INCLUDING TRUMPS YOUNGER BROTHER
COVID death toll tops 170,000 in America — but Trump spent Saturday golfing with ex-NFL kicker
on August 15, 2020
By Bob Brigham

Donald Trump and Jay Feely (Twitter)

The coronavirus death toll in America crossed 170,000 on Saturday, NBC News reported.

The president of the United States was not in Washington, DC to respond to the pandemic or work to revive stalled negotiations over an additional stimulus bill, but was instead spending another weekend golfing at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster.

HuffPost White House reporter S.V. Dáte, who has been tracking Trump’s time on the links, reports it was Trump’s 86th day golfing at Bedminster, with 269 total days spent at golf course out of Trump’s 1,304 days in office.

Dáte noted that since the reports of Russia paying bounties broke, Trump has spent 14 days golfing while only having 4 days with his daily intelligence briefing on the schedule.
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Jay Feely, a former football kicker, posted a photo with the Donald Trump on Saturday, saying that he was golfing with the president during the pandemic. The photo features Trump wearing a red hat with “Make America Great Again” in large letters.

Had the distinct honor to play golf today with @POTUS and be his partner!

Truly enjoyed talking about our families, politics and his earnest desires for our great country.

he’s still got game. pic.twitter.com/h25q446Stb
— Jay Feely (@jayfeely) August 15, 2020

Feehy, who played arena football after college, was a Pro Bowl alternate for the NY Giants in 2005.

This was not the first eyebrow-raising photo Feely has posted on Twitter. In 2018, criticized for posting a prom photo with a gun.

Wishing my beautiful daughter and her date a great time at prom #BadBoys pic.twitter.com/T5JRZQYq9e
— Jay Feely (@jayfeely) April 22, 2018


President announces his younger brother Robert Trump has died: ‘He was my best friend’

TRUMP HAS NO FRIENDS

Published on August 15, 2020 By Bob Brigham

Donald Trump and Robert Trump (Twitter)

The White House announced Saturday evening that the president’s younger brother, Robert Trump, has passed away.

“It is with heavy heart I share that my wonderful brother, Robert, peacefully passed away tonight,” Trump said in a statement.

“He was not just my brother, he was my best friend,” Trump claimed.

“He will be greatly missed, but we will meet again. His memory will live on in my heart forever. Robert, I love you. Rest in peace,” Trump wrote.

Trump visited his brother in a New York hospital on Friday while en route to his Bedminster Golf Club, where he spend Saturday golfing as the COVID-19 death toll crossed 170,000.

No cause of death was listed in the statement released by the White House. Trump was asked why his brother had been hospitalized but did not answer the question.

BECAUSE HE WAS HOSPITALIZED WITH CORONAVIRUS AKA TRUMPVIRUS

Robert Trump, the president’s younger brother, dead at 71
By JIM MUSTIAN today

 In this Nov. 3, 1999, file photo, Robert Trump, left, joins then real estate developer and presidential hopeful Donald Trump at an event in New York. President Donald Trump's younger brother, Robert Trump, a businessman known for an even keel that seemed almost incompatible with the family name, died Saturday night, Aug. 15, 2020, after being hospitalized in New York, the president said in a statement. He was 71. The president visited his brother at a New York City hospital Friday after White House officials said Robert Trump had become seriously ill. (AP Photo/Diane Bonadreff, File)


NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump’s younger brother, Robert Trump, a businessman known for an even keel that seemed almost incompatible with the family name, died Saturday night after being hospitalized in New York, the president said in a statement. He was 71.

The president visited his brother at a New York City hospital on Friday after White House officials said he had become seriously ill. Officials did not immediately release a cause of death.

“It is with heavy heart I share that my wonderful brother, Robert, peacefully passed away tonight,” Donald Trump said in a statement. “He was not just my brother, he was my best friend. He will be greatly missed, but we will meet again. His memory will live on in my heart forever. Robert, I love you. Rest in peace.”

The youngest of the Trump siblings had remained close to the 74-year-old president and, as recently as June, filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Trump family that unsuccessfully sought to stop publication of a tell-all book by the president’s niece, Mary.

Robert Trump had reportedly been hospitalized in the intensive care unit for several days that same month.

Both longtime businessmen, Robert and Donald had strikingly different personalities. Donald Trump once described his younger brother as “much quieter and easygoing than I am,” and “the only guy in my life whom I ever call ‘honey.’”

Robert Trump began his career on Wall Street working in corporate finance but later joined the family business, managing real estate holdings as a top executive in the Trump Organization.

“When he worked in the Trump Organization, he was known as the nice Trump,” Gwenda Blair, a Trump family biographer, told The Associated Press. “Robert was the one people would try to get to intervene if there was a problem.”

Robert Stewart Trump was born in 1948, the youngest of New York City real estate developer Fred Trump’s five children.

The president, more than two years older than Robert, admittedly bullied his brother in their younger years, even as he praised his loyalty and laid-back demeanor.

“I think it must be hard to have me for a brother but he’s never said anything about it and we’re very close,” Donald Trump wrote in his 1987 bestseller “The Art of the Deal.”

