Rescuers shaken by 'blood and death' of India jet disaster

Indian authorities had practised for years for a jet overshooting the "table-top" runway at Kozhikode airport, but local resident Fazal Puthiyakath was not prepared for the "blood and death" of the real thing. The 32-year-old businessman and his neighbours were first on the scene after an Air India Express plane crashed over the runway down a 10-metre (35-foot) bank and broke in two during a fierce storm late Friday, killing 18 people and injuring more than 120. Kozhikode airport in southern India's Kerala state is considered a potential hazard because it has a "table-top" runway with a steep bank at either end.

The National Rifle Association faces its worst nightmare: accountability

The NRA is facing lawsuits and investigations for possible financial misconduct while losing the influence it once had on American leadership.

Dustin Johnson Leads the P.G.A. Championship, With Some Young Players Threatening

By BY BRIAN MURPHY from NYT Sports https://ift.tt/3gGqB17

Quotation of the Day: A New Cash Cow for Farmers: Turning the Chores Into Clicks

By Unknown Author from NYT Today’s Paper https://ift.tt/31w0h3D

Trump calls audience at his Bedminster golf club a 'peaceful protest'

President Trump said his audience of well-to-do supporters was involved in a “peaceful protest” and therefore did not need to adhere to state coronavirus guidelines prohibiting large gatherings.

A stranded tanker carrying 4,000 tons of fuel has breached and is leaking oil into the pristine, azure waters of the Indian Ocean

The MV Wakashio ran aground off Mauritius on July 25. Cracks emerged in the hull on Friday after the ship was battered by strong winds.

Exclusive: FAA employees report industry pressure, question agency safety push in survey

Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) safety employees reported facing "strong" external pressure from industry and raised alarms the agency does not always prioritize air safety, according to an independent survey seen by Reuters on Friday. The survey report gives ammunition to critics who argue in the aftermath of two fatal Boeing 737 MAX crashes that the U.S. aviation safety regulator has not done enough to insulate employees from industry pressure. The survey quoted one anonymous employee as saying that the message was, "Don't rock the boat with Boeing."

Michigan Gov. Whitmer met with Biden as running mate announcement nears

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has been said to still be among those under serious consideration for Biden's running mate.

Explosives expert: It's only a matter of time before human error leads to another Beirut blast

One of the world’s leading experts on ammonium nitrate told The Daily Telegraph: “It’s only a matter of time before something similar happens again.” Vyto Babrauskas, a fires and explosives forensics expert based in New York, said that there were tens of thousands sites around the world where the chemical was stored unsafely. He carried out an investigation into a disaster seven years ago in West, Texas where 15 died. About 2,750 tonnes ignited to devastate Beirut on Tuesday. In the UK, it is legal to store up to 1,250 tonnes. In the Texas disaster, only 30 tonnes went up.

Police Officer Fired After Allegedly Mishandling Explicit Photos of Slain University of Utah Student

The Salt Lake Tribune had reported that the officer had downloaded, shared and bragged about the photos

India landslide: Dozens feared dead after flooding in Kerala

Up to 20 houses are buried under debris in the state of Kerala, with rescue efforts under way.

Why a Black man from Louisiana is serving a life sentence for stealing hedge clippers

Louisiana's highest court won't review a life sentence for Fair Wayne Bryant, who was convicted of attempting to steal a pair of hedge clippers in 1997.

A roar, an explosion, then a blank: An L.A. Times reporter's ordeal in the Beirut blast

Los Angeles Times reporter Nabih Bulos was less than 500 yards from the center of the massive explosion in Beirut. He lived to tell the tale

County official uses racial slur, blames Black people for COVID-19 spread in Michigan

Locals are now calling for his resignation.

Fact check: Sex crimes by public officials not connected to Ghislaine Maxwell

Posts say sex crimes by dozens of public officials are connected to Ghislaine Maxwell, an associate of Jeffrey Epstein. But they're not.

The NRA Might Be Weakened. Gun Rights Voters Are Not.

And that presents a challenge for Democrats determined to press for gun control in a Biden administration.

