Hundreds of homes were evacuated and schools closed Thursday as crews battled a stubborn wildfire churning through heavy brush in Southern California.
The blaze near the Riverside County city of Murrieta and unincorporated community of La Cresta grew to more than 2 square miles (5.4 square kilometers) and was 7% contained, authorities said.
There were no reports of structure losses.
“There’s lots of heavy fuel in very steep terrain that we can’t get to on foot,” said Capt. Fernando Herrera with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Aircraft were making continuous drops of water and retardant, he said.
More than 480 homes were in the mandatory evacuation zone and another 2,270 are under voluntary evacuation orders, according to Herrera.
The blaze erupted Wednesday afternoon on rural land and erratic winds quickly pushed flames down hills toward homes about 70 miles (115 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles.
The cause may have been a lightning strike as hot, muggy weather produced thunderstorms. Those conditions will continue into Friday, the National Weather Service said.
It’s one of a number of fires burning around the state. There’s very little containment of a 1.5-square-mile (3.9-square-kilometer) blaze in rural forest land along the northern Sierra Nevada in Plumas County.
Nearly three-quarters of Americans see weather disasters, like Hurricane Dorian, worsening and most of them blame global warming to some extent, a new poll finds.
And scientists say they’re right.
The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey shows 72% of Americans think catastrophic weather is more severe, while 4% see it as less nasty. About one-quarter say those disasters are about as extreme as they always were.
Half of those who think weather disasters are worsening say it’s mainly because of man-made climate change, with another 37% who think natural randomness and global warming are equally to blame.
The poll was conducted in mid-August before Dorian formed, pummeled the Bahamas and put much of the U.S. East Coast on edge.
“We continue to loot our environment and it causes adverse weather,” said John Mohr, 57, a self-described moderate Republican in Wilmington, North Carolina, where he was bracing for Dorian’s arrival.
On Tybee Island, Georgia, Tony and Debbie Pagan said they rarely worried about hurricanes after buying their home nearly 50 years ago.
Hurricane David in 1979 and Floyd in 1999 threatened them but did little damage. The last four years haven’t been so kind.
FILE – Destruction lies in the wake of Hurricane Irma in St. Martin, Sept. 6, 2017.
One miss, but two hits
Hurricane Matthew raked the island in 2016 and pushed several inches of floodwater into the Pagans’ low-lying house. Hurricane Irma the following year sent 2 feet of water surging into the home. And this year Hurricane Dorian threatened, but didn’t hit.
“This is climate change, though President Trump denies that it is,” Tony Pagan, 69, a retired electrician, said as he and his wife finished packing to leave Wednesday. “He needs to open his eyes.”
Majorities of adults across demographic groups think weather disasters are getting more severe, according to the poll. College-educated Americans are slightly more likely than those without a degree to say so, 79% versus 69%.
But there are wide differences in assessments by partisanship. Nine in 10 Democrats think weather disasters are more extreme, compared with about half of Republicans.
Americans this summer also are slightly more likely to say disasters are more severe when compared with a similarly worded question asked after hurricanes in 2013 and 2017.
“People are catching up with the science! Extreme events are always partly due to natural variability, but we do think many are increasing in frequency because of climate change,” Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald said in an email.
FILE – Indian residents queue with plastic containers to get drinking water from a tanker in the outskirts of Chennai, May 29, 2019. An unrelenting heat wave triggered warnings of water shortages and heatstroke in India on June 1.
Heat, rain
It’s more than hurricanes. A recent U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report found that heat waves are happening more often, are nastier and last longer, while heavy downpours are increasing globally, said NASA and Columbia University climate scientist Cynthia Rosenzweig.
Chris Dennis, 50, a registered nurse and self-described liberal Democrat in Greenville, South Carolina, said he is seeing more intense and more frequent weather disasters than in the past.
“Years ago, we didn’t hear of these kinds of storms, at least that frequently,” Dennis said, taking a break from watching the CNN forum on climate change for Democratic presidential candidates. He said he kept noticing the damning statistics on carbon dioxide put in the air, saying the “numbers are cranking up like the national debt clock … that’s pretty significant, what we’re doing to our environment.”
