Suburbs take center stage as U.S. growth slows – NBC News
Suburbs take center stage as U.S. growth slows – NBC News
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Texas doctor claims state’s new abortion law is illegal, says he has already violated it – Fox News
Texas doctor claims state’s new abortion law is illegal, says he has already violated it – Fox News
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A Texas doctor claimed Saturday that he has deliberately violated the state’s new abortion law in order to help test whether it’s legal.

Alan Braid, an obstetrician-gynecologist in San Antonio, explained his actions in an essay published in The Washington Post.

Braid writes that he understands “there could be legal consequences” because of his action.

“But I wanted to make sure that Texas didn’t get away with its bid to prevent this blatantly unconstitutional law from being tested.”

He added later: “I understand that by providing an abortion beyond the new legal limit, I am taking a personal risk, but it’s something I believe in strongly.”

“I understand that by providing an abortion beyond the new legal limit, I am taking a personal risk, but it’s something I believe in strongly.”

— Alan Braid, obstetrician-gynecologist in San Antonio

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed the abortion bill into law in May and it took effect Sept. 1.

Jonathan Mitchell, a former Texas solicitor general who helped prepare the bill, defended it in a legal brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in which he calls on the court to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 high court decision that legalized abortion, The Guardian reported.

‘Change their behavior’

Mitchell argues in the brief that a higher degree of personal integrity in response to a court ban on abortions would help make illegal abortions unnecessary, according to the news outlet.

“Women can ‘control their reproductive lives’ without access to abortion; they can do so by refraining from sexual intercourse,” Mitchell writes. “One can imagine a scenario in which a woman has chosen to engage in unprotected (or insufficiently protected) sexual intercourse on the assumption that an abortion will be available to her later. But when this court announces the overruling of Roe, that individual can simply change their behavior in response to the court’s decision if she no longer wants to take the risk of an unwanted pregnancy.”

The Supreme Court is expected to address a Mississippi case in its next term that could affect Roe v. Wade, The Guardian reported.

But Braid doesn’t support a return to the days before Roe v. Wade, he writes in the Post.

A pro-life demonstrator holds a placard inside the Texas Statehouse in Austin, July 12, 2013. (Reuters)

“For me, it is 1972 all over again,” Braid writes. At that time, he continues, abortions in Texas were available mostly to women of economic means who could afford to travel to states like California, Colorado or New York to have the procedure done. He claims that Texas’ new law returns the state to those days.

He claims he watched three teenagers die from the effects of illegal abortions while performing emergency-room duty as an OB-GYN resident at a San Antonio hospital.

‘A duty of care’

On Sept. 6, five days after the new Texas law took effect Sept. 1, he writes, he provided an abortion to a woman in the first trimester of her pregnancy – a violation of the state law.

“I acted because I had a duty of care to this patient, as I do for all patients, and because she has a fundamental right to receive this care.”

Last Tuesday, the U.S. Justice Department asked a federal judge in Texas to temporarily halt the implementation of the new Texas law.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott speaks at a news conference, Tuesday, June 8, 2021, in Austin, June 22, 2021. (Associated Press)

The emergency motion seeking a temporary restraining order comes days after the DOJ sued Texas over the law, claiming it was enacted to “prevent women from exercising their constitutional rights.” 

The law went into effect on Sept. 1 after being upheld in a 5-4 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. It is the strictest abortion law in the country. Critics say many women don’t yet know they’re pregnant at six weeks – around the time when a fetal heartbeat can first be detected – and the law makes no exceptions for rape or incest. 

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“It’s clearly unconstitutional,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said earlier this month. “The obvious and expressly acknowledged intention of this statutory scheme is to prevent women from exercising their constitutional rights.”

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and other Republicans have vowed to defend the new law.

“Biden should focus on fixing the border crisis, Afghanistan, the economy and countless other disasters instead of meddling in states’ sovereign rights,” Paxton wrote on Twitter on Sept. 9. “I will use every available resource to fight for life.”

The law prohibits all abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, usually around six weeks, and also allows individuals who oppose abortion to sue clinics and others who assist a woman in getting an abortion.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/politics/texas-doctor-abortion-law-illegal

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Haitians On Texas Border Are Undeterred By U.S. Plan To Expel Them – NPR
Haitians On Texas Border Are Undeterred By U.S. Plan To Expel Them – NPR

Haitian migrants use a dam to cross into and from the U.S. from Mexico, on Saturday, in Del Rio, Texas.

Eric Gay/AP


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Haitian migrants use a dam to cross into and from the U.S. from Mexico, on Saturday, in Del Rio, Texas.

Eric Gay/AP

DEL RIO, Texas — Haitian migrants seeking to escape poverty, hunger and a feeling of hopelessness in their home country said they will not be deterred by U.S. plans to speedily send them back, as thousands of people remained encamped on the Texas border Saturday after crossing from Mexico.

Scores of people waded back and forth across the Rio Grande on Saturday afternoon, re-entering Mexico to purchase water, food and diapers in Ciudad Acuña before returning to the Texas encampment under and near a bridge in the border city of Del Rio.

Junior Jean, a 32-year-old man from Haiti, watched as people cautiously carried cases of water or bags of food through the knee-high river water. Jean said he lived on the streets in Chile the past four years, resigned to searching for food in garbage cans.

“We are all looking for a better life,” he said.

The Department of Homeland Security said Saturday that it moved about 2,000 of the migrants from the camp to other locations Friday for processing and possible removal from the U.S. Its statement also said it would have 400 agents and officers in the area by Monday morning and would send more if necessary.

The announcement marked a swift response to the sudden arrival of Haitians in Del Rio, a Texas city of about 35,000 people roughly 145 miles (230 kilometers) west of San Antonio. It sits on a relatively remote stretch of border that lacks capacity to hold and process such large numbers of people.

A U.S. official told The Associated Press on Friday that the U.S would likely fly the migrants out of the country on five to eight flights a day, starting Sunday, while another official expected no more than two a day and said everyone would be tested for COVID-19. The first official said operational capacity and Haiti’s willingness to accept flights would determine how many flights there would be. Both officials were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Told of the U.S. plans Saturday, several migrants said they still intended to remain in the encampment and seek asylum. Some spoke of the most recent devastating earthquake in Haiti and the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, saying they were afraid to return to a country that seems more unstable than when they left.

“In Haiti, there is no security,” said Fabricio Jean, a 38-year-old Haitian who arrived with his wife and two daughters. “The country is in a political crisis.”

Haitians have been migrating to the U.S. in large numbers from South America for several years, many having left their Caribbean nation after a devastating 2010 earthquake. After jobs dried up from the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, many made the dangerous trek by foot, bus and car to the U.S. border, including through the infamous Darien Gap, a Panamanian jungle.

Jorge Luis Mora Castillo, a 48-year-old from Cuba, said he arrived Saturday in Acuna and also planned to cross into the U.S. Castillo said his family paid smugglers $12,000 to take him, his wife and their son out of Paraguay, a South American nation where they had lived for four years.

Told of the U.S. message discouraging migrants, Castillo said he wouldn’t change his mind.

“Because to go back to Cuba is to die,” he said.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection closed off vehicle and pedestrian traffic in both directions Friday at the only border crossing between Del Rio and Ciudad Acuña “to respond to urgent safety and security needs” and it remained closed Saturday. Travelers were being directed indefinitely to a crossing in Eagle Pass, roughly 55 miles (90 kilometers) away.

Crowd estimates varied, but Del Rio Mayor Bruno Lozano said Saturday evening there were 14,534 immigrants at the camp under the bridge. Migrants pitched tents and built makeshift shelters from giant reeds known as carrizo cane. Many bathed and washed clothing in the river.

It is unclear how such a large number amassed so quickly, though many Haitians have been assembling in camps on the Mexican side of the border to wait while deciding whether to attempt entry into the U.S.

The number of Haitian arrivals began to reach unsustainable levels for the Border Patrol in Del Rio about 2 ½ weeks ago, prompting the agency’s acting sector chief, Robert Garcia, to ask headquarters for help, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Since then, the agency has transferred Haitians in buses and vans to other Border Patrol facilities in Texas, specifically El Paso, Laredo and Rio Grande Valley. They are mostly processed outside of the pandemic-related authority, meaning they can claim asylum and remain in the U.S. while their claims are considered. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement makes custody decision but families can generally not be held more than 20 days under court order.

Homeland Security’s plan announced Saturday signals a shift to use of pandemic-related authority for immediate expulsion to Haiti without an opportunity to claim asylum, the official said.

The flight plan, while potentially massive in scale, hinges on how Haitians respond. They might have to decide whether to stay put at the risk of being sent back to an impoverished homeland wracked by poverty and political instability or return to Mexico. Unaccompanied children are exempt from fast-track expulsions.

DHS said, “our borders are not open, and people should not make the dangerous journey.”

“Individuals and families are subject to border restrictions, including expulsion,” the agency wrote. “Irregular migration poses a significant threat to the health and welfare of border communities and to the lives of migrants themselves, and should not be attempted.”

U.S. authorities are being severely tested after Democratic President Joe Biden quickly dismantled Trump administration policies that Biden considered cruel or inhumane, most notably one requiring asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico while waiting for U.S. immigration court hearings.

A pandemic-related order to immediately expel migrants without giving them the opportunity to seek asylum that was introduced in March 2020 remains in effect, but unaccompanied children and many families have been exempt. During his first month in office, Biden chose to exempt children traveling alone on humanitarian grounds.

Nicole Phillips, legal director for advocacy group Haitian Bridge Alliance, said Saturday that the U.S. government should process migrants and allow them to apply for asylum, not rush to expel them.

“It really is a humanitarian crisis,” Phillips said. “There needs to be a lot of help there now.”

Mexico’s immigration agency said in a statement Saturday that Mexico has opened a “permanent dialogue” with Haitian government representatives “to address the situation of irregular migratory flows during their entry and transit through Mexico, as well as their assisted return.”

The agency didn’t specify if it was referring to the Haitians in Ciudad Acuña or to the thousands of others in Tapachula, at the Guatemalan border, and the agency didn’t immediately reply to a request for further details.