“Robert gets along with almost everyone,” he added, “which is great for me since I sometimes have to be the bad guy.”

In the 1980s, Donald Trump tapped Robert Trump to oversee an Atlantic City casino project, calling him the perfect fit for the job. When it cannibalized his other casinos, though, “he pointed the finger of blame at Robert,” said Blair, author of “The Trumps: Three Generations that Built an Empire.”

“When the slot machines jammed the opening weekend at the Taj Mahal, he very specifically and furiously denounced Robert, and Robert walked out and never worked for his brother again,” Blair said.

A Boston University graduate, Robert Trump later managed the Brooklyn portion of father Fred Trump’s real estate empire, which was eventually sold.

Once a regular boldface name in Manhattan’s social pages, Robert Trump had kept a lower profile in recent years. “He was not a newsmaker,” Blair said.

Before divorcing his first wife, Blaine Trump, more than a decade ago, Robert Trump had been active on Manhattan’s Upper East Side charity circuit.

He avoided the limelight during his elder brother’s presidency, having retired to the Hudson Valley. But he described himself as a big supporter of the White House run in a 2016 interview with the New York Post.

“I support Donald one thousand percent,” Robert Trump said.

In early March of 2020, he married his longtime girlfriend, Ann Marie Pallan.

The eldest Trump sibling and Mary’s father, Fred Trump Jr., struggled with alcoholism and died in 1981 at the age of 43. The president’s surviving siblings include Elizabeth Trump Grau and Maryanne Trump Barry, a retired federal appeals judge.

Authors Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher described Robert Trump as soft spoken but cerebral in “Trump Revealed: The Definitive Biography of the 45th President”: “He lacked Donald’s charismatic showmanship, and he was happy to leave the bravado to his brother, but he could show flashes of Trump temper.”

___

AP researcher Jennifer Farrar contributed to this report from New York.

Trump’s Ex-Wife and a Kennedy Push Wild Bill Gates Coronavirus Conspiracy
GET A GRIP

Astrid Stawiarz/Getty

The president’s second wife, Marla Maples, and anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are pushing a wacky conspiracy theory involving Bill Gates, chip implants, and a COVID-19 vaccine.

Tarpley Hitt
Reporter
Updated Aug. 15, 2020

Thursday afternoon, Marla Maples, the television personality best known as Donald Trump’s second wife, shared an Instagram photo from notorious anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates cracking up like a cartoon villain. “We get rid of cash and coins,” the overlaid text reads. “We give you a chip. We put all your money in your chip. If you refuse a vaccine, we turn off the chip and you starve!”

“Education is key...Ask questions...Dig deeper…,” Maples wrote over the Instagram Story, which bore the vague header: “The digitalized economy?” If users dug deeper, clicking through to the original post, they could find two clips from an uncited video. The footage splices clips of Bill Gates talking about access to vaccination—playing, for unclear reasons, on a vintage IBM monitor—with disembodied commentary accusing the Microsoft co-founder of seeking “control over our identities...control over our transactions...and even control over our bodies.”


Instagram

Maples, who dabbles in wellness influencing, has periodically mentioned the global pandemic to her Instagram following of 114,000—recommending Vitamin C IV drips, morning prayer, and an idiosyncratic hand-washing method in which she pours a mug of water on her hands without soap. But Tiffany Trump’s mother has stayed largely quiet on the political dimensions of the virus, including how her ex-husband has handled it. Her Thursday post, spotted by CNN’s Betsy Klein, fed into the unfounded, but widely-held belief that Bill Gates has hatched a plot to implement tracking devices on billions of people under the guise of a COVID-19 vaccine. (Maples did not respond to requests for comment).

The conspiracy has taken off particularly among right-wing COVID truthers (despite the fact that Trump personally asked Gates to be his science adviser). Kennedy shared the post with the exhortation to “Follow the Corbett Report !”—a far right-leaning website ranked “Tin Foil Hat” on Media Bias Fact Check’s conspiracy scale. The Corbett Report claims to cover topics from “9/11 Truth and false flag terror to the Big Brother police state, eugenics, geopolitics, the central banking fraud and more.” Lewis Hamilton, the Formula One racing driver with 18.3 million Instagram followers, shared several stories in late July pushing the Gates theory. A YouGov poll of Republicans from late July found that 44 percent believe the conspiracy, while just 26 percent identified it as false.

Conspiracies about Bill Gates’ involvement in the global pandemic have swirled in online circles since early March. Gates has been sounding alarms about viral outbreaks for years, once warning in a 2015 TED Talk that the next global catastrophe was “more likely to be a highly infectious virus, rather than a war.” In the early weeks of closures in the United States, the video spurred baseless theories that Gates had orchestrated the virus himself.

Those theories were disseminated in part by high-profile figures, who shared the claims on social media. A March report from NBC News’ Brandy Zadrozny identified one such viral video on the Instagram accounts of Cedric the Entertainer, Gary Owen, D.L. Hughley, and Derrick Lewis. The video overlooked the fact that public health officials, including an Ebola researcher in the Obama administration, have made similar claims for years.