Scientific studies indicate a warming world has slightly stronger hurricanes, but they don’t show an increase in the number of storms hitting land, Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach said. He said the real climate change effect causing more damage is storm surge from rising seas, wetter storms dumping more rain and more people living in vulnerable areas.
Skeptic
Not everyone sees climate change making weather worse.
Though she’s weary of dealing with storms three of the past four years, Sandy Cason of Tybee Island said she’s not ready to blame climate change. She noted Georgia got hit by several powerful hurricanes in the 1800s.
“If you go back and read, it’s a cyclical thing. It really is,” Cason said. “If you read enough about the old storms, I don’t think you can” attribute the most recent storms to climate change.
The AP-NORC poll of 1,058 adults was conducted Aug. 15-18 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.2 percentage points. Respondents were first selected randomly using address-based sampling methods and later were interviewed online or by phone.
Technology firms and academics have joined together to launch a “deepfake challenge” to improve tools to detect videos and other media manipulated by artificial intelligence.
The initiative announced Thursday includes $10 million from Facebook and aims to curb what is seen as a major threat to the integrity of online information.
The effort is being supported by Microsoft and the industry-backed Partnership on AI and includes academics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cornell University, University of Oxford, University of California-Berkeley, University of Maryland and University at Albany.
Tool to detect altered video
It represents a broad effort to combat the dissemination of manipulated video or audio as part of a misinformation campaign.
“The goal of the challenge is to produce technology that everyone can use to better detect when AI has been used to alter a video in order to mislead the viewer,” said Facebook chief technical officer Mike Schroepfer.
Schroepfer said deepfake techniques, which present realistic AI-generated videos of people doing and saying fictional things, “have significant implications for determining the legitimacy of information presented online. Yet the industry doesn’t have a great data set or benchmark for detecting them.”
The challenge is the first project of a committee on AI and media integrity created by the Partnership on AI, a group whose mission is to promote beneficial uses of artificial intelligence and is backed by Apple, Amazon, IBM and other tech firms and non-governmental organizations.
A woman in Washington views a manipulated video, Jan. 24, 2019, that changes what is said by President Donald Trump and former president Barack Obama, illustrating how “deepfake” technology can deceive viewers.
Threat to democracy
Terah Lyons, executive director of the Partnership, said the new project is part of an effort to stem AI-generated fakes, which “have significant, global implications for the legitimacy of information online, the quality of public discourse, the safeguarding of human rights and civil liberties, and the health of democratic institutions.”
Facebook said it was offering funds for research collaborations and prizes for the challenge, and would also enter the competition, but not accept any of the prize money.
Oxford professor Philip Torr, one of the academics participating, said new tools are “urgently needed to detect these types of manipulated media.
“Manipulated media being put out on the internet, to create bogus conspiracy theories and to manipulate people for political gain, is becoming an issue of global importance, as it is a fundamental threat to democracy,” Torr said in a statement.
President Donald Trump is continuing his run of recognizing American sports greats with the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Trump has awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to pro-basketball great Jerry West, formerly of the Los Angeles Lakers, during a White House ceremony.
Trump says West “richly deserved” the medal for his years as a player, general manager and supporter of the nation’s war veterans.
The 81-year-old West noted his humble beginnings growing up in West Virginia and where sports has taken him, saying “it never ceases to amaze me the places you can go in this world chasing a basketball.”
Last month, Trump awarded the medal to 91-year-old basketball great Bob Cousy. Earlier this year, golfer Tiger Woods received the same honor.
The world is focused on the Bahamas, where thousands are just beginning the long and painful struggle to rebuild their lives after Hurricane Dorian.
International search-and-rescue teams are spreading across Abaco and Grand Bahamas islands looking for survivors. Crews have started clearing the streets of debris to set up emergency food and water distribution centers.
The U.S. Coast Guard and British Royal Navy have ships docked off the islands, and the United Nations is sending in tons of ready-to-eat meals and satellite communications equipment.
The Royal Caribbean and Walt Disney cruise lines, which usually carry happy tourists to Bahamian resorts, are instead using ships to deliver food, water, flashlights and other vital aid.
Death toll at 30
The death toll on the Bahamas stood at 30 late Thursday, but with entire villages and marinas wiped off the map, officials say they have no doubt that number will rise.
