August 2020

August 31, 2020

World Bank: Lebanon blast caused damage up to $4.6 billionThe massive explosion in Beirut earlier this month that killed and injured thousands of people has caused up to $4.6 billion in physical damage, the World Bank said in a report released Monday. The Aug. 4 blast was caused by the explosion of nearly 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate stored at the Port of Beirut since 2014. The blast was the most destructive single incident in Lebanon’s history with thousands of buildings, including residential homes, hospitals, schools and museums suffering considerable damage.




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August 31, 2020

John Oliver rains fire and cold fury on the RNC 'racial panic' and the Kenosha troublesThis week's Last Week Tonight was, unusually, about things that happened last week, "and the reason we're doing that is that this has been one hell of a week," John Oliver explained Sunday night. "Tonight we're going to talk about two things in particular: The Republican National Convention, and the horrific events in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where Jacob Blake was repeatedly shot in the back by police and a vigilante killed two people."Kimberly Guilfoyle's loud RNC speech "very much set the tone for the week," Oliver said. "The main theme of the convention seemed to be 'Telling Lies in Front of Flags,' because it was four days of a full-throated denial of objective reality," Oliver continued -- most significantly the assertions that COVID-19 and racism are things of the past."A lot of the RNC's messaging on race seemed intended not so much to win over Black voters as to reassure white people that they could vote Republican without being racist," even as the GOP served up a "steady diet of barely disguised racial panic," Oliver said. That brought him to Kenosha, and the Fox News response: "Let's be clear: A 17-year-old vigilante with a rifle cannot maintain order, because a 17-year-old vigilante with a rifle trying to maintain order is himself the definition of disorder -- except, of course, if you're a regular viewer of Tucker Carlson, a show that exists to teach its viewers precisely three things: property damage is violence, homicide is order, and pillows are for sale."The police shooting of Blake and excuses for the white vigilante offer a clear "visual illustration of the differences between being Black and white in America," Oliver said, and "it's somehow especially infuriating" that the events in Kenosha happened concurrently with the RNC's simultaneous denial of racism and stoking of racial violence.The "exhaustively depressing" reminders of racism were lightened a bit by the "genuinely extraordinary" NBA walkout, Oliver said. "History has repeatedly shown us the system does not respond until it is forced to," and "real discomfort is the only thing that's going to bring about real change here." Voting won't be nearly enough, he said, "because as much as I or the RNC would like to believe that Joe Biden will be an agent of radical change, there's just no reason to believe that." He ended on a fiery, NSFW note, and you can watch below. More stories from theweek.com Data firm predicts election 'chaos' as Trump seems to win in a landslide before losing as more votes are counted Ron Jeremy hit with 20 more sexual assault charges involving 13 women Pandemic adviser with no epidemiology background reportedly pushes White House to adopt herd immunity strategy




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August 31, 2020

Worth the wait: Yellowstone’s Giantess Geyser erupts for first time in six yearsGiantess is one of the biggest geysers in the national park, and typically explodes between twice and six times a year In these troubled times there comes a point where we all need to let off steam.For this huge geyser in Yellowstone park, the moment was now and the eruption was spectacular, after a six-year wait.But, for the rest of us, watching this natural phenomenon is strangely meditative and beautifully distracting from much of the bad news around, despite the violent geothermal forces propelling it.Giantess Geyser spouted for the first time in more than six years in Yellowstone National Park, which straddles part of Wyoming and a little of Montana, on 25 August, according to the US National Park Service (NPS).“She” has more typically erupted between twice and six times a year in the past, according to the NPS website, and blasts a spout up to 200ft high.“The surrounding area may shake from underground steam explosions just before the initial water and/or steam eruptions,” the NPS website adds.Giantess is one of the biggest geysers in the park, alongside phenomena such as the super-tall Steamboat geyser, the largest active geyser in the world, and the park’s most famous, Old Faithful, renowned for its punctual regularity as it soars from the ground about 20 times a day.Colorful hot spring features in the park include the blue-hued Morning Glory Pool and the psychedelic Grand Prismatic spring, as well as whiffy, sulfurous bubblers and roiling natural pots of scalding hot water fizzing out of the rocks.The features are among more than 10,000 hot springs and geysers in the park, a Unesco world heritage site.




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August 30, 2020

Mauritius fishermen battle to save dozens of dolphins near oil spillYasfeer Heenaye, a fisherman near Pointe aux Feuilles on the island's eastern shore, said he had counted at least 45 dead dolphins since they were first discovered on Wednesday, and said half a dozen more dolphins were in the bay fighting for their lives. "The preliminary autopsy report has excluded that oil played a role, however we sent some samples of the dead dolphins to La Reunion to determine why the animals couldn't swim and their radar wasn't functioning," Jasvin Sok Appadu from the Fisheries Ministry said on Sunday .