By March 19, the claim had shifted away from the mad scheme to infect the world with respiratory illness, to the notion that Gates planned to insert microchips in would-be vaccine patients to monitor and control their behavior...


But the conspiracies quickly mutated over time. By March 19, the claim had shifted away from the mad scheme to infect the world with respiratory illness, to the notion that Gates planned to insert microchips in would-be vaccine patients to monitor and control their behavior, like that Wallace and Gromit short where an evil penguin controls Wallace’s trousers. A Reuters fact-check of the conspiracy theory found that, by March 31, the claim had been shared at least 1,000 times on Facebook and 3,600 times on Twitter.

Most of the posts linked to a blog from biohackinfo.com, a website run by two “do-it-yourself biohackers” who write under the aliases CyphR and Glyph. The article claimed Gates planned to “launch human-implantable capsules that have ‘digital certificates’ which can show who has been tested for the coronavirus and who has been vaccinated against it.” Their sole evidence came from a Reddit ‘Ask Me Anything’ Gates participated in on March 18, in which he discussed digital contact tracing.

Gates addressed the conspiracy theories about him in a recent interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, saying, “It’s strange. They take the fact that I’m involved with vaccines and they just reverse it, so instead of giving money to save lives, I’m making money to get rid of lives. If that stops people from taking a vaccine or looking at the latest data about wearing a mask, then it’s a big problem.”

For privacy advocates, digital contact tracing—technology that tracks and monitors COVID-19-positive patients to mitigate outbreaks—has inspired legitimate concerns over how the digital surveillance works, how much data will be collected, and where it may go. Earlier this week, the crime blotter app Citizen launched its contact tracing function, SafeTrace, to immediate ire from data security professionals. But data companies don’t need to insert microchips into users’ skin to follow people around—if they have location services enabled on their phone, those companies already do.

Don’t be hoodwinked by Trump’s UAE-Israel ‘peace deal’ — it’s a sham


August 15, 2020

By Salon- Commentary

Benjamin Netanyahu, Jared Kushner and U.S. President Donald Trump are seen during their meeting at the King David hotel in Jerusalem. (Photo by Kobi Gideon / GPO)

“HUGE breakthrough today,” crowed Donald Trump on Twitter as he announced the new peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. The deal makes the UAE the first Gulf Arab state and the third Arab nation, after Egypt and Jordan, to have diplomatic ties with Israel. But the new Israel-UAE partnership should fool no one. Though it will supposedly stave off Israeli annexation of the West Bank and encourage tourism and trade between both countries, in reality, it is nothing more than a scheme to give an Arab stamp of approval to Israel’s status quo of land theft, home demolitions, arbitrary extrajudicial killings, apartheid laws and other abuses of Palestinian rights.


The deal should be seen in the context of more than three years of Trump administration policies that have tightened Israel’s grip on the Palestinians: moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognizing the Golan Heights as Israeli territory, and creating a so-called peace plan with no Palestinian participation or input. While no U.S. administration has successfully brokered a resolution to Israel’s now 53-year-long occupation, the Trump years have been especially detrimental to the Palestinian cause. Palestinian leader Hanan Ashrawi wrote on Twitter that with this deal, “Israel got rewarded for not declaring openly what it’s been doing to Palestine illegally & persistently since the beginning of the occupation.”

Indeed, with Trump at the helm and son-in-law Jared Kushner as the primary strategist, even concessions for Palestinians have been done away with. To add insult to injury, while the deal had been couched in terms of a commitment by Israel to suspend annexation of Palestinian territories, in his Israeli press conference announcing the deal, Netanyahu said annexation was “still on the table” and that it was something he is “committed to.”

Israel got rewarded for not declaring openly what it's been doing to Palestine illegally & persistently since the beginning of the occupation. The UAE has come out in the open on its secret dealings/normalization with Israel. Please don't do us a favor. We are nobody's fig leaf! https://t.co/6e8x7EhF2v
— Hanan Ashrawi (@DrHananAshrawi) August 13, 2020

Among the most brutal aspects of this period for Palestinians have been the loss of support for their cause in neighboring Arab states. The Arab political party in Israel, Balad, said that by signing this pact, “the UAE has officially joined Israel against Palestine, and placed itself in the camp of the enemies of the Palestinian people.”

The UAE has previously held a position consistent with public opinion in Gulf and Middle East countries that the acceptance of formal diplomatic relations with Israel should only take place in exchange for a just peace and in accordance with international law. Back in June, Emirati ambassador to the U.S. Yousef al-Otaiba penned an an op-ed in the Yediot Ahronot newspaper, the Israeli equivalent to USA Today, appealing directly in Hebrew for Israel not to annex the West Bank. Now, by working out an agreement with Trump and Netanyahu to normalize relations, the UAE has made itself Israel’s partner in cementing de facto annexation and ongoing apartheid.