Bahamian Prime Minister Hubert Minnis calls the damage left by Dorian one of the greatest crises in his country’s history.
“As prime minister, I assure you that no efforts will be spared in rescuing those still in danger, feeding those who are hungry and providing shelter to those who are without homes,” he said. “Our response will be day and night, day after day, week after week, month after month until the lives of our people return to some degree of normalcy.”
Dorian spent Thursday pummeling North and South Carolina with strong winds and heavy rain, along with causing more than a dozen tornadoes and waterspouts that led to additional damage.
Dorian landfall forecast
Forecasters do not expect Dorian to make a direct landfall Friday but will instead skirt the North Carolina coast, bringing life-threatening storm surges to North Carolina and southern Virginia before moving away from land.
Dorian will remain a potent storm straight into the weekend, however, with tropical storm warnings posted as far north as Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Nearly three months of protests have rocked Hong Kong amid a harsh police crackdown, widespread arrests, and fears of suppression by Beijing. On Wednesday, Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam announced plans to withdraw a controversial extradition bill that sparked the unrest, but pro-democracy activists are pressing for more. Mike O’Sullivan reports on how the current demonstrations are the latest in a long history of protest in the Chinese semi-autonomous region.
Despite tensions between the United States and Iran, U.S. President Donald Trump says a negotiated solution is possible. Trump told reporters Wednesday that Iranians “want to talk” and make a deal. His remarks came a day after Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said his country will never negotiate with the United States but may consider multilateral talks if Washington removes all the sanctions on Iran. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports the United States announced new measures against Iran Wednesday.
A large car bomb rocked the Afghan capital Thursday, and smoke rose from a part of eastern Kabul near a neighborhood housing the U.S. Embassy, the NATO Resolute Support mission and other diplomatic missions.
Firdaus Faramarz, a spokesman for Kabul’s police chief, told The Associated Press that the explosion took place in the city’s Ninth Police District. It appeared to target a checkpoint in the heavily guarded Shashdarak area where the Afghan national security authorities have offices.
There was no immediate word on casualties. An Associated Press reporter on the phone with the U.S. Embassy when the blast occurred heard sirens begin there.
Interior Ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said a car bomb had exploded on a main road and police were sealing off the area. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
The blast occurred as U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad has been in Kabul this week, briefing the Afghan government and others on a deal he says has been reached “in principle” with the Taliban on ending America’s longest war.
A Taliban suicide bombing in eastern Kabul on Monday night, which the insurgents said targeted a foreign compound, killed at least 16 people and wounded more than 100, almost all of them local civilians.
Bahamas Prime Minister Hubert Minnis is pledging to do whatever is necessary to carry out rescue and recovery efforts after Hurricane Dorian devastated the Caribbean archipelago.
Thursday will likely bring more grim news as people get a better look at what the storm left behind after spinning over Grand Bahama and Abaco islands for nearly two days with flooding rains and storm surge, as well as winds of up to 195 kilometers per hour.
Minnis said at a Wednesday news conference the confirmed death toll was at 20 on Abaco Island, and that officials expected the number to rise.
“As prime minister, I assure you that no efforts will be spared in rescuing those still in danger, feeding those who are hungry and providing shelter to those who are without homes,” he said at a Wednesday news conference. “Our response will be day and night, day after day, week after week, month after month until the lives of our people return to some degree of normalcy.”
A hotel room in the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian on the Great Abaco island town of Marsh Harbour, Bahamas, Sept. 4, 2019.
Speaking to the magnitude of the challenge the Bahamas faces, Minnis called it “one of the greatest national crises in our country’s history.”
Entire villages are gone and beaches usually packed with tourists are instead covered with parts of buildings, destroyed cars, and the remains of people’s lives.
“Right now there are just a lot of unknowns,” Bahamian lawmaker Iram Lewis said, adding, “We need help.”
U.S. President Donald Trump has sent the Coast Guard and urban search and rescue teams to help. The British Royal Navy, Red Cross, and United Nations are also rushing in food, medicine and any kind of aid that may be needed.
The White House says Trump spoke to Prime Minister Minnis Wednesday, assuring him the United States will provide “all appropriate support,” and sent American condolences to the Bahamian people for the destruction and loss of life.
