A global operation led by the FBI has dismantled one of the most notorious cybercrime tools used to launch ransomware attacks and steal sensitive data.

U.S. law enforcement officials announced on Tuesday that the FBI and its international partners had disrupted the Qakbot infrastructure and seized nearly $9 million in cryptocurrency in illicit profits.

Qakbot, also known as Qbot, was a sophisticated botnet and malware that infected hundreds of thousands of computers around the world, allowing cybercriminals to access and control them remotely.

“The Qakbot malicious code is being deleted from victim computers, preventing it from doing any more harm,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California said in a statement.

Martin Estrada, the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, and Don Alway, the FBI assistant director in charge of the Los Angeles field office, announced the operation at a press conference in Los Angeles.

Estrada called the operation “the largest U.S.-led financial and technical disruption of a botnet infrastructure” used by cybercriminals to carry out ransomware, financial fraud, and other cyber-enabled crimes.

“Qakbot was the botnet of choice for some of the most infamous ransomware gangs, but we have now taken it out,” Estrada said.

Law enforcement agencies from France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Romania, and Latvia took part in the operation, code-named Duck Hunt.

“These actions will prevent an untold number of cyberattacks at all levels, from the compromised personal computer to a catastrophic attack on our critical infrastructure,” Alway said.

As part of the operation, the FBI was able to gain access to the Qakbot infrastructure and identify more than 700,000 infected computers around the world, including more than 200,000 in the United States.

To disrupt the botnet, the FBI first seized the Qakbot servers and command and control system. Agents then rerouted the Qakbot traffic to servers controlled by the FBI. That in turn instructed users of infected computers to download a file created by law enforcement that would uninstall Qakbot malware.
…

Attorney Sidney Powell, one of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s 18 co-defendants in the Georgia 2020 election subversion case, has waived a formal arraignment and pleaded not guilty, a court filing on Tuesday showed.

Other Trump allies, Trevian Kutti and Ray Smith, have also waived formal arraignment and entered not guilty pleas.

The former president is scheduled to be arraigned on Sept. 6 as Fulton County prosecutors eye an October start to the trial.

The Fulton County has charged Trump with 13 felony counts including racketeering for pressuring state officials to reverse his 2020 election loss and setting up an illegitimate slate of electors to undermine the formal congressional certification of Democratic President Joe Biden’s victory.   

The latest charges marks Trump’s fourth indictment since launching his reelection campaign for president.  

Trump denies any wrongdoing.

 
…

The blood thinner Eliquis and popular diabetes treatments including Jardiance are among the first drugs that will be targeted for price negotiations in an effort to cut Medicare costs.

President Joe Biden’s administration on Tuesday released a list of 10 drugs for which the federal government will take an unprecedented step: negotiating drug prices directly with the manufacturer.

The move is expected to cut costs for some patients but faces litigation from the drugmakers and heavy criticism from Republican lawmakers. It’s also a centerpiece of the Democratic president’s reelection pitch as he seeks a second term in office by touting his work to lower costs for Americans at a time when the country has struggled with inflation.

The diabetes treatments Jardiance from Eli Lilly and Co. and Merck’s Januvia made the list, along with Amgen’s autoimmune disease treatment Enbrel. Other drugs include Entresto from Novartis, which is used to treat heart failure.

“For many Americans, the cost of one drug is the difference between life and death, dignity and dependence, hope and fear,” Biden said in a statement. “That is why we will continue the fight to lower healthcare costs — and we will not stop until we finish the job.”

Biden plans to deliver a speech on health care costs from the White House later Tuesday. He’ll be joined by Vice President Kamala Harris.

The drugs on the list announced Tuesday accounted for more than $50 billion in Medicare prescription drug costs between June 1, 2022, and May 31, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS.

Medicare spent about $10 billion in 2020 on Eliquis, according to AARP research. The drug treats blood clots in the legs and lungs and reduces the risk of stroke in people with an irregular heartbeat called atrial fibrillation.

