Imran Khan villagers trapped as Pakistan's largest Online Covid Today Gest USA Canada Hifizul

 Manchar Lake, in Sindh province, is dangerously full after record monsoons that inundated a third of Pakistan.

Its banks were deliberately breached to protect surrounding areas and more than 100,000 people have been displaced.

Officials are racing against time to rescue and evacuate thousands of villagers who are still stranded.

"We see the water is now starting to come down," provincial minister Jam Khan Shoro told the BBC. "If we didn't make the breaches, several towns with big populations would have been destroyed and many more people in danger."

Floods in Pakistan have affected some 33 million people and caused at least 1,343 deaths, Pakistan's National Disaster Management Agency said.

There is too much water. We are going to drown."

That was the warning from the villagers of Sehta Sehanj, where flooding caused by the overflow of Pakistan's largest lake has left many residents trapped by rising water levels and fearing for their lives.

Lake Manchar -- which has swelled to an area hundreds of square kilometers wide due to the combined effects of a heavy monsoon and melting glaciers -- breached its banks for what was at least the third time on Tuesday, leaving nearby villages under several feet of water.

He is one of a growing number of Ukrainians exploring the possibility of reparations for damage or violence that has occurred during the war as they attempt to rebuild their lives, according to the ICC.

The conflict, which six months in is locked in a stalemate, has caused thousands of deaths, made millions of people refugees and destroyed whole cities. Kyiv has said more than 140,000 residential buildings have been damaged or destroyed and economists have estimated the cost of damage to housing and infrastructure is more than $100 billion.

 

Pakistani authorities are in a desperate race against time to lower water levels at the lake in Sindh -- the country's second most populous province, home to nearly 48 million people -- fearing that a full-scale breach of its banks could inundate nearby cities.

 

 

Noor Mohammad Thebo said parts of his village have been cut off by the water from Lake Manchar.

 

In a bid to avert that scenario, they allowed the lake to overflow twice on Sunday in an attempt to divert some of the lake's waters into less densely populated areas. But this has led to flooding in smaller villages that has affected around 135,000 people, Sindh province's irrigation minister Jam Khan Shoro told CNN on Wednesday. Shoro said the move was necessary to avoid wider flooding in the district of Dadu, home to around 1.55 million people.

The lake also overflowed on Tuesday, in what officials said was a natural occurrence and not part of efforts to divert the water.

Shoro said officials had on Sunday had tried to warn people in towns near the lake that it would overflow and had urged people to leave the area.

Over the years multiple finance researchers. have found evidence that stock market returns have been consistently lower during the summer months. These culminated in a paper published a decade ago, and updated more recently, by finance professors Cherry Zhang and Ben Jacobsen at Massey University in New Zealand. They looked at the monthly returns of every stock market in the world for which they could find records: A total of 114 of them, including data from London starting in 1693.
“To answer the sceptics,” they wrote, “we use all historical data…on all stock market indices worldwide to verify the robustness of the so-called Halloween Indicator or Sell in May effect. The effect seems remarkably robust with returns on average 4% higher during November-April period than during May-October.”

In detail they report: “Summer risk premiums are not only not significantly positive, they are in most cases not even marginally positive. In 45 countries the excess returns during summer have been negative, and in 7 significantly so. Overall based on 37,167 observations we find that average stock market returns (including dividends) during May to October have been 1.1% (or 0.18% per month) lower than the short term interest rate and these negative excess returns tend to be significantly different from zero. Only in the winter months do we find evidence of a positive risk return relation. Average excess returns from November to April are 5.1% or (0.85% per month).”

Here in America, the sell-in-May rule is usually called the Halloween Effect: The general assumption is that you won’t get back into the stock market until the end of October. In Britain, where the adage supposedly began, it’s slightly different: The saying goes, “Sell in May and go away, and don’t come back till St Leger’s Day.” The St Leger’s Day in question is the day of the St Leger’s Cup, the last of the five big races of the British summer horse-racing calendar, and a social bookend for the summer season. This year the St Leger is being run this Saturday, Sept. 10.

The summer months, as the research shows, have tended to produce lower or even negative average returns. But as I mentioned earlier, they have also tended to be volatile: meaning, at best, that they have often produced some terrific buying opportunities. I ran the numbers on the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.55% going all the way back to 1900. The average price gain for the six months following May 1 was 2.8%–way below the 4% average price gain for any six months. Furthermore, in half of all years the Dow fell by at least 5% at some point during the summer: Someone who sold at the start of May had the chance to buy it back 5% cheaper over the summer. And in one year in three the market fell by at least 10%.

Clean Energy supplied fuel for the first bunkering with liquified natural gas (LNG) of Pasha Hawaii’s new container ship MV George III. (Photo: Business Wire)

 

Pasha Hawaii’s MV George III, a 774-foot container ship operating between Long Beach, CA, Honolulu, HI, and Oakland, CA, is the first of three LNG-powered ships that the domestic shipping company is putting into service. The three ships are expected to consume 105 million gallons of LNG fuel over the next five years.

"The air quality around the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles is some of the worst in the country because of in large part the very dirty marine fuels that have been traditionally used by container ships," said Andrew J. Littlefair, president and CEO, Clean Energy. "The move by Pasha to add ships that operate on clean-burning LNG is one the most forward-thinking and environmentally-progressive actions taken in the maritime industry. We congratulate Pasha on their first successful bunkering operation and look forward to many more as Pasha continues to add the other LNG-powered ships to their fleet."