France deploys teams to Mauritius as oil spill disaster worsens

France on Saturday dispatched aircraft and technical advisers from Reunion to Mauritius after the prime minister appealed for urgent assistance to contain a worsening oil spill polluting the island nation's famed reefs, lagoons and oceans. Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth declared "a state of environmental emergency" late Friday as oil spilled unabated into the coral reefs, lagoons and white-sand shores upon which Mauritius has built its reputation as a green tourism destination.

CIA analysts reportedly told the White House there's 'no evidence' the Chinese government has accessed TikTok data

Despite the report, President Trump still issued an executive order prohibiting US firms from doing business with TikTok's parent company ByteDance.

U.S. sanctions branded 'clowning actions' as Hong Kong vows it won't be intimidated

Beijing's top representative office in Hong Kong said on Saturday that sanctions imposed by Washington on senior Hong Kong and Chinese officials were "clowning actions" that would not frighten or intimidate Chinese people. Separately, the Hong Kong government said the sanctions were "shameless and despicable" and represented "blatant and barbaric" interference in China's internal affairs. The United States on Friday imposed sanctions on Luo Huining, the head of China's Liaison Office, as well as Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam and other current and former officials that Washington accuses of curtailing political freedoms in the global financial hub.

California Rep. Maxine Waters says Biden 'can't go home' without choosing a Black woman as his running mate

Biden's pick for vice president could come anytime now, and several Black women have been named as possible contenders.

Haunting image of Beirut destruction shows clock frozen at 6:09

"It stopped short, never to go again, when Beirut died," the photographer said.

Partisan divide among Americans who believe 'it is safe now' to reopen persists as COVID-19 cases rise, survey finds

Republicans and Democrats remain divided on when business and activities should reopen.

Postmaster general says Postal Service is not "slowing down election mail"

Louis DeJoy denied claims that the Postal Service is slowing down the delivery of election mail.

Portland's Black police chief says violent protesters have 'taken away from' the Black Lives Matter movement

While the protests in downtown Portland have largely been peaceful, there have been violent offshoots in other parts of the city this week.

Joe Arpaio Loses Arizona Primary to Reclaim His Old Job as Sheriff

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2 Black Staff Members Quit Bon Appétit as Tensions Over Race Continue

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Wealthy families are throwing a lifeline to distressed businesses.

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Former Angels Employee Charged in Pitcher’s Overdose Death

By BY CHRISTINA MORALES from NYT Sports https://ift.tt/2DpPRKW

Know Your Pandemic Schooling Options

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New York Is Positioned to Reopen Schools Safely, Health Experts Say

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How to Volunteer or Donate to Help Others This School Year

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What It’s Like to Be a Virtual N.B.A. Fan

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Bolivia está bloqueada, los manifestantes obstruyen el acceso a las ciudades

By BY MARÍA SILVIA TRIGO AND ANATOLY KURMANAEV from NYT en Español https://ift.tt/2XBDIcn

A roar, an explosion, then a blank: An L.A. Times reporter's ordeal in the Beirut blast

Los Angeles Times reporter Nabih Bulos was less than 500 yards from the center of the massive explosion in Beirut. He lived to tell the tale

US stops advising against global travel, but hits Mexico

DeSantis doesn’t want lucrative deal going to company that botched unemployment system

Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday slammed a potential new nine-figure contract between the state and the firm that built Florida’s dysfunctional unemployment system.

Partisan divide among Americans who believe 'it is safe now' to reopen persists as COVID-19 cases rise, survey finds

Republicans and Democrats remain divided on when business and activities should reopen.