The UAE’s change from supporting Palestinian dignity and freedom to supporting Israel’s never-ending occupation is a calculated move by UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, a shrewd Middle East dictator who uses his country’s military and financial resources to thwart moves toward democracy and respect for human rights under the guise of fighting Islamic terrorism. His support for Israel cements his relationship with the Trump administration. Trump has already gone out of his way to push billions of dollars in arms sales to the UAE, despite opposition from Congress because of high number of civilian casualties associated with the use of those weapons in Yemen.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has also defended the UAE from credible reports that U.S. weapons sold to the UAE have been transferred in Yemen to groups linked to al-Qaida, hardline Salafi militias and Yemeni separatists. The UAE was also stung by revelations of secret prisons it had been operating in Yemen where prisoners were subjected to horrific forms of torture, including “the grill,” where victims were “tied to a spit like a roast and spun in a circle of fire.” In Libya, the UAE has been criticized for violating a 2011 UN Security Council arms embargo by supplying combat equipment to the LAAF, the armed group commanded by General Khalifa Haftar with a well-established record of human right abuses. So this deal with Israel gives the UAE a much-needed veneer of respectability.

But it is impossible to understand the impetus for this deal without putting it in the context of the ongoing hostilities between all three countries and Iran. Following the old adage that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” in recent years Israel has been negotiating with various Gulf states, including the UAE, to push back against Iran’s growing influence in the region. As the communiqué announcing the Israeli-UAE deal asserted, the U.S., Israel and the UAE “share a similar outlook regarding threats in the region.” This dovetails with Trump’s anti-Iran obsession, which includes withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and his “maximum pressure” campaign designed to force Iran back to the negotiating table to make a “better deal.” In announcing the UAE-Israeli pact, Trump declared with ridiculous bravado that if he wins the elections, he’ll have a new deal with Iran within 30 days. Anyone who believes this must be almost as delusional as Trump.

The fact that this agreement between two Middle East countries was first announced thousands of miles away in Washington shows that it is more about shoring up Trump’s slumping electoral campaign and improving Netanyahu’s battered image in Israel than bringing peace to the Middle East. It also shows that Netanyahu and bin Zayed have a stake in seeing Trump win a second term in the White House. Instead of pointing out the hollowness of the pact, Joe Biden’s response was unfortunately to congratulate Israel and the UAE and try to take credit for the deal. “I personally spent time with leaders of both Israel and the U.A.E. during our administration, building the case for cooperation and broader engagement,” he said. “I am gratified by today’s announcement.”

The normalization of relations between the UAE and Israel, facilitated by the U.S., serves to prop up three repressive leaders — Trump, Netanyahu and bin Zayed — and will cause further harm to Palestinians. It is both a shame and a sham.


Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK for Peace, is the author of “Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran” and “Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection.”

Ariel Gold is the national co-director and senior Middle East policy analyst with CODEPINK for Peace.

SEE
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/08/mbz-uae-strongman-behind-historic-deal.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/08/uae-excusing-and-accepting-israels.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/08/backgrounder-uae-efforts-to-normalise.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/08/israel-uae-deal-how-middle-east-reacted.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/08/opinion-israel-uae-deal-means-goodbye.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/08/rashid-khalidi-israel-uae-deal-to.html

EN PASSANT 

Greenland’s ice sheet has melted past the point of no return

August 15, 2020 By Agence France-Presse

Greenland, a resource-rich Danish possession, has become a focal point for climate research AFP / Jonathan NACKSTRAND

Greenland’s ice sheet may have shrunk past the point of return, with the ice likely to melt away no matter how quickly the world reduces climate-warming emissions, new research suggests.

Scientists studied data on 234 glaciers across the Arctic territory spanning 34 years through 2018 and found that annual snowfall was no longer enough to replenish glaciers of the snow and ice being lost to summertime melting.

That melting is already causing global seas to rise about a millimeter on average per year. If all of Greenland’s ice goes, the water released would push sea levels up by an average of 6 meters — enough to swamp many coastal cities around the world. This process, however, would take decades.

“Greenland is going to be the canary in the coal mine, and the canary is already pretty much dead at this point,” said glaciologist Ian Howat at Ohio State University. He and his colleagues published the study Thursday in the Nature Communications Earth & Environment journal

“Glacier retreat has knocked the dynamics of the whole ice sheet into a constant state of loss” Nearly 40 years of satellite data show that Greenland has “passed a point of no return.” #FaceTheClimateEmergency https://t.co/bt5POrJ5DX
— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) August 15, 2020

The Arctic has been warming at least twice as fast as the rest of the world for the last 30 years, an observation referred to as Arctic amplification. The polar sea ice hit its lowest extent for July in 40 years.

The Arctic thaw has brought more water to the region, opening up routes for shipping traffic, as well as increased interest in extracting fossil fuels and other natural resources.

Greenland is strategically important for the U.S. military and its ballistic missile early warning system, as the shortest route from Europe to North America goes via the Arctic island.

Last year, President Donald Trump offered to buy Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory. But Denmark, a U.S. ally, rebuffed the offer. Then last month, the U.S. reopened a consulate in the territory’s capital of Nuuk, and Denmark reportedly said last week it was appointing an intermediary between Nuuk and Copenhagen some 3,500 kilometers away.