In August, U.S. authorities stopped migrants nearly 209,000 times at the border, which was close to a 20-year high even though many of the stops involved repeat crossers because there are no legal consequences for being expelled under the pandemic authority.

Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2021/09/19/1038648750/haitians-texas-border-us-plan-deport

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Gabby Petito: FBI and Park Rangers search campsite believed used by missing YouTuber – The Independent
Gabby Petito: FBI and Park Rangers search campsite believed used by missing YouTuber – The Independent

A team of FBI agents and park rangers have carried out a major search of a wild campsite believed to have been used by missing YouTuber Gabby Petito.

Several dozen officers from the FBI, the US Forest Service, Teton County Sheriff’s office and other agencies, spent hours on Saturday searching for clues at the site at Spread Creek Road, about 20 miles north of Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Rangers from the National Park Service blocked the public and the media from entering the site, while campers who had been using it were told to be gone by the time the search started.

“The #FBIDenver Field Office and its Wyoming Resident Agencies, in coordination with the National Park Service, US Forest Service, Teton County Sheriff’s Office & Jackson Police Department, have been conducting ground surveys at the Spread Creek Dispersed Camping Area,” the FBI said on Twitter.

It added: “While we cannot comment further as to the specifics of this investigation, we will provide updates and request additional assistance from the public when appropriate to do so.”

Grand Teton National Park is vast and dramatic, a full 480 square miles. On Saturday, officers carried out their search under a sky that rapidly shifted from sunshine to dark storms.

Officials have said very little about the search or what they may have found. The National Park Service said the operation was being led by the Denver office of the FBI. That office did not immediately respond to inquiries.

Yet, it appears the area, a so-called dispersal camping site which has no facilities appears to be considered for several reasons.

It is just a few miles from Jenny Lake, where a member of the public claims to have seen the white 2012 Ford Transit van that Ms Petito and her boyfriend were using for their cross-country trip, on 25 August.

It is possible that the couple may have stayed at the site. It has been widely reported that Ms Petito did tag numerous a number of potential campsites on an app called The Dyrt, among them this one.

It is also less than ten miles from where another visitor to the national park, Amanda Baker, said she and her boyfriend, gave a lift to Mr Laurie, who was hitch-hiking by himself on August 29.

In a series of TikTok videos, Ms Baker, 22, said they had picked him up the public showers at Colter Bay Village, where he told them he had been wild camping with his partner north on the Snake River.

“He approached us asking us for a ride because he needed to go to Jackson, [and] we were going to Jackson that night,” Ms Baker said.

“So I said ‘You know, hop in’, and he hopped in the back of my Jeep, we then proceeded to make small talk, but before he came in the car he offered to pay us like $200, to give him a ride, like 10 miles.

“So that was kind of weird. He then told us he’s been camping for multiple days without his fiancé, he did say he had a fiancé, and that she was working on their social media page back at their van.”

Ms Baker said she had provided her information to the police and the FBI, something officers at North Port Police Department in Florida confirmed.

As it was on Saturday, police in Florida were doing their own search, for Mr Laundrie, after it was revealed his family had said the had not seen him since Tuesday.

Grand Teton National Park is vast

The Associated Press said police searched a vast Florida wildlife reserve on the 23-year-old, named a person of interest in the disappearance of his girlfriend. More than 50 North Port police officers, FBI agents and members of other law enforcement agencies searched the 24,000-acre Carlton Reserve in the Sarasota, Florida area of the Gulf Coast.

Police have repeatedly stressed they have no evidence a crime has been committed, and are treating Ms Petito’s case as that of a missing person.

In Wyoming, most people seemed to be aware of the story of Ms Petito’s disappearance, though views and opinions ranged as to what may have happened.

Ben Cole, who has been coming to the park for 30 years, was sitting close to the public showers at Colter Bay Village, from where Ms Baker said she and her boyfriend gave a ride to Mr Laundrie.

He said: “Out here, it’s a vast land.”

He said he thought something “fishy” had happened but was not sure what.

Craig Davies, who said he has been touring the country in a van for four years, was at a campsite close to the one the FBI had locked down.

‘They told us we had to get out,” he said. “We didn’t know why.”

Source Article from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/gabby-petito-fbi-search-campsite-latest-b1922782.html

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Gabby Petito Search Extends to Grand Teton as Brian Laundrie Sought in Alligator-Infested Area – Newsweek
Gabby Petito Search Extends to Grand Teton as Brian Laundrie Sought in Alligator-Infested Area – Newsweek

The search for Gabby Petito continues—as does a separate search for fiancée, Brian Laundrie, thousands of miles away. On Saturday, the Denver FBI announced it has extended the search for Petito to Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.

Petito, 22, is believed to have gone missing while visiting the park with Laundrie in August. She was first reported missing on September 11.

She was reportedly last seen on August 24 at the Fairfield Inn & Suites in Salt Lake City. The couple had been making their way from Utah’s Arches National Park to Grand Teton. It was during this trip that she was last in contact with her family via Facetime on August 25.

The FBI confirmed the extension of the search via Twitter on Saturday. The bureau also urged the public to “maintain distance from any law enforcement personnel, equipment, vehicles, and their related activity” while the investigation is being conducted.

“The #FBI and our partners at the National Park Service, Teton County Sheriff’s Office & Jackson Police Department are currently conducting ground surveys in areas of Grand Teton National Park that are relevant to the investigation into Gabrielle Petito’s disappearance,” the tweet reads.

Grand Teton National Park covers around 310,000 acres in northwest Wyoming.

Meanwhile, the search continues for Laundrie, 23, in North Port, Florida. His family reported him missing in the town on Friday. Since then, dozens of FBI agents, police officers and others have been canvassing the Carlton Reserve, which spans over 24,000 acres in Venice, Florida.

Speaking to Fox News reporters, a man who lives near Carlton Reserve said that its waters are full of alligators.

“There’s just so much area here,” the man can be heard to say in a video posted to Twitter, in response to a question about the challenges facing law enforcement in its search for Laundrie. Shortly after this, he points out an alligator visible in a nearby body of water.

Police have been bringing search dogs and amphibious swamp buggies to aid in their search of Carlton Reserve.

While Laundrie’s condition remains unknown, Petito’s family have said they believe he is “hiding” to evade law enforcement and is not missing in the same way that their daughter is believed to be.

“Brian is not missing, he is hiding. Gabby is missing,” the family said through the law office representing them.

The search for Gabby Petito has been extended to Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. In this photo, parents Tara and Joe Petito react while the City of North Port Chief of Police Todd Garrison speaks during a news conference about their missing daughter on September 16 in North Port, Florida.
Octavio Jones/Getty Images

Earlier this week, the Moab City Police Department in Utah released body-cam footage from an interaction with the couple on August 12. Officers had been responding to an altercation between the two, with Petito claiming that Laundrie had locked her out of their van and told her to calm down. The two were advised to “stay away from each other” for the remainder of that night.

Petito had been active prior to her disappearance as a travel YouTuber working in the “van life” genre.

Source Article from https://www.newsweek.com/gabby-petito-search-extends-grand-teton-brian-laundrie-sought-alligator-infested-area-1630523

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Biden Administration Plans Mass Deportation Of Haitian Migrants In Del Rio, Texas – NPR
Biden Administration Plans Mass Deportation Of Haitian Migrants In Del Rio, Texas – NPR

Migrants walk across the Rio Grande River carrying food and other supplies back to a makeshift encampment under the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas, on Friday.

Jordan Vonderhaar/Getty Images


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Migrants walk across the Rio Grande River carrying food and other supplies back to a makeshift encampment under the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas, on Friday.

Jordan Vonderhaar/Getty Images

The Department of Homeland Security will begin deporting planes full of Haitian migrants as soon as Sunday to discourage more border-crossers from streaming into a camp in South Texas.

The plan, outlined by the Department of Homeland Security, is meant to relieve the overflow at the South Texas border town of Del Rio and deter more Haitians from trying to come to the United States illegally.

Human rights groups and some Democratic lawmakers opposed the plan.

The administration said it will “accelerate the pace and increase the capacity” of deportations to Haiti as well as other countries in the next 72 hours. The plan does not detail the number of people on each plane or how migrants will be processed before being placed on a flight. The administration did note that families with children will be subject to expulsion, a point that had been contested in court earlier this week.

In May, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas announced an 18-month temporary protected status for Haitians living in the U.S., citing “serious security concerns, social unrest, an increase in human rights abuses, crippling poverty, and lack of basic resources, which are exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.” The status provides a work permit and stay of deportation to foreign nationals who apply and qualify.

The number of migrants in Del Rio has surged in the past week. Del Rio Mayor Bruno Lozano said more than 14,000 Haitians are camping out under a bridge and awaiting processing, CNN reported.

To alleviate the pressure on resources and the growing surge in Del Rio, the Department of Homeland Security said that it has closed the port, beefed up staffing by more than 400, and that it would send additional staff if necessary.

Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2021/09/18/1038591661/biden-administration-plans-mass-deportation-of-haitian-migrants-in-del-rio-texas

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Wildfire reaches Giant Forest; fate of giant sequoias unknown – Los Angeles Times
Wildfire reaches Giant Forest; fate of giant sequoias unknown – Los Angeles Times

A lightning-sparked wildfire in Sequoia National Park has scorched the edge of the Giant Forest, home to some 2,000 giant sequoias that includes one of the world’s largest known trees.

The KNP Complex fire on Friday burned through the westernmost tip of the forest off General’s Highway near the Four Guardsmen, a grouping of giant sequoias that mark the forest’s entrance, said Steven Bekkerus, public information officer with the Southern Area Blue Team. The forest is located east of Fresno.

The bases of the trees had been wrapped in protective foil that can withstand high heat and is typically used to guard structures against flames, he said, but it wasn’t clear how intensely the fire burned through the area or how the trees fared.

California

Photos: Windy fire blows through Sequoia National Forest

Photos of the Windy fire near the Tule River Reservation in the Sequoia National Forest as crews from the Sierra Cobras and Roosevelt Hotshots fight it.

Giant sequoias are considered one of the most fire-adapted species on Earth, but experts say the drought-stressed trees are increasingly no match for massive, high-intensity blazes stoked by climate change and a buildup of dry vegetation in western U.S. forests.