LNG-powered ships achieve 99.9 percent reduction in diesel particulate matter and sulfur oxide emissions, 90 percent less nitrogen oxides and a 25 percent reduction in carbon dioxide compared to ships running on traditional fuels.

The LNG that powers the Pasha Hawaii container ships is supplied by the Clean Energy plant in Boron, CA, the only one of its kind in the state. Because of the increase in demand for LNG by Pasha and others, Clean Energy is in the process of expanding its Boron LNG plant by adding a third production train, which will increase capacity by 50 percent when completed.

Days after a high school football player in Washington state was reported missing under suspicious circumstances, he was found safe and accused of murder in the killing of his mother’s former partner, court documents filed Tuesday show.

The 16-year-old was charged with first-degree murder and other crimes in the killing of a man, according to a probable cause affidavit filed in Pierce County Superior Court.

 

His friend, a minor, was also charged with murder in the killing, according to the documents. It is unclear whether they have entered a plea.

NBC News does not usually identify minors who have been charged with a crime.

The teenager was reported missing to authorities in nearby Thurston County on Aug. 31, the affidavit says. The sheriff’s office there said he left his home at 4 p.m. for football practice, but never arrived.

His damaged truck was found on the side of a road roughly 13 miles south, with blood on the steering wheel and driver's side door, according to the affidavit. His cell phone was found smashed on the pavement.

The Thurston County Sheriff's Office described his disappearance as "suspicious," and asked the public for help finding him.

Authorities dispatched bloodhounds and investigators to search a state park where he was reportedly last seen, and officials told reporters that they would "explore every tip and avenue" to bring the teen home safely.

On Sept. 1, 36 hours after the teenager was reported missing, he was found, according to the affidavit. He was 3 miles from his truck and wearing only a pair of shorts.

He initially told investigators that he had no idea where he had been, though he later claimed that people were going to hurt him if he revealed what had happened, the affidavit says.

On the same day the teenager was found, Pierce County sheriff's deputies responding to a call for a welfare check found the decaying body of a man at his home. A medical examiner later concluded that he appeared to have been shot in the head and stabbed multiple times, according to the affidavit.

- A landslide triggered by heavy rain in a remote part of southwestern Uganda has killed at least 15 people, according to the Uganda Red Cross.

The group reported Wednesday that most of the victims are “mothers and children,” calling the landslide in the hilly district of Kasese a disaster.

Kasese, which lies near the border with Congo, is prone to deadly mudslides during rainy seasons.

Ugandan police and other authorities didn’t immediately comment.

 

But for many Ukrainians like Zhyvotovskyi, currently the chances of obtaining compensation from Russia or international tribunals or domestic programs are small, three reparations specialists told Reuters. And, even if the victims do receive reparations, they might only get a modest sum many years from now, they added.

International criminal tribunals can be a route for reparations but the ICC deals with individual perpetrators who can be held liable for damages, rather than states. And, the ICC determines reparations only at the end of what are typically lengthy court cases and they can have a more symbolic value that is unlikely to cover actual costs, some of the specialists said.

Putin told an annual economic forum in the far-eastern port city of Vladivostok that the main goal behind sending troops into Ukraine was protecting civilians in the east of that country after eight years of fighting.

“It wasn’t us who started the military action — we are trying to put an end to it,” Putin said, reaffirming his argument that he sent troops to protect Moscow-backed regions in eastern Ukraine, where separatists have fought Ukrainian forces since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

“All our action has been aimed at helping people living in the Donbas. It’s our duty, and we will fulfill it until the end,” he said.

Putin asserted that Russia had strengthened its sovereignty in the face of Western sanctions, which he said bordered on an aggression.

“Russia has resisted the economic, financial and technological aggression of the West,” Putin said. “I’m sure that we haven’t lost anything and we won’t lose anything. The most important gain is the strengthening of our sovereignty. It’s an inevitable result of what’s going on.”

Reparations can also be organized at the national level and Ukraine has pledged to set up a reparations structure with international partners but it’s unclear who would be eligible or how it would be funded. Kyiv has said it hopes Russian assets in other countries could be confiscated and used as compensation, an idea Moscow has rejected as illegal.

The Kremlin didn’t respond to a request for comment. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said any attempt to use frozen Russian state assets to rebuild Ukraine would constitute “outright theft.” Moscow has rejected allegations by Ukraine and Western nations of war crimes and has denied targeting civilians in what the Kremlin calls a "special military operation" to demilitarise its neighbour.

Zhyvotovskyi’s lawyer, Yuriy Bilous, said he is hopeful his client will get some financial help to rebuild his house and that a successful war crimes prosecution would provide some psychological relief in terms of seeing justice done.

 

"We are trying our best to provide relief to the people but the scale of the disaster is so high and the number of people affected is also so high," he said. "It's nearly impossible for our government to provide everyone with shelter, food, and medicine. It's difficult."

Shoro added that the army and navy were being enlisted to help the relief efforts and authorities were communicating with elected officials in the villages.

Murad Ali Shah, the chief minister of Sindh, said Wednesday he did not want the lake to overflow but if authorities had not diverted the water, cities up to 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the lake -- such as Sehwan, Dadu and Mehar -- would have been put in danger.

While those areas have been spared, at least for now, villages nearby are bearing the brunt.

"(Our) village is submerged. There is no way to go (to it)," said Noor Mohammad Thebo, who spoke to CNN on a roadside as rapidly flowing water swirled around his ankles.

Thebo said 10 to 15 families had been cut off by the rising waters in his village near the lake and that water up to 1.5 meters (five feet) deep now covered its main access road -- making any rescue efforts a dangerous affair.