Scientists, however, have long worried about Greenland’s fate, given the amount of water locked into the ice.

The new study suggests the territory’s ice sheet will now gain mass only once every 100 years — a grim indicator of how difficult it is to re-grow glaciers once they hemorrhage ice.

In studying satellite images of the glaciers, the researchers noted that the glaciers had a 50% chance of regaining mass before 2000, with the odds declining since.

“We are still draining more ice now than what was gained through snow accumulation in ‘good’ years,” said lead author Michalea King, a glaciologist at Ohio State University.

The sobering findings should spur governments to prepare for sea-level rise, King said.

“Things that happen in the polar regions don’t stay in the polar region,” she said.

Still, the world can still bring down emissions to slow climate change, scientists said. Even if Greenland can’t regain the icy bulk that covered its 2 million square kilometers, containing the global temperature rise can slow the rate of ice loss.

“When we think about climate action, we’re not talking about building back the Greenland ice sheet,” said Twila Moon, a glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center who was not involved in the study. “We’re talking about how quickly rapid sea-level rise comes to our communities, our infrastructure, our homes, our military bases.”

(REUTERS)

Newsweek walks back birther attack on Kamala Harris after staff revolt: report

 THE RIGHT HAND SIDE OF THEIR WEBSITE DISPLAY'S THEIR COLUMNISTS THEY ARE AS 

RIGHT WING AS THE NATIONAL REVIEW

THIS IS NOT THE FIRST SUCH INCIDENT

THEY APOLOGISED FOR RUNNING SEN.COTTON'S

KILL THEM ALL AND LET GOD SORT THEM OUT

COLUMN.

APOLOGIES ARE AN AFTER THE FACT 

THE FACT  IS THEY PUBLISHED THEM

AND WILL DO SO AGAIN, AND EXPECT 

THE USUAL.

Proverb. it's better to ask forgiveness than permission. 

It is better to act decisively and apologize for it later than to seek approval to act and risk delay, objections, etc.

Sen. Kamala Harris (MSNBC)August 15, 2020
By Tom Boggioni

According to a report from the Daily Beast’s Lloyd Grove, newsmagazine Newsweek was forced to walk back an editorial written by a conservative lawyer that questioned whether Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) was eligible to run for vice president on the ticket with former Vice President Joe Biden.

The op-ed, written by Chapman University law professor John C. Eastman, headlined “Some Questions for Kamala Harris About Eligibility” set off a firestorm that only grew more when Donald Trump discussed it at a press conference and suggested there might be some truth to it.

With the furor reaching a peak, Newsweek Editor-in-Chief Nancy Cooper and opinion editor, a “Trump-backing conservative activist and attorney Josh Hammer,” apologized on Friday with a statement reading, “This op-ed is being used by some as a tool to perpetuate racism and xenophobia. We apologize. [T]o many readers, the essay inevitably conveyed the ugly message that Senator Kamala Harris, a woman of color and the child of immigrants, was somehow not truly American.”

That apology came after staffers and editors went public complaining about the running of the essay to begin with.

According to Grove, London-based Newsweek correspondent Chantal Da Silva tweeted, “To see this piece run on Newsweek’s website was beyond devastating,” with The Beast reporting, “members of the magazine’s London bureau sent an anguished and angry letter to top editor Cooper demanding that the essay be taken down.”

“It is inaccurate and it is dangerous. Journalism should be about informing, not inflaming and certainly not about spreading baseless claims that can only fuel the flames of racism and hatred,” they stated.

Grove added that Christina Zhao, a New York-based senior editor, also tweeted: “This is an inflammatory and racist op-ed that should never have been published. That is my opinion.”

The Beast report also notes, “… a prominent former Newsweek staffer, who asked not to be further identified, quipped that the magazine’s owners and upper management ‘are probably loving the clicks and the fact that it’s an editorial controversy unrelated to Jesus and Seoul.'”

Firenado (Pyrocumulus vortex ): 

US National Weather Service issues America’s first-ever warning for a fire tornado
Published  August 15, 2020 By Bob Brigham

Fire tornado screengrab via Twitter.

The year 2020 continued to make history as a terrible time as America received its first-ever warning of firenadoes.

“The Reno office of the National Weather Service warned Northern California of a fiery tornado Saturday afternoon that had sprung up near a large, fast-moving wildfire in the Sierra. That’s right: A firenado,” the Sacramento Bee reported Saturday. “It is the first known issuance of a tornado warning for the climate phenomenon since it burst into California’s consciousness during the deadly Carr Fire in 2018.”

Indeed, Washington Post meteorologist Matthew Cappucci confirmed it was a first.

“For the first time in history, a tornado warning has been issued for a likely fire tornado,” Cappucci reported. “These are not ‘firewhirls.’ This is a rotating smoke plume being ingested into a pyrocumulonimbus cloud that could produce a bonafide fire-induced tornado. Tornadic wind speeds.”