A man searches for his wife in the Marsh Harbour Medical Clinic in the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian on the Great Abaco island town of Marsh Harbour, Bahamas, Sept. 4, 2019.
U.N. Humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock was in Nassau Wednesday meeting with Minnis. Lowcock says 20% of the Bahamian population has been affected and 70,000 people need food.
“Nothing of this sort has been experienced by the Bahamas before,” Lowcock said, adding that he is immediately releasing $1 million from the U.N. central emergency fund for water, food, shelter and medical services.
Dorian, again a Category 3 storm, is moving up the southeastern coast of the United States with potent strength as it drops heavy rain and threatens coastal areas with what the U.S. National Hurricane Center says is “life-threatening storm surge with significant coastal flooding.” It had maximum sustained winds of 185 kilometers per hour Thursday morning.
Those threats will endure for the next few days with forecasters expecting the center of the storm to move near or over the coast of South Carolina on Thursday and the coast of North Carolina on Friday before accelerating off to the northeast as Dorian weakens.
Kenyan farmers hope to benefit from insured loans that will help them purchase farm inputs and seeds. Unlike other commercial bank loans, the Risk Contingent Credit Scheme, which is a brainchild of Washington-based IFPRI, aims to cushion farmers from huge losses accrued from crop failures because of climate change. Sarah Kimani has more from Machakos, Kenya.
Lebanon’s prime minister is pledging to keep the national currency pegged to the dollar and says the government won’t consider an International Monetary Fund program that would leave it to the markets to decide the price of the Lebanese pound.
Saad Hariri told CNBC late on Tuesday: “We believe that keeping the Lebanese pound at 1,500 (to the dollar) is the only stable way to move forward with these reforms.”
The Lebanese pound has been pegged to the dollar since 1997.
Hariri’s comments came a day after Lebanese leaders declared “an economic state of emergency” to resolve the country’s economic crisis.
Lebanon has one of the world’s highest public debts, standing at 150% of gross domestic product. Growth has plummeted and the budget deficit has reached 11% of GDP.
The creation of a so-called “safe zone” in northeastern Syria has gotten off to good start, with U.S.-backed Kurdish-led forces pulling back from a small, initial area along the Turkish border, a Syrian Kurdish official said — but calm can only prevail if Turkey also removes its troops.
Ilham Ahmed, co-chair of the executive committee of the U.S-backed Syrian Democratic Council, said the understanding reached between Washington and Ankara last month, and in coordination with the Syrian Kurdish-led forces, constitutes a step toward starting a dialogue over mutual security concerns.
“We seek to find a way to dialogue, and starting to implement this plan expresses our readiness and seriousness,” Ahmed said in an interview Tuesday with The Associated Press.
“We want to tell the world and the coalition that we are ready to take serious steps to get to dialogue,” she added.
Turkey views the U.S-backed Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, in Syria as an extension of a Kurdish insurgency within Turkey.
Ankara has already carried out military offensives inside Syria to push the group away from the western end of the border. Over the last weeks, Turkish officials threatened a similar offensive in northeastern Syria, where troops from the U.S.-led coalition are deployed to help the Syrian Kurdish-led forces in combatting remnants of the Islamic State group.
The Syrian Kurds have been America’s only partners on the ground in Syria’s chaotic civil war. With U.S. backing, they proved to be the most effective fighting force against the Islamic State group and announced its territorial defeat earlier this year. The Kurds now worry about being abandoned by the U.S. amid Turkish threats to invade Syria, and are keen to work out an agreement with both parties that would safeguard their gains.
Ankara and Washington announced last month that they would begin measures to implement a border “safe zone” to address Turkish security concerns. The Kurdish-led forces are expected to pull out of the zone, but details must still be worked out _ including who then would patrol and administer it.
FILE – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attends a news conference in Moscow, Russia, Aug. 27, 2019.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the weekend repeated threats of an offensive if Turkey’s demands on the zone are not satisfied, including that its soldiers control the area.
Ahmed said more U.S. troops will probably be needed to implement the zone, though the Americans have not said whether they will deploy any.
“In the coming days, and because of the needs of the formation and implementation of the security mechanism, they may need more forces. It is not yet clear what the U.S. administration would decide,” she said.
There was no immediate comment from the U.S.-led coalition.