"There are no rescue teams that could help (the trapped families) and there is no way for (the families) to come out," Thebo said.

baba Raza Kumar khali will succeed Johnson as prime minister kola bangan dhaka 1230 mama

 Britain finally learns who its next prime minister will be on Monday after two months of political uncertainty during which energy prices skyrocketed and tens of thousands of workers went on strike.

The governing Conservative Party plans to announce whether Foreign Secretary Liz Truss or former Treasury chief Rishi Sunak won the most votes from party members to succeed Boris Johnson as party leader and thus prime minister.

After developing last week into the strongest tropical storm of the year, Typhoon Hinnamnor barreled toward South Korea on Monday, with officials raising the typhoon alert to the highest level ahead of expected landfall on Tuesday.

The powerhouse storm has already unleashed damaging wind and rain, prompting evacuation orders and disrupting transportation in the country’s south, including Busan, South Korea’s second-largest city.

Hinnamnor was packing maximum sustained winds of 127 mph and gusts of up to 155 mph, according to the U.S. Joint Typhoon Warning Center. The Korea Meteorological Administration said strong winds and heavy rain are expected across the country through Tuesday.

No casualties have been reported so far but at least 11 facilities have been flooded, according to Seoul’s Ministry of the Interior and Safety.

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol held an emergency meeting over the weekend to discuss the typhoon response. “We are yet to fully recover from damage of the recent downpour and Typhoon Hinnamnor is making its way up, provoking big public concerns,” Yoon told the meeting on Sunday.

 

Fishing boats were moored at a port for shelter in Pohang on Monday as Typhoon Hinnamnor approached the Korean Peninsula.© -/AFP/Getty Images

Last month, a record downpour over the country killed more than a dozen people and displaced thousands, many of them in the Seoul area. Recovery efforts are still underway in severely hit areas, where authorities called for extra precautionary measures ahead of the typhoon’s arrival.

 

As Hinnamnor neared, North Korea’s weather agency also issued bad weather warnings, with reports of heavy rain in the capital, Pyongyang, and other parts of the country on Sunday. The regime’s official Rodong Sinmun newspaper on Monday urged damage prevention works to minimize the typhoon’s impact on the economy.

North Korea’s poor infrastructure and widespread poverty make its people particularly vulnerable to climate-induced disasters. The super typhoon could deal a blow to the ailing economy of the isolated country, which is grappling with international sanctions and stalled trade with China due to coronavirus curbs.

Typhoons regularly churn across the Pacific between June and November each year. But climate scientists have warned that extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and damaging as a result of global warming. Typhoon Hinnamnor, which formed in the western Pacific earlier this month, has also affected Japan.

Whoever emerges victorious will inherit an economy heading into a potentially lengthy recession and will need to jump straight into tackling the cost-of-living crisis walloping the U.K.

Thanks to global gas price volatility triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the average U.K. household energy bill is jumping to more than 3,500 pounds ($4,000) a year — almost triple the level a year ago. Inflation is above 10% for the first time since the 1980s. The government is facing increasingly urgent calls to deliver financial support to help millions pay for essential heating and electricity to get through the winter.

The opposition Labour Party and other critics accuse the government of being “missing in action” during a summer of discontent that saw tens of thousands of rail staff, port and postal workers, lawyers and garbage collectors go on strike to demand better pay to keep up with spiralling costs.

Truss, widely regarded as the front-runner in the leadership race, has won the support of many Conservatives with her Thatcherite zeal to roll back state intervention and slash taxes. She has promised to act “immediately” to tackle soaring energy bills, but declined to give any details.

Sunak, who sought to paint himself as the more realistic economist, said he would temporarily cut the value-added tax on energy bills. But he insisted that he wouldn't “max out the country’s credit card” and said significant tax cuts should wait until inflation is under control.

Both finalists have declared their admiration for Margaret Thatcher, who was prime minister from 1979 to 1990, and her ring-wing, small-government economics.

“It’s all been very nonspecific and we’re really waiting for the next prime minister to hopefully hit the ground running and tell us what they’re going to do about what is in effect an emergency situation,” said Tim Bale, a politics professor at Queen Mary University of London.

Steven Fielding, a professor of political history at Nottingham University, says Truss’s politics has played well with the estimated 180,000 Conservative Party members who have a say in choosing the country's leader. But many have low expectations that she will deliver much financial relief to the country’s poorest.

“This is someone who believes in the market in a radical way, someone who believes that the objective of government is to get towards a much smaller state sooner rather than later. She takes that very seriously,” he said.

“So I think we’re going to have a very radical, right-wing, free market prime minister and one that actually is more of an ideologist than a pragmatist.”

While the economy is certain to dominate the first months of the new premier’s term, Johnson’s successor will also have to steer the U.K. on the international stage in the face of Russia’s war in Ukraine, an increasingly assertive China and ongoing tensions with the European Union over the aftermath of Brexit – especially in Northern Ireland.

Pakistan authorities intentionally breached the country’s largest freshwater lake on Sunday, displacing 100,000 people from their homes but preventing more densely populated area close by from being hit by flood water.

Water levels in Manchar Lake – located in the country’s southeastern Sindh province – reached dangerously high levels on Sunday, prompting authorities to deliberately breach the lake, according to Jamal Mangan, Pakistan’s Irrigation Special Secretary.

Water released from the lake flowed into the nearby districts of Jaffarabad and Bubak, with the aim of sparing more populated cities and towns across Sindh, including Sehwan, Dadu and Bhan Syedabad, from the worst of the flooding, according to Mangan.

