A weakened Irma took its parting shot at Florida on Monday, triggering severe flooding in the state’s northeastern corner, while authorities along the storm’s 400-mile path struggled to rush aid to victims and take the full measure of the damage.
The monster hurricane that hit the Florida Keys on Sunday as a Category 4 was downgraded to a tropical storm as it finally pushed its way out of the state and into Georgia, where it caused more misery.
During its rainy, windy run up the length of Florida, Irma swamped homes, uprooted trees, flooded streets, cast boats ashore, snapped miles of power lines and toppled construction cranes.
“How are we going to survive from here?” asked Gwen Bush, who waded through thigh-deep floodwaters outside her central Florida home to reach National Guard rescuers and get a ride to a shelter. “What’s going to happen now? I just don’t know.”
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Building owner Catharine Taylor Woods, front, and Jessica Newman, of the City of Wauchula clean up broke glass after an awning blew off in Hurricane Irma and broke several windows early Monday, Sept. 11, 2017, in Wauchula, Fla.
As Hurricane Irma bears down on the East coast, Floridians may be wondering where all the hurricanes come from, and why they all follow a similar course. In fact, Irma, Harvey, and Jose were all born on the other side of the Atlantic, off the coast of Africa, and the Sahara desert may be to blame.
Aboard the papal plane:If US President Donald Trump considers himself “pro-life,” he should reconsider his decision to end a program that allows the children of undocumented immigrants to remain in the United States, Pope Francis said.
“The President of the United States presents himself as pro-life and if he is a good pro-lifer, he understands that family is the cradle of life and its unity must be protected,” Francis said.
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The Pope’s comments came during a news conference Sunday aboard the papal plane, as he returned to the Vatican after a five-day trip to Colombia. In the wide-ranging Q&A with reporters, the Pope also said history will harshly judge deniers of climate change.
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The Pope acknowledged that he was not familiar with the specifics of DACA. “I think this law comes not from parliament but from the executive,” the Pope said. “If that is so, I am hopeful that it will be re-thought.”
Trump and the Pope have tussled over immigration before, with the Pope saying last year that anyone who thinks only of building walls instead of bridges is “not Christian.”
A police report obtained by CNN bolsters evidence that legendary football coach Joe Paterno knew years before Jerry Sandusky’s arrest that his longtime assistant might be sexually abusing children.
The one-page Pennsylvania state police report, obtained from a source and described here for the first time, lays out an account from whistleblower Mike McQueary, who reported to Paterno an incident he had just witnessed in a locker room between Sandusky and a young boy. Paterno allegedly told McQueary in 2001 that the claim against Sandusky “was the second complaint of this nature he had received,” according to the police report, which was written after Sandusky’s arrest 10 years later.
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McQueary’s claim of abuse and other allegations led to Sandusky’s conviction in 2012 for sexually abusing 10 boys over 15 years, including three victims after the 2001 locker room incident. He is serving a sentence of at least 30 years in prison. An appeal is pending.
Equifax issued a statement Friday saying that victims of a recent massive security breach won’t have to waive their right to file a class action lawsuit against the company, after people noticed language buried in Equifax’s terms of service that barred customers from doing so.
“We have made it clear that the arbitration clause and class action waiver included in the Equifax and TrustedID Premier terms of use does not apply to this cybersecurity incident,” the company said in an update to its website.
Equifax announced Thursday that it had discovered in July it was the victim of a massive hack that exposed the personal information of an estimated 143 million Americans. Social Security numbers and credit card numbers were among the information exposed.
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has alerted the White House that his team will probably seek to interview six top current and former advisers to President Trump who were witnesses to several episodes relevant to the investigation of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, according to people familiar with the request.
Mueller’s interest in the aides, including trusted adviser Hope Hicks, former press secretary Sean Spicer and former chief of staff Reince Priebus, reflects how the probe that has dogged Trump’s presidency is starting to penetrate a closer circle of aides around the president.
Each of the six advisers was privy to important internal discussions that have drawn the interest of Mueller’s investigators, according to people familiar with the probe, including his decision in May to fire FBI Director James B. Comey. Also of interest is the White House’s initial inaction after warnings about then-national security adviser Michael Flynn’s December discussions with Russia’s ambassador to the United States.
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Special counsel Robert Mueller departs after a closed-door meeting in June with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee about Russian meddling in the election. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
So Equifax was hacked. Like, badly. But how to tell if you, personally, are affected by the massive data breach? There’s a website for that — as long as you don’t mind forking over even more information to Equifax.
The credit reporting agency announced Thursday that private identifying information on potentially 143 million US citizens was accessed by “criminals,” and that the information in question could include names, social security numbers, birth dates, addresses, and even possibly driver’s license numbers.
Like we said, it’s bad.
But don’t worry! Equifax is here to save the day! And, like we said, if you trust them with your personal information (which, maybe not a great idea?), the process of determining if you’ll now need to keep an eye out for identity theft should be a breeze.
The most powerful earthquake to hit Mexico in 100 years struck off the nation’s Pacific Coast late Thursday, rattling millions of residents in Mexico City with its violent tremors, killing at least 32 people and leveling some areas in the southern part of the country closest to where the quake occurred.
About 50 million people across Mexico felt the earthquake, which had a magnitude of 8.2, the government said. In the capital, the force of the temblor sent residents of the megacity fleeing into the streets at midnight, shaken by the alarms blaring over loudspeakers and a full minute of tremors. Windows broke, walls collapsed, and the city seemed to convulse in terrifying waves; the quake even rocked the city’s landmark Angel of Independence monument.
From clot-busting drugs to bypass surgery, cardiologists have many options for treating the 700,000-plus Americans who suffer a heart attack each year. But treatment options remain limited for the 5.7 million or so Americans who suffer from heart failure, an often debilitating condition in which damage to the heart (often resulting from a heart attack) compromises its ability to pump blood.
“Severe heart damage can pretty much incapacitate people,” says Dr. Timothy Henry, director of cardiology at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. “You can’t climb a flight of stairs, you’re fatigued all the time, and you’re at risk of sudden cardiac arrest.”
Medication is available to treat heart failure, but it’s no panacea. And some heart failure patients undergo heart transplantation, but it remains an iffy proposition even 50 years after the first human heart was transplanted in 1967.
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.
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