There are around 1,000 U.S. troops in Syria on a mission to combat IS militants. President Donald Trump had said he wants to bring the troops home, but military officials have advocated a phased approach.
Ahmed said initial steps have been positive but for calm to prevail Turkish troops must also retreat from the Syrian borders. She said while Turkey expresses concerns about the Kurdish-led forces, it is Ankara that has been a source of threat to Syria with the various military operations and its military posts in western Syria.
The Kurdish-led forces have begun removing fortifications along the border and have moved some troops away from the border. At least two U.S-Turkish joint reconnaissance flights have flown over the area, and on Tuesday, joint patrols between U.S. troops and Kurdish-led forces also examined the area where fortifications have been removed.
The deal envisions an area five to 14 kilometers deep (three to eight miles) with no YPG presence, as well as removal of heavy weapons from a 20-kilometer-deep zone (12 miles), she said. Turkey wants a deeper zone. The length of the zone has not yet been agreed on, but will likely stretch hundreds of kilometers (miles).
Ahmed said discussions over other details of the security mechanism will open the way for Syrians who had been displaced from those areas, many of them fled to Turkey, to return. Turkey is home to 3.6 million Syrian refugees and Ankara said it wants the safe zone to provide an opportunity for many to return home.
Ahmed said only those originally from eastern Syria would be allowed to return. Kurdish officials worry Turkey wants to bring back large numbers of Syrians to the areas, which were previously controlled by IS militants, changing the demographic balance in the area. Syria’s Kurds are predominantly from the country’s northeast, living in mixed or Kurdish-dominated villages and towns there. She said no residents will be displaced because of the implementation of the safe zone.
“Calm must bring with it sustainable dialogue. Calm alone is not enough,” Ahmed said. “If Turkish troops don’t pull away from the borders, it will always be considered a threat.”
Another top Kurdish official, Aldar Khalil, said the Kurdish-led administration and forces would not accept Turkish forces or permanent bases in the so-called safe zone or a free hand for Turkish flights over the area.
He said while an understanding has been reached, a final deal would constitute an indirect Turkish recognition of the Kurdish-led administration in northeastern Syria. He said, however, a final deal is not imminent.
A federal judge will discuss plans Wednesday for unsealing a new trove of court records involving sexual abuse allegations against Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who took his own life last month while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska scheduled the hearing after an appeals court in New York ordered her to carefully review the records and release “all documents for which the presumption of public access outweighs any countervailing privacy interests.”
While it’s not clear who is named in the records, an attorney for a John Doe warned in court papers Tuesday that the documents may contain “life-changing” disclosures against third parties not directly involved in the litigation. The attorney, Nicholas Lewin, requested the opportunity to be heard on the matter, citing his unnamed client’s “reputational rights.”
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has already made public more than 2,000 pages in the since-settled defamation lawsuit. Virginia Roberts Giuffre, one of Epstein’s accusers, filed the case against Ghislaine Maxwell , a former Epstein girlfriend. Giuffre has accused Maxwell of recruiting young women for Epstein’s sexual pleasure and taking part in the abuse— allegations Maxwell has vehemently denied.
The first release of court records— unsealed the day before Epstein’s jailhouse suicide in Manhattan— contained graphic claims against Epstein and several of his former associates. Giuffre alleges she was trafficked internationally to have sex with prominent American politicians, business executives and world leaders.
Giuffre filed the lawsuit in 2015, alleging Maxwell subjected her to “public ridicule, contempt and disgrace” by calling her a liar in published statements “with the malicious intent of discrediting and further damaging Giuffre worldwide.” The lawsuit sought unspecified damages.
About one-fifth of all documents filed in the case were done so under seal— a level of secrecy the 2nd Circuit ruled was unjustified. However, the appellate court, in unsealing the records, issued an unusual warning to the public and the media “to exercise restraint” regarding potentially defamatory allegations contained in the depositions and other court filings.
WASHINGTON (AP) _ Democratic presidential candidates are releasing their plans to address climate change ahead of a series of town halls on the issue as the party’s base increasingly demands aggressive action.
New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former Obama Cabinet member Julián Castro laid out their plans Tuesday. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar released hers over the weekend.