Here are some of the images and videos people were posting online:

image of the fire tornado in Lassen Co., CA today. divine. gorgeous. unbelievable. pic.twitter.com/jr9zj89tTh
— Morgan Fuld (@mjfuld54) August 16, 2020

What the fuck? A fire tornado in CA? What the hell even is this year? Seriously like whoever is play jumanji PLEASE FINISH YOUR GAME ALREADY!! 2020 needs to end pic.twitter.com/BMKcD9g6Ft
— Alexis James (Lexi) (@LexiJ25) August 16, 2020



Fire Tornado today outside Chilcoot and Hallelujah Junction California. This was intense and scary!!!! @TheTXWXchaser @spahn711 @JimCantore @ReedTimmerAccu @jeffpiotrowski #CAwx #LoyaltonFire #firenado #FireSeason2020 pic.twitter.com/vfwrTKK02n
— Tasha Joy (@That1GirlTasha) August 16, 2020

#loyaltonfire exploding in size. Pyrocumulus vortex TimeLapse @weather_west pic.twitter.com/jM8kc9y9Od
— Barry Winston (@BSWinston) August 15, 2020

Who had #FireTornado on their list of things left that could happen in 2020?!? Well, CA officially had the first Fire Tornado in history today! Like the things that are happening is crazy crazy! #2020 #HeatWave pic.twitter.com/aYCSSe1IZb
— Brad Everett Young (@BradEYoung) August 16, 2020

The "Fire Tornado" #LoyaltonFire is less than 20 miles away.
Here's some photos my friend took on the road sometime this afternoon. pic.twitter.com/jR076cmVwR
— Gingeroo #CA01 #WearAMask (@Destiny22Ginger) August 16, 2020


To be sure, this is not the first fire tornado in history, but it's the first warning for one.
The worst one I'm aware of was 2018 in the Carr Fire in Redding, CA: https://t.co/cwJdXzs3eZ
— Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) August 15, 2020

TRUMP SABOTAGES POST OFFICE
USPS halts removal of collection boxes



A man walks by a set of USPS collection boxes March 20 in New York City. The USPS said it will re-evaluate the removal of some mail collection boxes after Election Day. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

Aug. 15 (UPI) -- A U.S. Postal Service spokesman said the agency will stop taking down mail collection boxes until after Election Day.

Rod Spurgeon told NBC News and CNN of the policy change after the USPS faced criticism for removing the boxes. Some Democrats, including former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., accused the agency of operating under the Trump administration to suppress mail-in voting.

"We are not going to be removing any boxes," Spurgeon said late Friday. "After the election, we're going to take a look at operations and see what we need and don't need."

The USPS began the collection box removal process earlier in the week, targeting boxes in Indiana, Montana, New York and Oregon.

RELATED Kentucky expands mail-in, early voting for November election

USPS Portland Seattle region spokesman Ernie Swanson told Willamette Week the boxes were removed because of declining mail volume.

"Ever since the pandemic came along, people are mailing less for some reason," he said.

Critics, though, said fewer collection boxes mean fewer locations for people to drop off their mail-in ballots for the Nov. 3 election.

RELATED Puerto Rico suspends primary voting due to ballot shortage

"Donald Trump isn't *trying* to sabotage our elections. He's doing it right under our noses. This is voter suppression and Senate Republicans are letting him get away with it," Wyden tweeted Friday.

The USPS warned 46 states and Washington, D.C., that some mail-in ballots might not be counted in time for the election. The agency told the states their time frames and deadlines for mail-in voting would be "incongruous" with delivery standards, meaning some ballots might not arrive in time to be counted.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has said he opposed funding the financially struggling postal service because it would benefit those who seek to promote mail-in voting in November.

RELATED Tennessee high court: COVID-19 not valid reason for absentee ballot

He and first lady Melania Trump just requested main-in ballots from the Palm Beach County, Fla., supervisor of elections' office, the Palm Beach Post reported Friday. The president and his wife have declared Florida to be their home state.

Democrats, in particular, have called for mail-in voting as a way to protect voters from the spread of COVID-19 on Election Day.

Trump has long opposed mail-in voting, saying it's too vulnerable to fraud.

RELATED November election in U.S. can be held safely, experts say

"They want $25 billion for the post office. Now, they need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots," Trump said Thursday.

"Now, if we don't make a deal, that means they don't get the money. That means they can't have universal mail-in voting," he added. "They just can't have it. So, you know, sort of a crazy thing."

He backtracked on his comments later Thursday, saying he would sign a stimulus package that includes $25 billion for the agency, but only if Democrats give Republicans what they want in the relief legislation.

"Sure, if they gave us what we want. And it's not what I want, it's what the American people want," Trump said during a Friday news conference.

The financially struggling USPS has been undergoing an organizational overhaul, including removing mail sorting machines from facilities across the country, some of which would normally be used to sort mail-in ballots, Vice reported.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said the USPS still has "ample capacity" to handle the expected surge of mail-in ballots.

"The Postal Service routinely moves equipment around its network as necessary to match changing mail and package volumes," USPS spokesman David Partenheimer told Vice.