Crews were able to get into the area later Saturday, after they cleared General’s Highway — the only way in and out of the forest — of falling rocks and flaming vegetation that had rolled onto the road, Bekkerus said.

That came as the two fires that comprised the complex — the Colony and the Paradise fires, which were sparked by a Sept. 9 lightning storm — merged overnight, swelling to 17,857 acres and making a run to the north and northeast. Firefighters reported 0% containment.

As of Saturday afternoon, the fire had not affected most of the Giant Forest, including the famed General Sherman tree, believed to be the largest in the world by volume, Bekkerus said. The tree is on the north end of the forest.

Authorities were not sure whether flames would reach there later in the day.

“We don’t know exactly what will happen today,” Bekkerus said. “Today may be an active fire day.”

California

As wildfires decimate the giant sequoia, California faces unprecedented loss

Researchers now believe a wildfire last year killed 10% to 14% of the world’s natural sequoia population.

Fire activity started to increase around 2 p.m. Friday, when the wind picked up and a smoke inversion lifted, allowing the sun to heat up the vegetation, Bekkerus said.

“We actually had to pull our crews out for safety reasons,” he said.

Crews were back out fighting the fire Saturday morning, he said. They were also protecting structures in the cabin communities of Mineral King and in Three Rivers, where over 100 homes were threatened, he said.

There were 416 personnel assigned to the incident, with more resources on order, Bekkerus said.

“This is one of the highest priority fires in the country right now, so we are trying to wrap those resources up and get what we need,” he said.

Firefighters were scrambling to make progress before a red-flag warning issued by the National Weather Service took effect at 5 p.m. As a trough of low pressure moved in from the west, forecasters were calling for very low relative humidity values and strong winds gusting as high as 45 mph, said Bill South, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Hanford.

“All that in combination could lead to extreme fire behavior,” he said.

The critical fire weather conditions were expected to persist through most of the weekend, with the warning set to expire at 8 p.m. Sunday, he said.

“Any time you have significant wind events, those are difficult,” Bekkerus said. “There’s not much we can do to stop that.”

Crews had been working for the past week to prepare the Giant Forest for fire by wrapping trees, including General Sherman, in protective structure wrap and raking vegetation from around their bases.

Hotshots specially trained in setting low-intensity fires were also lighting off duff around the trees, he said.

The Forest Service has been conducting controlled burns in the sequoia groves since the 1960s to remove excess vegetation that could help fire burn hotter and carry it up into the crowns of the trees, Bekkerus said. They’ve been challenged by resource limitations and the fact that the windows to conduct the burns have grown narrower due to rising temperatures, dwindling precipitation and longer, more active fire seasons.

Still, authorities hope that history will help ensure that if the fire does burn through the rest of the forest, it will do so at a low enough intensity to be beneficial to the towering giants, which have bark that’s up to 2 feet thick, branches that reach above flames and cones that release seeds when exposed to a burst of heat.

“It is important to remember that these trees are thousands of years old,” Bekkerus said. “They are used to fire.”

A giant sequoia can survive a wildfire if just 5% of its crown remains unscorched. At the same time, Bekkerus noted, the trees can still succumb to blazes that burn hot enough, particularly amid hot, dry conditions that have left them more vulnerable to begin with.

“We are currently in a historic drought, and these trees are stressed,” Bekkerus said.

Giant sequoias grow only on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada, where there are roughly 70 groves. Last year, the Castle fire burned through portions of about 20 of those groves with such an intensity that it caused some trees’ crowns to combust and destroyed their cones rather than helping them release seeds. Researchers estimate the fire killed 7,500 to 10,600 trees — 10% to 14% of the world’s natural population.

The Giant Sequoias Land Coalition of federal and state agencies, universities, tribes and conservationists is now working to put together a plan to ensure the trees’ long-term viability in the face of what has become an existential threat, Bekkerus said.

He noted that the giant sequoia is an iconic symbol of the nation’s open spaces and is prominently featured in the National Park Service logo.

“This is the second-oldest park in the country after Yellowstone, and the reason for the park is the sequoia trees,” he said. “So these are very important resources we are working hard to protect.”

Source Article from https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-09-18/wildfire-reaches-giant-forest-fate-of-giant-sequoias-unknown

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Small crowd gathers near the Capitol to protest arrests of Jan. 6 rioters – CNBC
Small crowd gathers near the Capitol to protest arrests of Jan. 6 rioters – CNBC

A sparse crowd of demonstrators gathered in Washington to rally for those criminally charged in the Jan. 6 deadly pro-Trump insurrection.

Organizers called the rally “Justice for J6,” referencing the date in which supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to prevent the certification of the 2020 election results.

Protestors were met with heavy presence of local, state and federal law enforcement — and members of the press — outnumbering event attendees.

U.S. Capitol Police made a few arrests Saturday in an otherwise nonviolent demonstration, according to the department’s social media. Arrests included weapons violation, possession of a firearm and probation violation, according to police.

Washington Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Contee told NBC News the crowd was “about what we expected” and the heightened police presence may have deterred attendance.

Police in advance of Saturday ramped up security around the Capitol, erecting fences around the Capitol grounds, Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, and other congressional office buildings.

One hundred National Guard troops were on standby to help protect the Capitol, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Friday.

Matt Braynard, the former Trump campaign staffer who organized the rally, previously told CNBC he expected the protest to be peaceful.

The Jan. 6 Capitol riot began shortly after Trump, speaking at a rally outside the White House, urged the crowd to march to Congress and fight against the certification of Joe Biden‘s election as president.

Four people died that day in connection with the riot, including a woman shot by a police officer as she tried to crawl through a window toward the House of Representatives chamber.

Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died the following day after collapsing hours after he was attacked by rioters. Four police officers who responded to the insurrection have died by suicide since the attack.

Trump on Thursday said he sided with the rally attendees in condemning the criminal prosecution of the Jan. 6 riot participants.

More than 600 people have been arrested since the Jan. 6 attack, and over 50 of them have pleaded guilty to a variety of crimes. Six have been found guilty in court, according to the Justice Department.

—CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger, Dan Mangan and Amanda Macias contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/18/small-crowd-gathers-in-dc-to-protest-arrests-of-jan-6-rioters.html

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Gabby Petito one of three people missing near Grand Teton Park this summer – New York Post
Gabby Petito one of three people missing near Grand Teton Park this summer – New York Post

Gabby Petito is one of three people who went missing in or near Grand Teton National Park this summer.

Petito, 22, was in the midst of a cross-country van trip with her also missing boyfriend, Brian Laundrie, when she disappeared in late August. Her family last spoke with her Aug. 24, when she said they were in Utah, headed to Wyoming to see the Tetons.

Rangers are searching for the 5-foot-5 Petito in the Teton backcountry — but she’s not the only missing person on their radar there, authorities said.

The last trace of Robert Lowery, a traveler from Texas, was a ping from his cellphone in Jackson on Aug. 23, police told the Jackson Hole News & Guide.

The 46-year-old was seen on video from Aug. 19 at a restaurant at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort in Teton Village, and may have taken a ride in a Lyft the following day.

Lowery had never been to the area before, his sister, Leigh Lowery, told the paper, and had recently gotten a sleeping bag and a tent, but had no camping experience.

Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie were on a “van life” trip across the US when she went missing.
Instagram
Gabby Petito’s last spoke to her family on Aug. 25.
North Port/Florida Police/Handout via REUTERS

Before Lowery left his home in Houston, he canceled his mail, Jackson sheriff’s Deputy Chad Sachse told the paper.

In the third case, Cian McLaughlin, 27, was last seen June 8 hiking in the park by a local resident without a backpack. He was reported missing four days later.

Authorities are now searching for Gabby Petito’s boyfriend, Brian Laundrie.
Instagram
Police have found no evidence or clues into Cian McLaughlin’s whereabouts.
SARGENT SCHUTT / COURTESY PHOTO

The park conducted an investigation that involved tips from more than 140 people, and more than 45 helicopter searches, some using thermal imaging cameras and other high-tech equipment. No trace of McLaughlin was found.

Neither the Department of the Interior, which oversees the National Park Service, nor the Department of Agriculture’s US Forest Service keeps track of how many people vanish in American wilderness areas each year, but researchers suggest the number could be in the hundreds.

Robert Lowery was last seen in a restaurant at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort in Teton Village.
Teton County Sheriff’s Office
A poster describes what Cian McLaughlin might be wearing when he was last seen on June 8.
Grand Teton National Park / Facebook

Teton Park spokesman C.J. Adams told the paper there was no known connection between the three missing persons, or their cases.

Source Article from https://nypost.com/2021/09/18/gabby-petito-one-of-three-people-missing-near-grand-teton-park-this-summer/

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Nuclear subs and a diplomatic blowup: The US-France clash, explained – Vox.com
Nuclear subs and a diplomatic blowup: The US-France clash, explained – Vox.com

France recalled its ambassadors to the United States and Australia on Friday in protest of Australia’s decision to cancel a major defense deal in favor of a new one with the US and Britain.

The dramatic move caps a week of indignation for France, which described the new US-UK-Australia deal as “a stab in the back” on Thursday, and represents a major diplomatic break between longtime allies.

It’s also the first time that France has recalled its ambassador to the US, according to Bloomberg News, and it comes after French officials canceled a Washington, DC, gala scheduled for Friday.

The new US-UK-Australia deal, which was announced on Wednesday by the leaders of the three countries, lays the groundwork for Australia to acquire at least eight nuclear submarines with support from the US and the UK. According to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, it also marks the “first major initiative” of a tripartite new security agreement between the countries under the acronym AUKUS (pronounced AWK-us, according to the AP).

“This initiative is about making sure that each of us has a modern capability — the most modern capabilities we need — to maneuver and defend against rapidly evolving threats,” President Joe Biden said in Wednesday’s joint announcement with Morrison and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

The AUKUS submarine deal replaces a previous agreement between France and Australia for France to deliver 12 non-nuclear submarines.

In a Friday statement announcing France’s decision to recall its ambassadors, French Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said that the move “is justified by the exceptional gravity of the announcements made on 15 September by Australia and the United States.”

