Satellite view of Ida Saturday night. (NOAA)
“Hurricane Ida strengthened to a major hurricane early Sunday as it churned ever closer to crashing ashore along the Louisiana coast Sunday afternoon.
The Category 4 storm’s peak winds leaped to 130 mph early Sunday. The National Hurricane Center said the ‘dangerous’ hurricane is predicted to wallop New Orleans on the 16-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and threatens numerous other population centers along the northern Gulf Coast and hundreds of miles inland.
The storm’s track has shifted to the east, increasing the possibility that the storm’s core of dangerous hurricane-force winds batters New Orleans.
The powerhouse storm will push ashore an ‘extremely life-threatening’ ocean surge of up to 10 to 15 feet above normally dry land at the coast in southeast Louisiana, the Hurricane Center warned. ‘Catastrophic wind damage’ is possible close to where the storm comes ashore while ‘considerable’ inland flooding from up to 20 inches of rain is also predicted.” Read more at Washington Post
“Thousands of people marched on Saturday to mark the 58th anniversary of the historic March on Washington and voice their support for expanding and protecting access to the ballot.
The crowd cheered, sang and danced in the streets on the way to the National Mall while calling on Congress to pass an extensive voting rights measure and eliminate the filibuster if necessary to do so. The marchers, though fewer than in years past, also demanded D.C. statehood and an end to police brutality.” Read more at Washington Post
Members of the Badri 313 Battalion, a group of Taliban special forces fighters, securing Kabul’s international airport and the surrounding area on Saturday.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
“The sweeping international effort to evacuate thousands of vulnerable Afghans and foreign nationals from Kabul’s airport neared completion on Saturday as the United States continued to withdraw its remaining troops from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan after carrying out a retaliatory airstrike in response to a devastating terrorist attack.
Britain planned to end the evacuation of its citizens on Saturday and to begin bringing its remaining troops home, Gen. Nick Carter, the chief of the defense staff, told the BBC’s Radio 4. More American troops have also begun getting on planes and leaving. A military official said on Saturday that there were around 4,000 U.S. troops in Kabul, down from 5,800a few days ago.
The official’s comment came just as President Biden warned that “an attack is highly likely in the next 24 to 36 hours.” Early Sunday morning in Kabul, the United States Embassy warned of a ‘specific, credible threat’ to the airport area and urged all American citizens there to leave immediately.
The troop departures signaled a tumultuous end to a 20-year war that has left the country awash in grief and desperation, with many Afghans fearing for their lives under Taliban rule and struggling with cash shortages and rising food prices.
‘We haven’t been able to bring everybody out and that has been heartbreaking,’ General Carter told the BBC. ‘There have been some very challenging judgments that have had to be made on the ground.’” Read more at New York Times
“President Biden is planning to withdraw the U.S. ambassador and all diplomatic staff in Afghanistan by Tuesday, and it is unclear when — or if — they might return to the country, according to two U.S. officials.
Despite the Taliban’s expressed interest in having the United States maintain a diplomatic mission in Kabul, the Biden administration has not made a final decision about what a future presence might look like. On Friday, State Department spokesman Ned Price said the Biden administration is ‘actively discussing’‘the Taliban’s request with U.S. allies and partners in the region — but the United States has not yet engaged directly with the Taliban to discuss what form a diplomatic mission might take, according to one U.S. official who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive policy deliberations.
The lack of a set plan all but ensures that the United States’ diplomatic presence in Kabul will lapse for weeks, months or even longer — potentially complicating the Biden administration’s ability to make good on recent assurances that although the U.S. military is departing the country by Tuesday, the United States will continue to help Americans and Afghans who want to leave after they are gone.” Read more at Washington Post
“Former Theranos chief executive Elizabeth Holmes is likely to argue in her criminal trial that abuse by her ex-boyfriend, who was the company’s president, rendered her incapable of making her own decisions, according to documents unsealed in the case early Saturday morning.
Holmes, who started Theranos when she was a 19-year-old student at Stanford University, is charged with 10 counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for allegedly defrauding investors and patients in connection to her failed blood-testing firm. Jury selection is scheduled to begin on Aug. 31, with the trial starting Sept. 8.
The unusual defense strategy in one the highest-profile corporate trials in years offers clearer details on how Holmes plans to frame the implosion of a company that was once one of the industry’s start-up darlings. Holmes graced magazine covers and regularly appeared on business television programs while Theranos took in hundreds of millions of dollars from household-name investors such as Rupert Murdoch and Betsy DeVos. But her fall, after a 2015 Wall Street Journal investigation showed the company’s technology was unreliable, led to the many claims of fraud.
Elizabeth Holmes, founder of blood-testing company Theranos, indicted on wire fraud charges
Several of the newly unsealed documents relate to the successful efforts by Holmes’s ex-boyfriend, Ramesh ‘Sunny’ Balwani, to separate his trial from hers. Holmes’s plans to argue intimate partner violence as a defense would prevent him from receiving a fair trial if the cases were joined, Balwani’s lawyers argued in the documents.” Read more at Washington Post
“MIAMI — The unexpected and unwelcome coronavirus surge now unfolding in the United States has hit hardest in states that were slow to embrace vaccines. And then there is Florida.