Record monsoon rains that have lashed Pakistan and melting glaciers in the country’s northern mountains have affected 33 million people – or 15% of its population – according to government officials and aid organizations.

A third of Pakistan was left underwater after experiencing the heaviest rains on record, according to satellite images from the European Space Agency (ESA). Some areas – particularly the southern provinces of Sindh and Balochistan – have seen five times their normal levels of monsoonal rain.

The number of deaths since mid-June rose to 1,305 as of Sunday – with almost a third of the victims children – according to the country’s National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).

Three million children are now in need of urgent humanitarian assistance across Pakistan due to the increased risk of waterborne diseases, drowning and malnutrition, UNICEF warned in a statement Wednesday.

Residents clamber over rocks to avoid flood waters in Kalam Valley, northern Pakistan, September 4, 2022.

Sherin Zada/AP

Several international aid agencies were beginning to arrive in flood-ravaged Pakistan on Monday, delivering much needed food, clean water and medicines to victims of what the United Nations has called a “monsoon on steroids.”

‘This will not be over in two months’

Dr. Deedar Hussain from Pakistan’s health department said he feared of an outbreak of waterborne diseases if the flood waters do not recede fast enough.

“Many patients have come to us. According to our register, we have received 16,000 patients (from over the district). Mostly patients are suffering from allergy because of (flood) water, and there are patients suffering from diarrhea and fever. Also there are patients suffering from malaria as we are conducting malaria parasite tests on them,” Hussain told Reuters on Saturday.

 

Displaced families wait to receive medicine at a distribution point in Sukkur, Pakistan on September 4, 2022.

Fareed Khan/AP

Aurélie Godet, a press officer with Médecins du Monde, told CNN on Thursday the flood waters had washed away everything.

“Survivors must start from scratch. They need urgently dignified shelters, affordable food, access to health and to basic commodities. But this will not be over in two months, they need a long-term aid,” Godet said.

Godet said that children have been coming to their clinics with severe injuries on their feet because they have no shoes. And she said some people can’t afford their regular medicine because of price increases that are also making food too expensive, even outside the flood zone.

 

 

Pakistan emits less than 1% of the world's planet-warming gases. It's now drowning

“In the dryer areas, survivors are telling us that one difference now for them is the prices of the food, because the roads are inaccessible. It is four times the prices of the market. They cannot afford to eat,” she said.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on August 30 the floods were “the worst in the country’s history” and estimated the calamity had caused more than $10 billion in damages to infrastructure, homes and farms.

According to charity Action Against Hunger, 27 million people in the country did not have access to enough food prior the floods, and now the risk of widespread hunger is even more imminent.

Bangladesn and California town has learned to live on edge Low Price eager muslim Manik sarkar 2022

 WEED, Calif. (AP) — The fire-stricken Northern California town of Weed has long been seen by passersby as a whimsical spot to stop along Interstate 5 and buy an ironic T-shirt, but residents say they've grown edgy in recent years due to a new danger: Dark skies, swirling ash and flames that race so quickly they leave little time for escape.

Former President Donald Trump responded to President Joe Biden's condemnation of "MAGA Republicans" by calling the president an "enemy of the state" during a Saturday rally in Pennsylvania. 

Across the United Kingdom, businesses and households are warning that they won't make it through the winter without help from the government. That sets up enormous challenges for the incoming prime minister, who will be announced this week.

For months, the United Kingdom has endured a leadership vacuum while the country has skidded toward a recession and a humanitarian crisis triggered by soaring energy bills.

Since Boris Johnson announced he would leave office in July, the outlook for growth has weakened. Annual inflation is running above 10% as food and fuel prices leap. Frustration over the rising cost of living has compelled hundreds of thousands of workers who staff ports, trains and mailrooms to go on strike. The British pound just logged its worst month since the aftermath of the 2016 Brexit referendum, hitting its lowest level against the US dollar in more than two years.

 

 

"It's just one blow after the other," said Martin McTague, who heads up the UK's Federation of Small Businesses. "I'm afraid I can't find any good news."

The situation could get much worse before it gets better. The Bank of England anticipates that inflation will jump to 13% as the energy crisis intensifies. Citigroup estimates inflation in the United Kingdom could peak at 18% in early 2023, while Goldman Sachs warns it could reach 22% if natural gas prices "remain elevated at current levels."

 

A man with a trade union flag awaits the start of the sold-out campaign event "Enough Is Enough." Faith leaders and unions came together to raise support to tackle the cost of living crisis by demanding real pay rises, slashing energy bills and taxing the rich.

 

The contenders to succeed Johnson — current foreign secretary Liz Truss and former finance minister Rishi Sunak — face calls to announce a dramatic intervention as soon as one of them becomes the fourth Conservative leader of the country in a decade.

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The most urgent problem will be dealing with the skyrocketing cost of energy, which could unleash a wave of business closures and force millions of people to choose between putting food on the table and heating their homes this winter. Experts have warned that people will become destitute and cold-weather deaths will rise unless something is done fast.

 

"Everybody is assuming that there will be a swift and decisive announcement that puts this issue to bed, or at least provides people with reassurance," said Jonathan Neame, who runs Shepherd Neame, Britain's oldest brewer. "If there's not, that person will come under very considerable pressure."

An energy 'catastrophe'

Energy bills for households will rise 80% to an average of £3,549 ($4,106) a year from October. Analysts say the household price cap could rise to more than £5,000 ($5,785) in January and jump above £6,000 in April ($6,942).

