[ZERO] There's no such thing as coincidence in Washington...
A day after former President Trump ventured into a McDonalds during a campaign stop, cooked some fries, and handed out some food to more-than-happy customers in a photo-op that went very viral (in a good way), the CDC issued a statement announcing an E. coli outbreak linked to McDonald's Quarter Pounders has left one person dead and caused 10 hospitalizations.
There are 49 cases across 10 states, with most illneses in Colorado and Nebraska (not where president Trump was)...
Human interest stories at the link. Here’s the current situation:
[FoxNews] More than 50 people remain missing in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene.
Nearly a month after Hurricane Helene devastated areas of the Southeast and killed more than 250 people, North Carolina residents are sleeping in tents where their homes once stood, even as temperatures drop to the 30s at night.
"The churches, the community, more than anything, have been some of the people who have helped the most. And it's been inspiring to know that we're not forgotten. The people are amazing," Weil said. "Their willpower and their love for other people is amazing. … They come in here in force and brought us everything we need. And they weren't going to leave until they knew we were all right."
Volunteers donated several tents to Weil and his dog, as well as a bike, food, a camping stove and propane. Emerge Ministries was able to find someone to donate a car to Weil so he can visit his girlfriend and newborn.
Shannon Martin Easley of Louisiana and Judy Norris of North Carolina are two volunteers with Emerge Ministries who have been helping Cody and others in the aftermath of Helene. The ministry has anywhere from 50 to 150 volunteers in the western North Carolina region "from all over the country" offering help "every day," Easley said.
"My uncle cleared a driveway for a man a few days ago, and he had not seen a human in 20 days," Easley said. "How many more are just like him?"
Volunteers from Ohio and Maryland also spoke with Fox News Digital in Swannanoa.
Martha Hershberger and her husband, Roy, of Shekinah Christian Fellowship in Ohio, have been serving hot meals under a tent in a parking lot off the main road in Swannanoa. She estimates that she and other volunteers have been serving between 1,500 and 2,000 meals per day.
A total of 26 North Carolinians remain missing in the wake of Helene. The storm caused widespread damage across seven states that will take years for some towns to recover from. Locals and volunteers compared Helene's devastation to a war zone.
Q: What did Communist countries use for light before candles?
A: Electricity.
[FoxNews] Cuba's government said it was working again to reestablish electrical service across the island after state-run media earlier on Saturday reported the national grid had collapsed for a second time in 24 hours.
The country's top electricity official, Lazaro Guerra, said on a morning TV news program that another grid malfunction in western Cuba had forced technicians to begin anew connecting three important power plants to the system, temporarily stalling progress.
"I can not assure you that we will be able to complete linking the system today, but we are estimating that there should be important progress today," Guerra said.
Just prior to Guerra's statement, CubaDebate, one of the island's state-run media outlets, said the grid operator, UNE, had reported a "total disconnection of the national electro-energetic system."
Guerra did not directly confirm the total collapse, leaving some confusion as to what exactly had taken place.
Cuba's electrical grid first failed around midday on Friday after one of the island`s largest power plants shut down, suddenly leaving more than 10 million without power.
Even before the grid's collapse, an electricity shortfall on Friday had forced Cuba's communist-run government to send non-essential state workers home and cancel school classes for children as it sought to conserve fuel for generation.
But lights began to flicker on in scattered pockets across the island early in the evening on Friday, offering some hope that power would be restored.
Cuba's government has blamed weeks of worsening blackouts - often 10 to 20 hours a day across much of the island - on deteriorating infrastructure, fuel shortages and rising demand.
Strong winds that began with Hurricane Milton last week had also complicated the island's ability to deliver scarce fuel from boats offshore to feed its power plants, officials have said.
Fuel deliveries to the island have dropped off significantly this year, as Venezuela, Russia and Mexico, once key suppliers, have reduced their exports to Cuba.
Key ally Venezuela slashed by half its deliveries of subsidized fuel to Cuba this year, forcing the island to search elsewhere for far more pricey oil on the spot market.
Cuba's government also blames the U.S. trade embargo, as well as sanctions under then-President Donald Trump, for ongoing difficulties in acquiring fuel and spare parts to operate and maintain its oil-fired plants.
The United States on Friday denied any role in the grid collapse in Cuba.
[IsraelTimes] China is holding live-fire drills off the coast of its southern Fujian province facing Taiwan, just a week after a massive air-and-sea drill it called punishment for Taiwan’s president rejecting Beijing’s claims of illusory sovereignty.
The live fire drills are being held near the Pingtan islands off Fujian province from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., according to a notice from the Maritime Safety Administration. It warns ships to avoid the area. It does not offer additional details.
Taiwan’s Defense Ministry says China’s drills are part of an annual exercise and is tracking them. "It cannot be ruled out that it is one of the ways to expand the deterrent effect in line with the dynamics in the Taiwan Strait," the statement adds.
Last week, China held a one-day military exercise aimed at practicing the "sealing off of key ports and key areas." Taiwan counted a record one-day total of 153 aircraft, 14 navy vessels, and 12 Chinese government ships.
In response to Chinese moves, the US has continued to host what it calls "freedom of navigation" transits through the Taiwan Strait. On Sunday, the destroyer USS Higgins and the Canadian frigate HMCS Vancouver transited the narrow band of ocean that separates China and Taiwan.
[SDUT] The advance will help Japan to co-use one of the U.S.'s foremost military aircraft.
In a technical advance off San Diego, a U.S. Navy F-35B strike fighter landed on a Japanese aircraft carrier for the first time over the weekend, proving that the two allies can jointly use one of the world’s most sophisticated jets.
The short takeoff vertical landing (STOVL) aircraft touched down on the JS Kaga on Saturday afternoon, the Navy said. The carrier arrived in local waters earlier this month for six weeks of developmental testing and exercises with the Navy and Marines.