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August 30, 2020

China restaurant collapses during birthday party, killing 29Rescue efforts ended at a two-story restaurant in a northern Chinese village that collapsed during a local resident's 80th birthday celebration, leaving 29 people dead, authorities said Sunday. The Ministry of Emergency Management said another 28 people were injured, seven of them seriously, when the building suddenly crumbled on Saturday. Hundreds of rescue workers using sniffer dogs, cranes and high-tech sensors had searched the rubble, lifting slabs of concrete in hopes of freeing survivors.




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August 30, 2020

Germany's president condemns far-right Reichstag demonstration as an 'attack on democracy'Germany’s president condemned an “unacceptable attack on the heart of our democracy” on Sunday, after far-right activists broke into the grounds of the Reichstag, the seat of the German parliament. The incident occurred after a demonstration against coronavirus measures on Saturday, attended by some 40,000 people. Early Saturday evening activists carrying the black, white and red-striped flag of the Kaiser era broke through barricades separating the Reichstag from the march. Video clips show a stream of demonstrators run up the steps of the building before gathering in front of the doors. Riot police then step in to ensure that demonstrators did not attempt to enter the building. “We will never accept this,” said President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. “The Reichstag is our house of parliament and thus the symbolic centre of our free democracy - that it’s been abused by extremists is unacceptable,” added Interior Minister Horst Seehofer.




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August 30, 2020

Rally supporting police draws scores to downtown KenoshaScores of police supporters gathered Sunday in downtown Kenosha where protesters have been demonstrating against police brutality since the shooting of Jacob Blake last weekend. A Kenosha police officer shot Blake in the back Aug. 23, leaving the 29-year-old Black man paralyzed. Protesters have marched in Kenosha every night since Blake’s shooting, with some protests devolving into unrest that damaged buildings and vehicles.




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August 30, 2020

India sets global record with single-day rise in coronavirus casesIndia on Sunday reported the biggest single-day jump in coronavirus infections of any nation in the COVID-19 pandemic, as the epicentre shifts to the south Asian giant. India's 78,761 cases exceeded the 77,299 recorded in the United States on July 16, a Reuters tally of official data showed. The world's second-most populous nation is, with 3.54 million cases, the third-hardest hit by the pandemic, following the United States and Brazil, but its daily tallies have exceeded those of the other two countries for almost two weeks.




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August 30, 2020

Joe Biden to go on the road again as poll lead shrinksWith his poll lead narrowing, Joe Biden is ready to campaign in person after months of being hunkered down in his Delaware basement because of the coronavirus pandemic. The former vice-president will go on the road after the September 7 Labour Day public holiday in the US. No itinerary has been set, but Mr Biden is expected to visit key swing states including Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Urban unrest and an aggressive performance by Donald Trump at last week’s Republican National Convention have cut Mr Biden’s lead by several points. According to Morning Consult, Mr Biden now has a six-point lead over the president, compared with 10 points before the Republican convention. Other polls have shown Mr Trump edging into the lead in two pivotal states: Michigan and Wisconsin.




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August 30, 2020

'7 bullets, 7 days': Protesters march for Blake in KenoshaWith chants of “One person, one vote!" and "No justice, no peace!” a crowd of about 1,000 demonstrators gathered outside a Wisconsin courthouse Saturday to denounce police violence and share messages of change, a week after an officer shot Jacob Blake in the back and left the 29-year-old Black man paralyzed. The diverse group of protesters also chanted “Seven bullets, seven days!” — a reference to the number of times Blake was shot last Sunday — as they marched toward the courthouse in Kenosha. There, Blake's father, Jacob Blake Sr., gave an impassioned call for changing a system he described as fostering police brutality and racial inequities.




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August 29, 2020

'How dare we not vote?' Black voters organize after DC marchTears streamed down Brooke Moreland’s face as she watched tens of thousands gather on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to decry systemic racism and demand racial justice in the wake of several police killings of Black Americans. As the campaign enters its latter stages, there's an intensifying effort among African Americans to transform frustration over police brutality, systemic racism and the disproportionate toll of the coronavirus into political power.