 

'Starve or freeze to death': Millions of elderly Brits fear a grim choice this winter as costs spiral

 

As people are forced to reevaluate their budgets, the boom in consumption that followed the Covid-19 lockdowns is dissipating fast. The Bank of England has warned the UK economy will fall into a recession in the coming months.

"The key challenge that the energy price surge poses is that households that use lots of energy — and in particular poorer households — are going to really struggle to make ends meet," said Ben Zaranko, senior research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. "It's going to mean really big cutbacks in other areas of spending."

Meanwhile, Neame, whose portfolio includes about 300 pubs across southern England, said business owners are panicking. They're getting quoted insane numbers for year-ahead utility bills, if they can find suppliers at all. Nick Mackenzie, the head of the Greene King pub chain, said that one location it works with reported its energy costs had jumped by £33,000 ($38,167) a year.

"It's really daunting for a lot of businesses, especially the ones who came through Covid in a weakened state," McTague said. "They're now struggling to deal with another once-in-a-lifetime catastrophe."

The crumbling British pound could exacerbate problems, making it more expensive to import energy and other goods, pushing inflation even higher.

Overlapping crises

It's not the only reason business owners and investors are increasingly anxious. While job vacancies fell between May and July, they remain 60% above their pre-pandemic level. Finding workers to fill open roles has been a particular challenge in the United Kingdom since the country voted to leave the European Union. About 317,000 fewer EU nationals were living in the United Kingdom in 2021 than in 2019, according to the Office for National Statistics.

 

Biden spoke on "threats to American democracy" he said were being peddled by ardent supporters of Trump during a prime time speech at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia on Thursday. 

"MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards. Backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love," Biden said. "They promote authoritarian leaders and fan the flames of political violence."

Biden's speech came days after he railed against the "MAGA philosophy," which he described as "semi-fascism."

Firefighters survey homes on Wakefield Avenue destroyed by the Mill Fire on Saturday, Sept. 3, 2022, in Weed, Calif. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)© Provided by Associated Press

Their fears exploded to life again in recent days as California’s latest inferno burned homes and buildings and forced evacuations in the small community about 280 miles (451 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco.

At the rally Trump replied, saying the speech was "vicious, hateful and divisive" and accusing the president of not even remembering his speech the next morning.

"This week, Joe Biden came to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to give the most vicious, hateful, and divisive speech ever delivered by an American president. Vilifying 75 million citizens... as threats to democracy and as enemies of the state, Trump said. "You're all enemies of the state. He's an enemy of the state."

Among the thousands of people displaced was Naomi Vogelsang. Her home destroyed, dog missing, and 10-year relationship with her boyfriend recently ended – all she could do on Saturday was sit outside a wildfire evacuation center with $20 in her pocket, waiting for a ride to the casino.

“It can’t be any worse,” she said.

The day before, flames raced from Roseburg Forest Products, which makes wood products, into Weed's Lincoln Heights neighborhood where a significant number of homes burned and residents had to flee for their lives. The blaze known as the Mill Fire had spread to more than 6.6 square miles (17 square kilometers) by Saturday evening and was 25% contained.

 

The sun rises over Mt. Shasta and homes destroyed by the Mill Fire on Saturday, Sept. 3, 2022, in Weed, Calif. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)© Provided by Associated Press

After fleeing the fire, 63-year-old Judy Christenson remembered a similar escape 40 years ago when, as a young parent, she had to rush her children out of a burning home. Last summer, a wildfire forced her to evacuate and leave her pets behind. Now, Christenson says she leaves harnesses on her pets all the time so she can grab them at a moment’s notice and leave.

The Republican candidate for governor in Wisconsin endorsed by Donald Trump is calling for people to take up “pitchforks and torches” in reaction to a story that detailed his giving to anti-abortion groups, churches and others — rhetoric that Democrats say amounts to threatening violence.

Tim Michels, who co-owns the state’s largest construction company, faces Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in the battleground state. If Michels wins, he will be in position to enact a host of GOP priorities passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature leading into the 2024 presidential election. Evers has vetoed more bills than any governor in modern state history and is campaigning on his ability to serve as a check on Republicans.

Michels, a multimillionaire, this week reacted strongly to a story published by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel detailing charitable giving by him and his wife’s foundation, some of which went to anti-abortion groups and churches that have taken anti-gay positions.

Since the story’s publication, Michels has gone after not just Evers and Democrats, but also the Journal Sentinel and, more broadly, all reporters.

“I believe people should just, just be ready to get out on the streets with pitchforks and torches with how love the liberal media has become,” Michels said Thursday on a conservative talk radio show.

“People need to decide: ‘Am I going to put up with this? Am I going to tolerate this, taking somebody that gives money to churches or cancer research and use that as a hit piece in the media?’ I’m appalled. It’s disgusting.”

That’s further than he went in a campaign website posting on Thursday when he encouraged people to “Get involved. Push back. Speak up. Volunteer. Donate. Vote.”

Evers’ spokesman, Sam Roecker, tweeted Friday that Michels had gone too far.

“Instead of explaining why he’s funding groups working to ban access to abortion and contraception, Tim Michels is encouraging violence,” Roecker wrote. “He’s too radical for Wisconsin.”

Hannah Menchoff, a Wisconsin Democratic Party spokesperson, accused Michels of threatening violence in an “extreme attempt to pander to Donald Trump and the MAGA base.”

Michels’ campaign spokesperson, Anna Kelly, on Friday downplayed his comments.

“Only political hacks and media accomplices would freak out about Tim using a figure of speech to emphasize the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s ridiculous characterization of his donations to churches, nuns, and charitable causes as ‘radical,’” she said.