Trump’s Last Gasp Could Be a Supreme Court Justice in January

Close your eyes and picture Jan. 3, 2021: The Capitol is teeming with 35 newly sworn-in Senators, four of whom have given the Democrats a 51-50 majority with the vice president-elect’s tie-breaking vote; Republican Senate rule has ended and, with their enlarged House majority, Democrats now control both branches of government for the first time in twelve years.President-elect Biden and his team are busy crafting an ambitious legislative program, dealing with transition tasks of agency appointments and anticipated judicial nominations and planning the upcoming inauguration. Democrats are happy. Exciting opportunity is in the air. But within a few days, the Democrats’ party crashes to a halt with the news that a Supreme Court opening has suddenly materialized, and the opening comes from the progressive wing of the court. The immediate assumption is that the 51-50 Democratic majority will ensure that a new nominee will reflect the judicial profile of her predecessor. Not so fast: Between Jan. 3 and Inauguration Day on Jan. 20, outgoing Vice President Mike Pence will still cast tie-breaking votes. And worse, Donald Trump is the undisputed president until noon on the 20th, able to nominate SCOTUS and other judicial nominees, all lifetime appointments.Here’s a Preview of America’s 2020 Nightmare if Trump LosesTrump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have quietly assembled a short list of conservative SCOTUS nominees, hoping for a vacancy to arise. Should the opening develop days before the November election, or during the transition period between the election and the Inauguration, Trump and McConnell would be ready to shove through their nominee within days. McConnell’s 2016 rebuke of Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the court—“Let the people decide!”—has been retooled to “We’re still in power!”As late as Jan. 3, Trump—rejected by American voters—and McConnell, stripped of his abusive leadership powers, would likely be prepared to ram through a SCOTUS nomination that would shift the court’s ideological balance to the far right for a generation to come.Should that opening occur before Jan. 3, McConnell would certainly use Senate rules and practices to schedule an up-or-down confirmation vote with his 53-47 Republican majority.  And even after the new 50-50 Senate is sworn in on Jan. 3, McConnell could potentially use Vice President Pence to break any Democratic effort to organize and prevent a Republican SCOTUS confirmation.A Far-Fetched Scenario?As long as the Senate has existed, tradition and bipartisan collegiality have smoothed the transfer of power from one party to the other after an election. Leaders of both parties hashed out committee apportionment, budgets, and so on, during the November-December transition period. The opening day schedule, introduction of priority legislation, and speeches has long been regulated by tradition. After the 2000 election and its resulting 50-50 split, outgoing Democratic leader Tom Daschle and incoming leader Trent Lott worked to ease partisan differences and hand the leadership reins to Republicans. But next Jan. 3 may be wildly different. If the November election results in a 50-50 split in the Senate—an entirely likely scenario, with four Democratic pickups and a loss in Alabama—emotions may be raw and even vindictive. The past four years of bitter division and personal hostilities have created a toxic Senate environment. This scenario has happened before, though with no dire results. After the 2000 election, with a split Senate, Al Gore provided the tie-breaking vote that gave Democrats the majority for the 17 days before George W. Bush’s Inauguration.Potholes in the Trump/McConnell PathSenate rules experts doubt that McConnell could attempt to force through a SCOTUS nominee in 17 days or less, citing a number of Senate procedural roadblocks, such as the requirement that a nomination must “lay over” for one week, and that the nomination must be voted out of the Judiciary Committee before Senate floor consideration. “The majority may be deterred from doing what they want by the institution’s inherited rules of procedure,” notes James Wallner, a senior fellow at the R Street Institute and former executive director of the Senate Steering Committee. “A last-minute effort to confirm a Supreme Court nominee would be extraordinary.”However, any Senate rule can be overridden by a simple Senate majority vote, a procedure that McConnell has aggressively invoked for the Kavanaugh and Gorsuch nominations. And until noon on Jan. 20, Mike Pence can, as president of the Senate, break any tie vote, and give Republicans a continued majority status to conduct committee business. Senate precedence has given vice presidents a wide berth to exercise that vote.The potential for a last-minute conservative SCOTUS appointment by a defeated Trump and defanged McConnell is real and frightening. Perhaps one or two Republican Senators would resist such a frantic power grab. Yet despite a handful of senators who have exhibited a willingness to rise above party and challenge Trump, 50 surviving Republicans may be willing to shove through another conservative justice, or a handful of lower court nominees at the last minute. Certainly an embittered, angry, loser Trump would love nothing more than to use his last days in the White House to deal Democrats a vicious blow.The only sure prevention of this nightmare rests in a Democratic wave election on Nov. 3 that ejects not only Trump and Pence from the White House, but at least five Republican incumbents as well.And for good measure, the surprise defeat of the Trump Senate enablers who have gotten us in this mess to start with.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.

Kerala plane crash: 17 dead after Air India plane breaks in two at Calicut

The plane had 190 people on board and was repatriating Indians stranded by the coronavirus crisis.

AP Exclusive: Woman is 1st in US to get 2nd face transplant

Carmen Blandin Tarleton, whose face was disfigured in an attack by her ex-husband, became the first American and only the second person globally to undergo the procedure after her first transplant began to fail six years after the operation. The transplant from an anonymous donor took place at Boston's Brigham and Women’s Hospital in July. The 52-year-old former nurse is expected to resume her normal routine, which all but ended when the first transplant failed a year ago.