The release of the competing plans comes as issues of climate and the environment have become a central focus of the Democratic primary. On Wednesday, 10 Democrats seeking the White House will participate in back-to-back climate town halls hosted by CNN in New York. A second set of climate-focused town halls will be televised by MSNBC later in the month. Liberals had demanded that the Democratic Party focus at least one debate on climate change, but a climate debate resolution was defeated at the Democratic National Committee’s summer meeting last month.
The issue is so urgent among Democratic voters that Washington Gov. Jay Inslee made action to limit the worst extremes of climate change the core of his presidential bid. But Inslee dropped out of the presidential race in August after failing to earn a spot in the September primary debate. Warren says Inslee’s ideas “should remain at the center of the agenda,” and she met with him in Seattle when she visited the state for a rally before Labor Day, according to two people familiar with the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private meeting.
Warren’s clean energy proposal builds on Inslee’s 10-year clean energy plan in seeking to implement 100% clean energy standards in three key sectors of the American economy. Warren says she will increase her planned spending on research and investment to cut carbon emissions to $3 trillion. She embraces tough deadlines for sharply cutting or eliminating the use of fossil fuels by the U.S. electrical grid, highways and air transit systems, and by cities and towns. That includes making sure that new cars, buses and many trucks run on clean energy _ instead of gasoline or diesel _ by 2030 and that all the country’s electricity comes from solar, wind and other renewable, carbon-free sources by 2035.
Booker’s $3 trillion plan includes nearly a dozen executive actions to reverse Trump administration moves. He says that by no later than 2045, he wants to get the U.S. economy to carbon neutral _ a point at which carbon emissions are supposedly canceled out by carbon-cutting measures, such as planting new forests to suck up carbon from the atmosphere. Booker also urges massive restoration of forests and coastal wetlands as carbon sponges and as buffers against rising seas. He sets a 2030 deadline for getting natural gas and coal out of the electrical grid. He would get there partly by scrapping all subsidies for fossil fuels, banning new oil and gas leases, phasing out fracking and introducing a carbon fee.
If elected, Booker says, he will propose legislation creating a “United States Environmental Justice Fund,” which, among its areas of focus, will replace all home, school and day care drinking water lines by the end of his second term.
Castro’s $10 trillion plan aims to have all electricity in the United States be clean and renewable by 2035. He wants to achieve net-zero emissions by 2045 and at least a 50% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. And, like Booker, he focuses on environmental racism, in which people of color are disproportionately affected by environmental hazards. Castro says that within the first 100 days of his presidency he would propose new legislation to address the impact of environmental discrimination.
Among Democrats seeking the presidency, there is little disagreement that climate change is a building disaster. Candidates’ primary differences are over how aggressively the U.S. should move now to cut fossil fuel emissions to stave off the worst of the coming climate extremes.
Last month, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders toured a California mobile home park ravaged by wildfires as he introduced his $16 trillion plan to fight global warming, the costliest among the Democratic field. His plan declares climate change a national emergency, calls for the United States to eliminate fossil fuel use by 2050 and commits $200 billion to help poorer nations reckon with climate change.
Former Vice President Joe Biden has proposed $1.7 trillion in spending over 10 years, on clean energy and other initiatives with the goal of eliminating the country’s net carbon emissions by 2050. Biden has been less absolute than some other Democratic candidates on stamping out consumption of oil, natural gas and coal, calling for eliminating subsidies for the fossil fuels rather than pledging to eliminate all use of them.
The relatively minor differences among Democrats on climate change come in sharp contrast to President Donald Trump, who has dismissed and mocked the science of climate change and has reversed course on U.S. climate policy. Trump made pulling the country out of the Paris climate accord one of his administration’s first priorities, and his wholehearted support of the petroleum and coal industries has been one of the enduring themes of his presidency
Nationally, 72% of Democratic midterm voters said they were very concerned about the effects of climate change, and 20% were somewhat concerned. That’s according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 115,000 midterm voters nationwide.
Oprah Winfrey is taking her motivational spirit on the road early next year with an arena tour to promote a healthier lifestyle.
The talk-show host and chief of OWN television network said Wednesday that she will launch the “Oprah’s 2020 Vision: Your Life in Focus” tour starting Jan. 4 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She is working with Weight Watchers Reimagined to offer a full-day of wellness conversations during the nine-city tour.