In public remarks this week, French officials, including Le Drian, have not held back their shock at Australia’s decision to turn to the US and the UK. “We had established a trusting relationship with Australia, and this trust was betrayed,” Le Drian said on Thursday, according to Politico.

French Minister of the Armed Forces Florence Parly reserved particular disdain for the US, saying France is “clear-eyed as to how the United States treats its allies,” according to Deutsche Welle.

Despite the UK’s smaller role in the negotiations — currently, the US shares its submarine technology with the UK alone, necessitating Britain’s cooperation in the pact — Le Drian had harsh words for the Johnson government, too, saying it is “in a logic of permanent opportunism.”

Nuclear submarines make geopolitical sense for Australia

French President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to withdraw his country’s ambassadors to the US and Australia in response to the pact marks a surprising breakdown in France’s historically close relationship with the US — but Australia’s decision to look to the US for its submarine fleet is less surprising.

Specifically, China’s military buildup, and its quest for dominance in the South China Sea — a major trade route for Australia — made the French submarines obsolete before they were even delivered. Because the US-made submarines rely on nuclear power, they have a far greater range than conventional submarines, don’t require refueling, and have better stealth capabilities — meaning they can stay underwater for months at a time without being detected, Australian National University researcher AJ Mitchell explained in the Conversation this week.

With the AUKUS pact, Australia will join six other nations — the US, UK, Russia, India, France, and China — in deploying nuclear submarines, assuming the deal goes forward as planned. Prior to this new alliance, the US had shared its submarine technology only with Britain.

In addition to the advantages of nuclear submarines, Australia’s previous deal with France — a $66 billion submarine contract, finalized in 2016, that would have provided Australia with 12 conventional, diesel-powered Barracuda submarines — has been rife with difficulties.

The deal with France was only canceled on Wednesday, just hours before Morrison announced the AUKUS agreement in a teleconference with Biden and Johnson, but it had already begun to unravel — falling behind schedule as costs nearly doubled — when Australia approached the US about acquiring its submarine technology shortly after Biden took office earlier this year.

In June, Australian Defense Minister Scott Moriarty signaled in a Senate hearing that the original deal was proving untenable, Politico reports, and that Australia was pursuing other options should the pact fall apart.

On top of cost overruns and delays, there were other issues as well. Shortly after Australia and France reached the agreement in 2016, the French shipbuilder, then called DCNS, revealed it had been hacked and documents related to a separate Indian submarine project exposed. And while France’s submarine technology — conventional, diesel-powered attack vessels that could be switched to nuclear power — may have made sense when Australia’s relationship with China was less contentious, that relationship has soured recently due to China’s aggressive foreign policy in the Pacific and elsewhere.

AUKUS took France by surprise

While issues with the Australia-France deal have long been apparent, neither the US nor the Australians discussed the shift with their French counterparts until just a few hours before Morrison, Johnson, and Biden announced the new alliance, according to the New York Times.

In fact, Australia and the US reportedly conspired to keep the developing deal from France, even as officials from both countries met with their French counterparts. Biden discussed the future of their alliance with Macron in June and Secretary of State Antony Blinken made no mention of the pact when he met with Le Drian that same month in Paris.

Australia also hid its plans from France when Morrison and Macron met in June, although Morrison says he did raise concerns about the viability of diesel-powered vessels, according to the Hill. Australia’s defense and foreign ministers even met with their French counterparts late last month and issued a joint statement about furthering their defense cooperation, specifically citing the submarine program.

But by that date, according to the New York Times, the AUKUS deal was all but signed. The news caught French officials off-guard, with French ambassador to Australia Jean-Pierre Thebault reportedly learning of the new alliance when the news broke in the Australian press, and while Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, did discuss the decision with French ambassador Philippe Etienne just before the official announcement, that did not stop France from recalling Etienne to Paris for consultations.

The complex roots of France’s fury

In addition to diplomatic issues, France’s disappointment in the dissolution of its original submarine deal has a financial component.

Indeed, the scuttled $66 billion deal was billed as the “contract of the century” in France, and Parly noted Thursday that the French government won’t rule out asking Australia for compensation.

The now-defunct deal also intersects with France’s long-term foreign policy goals.

Macron has long sought to establish what he calls “strategic autonomy” for the European Union, asking members of the bloc to increase their military spending and establish a stronger political relationship with NATO. In February, Macron emphasized at an Atlantic Council forum that “the EU is a credible player and one at a relevant level.

The dissolution of the French-Australian defense deal prevents Macron from flexing the country’s — and the bloc’s — security and political muscles in the Indo-Pacific.

That doesn’t mean France’s outrage this week augurs a major shift for the country going forward, however.

As Daniel Baer, senior fellow at the Carnegie Institute for International Peace, points out in Foreign Policy, “For the French—or anyone else—to spin a substantial commercial loss into a paradigm-busting strategic reorientation is a misinterpretation of the meaning of the pact, the main strategic focus of which is, after all, the Indo-Pacific.”

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Source Article from https://www.vox.com/2021/9/18/22680875/france-us-australia-ambassadors-nuclear-subs-explained

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Afghan survivors of errant US drone strike seek probe – Associated Press
Afghan survivors of errant US drone strike seek probe – Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A survivor of an errant U.S. drone strike that killed 10 members of his family demanded Saturday that those responsible be punished and said Washington’s apology was not enough.

The family also seeks financial compensation and relocation to the United States or another country deemed safe, said Emal Ahmadi, whose 3-year-old daughter Malika was among those killed in the Aug. 29 strike.

On that day, a U.S. hellfire missile struck the car that Ahmadi’s brother Zemerai had just pulled into the driveway of the Ahmadi family compound as children ran to greet him. In all, 10 members of the family, including seven children, were killed in the strike.

On Friday, U.S. Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, called the strike a “tragic mistake” and said that innocent civilians were indeed killed in the attack.

The U.S. military initially defended the strike, saying it had targeted an Islamic State group’s “facilitator” and disrupted the militants’ ability to carry out attacks during the chaotic final stage of the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops from Afghanistan late last month.

Discrepancies between the military’s portrayal of the strike and findings on the ground quickly emerged. The Associated Press and other news organizations reported that the driver of the targeted vehicle was a longtime employee at a U.S. humanitarian organization. There were no signs of a large secondary blast, despite the Pentagon’s assertion that the vehicle contained explosives.

The drone strike followed a devastating suicide bombing by IS — a rival of the Taliban — that killed 169 Afghans and 13 U.S. military personnel at one of the gates to the Kabul airport in late August. At that time, large numbers of Afghans, desperate to flee the Taliban, had crowded the airport gates in hopes of getting on to evacuation flights.

McKenzie apologized for the error and said the United States is considering making reparation payments to the family of the victims.

Emal Ahmadi told the AP on Saturday that he wants the U.S. to investigate who fired the drone and punish those responsible.

“That is not enough for us to say sorry,” said Ahmadi who heard of the U.S. apology from friends in America. “The U.S.A. should find the person who did this.”

Ahmadi said he was relieved that an apology was offered and the family members he lost were recognized as innocent victims, but that this won’t bring them back. He said that he was frustrated that the family never received a call from U.S. officials, despite repeated requests.

He looked exhausted as he sat in front of the charred ruins of his brother’s car.

In the days before the Pentagon’s apology, accounts from the family, documents from colleagues seen by the AP and the scene at the family home — where Zemerai’s car was struck by the missile — all sharply contradicted the accounts by the U.S. military.

Instead, they painted the picture of a family that had worked for Americans and were trying to gain visas to the U.S., fearing for their lives under the Taliban.

Zemerai Ahmadi was the family’s breadwinner and had looked after his three brothers, including Emal, and their children.

“Now I am then one who is responsible for all my family and I am jobless,” said Emal Ahmadi. The situation “is not good,” said Ahmadi of life under the Taliban.

International aid groups and the United Nations have warned of a looming humanitarian crisis that could drive most Afghans below the poverty level.

McKenzie said the decision to strike a white Toyota Corolla sedan, after having tracked it for about eight hours, was made in an “earnest belief” — based on a standard of “reasonable certainty” — that it posed an imminent threat to American forces at the Kabul airport. The car was believed to have been carrying explosives in its trunk, he said.

But Ahmadi wondered how the family’s home could have been mistaken for an Islamic State hideout.

“The U.S.A. can see from everywhere,” he said of U.S. drone capabilities. “They can see that there were innocent children near the car and in the car. Whoever did this should be punished.”

“It isn’t right,” he added.

Source Article from https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-kabul-strikes-islamic-state-group-4c7f8aa6ff1c6f95363085dd393a8b03

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Two of Newsom’s four children test positive for COVID-19 | TheHill – The Hill
Two of Newsom’s four children test positive for COVID-19 | TheHill – The Hill

Two of California Gov. Gavin NewsomGavin NewsomPhotos of the Week: Renewable energy, gymnast testimonies and a Met Gala dress California at risk of losing out on hundreds of millions in federal rental assistance, auditor warns Schwarzenegger says Californians ‘made the right decision’ not to recall Newsom MORE’s (D) four children have tested positive for COVID-19, his office announced.

Newsom’s office confirmed to The Hill on Saturday that the governor’s children tested positive on Thursday.

The governor, his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, and their two other children have tested negative for COVID-19.

“The governor’s children tested positive for COVID-19. The governor, the first partner, and the other two children have since tested negative,” Newsom spokeswoman Erin Mellon said.

“The family is following all COVID protocols,” Mellon continued. “The Newsoms continue to support masking for unvaccinated individuals indoors to stop the spread and advocate for vaccinations as the most effective way to end this pandemic.”

Newsom’s children are all under the age of 12, according to Politico. Therefore, they are not yet eligible to receive a coronavirus vaccine. 

The governor himself publicly received Johnson & Johnson’s one-dose coronavirus vaccine in early April.

Newsom’s children previously had to quarantine following exposures to the virus.

In November, one of Newsom’s children had to quarantine after going to school with a child who tested positive for the disease. Days later, Newsom and his family quarantined after his children came in contact with a California Highway Patrol officer who tested positive for the coronavirus.