"Package volume is up, but mail volume continues to decline. Adapting our processing infrastructure to the current volumes will ensure more efficient, cost-effective operations and better service for our customers."

DeJoy, a Trump donor who was tapped to run the USPS three months ago, also has curtailed overtime at the agency, leading to delays in deliveries.

On Saturday protesters gathered outside DeJoy's Washington, D.C. home, carrying signs reading "Don't mess with the USPS" and "Don't stamp out our democracy." It is not clear whether he was home at the time.

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Wrecked oil tanker breaks in half after causing spill off coast of Mauritius

A worker holds out his arms covered in thick oil from collecting seaweed and straw mixed with leaked oil from the MV Wakashio Saturday. The ship was sailing from China to Brazil when it hit coral reefs near Pointe d'Esny on July 25. Photo by Laura Morosoli/EPA-EFE

Aug. 15 (UPI) -- A ship that wrecked off the coast of Mauritius in July broke in two Saturday, prompting concern that more oil could spill out near the island and cause a significant threat to marine life.

A Japanese-owned ship called the MV Wakashio carrying an estimated 4,000 metric tons of oil to Brazil when it ran aground of a coral reef off the island July 25.

The crew was evacuated, but oil from the tanker has continually leaked into the surrounding water, prompting an emergency declaration and requests for financial assistance from abroad.

This week Mauritian Prime Minister Pravind Kumar Jugnauth said he expects compensation from the shipping company behind the spill.

Noxious fumes from the spill have caused schools to close just as the island was easing restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Volunteers from all over the island and staff from non-governmental organizations have worked together to construct floating buffers called booms to help protect the shoreline from the spill.

The nation's Crisis Committee said it is paying special attention to sites like Blue Bay Marine Park, Ile aux Aigrettes and the Pointe D'Esny National Ramsar, especially as forecasters expect waves of up to 15 feet on the shoreline.

Read MoreMauritian prime minister seeks compensation for oil spill

Mauritius declares state of emergency as wrecked ship leaks oil into ocean

Tropical Storm Kyle moves into open waters of Atlantic

upi.com/7029402

Ship leaking tonnes of oil off Mauritius splits apart
Japanese ship struck a reef on July 25 and is believed to have leaked some 1,000 tonnes of oil in pristine waters.

MV Wakashio, a bulk carrier ship that ran aground off the southeast coast of Mauritius is shown leaking oil [Eric Villars via AP]

Mauritius oil spill: An alarm bell for environmental safety 2 days ago

A grounded Japanese-owned ship that leaked tonnes of oil near protected areas off the Indian Ocean island nation of Mauritius has split apart, with remaining fuel spreading into the turquoise waters.

The bulk carrier struck a coral reef off Mauritius on July 25 and its hull began to crack after days of pounding waves. Some 1,000 tonnes of fuel began to leak on August 6, threatening a protected marine park boasting mangrove forests and endangered species.

On Sunday, photos posted on social media by the official clean-up showed the MV Wakashio in two pieces. Oil barriers were in place and a skimmer ship was nearby.

Mauritius declared an environmental emergency last week, and salvage crews raced against the clock to pump the remaining 3,000 tonnes of oil off the ship as environmental groups warned the damage to coral reefs and once-pristine coastal areas could be irreversible.

As of Saturday, about 90 tonnes of oil remained on board, much of it residue from the leakage.

Meanwhile, Japanese Environment Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said Tokyo planned to send a team of officials from the ministry and other specialists to Mauritius to assess the damage from the oil spill.

Koizumi also told reporters on Saturday he saw the oil spill as a grave crisis that could lead to a loss of biodiversity.

Indian Ocean faces growing threat of fuel spill

Under pressure

The Mauritius government is under pressure to explain why immediate action was not taken to empty the ship of its fuel. Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth earlier blamed bad weather for the slow response.

Owner Nagashiki Shipping is investigating why the ship went off course. The ship was meant to stay at least 16km (10 miles) from shore. The company has sent experts to help in cleaning up the damage.

The Mauritius government is seeking compensation from the company. Nagashiki has pledged to "sincerely" respond to requests for compensation over damage to the marine environment.

France and Japan have responded to Mauritius's call for help with clean-up operations.

After the government declared an environmental emergency, thousands of volunteers rushed to the shore to create makeshift oil barriers from tunnels of fabric stuffed with sugar cane leaves and even human hair, with empty soft drink bottles tucked in to keep them afloat.

So far, more than 800 tonnes of oil liquid waste and more than 300 tonnes of solid waste sludge and debris has been removed from the ocean.

The country of some 1.3 million people relies heavily on tourism and already had taken a severe hit with the coronavirus pandemic travel restrictions.

"The people of Mauritius are holding their breath," Vassen Kauppaymuthoo, an oceanographer, told Al Jazeera.

"The image of Mauritius has been deeply impacted. When we look at those very sad images of oil sipping in one of the most pristine areas of the southeastern coast of Mauritius we feel very sad in Mauritius - and at the same time very angry about the situation and why it has occurred," he said.