While leaders in that state also refused lockdowns and mask orders, they made it a priority to vaccinate vulnerable older people. Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, opened mass vaccination sites and sent teams to retirement communities and nursing homes. Younger people also lined up for shots.
Mr. DeSantis and public health experts expected a rise in cases this summer as people gathered indoors in the air-conditioning. But what happened was much worse: Cases spiraled out of control, reaching peaks higher than Florida had seen before. Hospitalizations followed. So did deaths, which are considerably higher than the numbers currently reached anywhere else in the country.” Read more at New York Times
“Two young men in Japan died after recently receiving shots of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine that were among more than 1.6 million doses subsequently pulled by the country’s government following the discovery of unspecified ‘particle matter,’ the Cambridge biotech said Saturday.
Both men were in their 30s and died this month within days of receiving their second doses, according to a Reuters report.
Each had a shot from one of three lots containing more than 1.6 million doses that were pulled Thursday following the discovery of contaminants traced to one product manufacturing lot, said Ray Jordan, a Moderna spokesman. They had gotten shots from one or two of the lots that were later suspended as a precaution, not the one identified as tainted.” Read more at Boston Globe
“Tens of millions of older Americans who cannot afford dental care — with severe consequences for their overall health, what they eat and even when they smile — may soon get help as Democrats maneuver to add dental benefits to Medicare for the first time in its history.
The proposal, part of the large budget bill moving through Congress, would be among the largest changes to Medicare since its creation in 1965 but would require overcoming resistance from dentists themselves, who are worried that it would pay them too little.” Read more at New York Times
“Across Britain, a slow-burning problem has ignited into a supply chain crisis in recent weeks as restaurants, supermarkets and food manufacturers warned customers that some popular products may be temporarily unavailable because of a shortage of truck drivers.
McDonald’s milkshakes, Nando’s chicken, Haribo sweets and supermarket milk are among the items that have become scarce in Britain over the summer. But it goes far beyond food: Nearly every industry is complaining about delivery problems. And already organizations are warning that logistics issues could upend the arrival of Christmas toys and the trimmings crucial to family holiday meals.
A long-running shortage of truck drivers has been exacerbated by a post-Brexit exodus of European Union workers. Adding to the problem are disruptions to training for new drivers because of the pandemic. And for years, the trucking industry has struggled to attract new workers to a job that has traditionally been low paid and required long, grueling hours.” Read more at New York Times
The historian Stephen B. Oates’s many acclaimed books included a biography of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.Credit...Right: University of Massachusetts, via Associated Press
“Stephen B. Oates, a Civil War historian and the biographer of several prominent Americans, including Abraham Lincoln, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and William Faulkner, died on Aug. 20 at his home in Amherst, Mass. He was 85.
His son, Greg, said the cause was pancreatic cancer.
In his best-known works, Dr. Oates explored the lives of four prominent figures — John Brown, Nat Turner, Lincoln and Dr. King — in what he called his ‘Civil War quartet.’” Read more at New York Times
Caleb Wallace addressed a public meeting in the city of San Angelo, Texas, in November.Credit...City of San Angelo, Texas
“Caleb Wallace, a leader of the anti-mask movement in central Texas who became infected with the coronavirus and spent three weeks in an intensive care unit, has died, his wife, Jessica, said on Saturday.
‘Caleb has peacefully passed on. He will forever live in our hearts and minds,’ Mrs. Wallace wrote in a post on GoFundMe, where she had been raising money to cover medical costs.
Mrs. Wallace had said recently that her husband’s condition was declining and that doctors had run out of treatment options. On Saturday, he was to be moved to a hospice at Shannon Medical Center in the city of San Angelo so that his family could say their goodbyes, she said.
Mrs. Wallace, who is pregnant with the couple’s fourth child, recently told the San Angelo Standard-Times that when her husband first felt ill, he took a mix of vitamin C, zinc, aspirin and ivermectin — a drug typically used to treat parasitic worms in both people and animals that has been touted as a coronavirus treatment but was recently proved to be ineffective against the virus.
Mr. Wallace, 30, who campaigned against mask mandates and other Covid policies that he saw as government intrusion, lived in San Angelo for most of his life and worked at a company that sells welding equipment. He checked into the Shannon Medical Center on July 30.
Earlier that month, Mr. Wallace had organized a ‘Freedom Rally’ for people who were ‘sick of the government being in control of our lives.’
He founded the San Angelo Freedom Defenders, a group that hosted a rally to end what it called ‘Covid-19 tyranny’ according to a YouTube interview.
Mrs. Wallace had said her husband respected her own decision to wear a mask. ‘We joked around about how he was on one side and I was on the other, and that’s what made us the perfect couple and we balanced each other out,’ she told the San Angelo Standard-Times.
She added that her three children are up-to-date on their vaccines and that she herself planned to get a coronavirus vaccine after the birth of her baby in late September. ‘We are not anti-vaxxers,’ she said.
Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations have been on the rise in Texas over the past few weeks. In Tom Green County, which includes the San Angelo area, cases have increased by 50 percent over the past two weeks, and hospitalizations have risen by 33 percent, according to a New York Times database.
At Shannon Medical Center, the intensive care unit is about 70 percent occupied, according to a New York Times tracker. The U.S. average of I.C.U. occupancy is about 68 percent, while the state average in Texas is 94 percent.” Read more at New York Times