Most recently, Newsom pulled two of his children, age 10 and 11, from a summer basketball camp in late July after learning that the camp was not requiring people to war masks.

The news comes just days after the Democrat survived a recall election in the state. 

Source Article from https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/572871-two-of-newsoms-four-children-test-positive-for-covid-19

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Police search for missing ‘van-life girl’ Gabby Petito in Wyoming and boyfriend in Florida – Daily Mail
Police search for missing ‘van-life girl’ Gabby Petito in Wyoming and boyfriend in Florida – Daily Mail

North Port Police and the FBI confirmed they are searching for Laundrie (pictured with Petito), who was reportedly last seen by his family Tuesday and was wearing a hiking bag

Rangers and the FBI are actively searching an area on the east side of Grand Teton National Park for missing van-life girl Gabby Petito, DailyMail.com can exclusively reveal. 

As a result of the search, Spread Creek campground is closed as National Park Rangers and the Teton County Sheriff search the area, and the area will remain closed to the public for the next few days. 

The Spread Creek site is one of the dispersed camp grounds Petito listed as visiting on her page at thedyrt.com, where she reviewed her journey.

In Florida, more than 50 law enforcement officers using bloodhounds, drones and 4×4 vehicles are searching for her boyfriend Brian Laundrie in a vast and swampy Florida woodland reserve, said North Port Police information chief Josh Taylor.

Laundrie often visits the Myakkahatchee Creek Environment Park, which is tied to the 25,000 acre Carlton Reserve, he said.

And that is where he told his parents he was going when he left their house, added Taylor

Officers do not know if Laundrie is armed. 

Park rangers at the Grand Teton National Park, are also actively searching for Petito in the in Wyoming park. 

Speaking at the entrance where Laundrie entered the park, Taylor said: ‘We have five, six different agencies who are out there, 50 plus folks.

‘We have had drones in the air, we have got bloodhounds, K9s, four by four vehicles. It’s very wet, it’s muddy. There are a few unpaved dirt roads. It’s a place that people hike. There are mountain bike trails out here. The Myakkahatchee Creek runs down into the city.’

Asked if he believed there were concerns for Laundrie’s safety, Taylor said: ‘Sure, I think that’s fair to say. There is an enormous amount of pressure I’m sure on him to provide answers on what’s going on here.’

He could not confirm if Gabby’s boyfriend – who has refused to talk to cops about her disappearance – owns a gun.

North Port Police, FBI agents and other agencies are on the hunt for Brian Laundrie at the Myakkahatchee Creek Environment Park, in Flordia’s Carlton Reserve

About 50 law enforcement officials have joined the search for the missing Laundrie

Four vehicles are at the scene to traverse the wooded and swampy area

A search party of about 50 officers have gathered to search the Carlton Reserves for Brian Laundrie, the boyfriend of the missing ‘van-life girl’ Gabby Petito

A map shows the last known movements of Petito and Laundrie along their cross-country road trip which began July 2

North Port PIO Josh Taylor said officers are focusing on a 200 acre area of the park

Pointing behind him, he added: ‘They started the search in the park area, which is about 200 acres. There is a bridge which crosses over into the Carlton Reserve which is about 25,000 acres. It is believed he entered from here.

‘The initial focus was on the 200 acres here, and then spreading out. The park is closed to the public.’

Asked how long it would take to search the entire 25,000 acres, he replied: ‘You can imagine… a long time.’

Before it become a criminal investigation involving Laundrie ‘we would need official confirmation of a crime,’ he added. 

Officers combed the forest as the search began on Saturday, September 18

The Florida wildlife area covers a heavy forested area and swamplands 

Petito’s stepfather, Jim Schmidt, was out in Wyoming on Wednesday as Grand Teton Park Rangers prepared to look for the missing woman

A Grand Teton Park Ranger told DailyMail.com, ‘there is a group of park rangers that is searching for Gabby Petito in the backcountry of the park.

‘This is the park’s elite search and rescue unit.

‘I believe there may also be a search going on in a remote area of Yellowstone National Park.’ 

Petito, the 22-year-old ‘van-life’ girl, has been missing since the end of August 24.

Authorities believe that Petito’s last known location was in or around the Grand Teton National Park.

The park itself spans more than 310,000 acres and 485 square miles the backcountry consists of several hundred square miles on the west side of the park, it’s a hike- in area only.

Petito’s stepfather, Jim Schmidt, told DailyMail.com, that they are confidant she made it to the area but aren’t sure where she may have ended up camping at.

‘Members of search unit at the park can be air lifted to various remote areas for a search,’ added the ranger. ‘They don’t tell us specifics they sort of do what they do.’

DailyMail.com located an account on thedyrt.com for Gabby and Brian V. that was last updated on July 14, 2021. 

On the list are several dispersed campsites in the Grand Teton/Jackson area which are often free for stays up to 14 days in some place.

DailyMail.com went to several of these campsites which were in remotes areas near the park- off the grid. 

Police began the search at the Grand Teton National Park on Friday

The park covers more than 310,000 acres of land in the Wyoming wilderness

Cellular phone service was spotty and the sheer remoteness of the area, one could easily disappear in without a trace.

In one dispersed campsite Dailymail.com just arrived at minutes after a grizzly was observed at the side of the road digging up an animal it had previously buried.

Grizzly bears aren’t the only predators Petito would face out in the wilderness, there are red foxes, coyotes, bobcats and cougars that roam the park.

Northport Officers and FBI agents are searching throughout the Carlton Reserves

This comes as police and FBI begin searching a Florida wildlife reserve for vanished Brian Laundrie, Petito’s fiancé who is a key witness to her disappearance. 

North Port Police department said ‘The North Point Police Department, FBI and agency partners are currently conducting a search of the vast Carlton Reserves for Brian Laundrie. 

North Port police tweeted a photo of the search parties massing in the park, with at least 30 people present. 

Laundrie’s family says he entered the area earlier this week. 

The T. Mabry Carlton Reserve covers nearly 25,000 acres and is 15 miles from the Laundrie home in North Port. It has 80 miles of equestrian, hiking and biking trails. 

North Port Police communications chief Josh Taylor told Dailymail.com, ‘That reserve covers a massive, swampland. 

Police, FBI and the green-clad local Sarasota Sheriff’s Department deputies were moving around in ATV vehicles as the search for Laundrie intensified today.

One particular area of interest with searchers is the 160-acre Myakkahatchee (correct) Creek Environment Park, which connects to the massive Carlton Reserve, and is filled with hiking trails amid the expanse of swamp and dense woodland.

One Sheriff’s deputy was seen moving along a pathway into thick undergrowth carrying a machete. Officers remained tight lipped about the search when asked.

Other law enforcement were moving around the location on the perimeter of the environment park in the back of pick-up trucks

Laundrie’s family did not tell authorities he was missing for three days.   

Police said the Laundrie family called the FBI Friday night to talk about their son’s disappearance, describing their frustration that this was the first time they had been willing to speak with investigators in detail amid the search for Petito. 

Gabby Petito’s mom Nicole Schmidt (pictured this week at a press conference) has slammed her boyfriend Brian Laundrie saying ‘he’s not missing, he’s hiding’ after the person of interest in her daughter’s disappearance vanished

On Thursday, new bodycam footage emerged showing police being called to an incident involving the young couple in Moab, Utah, on August 12 – 13 days before Petito was last heard from

Petito’s mother has slammed her boyfriend Brian Laundrie saying ‘he’s not missing, he’s hiding’ after his attorney said the man now named a person of interest in her daughter’s disappearance hasn’t been seen since Tuesday.

Petito’s mom Nichole Schmidt reacted angrily to the news that Laundrie had vanished and suggested he is on the run, following a fraught week where she has issued several public pleas asking him and his family to cooperate with investigators. 

‘He’s not missing, he’s hiding!’ she told DailyMail.com. ‘Gaby is missing!’ 

North Port Police and the FBI confirmed they are searching for Laundrie, whose family say they last saw him Tuesday wearing a hiking bag.  

Scroll Down For Video: 

Police are seen with evidence bags at the home of Brian Laundrie Friday – the boyfriend of missing ‘van-life’ woman Gabby Petito 

Cops arrive Friday and enter the home after Laundrie’s parents informed investigators their son had vanished 

Two cops were seen searching a car which has been parked on the driveway of the home 

‘We understand the community’s frustration, we are frustrated too,’ police said Friday. 

‘For six days, the North Port Police Department and the FBI have been pleading with the family to contact investigators regarding Brian’s Fiancé Gabby Petito. 

‘Friday is the first time they have spoken with investigators in detail.’

North Port Police said the department and the FBI are currently working a multiple missing person investigation.

They issued a description of Laundrie as a’ white male, 5’8 160lbs, brown eyes, short brown hair, trimmed facial hair, last seen wearing a hiking bag with a waist strap.’ 

Laundrie’s attorney told ABC 7 News Friday afternoon the 23-year-old had gone missing and that investigators were trying to locate both him and Petito – who was last seen on August 24 during the couple’s cross-country trip in a campervan.  

Police were seen at Laundrie family home in North Port, Florida, on Friday with evidence bags.

His attorney said they were removing items from the house in order to assist with the search for Laundrie. 

‘Be advised, the whereabouts of Brian Laundrie are currently unknown,’ he told ABC7.  

‘The FBI is currently at the Laundrie residence removing property to assist in locating Brian. As of now, the FBI is looking for both Gabby and Brian.’ 

Police reiterated Friday that although Laundrie is a person of interest in Petito’s disappearance, he is not wanted for any crime.  

Video surfaced of four police officers entering home on Friday afternoon after being let in by an unidentified family member.

After more than two and a half hours at the home, all four officers left in their black Dodge Caravan with none of the Laundrie family members in tow.   

Police arrive with evidence bags at the North Port, Florida home of Brian Laundrie on Friday

One cop is seen searching the trunk of the vehicle as part of their probe into Petito’s disappearance 

At one point one of the officers exited the home and retrieved what appeared to be an evidence bag from his police cruiser before returning inside

As they arrived protestors outside the home were heard yelling: ‘Bring Gabby home!’ 