Michels, who has used the Journal Sentinel article in fundraising pleas, posted a lengthy response to the piece on his campaign website Thursday. He accused Evers and the “corrupt media” of turning his charitable giving and faith “into something malicious.”

“I will never, ever apologize for giving to charitable causes, or for being a Christian,” Michels wrote. “However, the Journal Sentinel should be ashamed of their anti-religious bigotry.”

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel executive editor George Stanley defended the article, noting that the paper ran a piece on the same day about security costs for the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate that his Republican opponent was urging people to read.

Homes and vehicle destroyed by the Mill Fire line Wakefield Avenue on Saturday, Sept. 3, 2022, in Weed, Calif. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)© Provided by Associated Press

“Whenever this happens, I get really bad,” Christenson said from the front seat of a car at an evacuation center in Yreka as Felix, her orange cat, napped in the backseat. “I can’t think straight.”

 

Nestled in the shadow of Mt. Shasta — a 14,000-foot (4,267-meter) volcano that is the second-highest peak in the Cascade Range — Weed is no stranger to wildfires.

Strong winds in the area that fan flames drew the town's founder for a very different reason. Abner Weed, a Civil War soldier who is said to have witnessed the Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender before moving to California, chose to put a sawmill there because the wind would dry out the timber, according to Bob West, a lifelong resident who co-owns Ellie’s Espresso and Bakery, a coffee and sandwich shop that contains some historical items of the town’s past.

At a Pennsylvania rally supporting senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz and gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, the first since the FBI searched his Mar-a-Lago residence, Trump briefly fixated on the chief executive of Facebook's parent company.

"Last week, the weirdo — he's a weirdo — Mark Zuckerberg came to the White House, kissed my ass all night," Trump said during the speech, going on to mimic their alleged conversation: "'Sir, I'd love to have dinner, sir. I'd love to have dinner. I'd love to bring my lovely wife.' All right, Mark, come on in. 'Sir, you're number one on Facebook. I'd like to congratulate you.' Thank you very much, Mark. I appreciate it."

Trump has previously made similar comments about Zuckerberg. Last year, following his suspension from Facebook, he said the executive "used to come to the White House to kiss [his] ass" and called Zuckerberg "sick" for deplatforming him.

 

The winds make Weed and the surrounding area a perilous place for wildfires, whipping small flames into a frenzy. Weed has seen three major fires since 2014, a period of extreme drought that has prompted the largest and most destructive fires in California history.

That drought persists as California heads into what traditionally is the worst of the fire season. Scientists say climate change has made the West warmer and drier over the last three decades and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.

 

A scorched pickup truck sits in front of a Wakefield Avenue home destroyed by the Mill Fire on Saturday, Sept. 3, 2022, in Weed, Calif. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)© Provided by Associated Press

Dominique Mathes, 37, said he’s had some close calls with wildfires since he has lived in Weed. But he’s not interested in leaving.

 

“It’s a beautiful place,” he said. “Everybody has risks everywhere, like Florida’s got hurricanes and floods, Louisiana has got tornadoes and all that stuff. So, it happens everywhere. Unfortunately here, it’s fires.”

Evacuation orders were quickly put in effect Friday for 7,500 people – including West, who is 53 and has lived in Weed since he was a 1-year-old. He had never had to evacuate for a fire, but now he’s had to do it twice.

“It’s way worse than it used to be,” he said. “It affects our community because people leave because they don’t want to rebuild.”

Cal Fire Siskiyou Unit Chief Phil Anzo said crews worked all day and night to protect structures in Weed and in a subdivision to the east known as Carrick Addition. He said about 100 structures were destroyed.

Two people were brought to Mercy Medical Center Mount Shasta. One was in stable condition and the other was transferred to UC Davis Medical Center, which has a burn unit.

“There’s a lot at stake on that Mill Fire,” Anzo said. “There’s a lot of communities, a lot of homes there.”

Evacuees and firefighters quickly filled up local hotels while others rushed to stay with family and friends outside of the evacuation zone.

Vogelsang was not as fortunate. She said she slept on a bench in Weed until she could get a ride to the evacuation center. She said she’s spent most of the time crying about Bella, her 10-year-old English bulldog who — despite her best efforts — would not follow her out of the fire and is lost.

“My dog was my everything,” she said. “I just feel like I lost everything that mattered.”

___

Associated Press journalist Stefanie Dazio contributed from Los Angeles.

talukdar bari barisal kalurbap Turkish, Greek tension places 2022 Online News DIpjol

 Long-running tensions between Turkey and Greece in the Eastern Mediterranean are ramping up pressure on NATO exactly at a time when the 30-country Euro-Atlantic military alliance must pull together to tackle the multiple destabilizing factors sparked by Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.

The city of Litchfield is home to Hillsdale County’s largest industrial park thanks to the city’s Tax Increment Finance Authority — which encompasses most of the industrial park — reinvesting tax dollars back into the manufacturing community.

Litchfield City Manager Jason Smith may be relatively new to the job, but he has a grasp on the struggles manufacturers face in today’s economy.

Much of the situation employers are facing today has gone unchanged this year. Many jobs sit vacant as employers struggle to find qualified candidates to fill skilled positions.

A grisly drug-induced homicide captivated the media in Saudi Arabia this April, when a man in the country's Eastern Province set his family house on fire before iftar, the meal that ends the Ramadan fast. Four members of his family were killed.

Police said he was under the influence of shabu, a methamphetamine, according to local papers.

Saudi media has been sounding the alarm lately over the rise in drug use, with one columnist describing shipments of narcotics to the kingdom as an "open war against us, more dangerous than any other war."