It’s her first speaking tour in five years.
Winfrey says she wants to empower audiences to “support a stronger, healthier, abundant life.” She will be joined by high-profile guests. The names will be released at a later date.
Winfrey’s previous speaking tours include “Oprah’s Life Class” and “Oprah’s The Life You Want Weekend” in 2014.
A Tunisian appeals court on Tuesday upheld the detention of media magnate Nabil Karoui, a candidate in this month’s presidential election, on suspicion of tax fraud and money laundering, his lawyer said.
Karoui, who denies any wrongdoing, had sought to be freed, but the court rejected the demand to release him, lawyer Kamel Ben Massoud told Reuters without giving details or further comment.
Karoui, the owner of Nesma TV channel, is one of the most prominent candidates in the Sept. 15 election along with current and past prime ministers, a former president, the defense minister and the representative of a major Islamist party.
He is running as a campaigner against poverty in a country where economic troubles have caused widespread frustration despite the transition to democracy since a 2011 revolution.
Karoui founded a charity to combat poverty in 2017 and then set up a political party, leading his critics to accuse him of using his foundation to advance his political ambitions, which he denies.
In June, parliament passed an amendment to the electoral law forbidding candidates who benefited from “charitable associations” or foreign funding in the year before an election, which would have banned him from the race.
However, the late president Beji Caid Essebsi died in July without having signed the law, meaning Karoui was free to enter the election.
His political party has called his detention a politically motivated attempt to bar him from the race, though government officials have said it is a purely judicial matter.
Tunisia’s electoral commission kept him on the list of eligible candidates after his arrest last month on a court order.
The president is responsible for foreign and defense policy in Tunisia, while most decision-making powers rest with a prime minister who is chosen by parliament. A parliamentary election will also take place on Oct. 6.
Despite Karoui still being in detention, his party launched his presidential campaign with a rally on Monday night. On Tuesday, supporters gathered outside the court to demand he be
freed.
As evening falls over their Amazon home, the hunter gatherers of the Uru-eu-wau-wau people extract bamboo arrows from the flank of a wild pig and begin roasting it.
A few miles — and a world — away on the opposite side of the rainforest’s delicate existential divide, cowboys on horseback round up cattle at the outer reaches of a vast ranch.
“We have no problem with them,” said Awapy Uru-eu-wau-wau, the young chief of the 19-person forest community in central Rondonia state.
A young woman from the Uru Eu Wau Wau tribe leaves a straw-thatched hut in the tribe’s reserve in the Amazon, south of Porto Velho, Brazil, Aug. 29, 2019.
It’s an uncommon expression of goodwill in an area where the worlds of rich landowners and indigenous tribes collide and jostle over the future of the planet’s largest rainforest.
The tribe’s resource-rich 1.8 million hectare native reserve — an area nearly twice the size of Lebanon — is under constant siege from landlords, timber traders, landowners and miners who rely on deforestation to exploit its bounty.
“I’ve been facing this invasion since I was 19 or 20, and these guys are threatenings because we’re standing up to them,” says Awapy, 38. “I’m not afraid of risking my life. It’s the only way.”
The few hundred inhabitants of the reserve, divided into seven hamlets, have a long history of resistance. To help surveil the forest and protect themselves, the self-styled guardians of nature mostly live along the boundaries of their territory, demarcated in the early 1990s.
Awapy’s village comprises half a dozen small dwellings, some of wood with a straw roof, others of cement with roofs of tile. The five families here live almost entirely off the jungle, where they venture daily to hunt and when necessary, to see off invaders — often organized groups — in confrontations that often turn violent, he says.
‘They deforest everything’
In this area south of the town of Porto Velho, fresh clearings and grasslands are evident from the air, signs of ever-advancing deforestation often heralded by the wildfires which have reverberated on a global scale in recent weeks.
A young boy from the Uru Eu Wau Wau tribe carries dead piglets to cook in the tribe’s reserve in the Amazon, south of Porto Velho, Brazil, Aug. 29, 2019.
The state’s absence from the ground has made areas like this a breeding ground for gangs and encourages occupation of land which often ends up being integrated into cattle farms, NGOs say.