A man on a megaphone shouted ‘Where’s Gabby, Brian?’ repeatedly, joined by others who crowded the Laundrie’s front yard recording the police entering the home. 

‘We’re out here, Laundrie family, we’re out here, we’ll be out here everyday!’ the man on the megaphone yelled towards the home. 

At one point one of the officers exited the home and retrieved what appeared to be an evidence bag from his police cruiser before returning inside 

North Port police tweeted they were called to the home ‘at the request’ of the family, but that they are ‘not speaking’ to Brian.   

About an hour after first entering the home, two officers came out and opened up a silver convertible Ford Mustang in the driveway which is understood to belong to the family. It has been there most of this week.   

They opened the trunk and also delved inside the vehicle after opening the driver side door for a very quick search before the officers went back in the house. 

In an attempt to calm the rowdy group in front of the home, North Port police deputy chief Chris Morales stepped on to the lawn and addressed the crowd, saying: ‘This is not helping. Please keep it down. I ask you to have courtesy for the neighbors.’ 

About an hour after first entering the home, two officers came out and opened up a silver convertible Ford Mustang in the driveway which is understood to belong to the family

Protestors gathered outside the Laundrie home with banners Friday demanding justice for Petito

Some were heard yelling: ‘Bring Gabby home!’ with one man on a megaphone shouting ‘Where’s Gabby, Brian?’

People crowded the Laundrie’s front yard calling on Laundrie to ‘prove your innocence’

He added: ‘Please respect the peace. You guys can be here but respect the peace,’ he added, but was drowned down at one point by chants of ‘where’s the respect of Gabby?’

Police officially named Laundrie a ‘person of interest’ in their inquiry into Petito’s mystery disappearance this week as he refuses to cooperate with investigators and has lawyered up.  

On Friday, Utah authorities said they determined there is no connection between Gabby’s missing person cases and the double murder of a newlywed couple found dead just outside Moab, Fox News reported. 

Petito passed through Moab with Laudrie before he drove back to Florida without her.

‘It has been determined that the Gabby Petito missing person case is not related to the double-homicide case involving Crystal Turner and Kylen Schulte,’ Grand County Sheriff Steven White said in a statement Friday afternoon. 

Petito was last seen on August 24 leaving a hotel with Laundrie in Salt Lake City, Utah, during the couple’s cross-country campervan trip which they started early July.  

The following day she made her final call to her mom, telling her she and Laundrie had traveled to Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. She was reported missing by her family on September 11 after they hadn’t heard from her in 13 days.    

Meanwhile, Laundrie returned to the couple’s home in North Port, Florida, on September 1 with the van but without Petito, police said. 

He repeatedly ignored Petito’s family’s requests for help and refused to speak to cops. 

Laundrie’s attorney Steven P. Bertolino addressed his decision to stay silent in a statement earlier this week, saying his client isn’t speaking to police or the public ‘on the advice of counsel’ because ‘intimate partners are often the first person law enforcement focus their attention on in cases like this.’ 

Meanwhile, Petito’s family issued several public pleas for the Laundries to work with authorities in their efforts to bring their daughter home.

On Thursday, new bodycam footage emerged showing police being called to an incident involving the young couple in Moab, Utah, on August 12 – 13 days before Petito was last heard from.  

Laundrie is seen with scratches on his face which he tells an officer were caused when Petito ‘was trying to get the keys from me’ and ‘hit me with her phone’

In the video, an emotional Petito is seen with tears streaming down her face telling officers the couple ‘have been fighting all morning’ and admitting that she slapped him.  

Petito says she suffers from OCD and anxiety, with both her and Laundrie saying she was stressed because of the YouTube blog they were working on to document the doomed cross-country trip. 

Laundrie is seen with scratches on his face and arm which he tells an officer were caused when Petito ‘was trying to get the keys from me’ and ‘hit me with her phone’.

When an officer asks Petito if her boyfriend hit her, she replies ‘I guess’ and makes a grabbing motion on her chin. Laundrie admits he ‘pushed her’ during the altercation. 

The cops determine Petito was ‘the primary aggressor’ and say they are separating the couple for the night.  

The incident report says officers were called near the Moonflower Community Co-op in Moab on August 12 around 4:30pm for a ‘possible domestic violence’ incident involving the couple.

The report, released by the Moab Police Department on Wednesday, documented that the couple admitted they had been going through ‘issues’ over the last couple days.    

22-year-old Gabby Petito, who has not been heard from since August 30 while she was on a cross-country trip with her 23-year-old fiancé (couple pictured kissing)

According to Petito’s best friend, while Laundrie presents himself as a sweet and caring guy, he is actually jealous and controlling.  

 In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, Rose Davis said Laundrie allegedly went so far as to hide Gabby’s ID once so that she couldn’t meet up with her at a bar, trigging a violent episode similar to the one police investigated weeks before her disappearance.

‘Brian took her ID just so she wouldn’t be able to come out with me,’ she told DailyMail.com on Friday.

‘He’s got these jealousy issues and he struggles from what Gabby called these ‘episodes,’ where he would hear things and hear voices and wouldn’t sleep.

‘Gabby had to stay at my house a bunch of times because she just needed a breather and didn’t want to go home to him.’

TikTok user claims she picked up missing ‘van-life girl’ Gabby Petito’s boyfriend Brian Laundrie as he hiked ALONE five days after she was last seen in public and one day before sending her final text

A TikToker from Wisconsin has claimed she picked up Brian Laundrie, the person of interest in Gabby Petito’s disappearance, as he was hitchhiking alone five days after his girlfriend went missing and one day before she last texted her mother.

In the video posted to the social media site Miranda Baker said she and her boyfriend were at Grand Teton National Park in Colter Bay, Wyoming, on August 29 when Laundrie approached the couple and asked them for a ride at 5.30pm.

‘He approached us asking for a ride because he needed to go to Jackson and we were going to Jackson that night. So I said, ya know, ‘hop in’ and he hopped in the back of my Jeep,’ Baker explained.

She noted Laundrie, 23, was wearing ‘a backpack, a long sleeve, pants and hiking boots’ and said that before he got in the car he  offered to pay the couple $200 to give him a 10-mile ride. 

‘So that was kind of weird,’ she said. Baker spoke hours before 

‘He approached us asking for a ride because he needed to go to Jackson and we were going to Jackson that night. So I said, ya know, ‘hop in’ and he hopped in the back of my Jeep,’ Baker explained. She called the entire interaction with Brian Laundrie ‘a weird situation’

Baker supposedly picked up Laundrie (left), the person of interest in Gabby Petito’s (right) disappearance, as he was hitchhiking alone five days after his girlfriend went missing and one day before she last texted her mother

 Bake noted Laundrie, 23, was wearing ‘a backpack, a long sleeve, pants and hiking boots’ and said that before he got in the car he offered to pay the couple $200 to give him a 10-mile ride

Baker explained that her, her boyfriend and Laundrie ‘then proceeded to make small talk’ and found out he had been camping for multiple days without his fiancée.

‘He did say he had a fiancée and that she was working on their social media page back at their van,’ Baker said.

In a later video she added that Laundrie supposedly told her he and Petito, 22, were not camping on a regulated campsite through the national park. ‘They were camping basically out in the middle of nowhere along Snake River,’ she said.

Baker recounted the alleged story Laundrie told her and her boyfriend: ‘This is key information. He said that he had hiked for days along Snake River but looking at his backpack, it wasn’t full.

‘And he said all he had was a tarp to sleep on. And, if you’d think you’re going camping for days on end you’d want food and a tent and he had none of that.’

She added: ‘He had scruff but he didn’t look dirty for someone who was camping for multiple days. He didn’t look dirty, he didn’t smell dirty, so that part was kind of weird.’

Then, when Baker told Laundrie they were driving to Jackson Hole he supposedly ‘freaked out’ and asked them to pull over and said: ‘Nope, I need to get out right now.’ 

Petito set out on a cross-country trip July 2 with her boyfriend in the couple’s 2012 Ford Transit van. Brian posted this photo of the couple on Instagram on July 16

Baker said they pulled over at the Jackson Dam in Grand Teton National Park, which she noted was not very far from where they originally picked Laundrie up.

He allegedly hurried out of the car and told the couple he would find someone else to hitchhike with. 

‘We dropped him off at 6.09pm on August 29,’ Baker said, adding that she hopes her videos would find someone who could also help solve the case and find Petito.

She called the entire interaction with Laundrie ‘a weird situation’. 

In her latest video she addressed skeptics and said that the story she detailed in the previous videos posted to TikTok she also told detectives and the FBI. ‘I am actively in contact with these people,’ she said.

Her allegations come five days after Petito was last seen in public – on August 24 – when she and Laundrie checked out of a Fairfield Inn hotel in Salt Lake City, Utah.

On August 29 Baker only saw Laundrie. One day later Petito’s mother Nicole Schmidt received a curious text from her daughter that read: ‘No service in Yosemite.’

The mother refused to disclose the contents of her daughter’s texts but told DailyMail.com: ‘That text was NOT from Gabby I know it!’

She believes Laundrie may have sent the message from her phone possibly to mislead her family and investigators as to her whereabouts.

Laundrie was named a person of interest and is refusing to cooperate with cop. The couple with their campervan

Attorney Richard Stafford on Thursday read out an emotional letter from Petito’s family begging the Laundries to cooperate, saying ‘we believe you know the location of where Brian left Gabby’

Laundrie returned home to Florida from the couple’s road trip alone on September 1 – two days after hitchhiking with Baker and 10 days before Petito’s family reported her missing.

If the couple were in fact together in Yosemite on August 30, that would mean Brian drove over 3,000 miles within two days to arrive in Florida on September 1.

Now police have officially named Brian Laundrie a ‘person of interest’ in their inquiry into her mystery disappearance as he refuses to cooperate, although they say there is no evidence any crime has been committed. 

Cops in North Port, Florida, said: ‘Brian Laundrie is a person of interest in this case. As of now, Brian has not made himself available to be interviewed by investigators or has provided any helpful details.’  

Brian’s family refused to let authorities speak to their son when the 2012 Ford van was seized from their property late on September 11. 

Most recently, Brian Laundrie’s sister broke the Laundrie family silence about the disappearance of her brother’s girlfriend and said her and her family ‘obviously want Gabby to be found safe’.

