to create and provide strains of the virus." The ethics of that are problematic given we don't have an effective treatment process.
"A Marketplace investigation into Amazon Canada has found that perfectly good items are being liquidated by the truckload — and even destroyed or sent to landfill. Experts say hundreds of thousands of returns don't end up back on the e-commerce giant's website for resale, as customers might think." (Grokked from John)
"Shoppers bought more clothes and cars, and even returned to beleaguered department stores in September… This helped lift U.S. retail spending by a stronger-than-expected 1.9% compared to August, the Commerce Department said Friday, delivering a slight boost of confidence amid a recent spate of signs that the economic recovery has lost momentum from the pandemic's toll."
How goes Brexit? "U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Friday that he would seek a no-deal Brexit unless there was a fundamental change of approach from the European Union." Well who could have seen that coming, except everybody. Briton, you're about to be screwed.
The Throughline podcast… "Born from a rushed, fraught, imperfect process, the origins and evolution of the Electoral College might surprise you and make you think differently about not only this upcoming presidential election, but our democracy as a whole."
"An eighth man is now charged with supporting an act of terrorism in the alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer from her vacation home. Attorney General Dana Nessel's office says Brian Higgins, 51, was arrested in Wisconsin Thursday. He allegedly brought night-vision goggles to aid surveillance of Whitmer's home." The circle widens.
"President Trump on Friday targeted Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) amid her difficult reelection bid, complaining that she opposes his priorities and saying she isn’t 'worth the work.'"
"Senate Judiciary Democrats attempted Thursday to indefinitely delay the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, arguing that they've had 'inadequate' time to review her nomination after CNN's KFile found additional talks Barrett gave were not listed on her Senate paperwork." It won't slow it down. The GOP knows they're on deadline.
"President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) look set to clash over stimulus as the White House seeks to secure a deal on a further relief package." It's an artificial divide. The president is only pushing a "larger" stimulus bill because he knows it might affect the outcome of the election. McConnell knows if he gives this up he'll lose his election. Just like the Sen. Collin issue, this is a disagreement made for TV.
"President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden weren't on the same stage on Thursday night but two simultaneous town halls managed to clearly lay out the stark differences between the candidates."
"But no matter how the laptop, and whatever is on the hard drive, came to exist, the situation looks a lot like a classic Russian intelligence operation, according to an Estonian intelligence official with extensive experience in combating Russian spies. In a typical Russian disinformation operation, real documents are salted with forged or manipulated information and then presented in a way that news media — and social media — cannot resist."
"Top Biden advisers who staffed him during his vice presidency, citing their own recollections as well as a review of Biden’s official schedules, sharply rejected the Post’s suggestion that Biden met with a representative of Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings in 2015. And social media companies throttled sharing of the article on their platforms, fueling complaints from conservatives that information critical of the Bidens was being censored."
"Twitter will now add warning labels to tweets containing hacked material instead of banning them entirely, after its blocking of contested New York Post Biden story provoked uproar."
"The upcoming U.S. election is being keenly watched by world leaders who have looked to President Donald Trump for favor and friendship, and who share his political ethos… If he fails at the election, political experts believe other leaders who espouse similarly populist politics — from Matteo Salvini, who leads Italy’s anti-immigration Lega party, to India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi — could see their own political fortunes change, and that a populist surge that swept such radical and anti-establishment leaders to power across the world, including Trump, could wane."
"For more than three years, federal prosecutors investigated whether money flowing through an Egyptian state-owned bank could have backed millions of dollars Donald Trump donated to his own campaign days before he won the 2016 election, multiple sources familiar with the investigation told CNN."
No comments:
Post a Comment