 

 

On Wednesday, Saudi authorities announced the largest seizure of illicit drugs in the country's history after nearly 47 million amphetamine pills were hidden in a flour shipment and seized at a warehouse in the capital Riyadh.

The record seizure demonstrates what experts say is Saudi Arabia's growing role as the drug capital of the Middle East, driving demand and becoming the primary destination for smugglers from Syria and Lebanon.

The kingdom, they say, is one of the largest and most lucrative regional destinations for drugs, and that status is only intensifying.

Wednesday's operation was the biggest single smuggling attempt in terms of narcotics seized, according to the General Directorate of Narcotics Control. While authorities didn't name the drug seized or where it came from, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has previously said that "reports of amphetamine seizures from countries in the Middle East continue to refer predominantly to tablets bearing the Captagon logo."

 

Oleg Ustenko, a senior economic adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, welcomed the development, and said he expected the price range to be between $40 and $60.

"This is fantastic. It's exactly what we needed" to reduce the revenues that Russia was collecting, he told Reuters. Brent crude futures rose 66 cents to $93.02 a barrel on Friday.

Zelenskiy himself, in a video address, said a cap should also be imposed on Russian natural gas exports.

 

Captagon was originally the brand name for a medicinal product containing the synthetic stimulant fenethylline. Though it is no longer produced legally, counterfeit drugs carrying the captagon name are regularly seized in the Middle East, according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction.

Drug busts of captagon in Saudi Arabia and around the region have grown over time. Earlier this week, A US Coast Guard boat seized 320 kilograms of amphetamine tablets and almost 3,000 kilograms of hashish worth millions of dollars from a fishing boat in the Gulf of Oman.

The drug was popularized in the kingdom some 15 years ago but has taken off more intensely in the past five years, "perhaps becoming on par with cannabis," according to Vanda Felbab-Brown, a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, who has written on the topic.

One of the reasons captagon is spreading in use is "because there is a supply flood now coming mostly from Syria" where it is produced "on an industrial scale in the chemical factories inherited from the [Assad] regime" and supplied by warlords and affiliates of the regime.

Saudi Arabia's Center for International Communication didn't respond to CNN's request for comment.

Captagon can be sold for between $10 and $25 a pill, meaning the latest Saudi haul, if it was the same drug, has a street value of up to $1.1 billion, based on figures from the International Addiction Review journal.

"Captagon's amphetamine-type properties are sought out as a coping mechanism that can aid users facing food insecurity in staving hunger, and inducing a euphoric 'rush' that users have said to help with traumatic stress," said Caroline Rose, a senior analyst at the New Lines Institute in Washington, D.C. who has studied the captagon trade. "It's also been said that these same traits for captagon have been sought out by foreign workers in wealthy Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, seen to aid work performance."

While hashish and khat are also common drugs in the kingdom, amphetamines are popular among Saudi youth. A 2021 study in the journal of Crime, Law and Social Change cited a user as saying, "captagon is small. My school mates and I like it more than hashish. Not like hashish, we can buy in tablet......Once we get 25 riyals from [our] parents, we can buy one tablet and enjoy it."

"In wealthier consumer markets, the drug has a different appeal, serving as a recreational activity amongst its growing youth population that, despite social reforms... have reportedly struggled with boredom amidst widespread youth unemployment and a lack of opportunities for leisurely activities," said Rose. "Some consumers have justified captagon as less of a taboo substance, compared to 'harder' drugs like opiates and cocaine."

Since many young people in Saudi Arabia have been taking drugs as a result of boredom and lack of social opportunities, the increased freedoms introduced by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman could help reduce some of that use, said Felbab-Brown.

"The important thing is neither to curtail the freedoms, nor to turn concerts into places of dragnets and raids, but rather to educate young people," she told CNN.

Over the past few years, a number of drug rehabilitation centers have popped up across the kingdom after the government began licensing private establishments.

Khalid Al Mashari, the CEO of Qaweem, one of the first such centers to open, says around four or five have opened in the past two years. That's a testament to the government's recognition of the importance of rehabilitation, he says, but it also shows that the problem is on the rise.

“Companies are struggling to find talent, whether it is because of a lack of specialized talent for their needs, pay, work environment or a combination of the three is something that each company should be investigating on their own,” Smith said. “For example, it doesn’t matter what the starting pay is for a specialized welder or highly skilled trade, if there are none looking for work, there’s not much that can be done to quickly fill those spots. It comes down to supply and demand.”

If there are a lot of people in the field, Smith said, job seekers will go where they can find the best balance of a good environment and strong pay. If a company offers lower wages compared to other regional companies competing for the same talent, they’ll struggle.

Thousands of Russians from across the country were in central Moscow on Saturday to pay their final respects to Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, who was viewed by some as a great reformist but was reviled by others who blamed him for the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Inside the grand hall of Moscow’s famed House of the Unions — with its windows draped in black and its chandeliers dimmed as solemn classical music played — people walked by Mr. Gorbachev’s coffin, flanked by two guards of honor. Some mourners left flowers on a table in front of the coffin.

Mr. Gorbachev died on Tuesday at age 91, after what Moscow’s Central Clinical Hospital said was “a long and grave illness.”

Today we confirm our joint political intention to finalise and implement a comprehensive prohibition of services which enable maritime transportation of Russian-origin crude oil and petroleum products globally," the ministers said.

The provision of Western-dominated maritime transportation services, including insurance and finance, would be allowed only if the Russian oil cargoes are purchased at or below the price level "determined by the broad coalition of countries adhering to and implementing the price cap.