 ‘All I want is for her to come home safe and sound and this to be just a big misunderstanding,’ she said in an interview with ABC News.

Source Article from https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10004327/Police-search-missing-van-life-girl-Gabby-Petito-Wyoming-boyfriend-Florida.html

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Cops and protesters gather at US Capitol for ‘Justice for J6’ rally – Fox News
Cops and protesters gather at US Capitol for ‘Justice for J6’ rally – Fox News
Video

Demonstrators gather at the US Capitol for the “Justice for J6” rally

A massive police response mobilized outside a fenced-off U.S. Capitol Saturday morning to greet a group of right-wing protesters who insist their noon demonstration won’t descend into violence.

Advocates at the “Justice for J6” rally in Washington, D.C., plan to denounce what they call the “inhumane treatment” of dozens of Jan. 6 rioters who remain jailed while awaiting trials that are still months away.

Two hours ahead of the rally, a fleet of District of Columbia-owned dump trucks lined up to block the city’s streets off from roaming demonstrators, and an olive-green Humvee from neighboring Prince George’s County, Maryland, was stationed outside the Capitol’s Botanic Garden Conservatory.

CAPITOL POLICE BRACING FOR ‘JUSTICE FOR J6’ RALLY IN SUPPORT OF JAN. 6 ALLEGED RIOTERS

Counter-protesters arrived early, bearing giant flags in support of Black Lives Matter and trans rights, and a banner mimicking Trump’s signature campaign branding that read “Loser.” A hand-lettered sign identified the bearer as “proud Antifa scum.”

Capitol Police, nervous about a reprise of the January chaos that led to five deaths, requested reinforcements from the Pentagon this week to fend off any attacks from rally-goers. A company of 100 National Guard troops was expected to patrol the event.

On Wednesday, federal workers reinstalled the tall, black security fencing that had been removed in July.

“We’ve cooperated with the Capitol Police, Park Police, Metropolitan Police,” Matt Braynard of Look Ahead America, the rally’s main sponsor, told Fox5 this week. “We’ve got … a diplomatic security team to help make the event be smooth.”

The group issued a statement Friday to “condemn political violence in all its forms, especially violence perpetrated on January 6.”

“This is a rally in support of those who have been charged with nonviolent offences to protest of their disparate treatment at the hands of the Department of Justice and the Judiciary,” the statement read.

Demonstrators hold signs near members of the media before a rally near the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Saturday, Sept. 18, 2021. The rally was planned by allies of former President Donald Trump and aimed at supporting the so-called “political prisoners” of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
(AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

CAPITOL POLICE ARREST MAN WITH KNIVES IN TRUCK PAINTED WITH SWATSITKA NEAR DNC HEADQUARTERS IN WASHINGTON

Braynard’s group claims that 67 of the 595 people who have been charged with assault, obstruction, trespassing and other crimes in connection with the Capitol incursion remain behind bars — many in solitary confinement — as their trial dates are repeatedly delayed.

Two GOP congressional candidates — Joe Kent of Washington state and Mike Collins of Georgia — were set to address the crowd.

Braynard, a former Trump campaign strategist who boosted his public profile with allegations of voting anomalies during the 2020 presidential election, instructed rally-goers not to bring any political gear — either in favor of former President Donald Trump or in opposition to President Biden — to the event.

“Anyone not honoring this request will be assumed to be an infiltrator,” he tweeted this week.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Trump on Thursday dismissed the demonstration as “a setup.”

“If people don’t show up they’ll say, ‘Oh, it’s a lack of spirit,’” he told The Federalist. “And if people do show up they’ll be harassed.”

But he also expressed support for “the people being persecuted so unfairly relating to the January 6th protest” in a statement issued by his Save America PAC this week.

“In addition to everything else, it has proven conclusively that we are a two-tiered system of justice,” Trump wrote. “In the end, however, JUSTICE WILL PREVAIL!”

Click here to read more on the New York Post.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/us/cops-protestors-us-capitol-j6-rally

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Survivors Of A U.S. Drone Strike In Kabul Want An Investigation And Compensation – NPR
Survivors Of A U.S. Drone Strike In Kabul Want An Investigation And Compensation – NPR

The Ahmadi family pray Monday at the cemetery next to family graves of family members killed by a U.S. drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Bernat Armangue/AP


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Bernat Armangue/AP

The Ahmadi family pray Monday at the cemetery next to family graves of family members killed by a U.S. drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Bernat Armangue/AP

KABUL, Afghanistan — Sorry is not enough for the Afghan survivors of an errant U.S. drone strike that killed 10 members of their family, including seven children.

Emal Ahmadi, whose 3-year-old daughter Malika was killed on Aug. 29, when the U.S. hellfire missile struck his elder brother’s car, told The Associated Press on Saturday that the family demands Washington investigate who fired the drone and punish the military personnel responsible for the strike.

“That is not enough for us to say sorry,” said Ahmadi. “The U.S.A. should find the person who did this.”

Ahmadi said the family is also seeking financial compensation for their losses and demanded that several members of the family be relocated to a third country, without specifying which country.

The AP and other news organizations in Kabul reported after the strike that the driver of the targeted vehicle, Zemerai Ahmadi, was a longtime employee at an American humanitarian organization and cited an absence of evidence to support the Pentagon’s assertion that the vehicle contained explosives.

The missile struck as the car was pulling into the family’s driveway and the children ran to greet Zemerai.

On Friday, U.S. Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, called the strike a “tragic mistake,” and after weeks of denials, said that innocent civilians were indeed killed in the attack and not an Islamic State extremist as was announced earlier.

An Afghan inspects the damage of the Ahmadi family’s house in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Monday.

Bernat Armangue/AP


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Bernat Armangue/AP

An Afghan inspects the damage of the Ahmadi family’s house in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Monday.

Bernat Armangue/AP

The drone strike followed a devastating suicide bombing by the Islamic State group — a rival of the Taliban — that killed 169 Afghans and 13 U.S. military personnel at one of the gates to the Kabul airport. For days, desperate Afghans had swarmed the checkpoints outside the airport, trying to leave the country amid the chaotic U.S. and NATO troops pullout, fearing for their future under the Taliban.

McKenzie apologized for the error and said the United States is considering making reparation payments to the family of the victims.

Emal Ahmadi, who said he heard of the apology from friends in America, insisted that it won’t bring back members of his family and while he expressed relief for the U.S. apology and recognition that his family were innocent victims, he said he was frustrated that it took weeks of pleading with Washington to at least make a call to the family.

Even as evidence mounted to the contrary, Pentagon officials asserted that the strike had been conducted correctly, to protect the U.S. troops remaining at Kabul’s airport ahead of the final pullout the following day, on Aug. 30.

Looking exhausted, sitting in front of the charred ruins of Zemarai’s car, Ahmadi said he wanted more than an apology form the United States — he wanted justice, including an investigation into who carried out the strike “and I want him punished by the U.S.A.”

In the days before the Pentagon’s apology, accounts from the family, documents from colleagues seen by The AP and the scene at the family home — where Zemerai’s car was struck by the missile — all sharply contradicted the accounts by the U.S. military. Instead, they painted the picture of a family that had worked for Americans and were trying to gain visas to the U.S., fearing for their lives under the Taliban.

Zemerai was the family’s breadwinner had looked after his three brothers, including Emal, and their children.

“Now I am then one who is responsible for all my family and I am jobless,” said Emal Ahmadi. The situation “is not good,” said Ahmadi of life under the Taliban. International aid groups and the United Nations have warned of a looming humanitarian crisis that could drive most Afghans below the poverty level.

McKenzie said the decision to strike a white Toyota Corolla sedan, after having tracked it for about eight hours, was made in an “earnest belief” — based on a standard of “reasonable certainty” — that it posed an imminent threat to American forces at the Kabul airport. The car was believed to have been carrying explosives in its trunk, he said.

But Ahmadi wondered how the his family’s home could have been mistaken for an Islamic State hideout.

“The U.S.A. can see from everywhere,” he said of U.S. drone capabilities. “They can see that there were innocent children near the car and in the car. Whoever did this should be punished.”

“It isn’t right,” he added.

Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2021/09/18/1038556483/drone-strike-kabul-family-afghanistan-missile

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Biden Administration to Deport Haitians in South Texas – The New York Times
Biden Administration to Deport Haitians in South Texas – The New York Times

The administration temporarily paused deportation flights to Haiti after the devastating earthquake in August, which was followed by a powerful tropical storm after weeks of civil unrest. But the sudden surge in migrant crossings over the past week has prompted it to change course.

The chaotic situation, with thousands of Haitians crossing the Rio Grande each day to reach U.S. soil, has posed a new, urgent challenge for the Biden administration, which has been grappling for months with soaring numbers of unauthorized migrants at the border.

President Biden, who had pledged to enact a more humanitarian approach to immigration than his predecessor, has been taking tough measures in a bid to staunch the influx. But the administration said that its plan for handling the large volume of Haitians was consistent with its enforcement policy.

“Individuals and families are subject to border restrictions, including expulsion,” said Marsha Espinosa, assistant secretary for public affairs for the Department of Homeland Security. “Irregular migration poses a significant threat to the health and welfare of border communities and to the lives of migrants themselves and should not be attempted.”

More than 14,000 Haitians, many carrying mattresses, fruit, diapers and blankets, have crossed the ankle-deep river between Mexico and Del Rio and are camping out under a bridge, awaiting processing by the United States Border Patrol. Some are seeking work in the United States, and others are fleeing violence or racial discrimination in other countries.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/18/us/politics/biden-administration-haiti-texas.html

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California wildfires burn into some groves of ancient giant sequoias – The Guardian
California wildfires burn into some groves of ancient giant sequoias – The Guardian

Crews continue to battle California wildfires that have burned into some groves of ancient giant sequoias, the world’s largest tree.

The National Weather Service (NWS) issued a weather watch for critical fire conditions in the Sequoia national park in the Sierra Nevada, where the Colony fire was burning about a mile from Giant Forest, a grove of 2,000 sequoias.