The 814-foot Kaga is a destroyer that was converted into an aircraft carrier to help Japan better defend itself and to collaborate with the U.S., possibly in helping keep sea lanes open in the South China Sea.
China has said that it has the right to control marine traffic in that region, a claim rejected by President Joe Biden.
"This test does not merely enhance the capabilities of the (Japan) Maritime Self-Defense Force," Shusaki Takeuchi, the Kaga’s commanding officer, said in a statement. "It also improves the interoperability between Japan and the U.S., strengthening the deterrence and response capabilities of the Japan-US alliance, thereby contributing to peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region."
The Kaga had to paint its flight deck with heat-resistant material so that it can withstand the F-35B’s thrust engines, the Navy said.
Some defense analysts consider the F-35B is the stealthiest military aircraft in the world. This version of the plane is primarily used by the Marine Corps, which is part of the Department of the Navy.
The San Diego-based aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln is currently carrying its own version of the plane — the F-35C — during operations in the Middle East.
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/23/2024 00:00 ||
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China, "ohshitohshitohshitohshit"
I mean, it's not like the Japanese Navy has a history of operations involving carriers.
[France24] During a fresh wave of troubles last week, one person was killed and nearly 30 police received injuries as protesters looted shops, erected burning barricades and clashed with members of law enforcement.
Residents of Martinique will be placed under curfew until October 21 in what authorities are calling an effort to protect the people and property of the French overseas territory. One person was killed last week in renewed unrest over skyrocketing food prices.
Authorities in the French Caribbean island of Martinique have extended a night-time curfew following a new wave of riots over spiraling food prices, while talks between authorities and protesters have stalled.
In recent weeks the island of 350,000 people has been shaken by violent protests over high food prices.
During a fresh wave of troubles last week, one person was killed and nearly 30 police received injuries as protesters looted shops, erected burning barricades and clashed with members of law enforcement.
The curfew, which was ordered from 9:00 pm to 5:00 am (0100 GMT-0900 GMT) last week, has been extended until October 21, the prefecture of Martinique said in a statement on Monday.
The "exceptional measure" is aimed at "guaranteeing the safety of people and property," authorities said.
Unrest has recently ebbed, with the prefecture saying no major incidents have been recorded over the past 48 hours.
Pupils in primary and secondary schools are set to gradually return to classrooms from Tuesday, education authorities said.
Residents of France's overseas territories have long complained about the high cost of living. In Martinique, food prices are 40 percent higher than in mainland France.
Island prices are always higher, I was once told, because pretty much everything has to be imported from fairly far away.
The protests were launched in early September by the Assembly for the Protection of Afro-Caribbean Peoples and Resources (RPPRAC), which demands that food prices be aligned with mainland France.
The government has held a series of meetings with activists and retailers to discuss ways to bring down prices. However, new talks would not take place due to a lack of a "new concrete and viable proposal," the president of Martinique's governing body, Serge Letchimy, said on Monday evening.
In response, the activists warned they were ready to continue protests against the high cost of living.
"We are a people legitimately demanding the right to access food at respectable prices, and all we have been given so far is repression," RPPRAC leader Rodrigue Petitot told AFP.
[Front Page] On the last leg of her African tour, Vice President Kamala Harris paid a visit to an otherwise unremarkable office building in Zambia. Her staff and local embassy personnel had spent a great deal of time looking for it and everyone was hoping it was the right place.
Kamala, with her Jamaican and Indian roots, needed a tangible connection to Africa to win over African-American voters and convince them that she was one of them. And everyone settled on the office building as being the next best thing because it was the former spot of the building where she had once stayed as a little girl with her Indian mother on a visit to her grandfather.
President Hakainde Hichilema welcomed her as "a daughter of our own country, someone who spent time here in her early years."
Kamala responded by launching into a story about having visited "Zambia, Mr. President, as a young girl when my grandfather worked here" as "an advisor to Zambia’s first president, Kenneth Kaunda" to "serve as a director of relief measures and refugees."
The vice president then began singing the praises of Kaunda, a brutal socialist dictator allied with the Soviet Union, who had banned opposing political parties and ran as the only candidate for president until he was finally ousted, and praised Zambia’s "democracy". Kaunda, whom Kamala fondly recalled meeting with JFK and MLK "to discuss peaceful forms of protest" had demanded nuclear weapons from LBJ. Hichilema, who had narrowly survived being arrested by a previous regime, had nothing to say about Kamala’s fond memories of Zambian democracy.
Or the "peaceful forms of protest" carried on with nuclear missiles and terrorism.
But behind Kamala’s childhood time in Zambia and her grandfather’s work is a lot of blood, along with a horrifying and mostly forgotten story of terrorism, atrocities and mass murder.
P. V. Gopalan, Kamala’s grandfather, had been a member of India’s socialist Congress party which was aligned with the USSR. What "refugees" was he aiding in Zambia?
Gopalan was posted to Zambia from 1966 to 1969. Formerly known as Northern Rhodesia, Zambia played a key role in the genocidal terrorist campaign against what was known as Rhodesia before it fell to a brutal dictatorship and became known afterward as Zimbabwe.
She's connecting with her socialist, anti-colonial past. She watched the toppling of Rhodesia and other nations in the region. She will use it as a template here, if she is permitted.
Yes, destruction of the borders of Rhodesia and South Africa by throngs of hungry migrants and terrorists, there is indeed is a parallel strategy.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Front Page] On the last leg of her African tour, Vice President Kamala Harris paid a visit to an otherwise unremarkable office building in Zambia. Her staff and local embassy personnel had spent a great deal of time looking for it and everyone was hoping it was the right place.
There are no "stupid questions."