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August 29, 2020

A Sick President Scrambles to Spread His Contagion of FearBefore last night’s neon obscenity—a Trump rally on the South Lawn of the American White House—the 2020 Republican National Convention was close to cartoonish in its attempt to scare the country into voting for Donald J. Trump. It began as dark comedy with a cast of family members, supplicants, incompetents, political ne’er do wells and loud worshippers of a guy who never really believed he’d win on that long-gone night in November 2016 but now thinks he belongs on Mount Rushmore. As each day melted into the next, though, there were no laugh-lines. Only the specter of a dark hand with a gun and a knock on your door, the mob empowered by Democrat radicals come to take your life, your dreams. By the time that Donald emerged from the White House—think about it, the White House—to deliver his convention speech on Thursday night, you could feel the nuts and bolts holding together this nearly 245-year-old republic loosening with each assault on a form of government that has stood through civil war, depressions, injustice and the stain of racism. Now here he was, an accidental president who stumbled into the job and is scrambling to hold on to it, despite the disasters on his watch. He is an expert on very few things but is a genius in recognizing the disease of resentment and bitterness in people who feel left behind and left out. Trump is a social arsonist who sets the fire and is warmed watching it grow.Ivanka Wants to Brag About Results? How About 180,000 Dead PeopleMaking fear contagious is his specialty. He does not dwell on the virus that attacked America while he denied it, the racial disparities he barely acknowledges, the millions of unemployed who have lost jobs, hope and a piece of dignity. It is what it is.This Republican week was about race. It was about denial. It was about ignorance, all of it piled on the embers of fear that Trump, his acolytes, his enablers in the Senate and House watched, witnessed, and stood by in silence as those sparkles turned into a bonfire.Much of what occurred was ugly, obscene and spitting on history, our history: Using the White House as a promotional prop; the smug secretary of State violating his office as he spoke from Jerusalem with the charm of something you could get in Aisle 5 of any Home Depot; two members of the Marine Corps, splendid in their summer ‘Blue-White’ uniforms, turned into door-openers for an ego so outsized Trump barely fit through the door they held open for him. Whatever he touches, whoever he touches, ends up stained.The week’s speeches and appearances were so much more of the sad and dangerous insanity that has imprisoned the Republican Party. It is now handcuffed in history to its leader—Trump—who has already badly damaged democracy leaving huge parts of our once functioning government in a debris field created and caused by the intentional crash landing of common sense, competence, morality, and accountability. Only he could do it!And then there was Trump himself, standing at a podium Thursday night alongside a gathering of American flags and in front of about 1,500 people, most of them without masks, who were there as part of a potential COVID super-spreader event. In a smaller-scale of the disastrous Arizona rally that Herman Cain attended, Trump got right to the big point of his re-election campaign: Let’s Make America Scared Again.“Your vote will decide whether we protect law-abiding Americans, or whether we give free reign to violent anarchists, agitators, and criminals who threaten our citizens,” he declared.“And this election will decide whether we will defend the American Way of Life or whether we allow a radical movement to completely dismantle and destroy it.”It was easy to shut your eyes and through the dust and fog of all the years see and hear Nixon tracking back and forth across the land in the fall of 1968, about how “the other” is coming for your way of life. People who do not look like you are the principal threat to you and your family.Last week, Michelle Obama addressed the Democratic convention and said: “If you think things cannot possibly get worse, trust me… they can and they will.”Last night and all through this week, you could watch and listen to the truth of her words. It was language built around demonization, defining danger in almost clear racial terms, denying and talking around nearly 180,000 virus deaths that Trump could not combat with only passing references to the millions of unemployed.As Trump spoke and midnight approached, you had a right to be scared.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.