Firefighters wrapped the base of the General Sherman Tree in fire-resistant aluminum of the type used in wildland firefighter emergency shelters and to protect historic wooden buildings, fire spokeswoman Rebecca Paterson said.

Firefighters pose next to the General Sherman Tree after wrapping it in fire-resistant blanket on 17 September. Photograph: National Park Service/EPA

The General Sherman Tree is the largest in the world by volume, at 52,508 cubic ft, according to the National Park Service. It is 275ft high and has a circumference of 103ft at ground level.

Some Californians are choosing to wrap their homes in the fire-resistant aluminum. One wrapped home near Lake Tahoe survived the Caldor fire while neighboring houses were destroyed.

The wrapping deflects heat, helping prevent flammable materials from combusting. It also keeps airborne embers, a major contributor to spreading wildfires, from slipping through vents and other openings. With a fiberglass backing and acrylic adhesive, the wraps can withstand heat of up to 1,022 F, or 550C.

The current fires are eating through tinder-dry timber, grass and brush. Historic drought tied to climate change is making wildfires harder to fight. It has killed millions of trees in California alone. Scientists say climate change has made the west much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.

More than 7,000 wildfires in California this year have damaged or destroyed more than 3,000 homes and other buildings and torched well over 3,000 square miles of land, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

The Colony fire is one of two lightning-caused blazes, known together as the KNP Complex, that have burned about 18 square miles of forest.

interactive map

The fires forced the evacuation of the park and parts of Three Rivers, a community of about 2,500 people outside the park’s main entrance. Crews have been bulldozing a line between the fire and the community.

Cooler, calmer weather and morning low-hanging smoke that choked off air limited the fire’s growth in recent days but the NWS said a low-pressure system will bring some gusty winds and lower humidity through Sunday in the fire area. However, fire officials weren’t expecting the kinds of explosive wind-driven growth that in recent months turned Sierra Nevada blazes into monsters that devoured hundreds of homes.

A home is completely wrapped in fire-resistant material in Meyers, California. Photograph: Jae C Hong/AP

“There isn’t a lot of extreme weather predicted for the next few days, which is good news, there’s not a lot of big wind shifts predicted. However, there’s also no rain predicted,” fire information spokeswoman Rebecca Paterson said. “So we’re anticipating that the fires are going to continue to grow. Hopefully they’re not going to grow too fast.”

Giant sequoias are adapted to fire, which can help them thrive by releasing seeds from their cones and creating clearings that allow young sequoias to grow. But the extraordinary intensity of fires – fueled by climate change – can overwhelm the trees.

The fires have burned into several groves containing trees as tall as 200ft and 2,000 years old. They include Oriole Lake grove in the national park and Peyrone North and South groves in the neighboring Sequoia national forest.

The fire had reached Long Meadow grove in the national forest, where two decades ago Bill Clinton signed a proclamation establishing a national monument.

“These groves are just as impressive and just as ecologically important to the forest,” Tim Borden, who is sequoia restoration and stewardship manager for the Save the Redwoods League, told the Bay Area News Group. “They just aren’t as well known. My heart sinks when I think about it.”

A fire crew member keeps an eye on a hillside as flames roil the Sequoia national forest on 16 September. Photograph: Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times/REX/Shutterstock

To the south, the Windy fire grew to nearly 11 square miles on the Tule River Indian Reservation and in Giant Sequoia national monument, where it has burned into one grove of sequoias and threatens others.

Fire officials haven’t yet been able to determine how much damage was done to the groves, which are in remote and hard-to-reach areas.

Last year, the Castle fire killed an estimated 7,500 to 10,600 large sequoias, according to the National Park Service. That was an estimated 10% to 14% of all the sequoias in the world.

Source Article from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/18/california-wildfires-giant-ancient-sequoias-fire-conditions

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Taliban replace Afghan ministry for women with one restricting them – NBC News
Taliban replace Afghan ministry for women with one restricting them – NBC News
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Top doctors say not so fast to Biden’s boosters-for-all plan – Associated Press
Top doctors say not so fast to Biden’s boosters-for-all plan – Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Just one month ago, President Joe Biden and his health advisers announced big plans to soon deliver a booster shot of the coronavirus vaccine to all Americans. But after campaigning for the White House on a pledge to “follow the science,” Biden found himself uncharacteristically ahead of it with that lofty pronouncement.

Some of the nation’s top medical advisers on Friday delivered a stinging rebuke of the idea, in essence telling the White House: not so fast.

A key government advisory panel overwhelmingly rejected Biden’s plan to give COVID-19 booster shots across the board and instead recommended the extra vaccine dose only for those who are age 65 or older or who run a high risk of severe disease.

Biden’s Aug. 18 announcement that the federal government was preparing to shore up nearly all Americans’ protection had been made with great fanfare. It was meant to calm the nerves of millions of Americans fearful of a new, more transmissible strain of the coronavirus.

“The plan is for every adult to get a booster shot eight months after you got your second shot,” Biden said, noting that his administration would be ready to begin the program on Sept. 20.

Biden added the qualification that third doses would require the signoff of health officials at the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but his public message glossed over the nuance.

“Just remember,” he said, “as a simple rule: Eight months after your second shot, get a booster shot.”

Biden’s plan drew immediate outrage from global health groups that encouraged the United States and other well-off nations to refrain from administering boosters until poorer countries could provide first doses to their most vulnerable citizens.

“Viewed from a global perspective, this is a squandering of a scarce global resource, as a consequence of which people will die,” said Dr. Peter Lurie, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “I feel completely comfortable saying this,” he added, acknowledging that domestic political considerations weigh differently on presidents.

The Biden plan was criticized, too, by medical professionals, who cited a lack of safety data on extra doses and raised doubts about the value of mass boosters, rather than ones targeted to specific groups.

“It created enormous pressure on the agency to go along with what the White House wanted,” said Lurie, who characterized the FDA panel’s decision as a “rebuke” of Biden’s efforts to circumvent standard procedures. “That’s what we’re trying to get beyond after the Trump era.”

“Following them has served FDA very well when they’ve done that,” he added. He contrasted the expeditious authorization of the vaccines to the agency’s brief flirtation with unproven COVID-19 treatments such as the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine during the Trump administration. “When they’ve strayed from it, they’ve got in trouble.”

The nonbinding recommendation from the outside experts who advise the FDA is not the last word. The FDA will consider the group’s advice and make its own decision, probably within days. The CDC is set to weigh in next week.

One of the FDA’s advisers, Dr. Paul Offit of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told reporters after the meeting that while the Biden administration had planned for boosters for the general population, “that’s not this. This is, ‘We’re going to test the water one foot at a time.‘’’

The committee “parked all of that stuff and did their job,” said Norman Baylor, former director of the FDA’s office of vaccine review. “I’ll be very frank here: I think this meeting was rushed. I would say it should have happened later,” so that the FDA had more data to make the decision.

White House allies defended the administration’s aggressive preparation for the boosters, which has included regular messaging from doctors about their necessity and bolstering the federal stockpile of doses.

They argue that the American people elect a president, not a scientist, to act in their best interests. They reason that the alternative — holding off on preparing for boosters until federal health officials give the green light — could have cost lives.

The U.S. surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, told reporters before the panel’s vote that the administration was aiming to be transparent with the public about the promise of boosters providing enduring protection and was not trying to pressure regulators to act. He said the administration also wanted to be prepared in the event the boosters were approved.

“We have always said that this initial plan would be contingent on the FDA and the CDC’s independent evaluation,” Murthy said. “We will follow that evaluation and their recommendations, we will make sure our final plan reflects it.”

“What we were doing in August and we continue to do there is really prioritizing transparency and preparation,” he added.

Administration officials noted that the experts’ recommendation Friday probably would result in boosters for people most likely to get them anyway had the entire population been give the go-ahead. Seniors were in the first group of Americans to be eligible for vaccination after their authorization last December, followed by those with preexisting conditions that put them at higher risk for serious disease. Those populations account for tens of millions of Americans, officials said.

After Friday’s voting, the White House tried to put the advisory panel’s action in a positive light.

“Today was an important step forward in providing better protection to Americans from COVID-19,” said White House spokesman Kevin Munoz. “We stand ready to provide booster shots to eligible Americans once the process concludes at the end of next week.”

Dr. Leana Wen, a former Baltimore health commissioner who comments regularly on the pandemic, said the decision about boosters “is not just one of science. It’s one of values.”

“Because when we’re considering issues like should additional doses go to Americans or people around the world, that is not the right decision for a scientific regulatory committee,” she said. “That is up to the president of the United States.”

___

Associated Press writers Matthew Perrone and Lauran Neergaard contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-health-coronavirus-pandemic-404cf650431f8aeee17d333180760337

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LIVE: North Port police, FBI search for Gabby Petito’s fiancé at Carlton Reserve – WFLA
LIVE: North Port police, FBI search for Gabby Petito’s fiancé at Carlton Reserve – WFLA

MOBILE, Ala. (WKRG) — Mobile police have arrested a man for kidnapping a teen from a west Mobile nightclub early Friday morning.

Morris Linson Jr., 34, was found and interviewed by Mobile Police Department detectives in Escambia County, Florida. Police say evidence was gathered to allow detectives to secure a warrant, and he was arrested for second-degree kidnapping and taken to the Escambia County Jail, pending extradition.

Source Article from https://www.wfla.com/news/sarasota-county/north-port-police-fbi-search-for-gabby-petitos-fiance-at-carlton-reserve/

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Justice for J6: What to know about Saturday’s rally for those arrested in the Capitol riots – The Washington Post
Justice for J6: What to know about Saturday’s rally for those arrested in the Capitol riots – The Washington Post

Even the Proud Boys, a far-right group with a history of violence that includes participation in the Jan. 6 insurrection, discouraged members from attending Saturday’s rally. After videos posted last month on social media showed Randy Ireland, who claimed to be president of a New York Proud Boys chapter, urging other Proud Boys to go to the rally outside the Capitol, the Proud Boys quickly disavowed the message and told their members to stay home. The group threatened that any Proud Boys who do attend would be “banished from the fraternity,” and some chapters called for Ireland to step down.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/09/18/justice-j6-rally-capitol-riot-dc/

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