Mauritius facing catastrophe as oil starts leaking from a shipwreck near pristine coral reefs

The island nation of Mauritius is facing an environmental crisis after a huge container ship ran aground and started to leak oil into an area home to some of the finest coral reefs in the world. Efforts to pump oil out of the ship have failed, and now there are fears that the carrier could start to break up, leading to an even greater leak and causing catastrophic damage on the island’s pristine coastline. “We are in an environmental crisis situation,” said the environment minister, Kavy Ramano, The carrier MV Wakashio, which belongs to a Japanese company and flew a Panamanian-flagged, was en route from China to Brazil when it ran aground near Pointe d’Esny on the island’s southeastern coast on 25 July. The vessel’s crew have been evacuated safely and the container was not carrying a cargo load when wrecked. However, the 1,000ft vessel was carrying 90 tonnes of lubricant oil, 200 tonnes of diesel and 3,800 tonnes of bunker fuel, according to local media outlets. Now the oil is spreading out of the ship rapidly, according to Sunil Dowarkasing, Greengate Consulting, a Mauritian environmental consultancy, who was on the beach in sight of wreck. “It’s really very bad because now despite all the measures, the oil has already reached the shores of Mauritius and polluted the shorelines. You can see fish dying. The situation is out of control,” Mr Dowarkasing told The Telegraph. Mr Dowarkasing said that the wreck was near four major wildlife and maritime sanctuaries, which contained flora and fauna unique to the island. He added that there was a 100-year-old ‘brain’ coral nearby in the Blue Bay Marine Park. “Thousands of species around the pristine lagoons of Blue Bay, Pointe d’Esny and Mahebourg are at risk of drowning in a sea of pollution, with dire consequences for Mauritius’ economy, food security and health,” Happy Khambule from Greenpeace Africa told The Telegraph in a statement. Mauritius, which lies some 600 miles east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, is a major tourist hotspot and tax haven for international corporations and African oligarchs. The country of 1.2m depends on its seas for food and for tourism, boasting some of the finest coral reefs in the world. The Mauritian government has asked the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion for assistance. “This is the first time that we are faced with a catastrophe of this kind and we are insufficiently equipped to handle this problem,” said fishing minister, Sudheer Maudhoo.

Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf: Federal officers in Portland 'are not the Gestapo, storm troopers or thugs'

Oregon officials say the federal government's presence in the city fueled violence, and civil liberties experts raised concerns.

Germany will test all arrivals from 'risky' countries like the US as daily new cases top 1,000 for the first time in 3 months

Germany will test arrivals from most countries outside of the EU in a bid to avoid another escalation in Covid-19 infections.

Negotiators fail to reach deal in coronavirus relief talks

Trump is expected to issue a series of contentious executive orders amid the stalemate.

ICE detained hundreds of Mississippi chicken plant workers. Now managers are charged

The indictments mark the first criminal action prosecutors have taken against company managers after ICE took close to 700 workers into custody last year during a massive raid on food processing plants.

Texas cancer researcher murdered on jog

A cancer researcher and mother of two is murdered on her daily jog; Sarmistha Sen was found dead near a creek in Plano, Texas.

President Trump flips on his longstanding attitude toward mail-in ballots

President Trump has repeatedly denounced mail-in ballots, but he is changing his tune for Florida. Weijia Jiang reports.

Beirut port officials arrested following deadly blasts

At least 137 people were killed and over 5,000 were injured in the explosions.

Pelosi rips Trump for 'degrading' plan to give nomination acceptance speech from the White House

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has sharply criticised Donald Trump for suggesting he will "probably" accept the Republican presidential nomination in a speech at the White House, an unprecedented move that could open Trump administration aides up to an array of federal ethics crimes."You don't have political events at the White House," Ms Pelosi, the longtime California Democrat, said in an interview with MSNBC on Wednesday. "You can't do it."

Letters to the Editor: Heads up, Joe Biden — Kamala Harris has always been campaigning for her next job

Kamala Harris is the junior senator from California, so what has she done for our state?

El estrés de que tu boda se convierta en un evento de propagación de coronavirus

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