Noting that the oil spill came "at a very bad time" for Mauritius, Kauppaymuthoo said: "This part of the island may be severely impacted - and I am not sure it's going to really recover after this event."


SEE
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/08/locals-in-mauritius-are-going-to-great.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/08/mauritian-prime-minister-seeks.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-oil-spill-at-mauritius-is-disaster.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/08/update-mauritius-battles-devastating.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/08/mauritius-oil-spill-locals-scramble-to.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/08/oil-spill-off-mauritius-is-visible-from.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/08/france-offers-aid-as-mauritius-declares.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/08/mauritius-facing-catastrophe-as-oil.html

LONG, LONG AGO IN A LAND FAR, FAR AWAY
On This Day: Ecuador grants asylum to Julian Assange
On Aug. 16, 2012, the Ecuadorean government said it was granting political asylum in its London Embassy to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange


On August 16, 2012, the Ecuadorean government said it was granting political asylum in its London Embassy to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, trying to avoid extradition to Sweden to face questioning in a sexual assault investigation. File Photo by Hugo Philpott/UPI | License Photo

In 2012, the Ecuadorean government said it was granting political asylum in its London Embassy to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, trying to avoid extradition to Sweden to face questioning in a sexual assault investigation. Ecuador withdrew its offer of asylum in April 2019, and London police arrested him.

Read More

UPI Archives: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange jailed until U.S. extradition hearing in MayUPI Archives: Judge sets Assange extradition hearing for February

Aug. 16 (UPI) -- On this date in history:

In 1812, British forces foiled plans for a U.S. invasion of Canada by capturing the city of Detroit.
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The Pentagon Made A Unit To Investigate UFOs And It's Not Keeping It Secret Anymore

A program investigating UFOs already existed for years under the Navy, but the Department of Defense publicly acknowledged the program Friday in a press release

Posted on August 14, 2020, at 7:55 p.m. ET

Screenshot from video released by Department of Defense

The Department of Defense announced Friday they had officially — and publicly — created a unit tasked specifically with investigating "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena," or as you, I, and everyone else would call them, UFOs.

Named the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, or UAPTF, the unit will "improve [the Department of Defense's] understanding of, and gain insight into, the nature and origins of UAPs."

"The mission of the task force is to detect, analyze and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security," the Department of Defense said in a statement Friday evening.

Now, it's true that the existence of UAPs, or UFOs, doesn't necessarily mean the aircraft are spaceships from another planet piloted by little green aliens quietly and secretly observing Earth.

This task force is geared more toward possible violations of air space from another country, rather than looking for intergalactic encounters.

"The Department of Defense and the military departments take any incursions by unauthorized aircraft into our training ranges or designated airspace very seriously and examine each report," the announcement reads. "This includes examinations of incursions that are initially reported as UAP when the observer cannot immediately identify what he or she is observing."

But 2020 has been something of a year for the Pentagon and UFOs.

2004
UFO FIRST SIGHTED FAST AND FAR AWAY

WITH PILOTS VOICE OVER

UFO CLOSE UP AND TURNING PILOT VOICEOVER SHOCK

2015 1 MINUTE VIDEO NO SOUND

Friday's announcement comes just a few months after the Department of Defense released and declassified three videos of Navy pilots encountering UAPs in 2004 and 2015.

The New York Times interviewed the pilots who encountered the objects, describing them as oblong-shaped and accelerating, "like nothing I've ever seen."

Despite the Pentagon's announcement Friday, the military has for years monitored unidentified aircraft and collected video of its pilots encountering the aircraft.

The New York Times in Dec. 2017 reported on the existence of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which had the same task.

The Times reported that funding for the program had stopped and it was ended in 2012, but in July it reported the program had continued under the Office of Naval Intelligence, where it was named the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force.

President Trump has himself expressed interest in the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Talking to his son, Donald Trump Jr. in a video produced by his campaign in June, the president was asked whether, "before you leave office, will you let us know if there's aliens?"

"I want to know what's going on," Trump Jr. asked. "Would you ever open up Roswell and let us know what's going on there?"

The president's son was likely referring to what is popularly known as Area 51, a classified military base in Nevada. The base has long been the center of UFO conspiracies, including the theory that a UFO crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 and that the spacecraft, and its supposed occupants, were taken to Area 51 to be studied.


"I won't talk to you about what I know about it but it's very interesting," Trump told Trump Jr. "But Roswell is a very interesting place with a lot of people that would like to know what's going on."


Roswell itself is a city in Chaves County, New Mexico, which is, of course, open to the public.

The Department of Defense's announcement about UAPTF makes no mention about any part of its mission having to do with extraterrestrial beings or spacecraft because of course it wouldn't.


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The “Storm Area 51” Event Didn’t Live Up To The Hype But Alien Believers Still Found Their People

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The Pentagon Has Officially Released Three Videos Showing UFOs

Ellie Hall · April 27, 2020

Here’s Why Scientists Are So Dismissive Of UFOs

Dan Vergano · Dec. 21, 2017

Salvador Hernandez is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Los Angeles.