Harvey intensified into an extremely dangerous Category 3 hurricane as it closed in on the Texas coast Friday afternoon. The storm is set to become the first major hurricane, rated Category 3 or higher (on the 1-5 Saffir-Simpson intensity scale), to strike U.S. soil in 12 years when it comes ashore late Friday night or early Saturday.
The National Hurricane Center said it expects “catastrophic and life-threatening” flash flooding along the middle and upper Texas coast. An incredible amount of rain, 15 to 25 inches with isolated amounts of up to 35 inches, is predicted because the storm is expected to stall and unload torrents for four to six straight days. In just a few days, the storm may dispense the amount of rain that normally falls over an entire year, shattering records.
“Let’s set the expectations: Texas is about to have a very significant disaster,” said Brock Long, FEMA administrator.
Wanczyk, 53, landed the largest single lottery jackpot ever in the United States — the $758.7 million grand prize in Wednesday’s Power Ball.
The winning ticket (6, 7, 16, 23, 26, and Powerball number 4) was purchased at the Pride Station & Store in Chicopee, Massachusetts.
Wanczyk said she discovered Wednesday night while leaving work at the Mercy Medical Center that she had won. A co-worker looked at her ticket and told her she had won. He told her to immediately sign the back of the ticket. She couldn’t believe it.
“I couldn’t drive anywhere. I couldn’t do anything,” she told reporters. She said her co-worker followed her home to make sure she was OK.
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Mavis Wanczyk has won the biggest jackpot ever in North America.
Tiny versions of human organs smaller than a pea are making a big splash around the world — and for a good reason. Though the clusters of cells of brain, kidney, or liver aren’t much to look at, experts say these so-called “organoids” and “organs-on-a-chip” are poised to remake the way new drugs are brought to market.
Right now, drug development is notoriously slow and costly; bringing a new drug to market can take a dozen years and cost upward of $2 billion. Even after all that time and money have been spent, new drug candidates often prove to be ineffective — or to have dangerous side effects.
“A huge percentage of drugs fail even after hundreds of millions or billions of dollars of investment,” says Dr. Donald Ingber, director of Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and a leader in organ-on-a-chip technology. In fact, only about one in 10 drugs that make it to human tests (after testing in the lab and in animals) wind up getting FDA approval.
Hurricane Harvey intensified to a Category 2 hurricane by early Friday as it moved toward Texas, with meteorologists forecasting that the storm could be a Category 3 “major hurricane” when it makes landfall late Friday or early Saturday.
No storm that strong has hit Texas since 2008.
Harvey is expected to stall after it hits land, dumping torrential rain over the southeast Texas region through Tuesday and causing potentially historic flooding, NBC News meteorologist Bill Karins said.
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‘Be Nice Harvey’ adorns a boarded-up business Thursday in Port Aransas, Texas. Eric Gay / AP
Fox News viewers and other Trump supporters everywhere doubtlessly patted themselves on the back and exchanged high-fives when they saw a carefully situated African-American man conspicuously standing behind Donald Trump at his rally in Phoenix on Tuesday night. The man was shown shouting and guffawing with approval as Trump tried to justify his warm embrace of neo-Nazis and white supremacists ever since the Charlottesville murders.
This wasn’t the first time “Michael the Black Man” has appeared in Trump’s orbit. He’s been a fixture at Trump rallies from the get-go:
At a number of political rallies over the last two years, a character calling himself “Michael the Black Man” has appeared in the crowd directly behind Donald Trump, impossible to miss and possibly planted.
He holds signs that scream “BLACKS FOR TRUMP” and wears a T-shirt proclaiming with equal conviction that “TRUMP & Republicans Are Not Racist.”
Congressional investigators have unearthed an email from a top Trump aide that referenced a previously unreported effort to arrange a meeting last year between Trump campaign officials and Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to sources with direct knowledge of the matter.
The aide, Rick Dearborn, who is now President Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff, sent a brief email to campaign officials last year relaying information about an individual who was seeking to connect top Trump officials with Putin, the sources said.
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The person was only identified in the email as being from “WV,” which one source said was a reference to West Virginia. It’s unclear who the individual is, what he or she was seeking, or whether Dearborn even acted on the request. One source said that the individual was believed to have had political connections in West Virginia, but details about the request and who initiated it remain vague.
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Top White House official draws new scrutiny in Russia inquiry
Even after decades of affirmative action, black and Hispanic students are more underrepresented at the nation’s top colleges and universities than they were 35 years ago, according to a New York Times analysis.
The share of black freshmen at elite schools is virtually unchanged since 1980. Black students are just 6 percent of freshmen but 15 percent of college-age Americans, as the chart below shows.
The U.S. Navy on Wednesday relieved the admiral in charge of the service’s 7th Fleet based in Japan due to “loss of confidence” in his ability to command, it said in a statement. The move comes after four embarrassing accidents this year, two of which killed sailors at sea.
Admiral Scott Swift, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet relieved Vice Adm. Joseph P. Aucoin from his duties at the 7th Fleet’s Yokosuka base in Japan. Rear Admiral Phil Sawyer, the Pacific Fleet’s deputy commander, will immediately take command. He had been scheduled to assume the post on Sept. 7.
The incidents include the deadly collision Monday of the destroyer USS John S. McCain with a much heavier oil tanker off Singapore, and a June 17 accident in which the destroyer USS Fitzgerald was ripped open by a larger Philippine container ship.
Ever since the 10-story Home Insurance Building in Chicago was called the first “skyscraper” in 1885, architects have been striving to create ever-taller buildings. Ten stories quickly became 20, 20 became 50, and on and on. In 2009 the Burj Khalifa in Dubai became the world’s tallest building, with its 154 floors towering above ground level.
So why is the mayor of Portland, Oregon, calling a modest 12-story tower set for completion there next year “a true technological and entrepreneurial achievement?” It’s not the affordable housing the building affords, nor its dozens of bike racks or even the roof farm that has Ted Wheeler gushing. It’s that the Framework apartment building will be made almost entirely of wood.
Once completed, Framework will be America’s tallest wooden building and its first “plyscraper” — a high-rise building built with panels made of cross-laminated timber (CLT). These modular sheets are made from cheap, sustainable softwood that are glued or pinned together in layers — a bit like super-strong, super-thick plywood. – Eco-Friendly ‘Plyscrapers’ Are on the Rise.
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Mark Harris
Framework is slated to become the first mass timber high-rise in the U.S. Artist’s rendering courtesy of LEVER Architecture .
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
(National Hurricane Center)
Blacks and Hispanics under-represented
Admiral relieved
James' World 2 