Prosecutors have filed complaints against rural producers for having occupied, parcelled and sold land on this reserve and in other places.
The Uru-eu-wau-wau argue that the invaders feel protected since the arrival in power in January of President Jair Bolsonaro, who has supported the opening up of protected lands to agriculture and mining activities. He said at his inauguration that indigenous people needed to be integrated into society and not live in reserves “as if they were animals in a zoo.”
“It wasn’t like that in the past, but today they are deforesting everything,” said Awapy, in his “oca” or room used for family gatherings, surrounded by villagers lying in hammocks.
‘Beef, bible and bullets’
An hour-and-a-half away along a forest road, in the small town of Monte Negro, the agribusiness sector shows its muscle at a rodeo where around 20 cowboys display their talent by riding bulls for as many seconds as they can.
A rider competes during a rodeo event in Monte Negro, south of the Amazon basin, Rondonia state, Brazil, Aug. 30, 2019.
Dressed in Stetson hats, blue jeans and cowboy boots, they work at some of the area’s vast cattle ranches that have cut into the forest over decades.
The spectators enjoy the show and laugh loudly at an interlude sketch in which a clown chases a deer — a “veado” in Portuguese, which is also a disparaging term for homosexuals.
This is rural, conservative Brazil, a fiefdom of Bolsonarism, whose inhabitants belong to the “BBB” demographic. The “Beef, Bible and Bullet” set is the triumverate of powerful interests that helped sweep Boslonaro to power — the agribusiness sector, Evangelical churches, and the pro-arms lobby in Congress.
The landowners, arrogant and circumspect to outsiders, are accused by environmental activists of being partly responsible for spreading ruin in the Amazon, profiteering to the detriment of public lands and indigenous reserves.
They maintain they respect the boundaries of their lands, claim their right to develop it and recall the importance of agricultural expansion for the Brazilian economy.
‘The Amazon is ours’
“People have to respect the fact that what is reserve is reserve, what is indigenous is indigenous,” said Marconi Silvestre, owner of a farm in Monte Negro and organizer of the rodeo.
Another owner who came to the show to sell breeding bulls says privately that the indigenous people themselves deforest and sell wood and land.
“They are doing the same thing that Pedro Alvares Cabral did when he arrived,” he said, referring to the Portuguese pioneer who, in 1500, landed on the coast of the future Brazil. “They are exchanging wealth for mirrors.”
Several landowners here claimed the media exaggerated the reach of the wildfires and mocked French President Emmanuel Macron, who last month called for “internationalizing” protection of the Amazon rainforest.
One of the landowners said: “The Amazon is ours. Tell that to Macron!”
US officials on Tuesday declared New York’s worst measles epidemic in nearly 30 years officially over after months of emergency measures that included mandatory vaccinations.
About 654 people, many in areas with large Orthodox Jewish communities, were infected since October last year but there have been no new cases since mid-July, the city government said.
The official end of the outbreak, 42 days since the last reported case, comes before the start of the US financial capital’s new school year Thursday.
Schools and nurseries were the focal points of government efforts to stop the spread of the disease.
“To keep our children and communities safe, I urge all New Yorkers to get vaccinated. It’s the best defense we have,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement.
Authorities declared measles eliminated in the United States in 2000 but there have been 1,234 cases of the potentially deadly disease reported in the country this year, the worst since 1992 according to the Center for Disease Control.
The rise comes as a growing anti-vaccine movement gains steam around the world, driven by fraudulent claims linking the MMR vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella, to a risk of autism in children.
New York city officials made vaccinations mandatory in the worst affected areas in April to help stem the epidemic. Schools were also allowed to turn away children who had not been vaccinated.
Those measures have been lifted, but a New York state law passed in June outlawing religious exemptions that had allowed parents to circumvent school-mandated vaccination remains in place.
“There may no longer be local transmission of measles in New York City, but the threat remains given other outbreaks in the US and around the world,” said New York’s health commissioner Oxiris Barbot.
The city government spent over $6 million and mobilized more than 500 employees to fight the outbreak.
Last month, the World Health Organization said there were 89,994 cases of measles in 48 European countries in the first six months of 2019.
That was more than double the number in the same period in 2018 when there were 44,175 cases, and already more than the 84,462 cases reported for all of 2018.