From the beginning, it was clear that the Kremlin would not accord Mr. Gorbachev the aplomb of a grand state ceremony that characterized funerals of his Soviet predecessors. It was not broadcast live by state television, and there were no lines of sobbing people in gray coats, carrying red carnations.

“It’s the same with poor working environments and conditions,” Smith said. “Word travels fast in a field. If a company has a reputation for being a poor environment, the culture will need significant change, or it’ll have to offer an incredibly high wage to attract talent.” The outlook for the remainder of 2022 is promising as companies are starting to realize that work environments and conditions are equally as important as pay.

“This generation of workers has a totally different mindset than generations past,” Smith added. “The days of taking a job at 18 and staying until you are 60, regardless of conditions, are long gone. Even the days of staying on board until you’re headhunted away are slowly fading off. Workers now are starting to see the benefits of work-life balance and prioritizing happiness over loyalty, security, and money.”

 

A week ago, citing Turkish Defense Ministry sources, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency reported that Greek surface-to-air missiles had locked on to Turkish F-16 fighter jets carrying out a reconnaissance mission in international airspace. Greek officials dismissed the account with a statement from the Defense Ministry saying that five Turkish jets appeared without prior notification to accompany a flight of U.S. B-52 bombers through an area subject to Greek flight control, the Associated Press reported.

The incident was only the latest in a series of claims by Turkey, and pushback from Greece that has prompted both countries to lodge complaints with NATO.

Endy Zemenides, executive director of the Hellenic American Leadership Council, likened Turkey’s behavior to that of China, which has made sweeping claims of sovereignty over the sea and its natural resources, antagonizing neighboring countries, including Taiwan, and Vietnam.

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  (From L) Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, U.S. President Biden and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg pose for pictures at the tart of the first plenary session of the NATO summit at the Ifema Congress Centre in Madrid, on June 29, 2022. (Photo by GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP via Getty Images)

 

"Turkey considers the Eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean in the same way that China considers the South China and the East China Seas, and the way China has been infringing on the area and making additional claims is what Turkey has been doing," he told Fox News Digital.

He added that a mix of internal and external factors had left Turkey feeling increasingly isolated and vulnerable, pushing Erdogan to focus on foreign policy and tensions with Greece to deflect from domestic problems.

Greece and Turkey have been locked in a maritime and territorial dispute for decades, but with shifting geopolitical alliances and the discoveries of natural gas and oil in regional waters, relations have deteriorated sharply not only impacting NATO, but also bilateral ties to the U.S. and other countries in the immediate region.

In 2020, the two states clashed over exploratory drilling rights in the sea where Greece and Cyprus claim exclusive economic zones. That incident led to a naval standoff between the two countries. More recently, Turkey has watched with increasing suspicion and frustration as Greece has grown closer to regional allies such as Israel, Egypt and France, as well as the United States.

In May, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis addressed a joint session of Congress warning that in light of the war in Ukraine, NATO could not allow a "further source of instability on its south-eastern flank." Mitsotakis’ visit to Washington, which finalized a Greek purchase of F-35 fighter jets, drew condemnation from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who charged that its neighbor was lobbying against U.S. arms sales to Turkey.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan observes a military exercise in Izmir, Turkey, on June 9, 2022. President Erdogan observed the final day of a large-scale joint military exercise in Turkey's western Izmir province on Thursday.  (Xinhua via Getty Images)

However, one person was conspicuously absent. Citing a busy schedule, President Vladimir V. Putin did not attend the proceedings. Instead, he paid his last respects to Mr. Gorbachev on Thursday, bringing a bouquet of flowers to his coffin at the hospital in Moscow.

 

Mr. Putin’s absence sent a clear message: While the Kremlin wanted to avoid any direct condemnation of a person who was once at its helm, it also wanted to distance itself from the symbol of an era whose legacy Mr. Putin is now largely trying to undo.

Ankara has faced sanctions from Washington over its ties with Russia, most notably a 2019 purchase of an advanced Russian missile defense system, but Turkey’s powerful role in NATO has forced the Biden administration to walk back its approach. In June, when NATO leaders met in Madrid, the prospect of fighter jets for Turkey was raised by the president as he worked to secure Turkish support for Sweden and Finland’s accession to the organization.

Turkey’s initial opposition to those countries joining NATO, as well as its close ties with Russia, have put it at odds with the U.S. and other members, including Greece, whose role as a strategic security partner for the U.S. has only been growing. In recent months, the Greek port of Alexandroupolis, which sits adjacent to Turkey and Bulgaria in the northern Aegean Sea, has become a central focal point as the U.S. increases its military presence in Eastern Europe.

According to statistics collected by Zemenides' orgranization, this year has seen a dramatic increase in Turkish violations of Greek national airspace from 618 in the first half of 2021 to some 2,377 during the same period in 2022. In addition, Turkish jets have begun flying over inhabited islands belonging to Greece, coming very close to the mainland not too far from the Alexandroupolis port.

US AFFIRMS GREEK SECURITY IN FACE OF TURKISH BELLIGERENCE

"It’s not one project or another," said Zemenides, pointing to the EastMed Forum, which includes Greece but excludes Turkey, the Abraham Accords between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, defense agreements between Greece and the U.S., and another with France.

"Turkey sees a picture with all these guys together and the other picture is of Erdogan with Putin and Iran holding hands," he said. "Turkey has bet on its Eurasia orientation, they have bet other partners and it is starting to boomerang as its economy suffers with high inflation, so now they’re following the playbook of external tensions to distract everybody from domestic difficulties."