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August 29, 2020

Does Kyle Rittenhouse Have a Self-Defense Claim?Kenosha, a city of 100,000 in Wisconsin’s southeastern corner, now confronts the question of when lethal force is justified in two different cases. One, the shooting of Jacob Blake by a police officer, I addressed yesterday. The other is the case of Kyle Rittenhouse, who is alleged to have killed two people and injured one during the civil unrest this week, and who has been charged with first-degree intentional homicide, reckless homicide, and other offenses.Rittenhouse is a 17-year-old from Antioch, Ill., about a half hour’s drive from Kenosha. Inexplicably, this underage police cadet from out of state wound up on the streets after curfew in a place where a riot was likely imminent, doing interviews with journalists and openly carrying an AR-15–style rifle.There can be no question that Rittenhouse and whatever adults were in charge of him made idiotic decisions. Minors should not stand guard at riots play-acting at being cops. But even people who knowingly put themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time are allowed to defend themselves against attack when they get there. So the biggest legal question is: Did Rittenhouse defend himself against attack with an appropriate amount of force, or were the people he shot the ones acting in self-defense by trying to disarm him?The very beginning of the situation is not on video that I am aware, but the complaint against Rittenhouse contains some key details from Richard McGinnis, a Daily Caller reporter who was interviewing Rittenhouse at the time:> McGinnis said that as they were walking south another armed male who appeared to be in his 30s joined them and said he was there to protect the defendant. McGinnis stated that before the defendant reached the parking lot and ran across it, the defendant had moved from the middle of Sheridan Road to the sidewalk and that is when McGinnis saw a male ([Joseph] Rosenbaum) initially try to engage the defendant. McGinnis stated that as the defendant was walking Rosenbaum was trying to get closer to the defendant. When Rosenbaum advanced, the defendant did a “juke” move and started running. McGinnis stated that there were other people that were moving very quickly. McGinnis stated that they were moving towards the defendant. McGinnis said that according to what he saw the defendant was trying to evade these individuals.After that, much of the situation was recorded, and the New York Times has done an excellent job of stitching the videos together. This Twitter thread from a co-author of the piece nicely explains the events and (for those willing to watch graphic footage) provides the key clips:> A teenager faces charges in shootings that left 2 people dead in Kenosha, WI. The @nytimes Visual Investigations team reviewed hours of livestreams to track 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse’s movements during and leading up to the shootings. [THREAD] https://t.co/FRCYlS5wgH> > -- Christiaan Triebert (@trbrtc) August 27, 2020 The first video starts with people already chasing Rittenhouse, one of whom throws something at him. One person even fires a handgun in the air — and another, Rosenbaum, charges at Rittenhouse, who shoots him. After that, there are more shots from an unknown source, and Rittenhouse calls a friend on his phone and leaves.But again he’s pursued, with some protesters urging others to join in, and this time he falls down. Several people move in on him, and he takes shots at three, hitting two. One is holding a handgun and survives a shot to the arm; the other has a skateboard and dies. Again there are additional mysterious gunshots after the fact.Obviously, a big unanswered question right now is how this all really got started. But as we wait for that information, let’s take a gander at the Wisconsin laws at issue.There are two extremes here: justifiable use of deadly force and first-degree intentional homicide. So let’s see what the law says about those two situations, bearing in mind that other charges can apply if Rittenhouse’s behavior fell in between them. (There are plenty of options: Rittenhouse is charged with reckless homicide for the first fatal shooting, first-degree intentional homicide for the second, and attempted first-degree intentional homicide for the nonfatal one, in addition to charges for reckless endangerment and bearing a dangerous weapon as a minor.)Quite typically for a U.S. state, Wisconsin allows civilian use of deadly force when one “reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm.” One major issue, then, will be whether Rittenhouse reasonably thought that the folks engaging with him meant to inflict serious injury, not just disarm him.But what if Rittenhouse provoked the confrontation to begin with? That’s bad for a claim of self-defense, but it doesn’t preclude one. Here’s another excerpt from the Wisconsin statute books:> (a) A person who engages in unlawful conduct of a type likely to provoke others to attack him or her and thereby does provoke an attack is not entitled to claim the privilege of self-defense against such attack, except when the attack which ensues is of a type causing the person engaging in the unlawful conduct to reasonably believe that he or she is in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm. In such a case, the person engaging in the unlawful conduct is privileged to act in self-defense, but the person is not privileged to resort to the use of force intended or likely to cause death to the person's assailant unless the person reasonably believes he or she has exhausted every other reasonable means to escape from or otherwise avoid death or great bodily harm at the hands of his or her assailant.> > (b) The privilege lost by provocation may be regained if the actor in good faith withdraws from the fight and gives adequate notice thereof to his or her assailant.> > (c) A person who provokes an attack, whether by lawful or unlawful conduct, with intent to use such an attack as an excuse to cause death or great bodily harm to his or her assailant is not entitled to claim the privilege of self-defense.So, even if Rittenhouse bears some responsibility for the initial conflict, he can still argue that he did everything he could to escape the situation and withdraw from the fight. Both shooting incidents began with him running away.Moving to the other extreme, to prove first-degree intentional homicide, prosecutors will have to show that Rittenhouse “cause[d] the death of another human being with intent to kill that person” and will have to disprove the existence of any “mitigating circumstances” the defense asserts. If the prosecution fails at the latter task, the offense is knocked down to the second degree.Mitigating circumstances include “adequate provocation,” meaning the victim did something “sufficient to cause complete lack of self-control in an ordinarily constituted person”; “unnecessary defensive force,” meaning Rittenhouse “believed he . . . was in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm and that the force used was necessary to defend [himself],” even though the belief was unreasonable; and “prevention of felony,” meaning he believed his actions were necessary to stop the “commission of a felony,” even though the belief was unreasonable. In other words, even if Rittenhouse unreasonably thought his actions were necessary, he can get the charge downgraded, though in that case he’ll still have committed a very serious offense.Rittenhouse is already a hero to some and a supervillain to others; in that sense, he is the Bernie Goetz of 2020. The highest charge against him strikes me as a stretch, but beyond that I don’t have any bold opinions yet. The outcome for each shooting will depend on whether Rittenhouse reasonably feared for his life, which in turn might depend on broader context we lack thus far — and even if all three shootings were justified, there are still firearms and reckless-endangerment charges for him to contend with.Where the f*** were this kid’s parents?




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