The announcement is a significant step under the Inflation Reduction Act, which Biden signed last year. The law requires the federal government for the first time to start negotiating directly with companies about the prices they charge for some of Medicare’s most expensive drugs.

More than 52 million people who either are 65 or older or have certain severe disabilities or illnesses get prescription drug coverage through Medicare’s Part D program, according to CMS.

About 9% of Medicare beneficiaries age 65 and older said in 2021 that they did not fill a prescription or skipped a drug dose due to cost, according to research by the Commonwealth Fund, which studies health care issues.

The agency aims to negotiate the lowest maximum fair price for drugs on the list released Tuesday. That could help some patients who have coverage but still face big bills such as high deductible payments when they get a prescription.

Currently, pharmacy benefit managers that run Medicare prescription plans negotiate rebates off a drug’s price. Those rebates sometimes help reduce premiums customers pay for coverage. But they may not change what a patient spends at the pharmacy counter.

The new drug price negotiations aim “to basically make drugs more affordable while also still allowing for profits to be made,” said Gretchen Jacobson, who researches Medicare issues at Commonwealth.

Drug companies that refuse to be a part of the new negotiation process will be heavily taxed.

The pharmaceutical industry has been gearing up for months to fight these rules. Already, the plan faces several lawsuits, including complaints filed by drugmakers Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb and a key lobbying group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA.

PhRMA said in a federal court complaint filed earlier this year that the act forces drugmakers to agree to a “government-dictated price” under the threat of a heavy tax and gives too much price-setting authority to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

PhRMA representatives also have said pharmacy benefit managers can still restrict access to drugs with negotiated prices by moving the drugs to a tier of their formulary — a list of covered drugs — that would require higher out-of-pocket payments. Pharmacy benefit managers also could require patients to try other drugs first or seek approval before a prescription can be covered.

Republican lawmakers also have blasted the Biden administration for its plan, saying companies might pull back on introducing new drugs that could be subjected to future haggling. They’ve also questioned whether the government knows enough to suggest prices for drugs.

CMS will start its negotiations on drugs for which it spends the most money. The drugs also must be ones that don’t have generic competitors and are approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

CMS plans to meet this fall with drugmakers that have a drug on its list, and government officials say they also plan to hold patient-focused listening sessions. By February 2024, the government will make its first offer on a maximum fair price and then give drugmakers time to respond.

Any negotiated prices won’t take hold until 2026. More drugs could be added to the program in the coming years.
…

The U.S. State Department has picked veteran diplomat Mark Lambert as its top China policy official, five sources familiar with the matter said, bringing in new leadership for a part of the department that has faced staffing problems and criticism over its handling of China-focused initiatives.

Lambert will likely be named as the deputy assistant secretary for China and Taiwan, the sources said, filling the post left in June by Rick Waters.

Waters had also served as the head of the Office of China Coordination – informally known as “China House” – a unit the department created late last year to meld China policies across regions and issues. Whether Lambert will assume the China House coordinator title is still being discussed, sources said.

Lambert’s appointment is unlikely to change the tone of Washington’s China policy, which President Joe Biden’s administration says is one of “intense competition” while trying to increase engagement with Beijing to stabilize ties.

But Lambert, a well-regarded diplomat with experience in East Asia, is certain to influence China House, which has been criticized for adding layers of bureaucracy to an already complex decision-making process.

It was unclear when the State Department will formally announce the appointment.

“We have no personnel announcements to make at this time, but the Office of China Coordination remains an integral piece of the U.S. government’s efforts to responsibly manage our competition with the People’s Republic of China and advance our vision for an open, inclusive international system,” a State Department spokesperson said in an emailed response to a request for comment.

The State Department pushed back on criticism about China House, saying it was one if its highest-functioning teams.

“It has improved coordination and facilitated senior leaders’ diplomacy and policymaking, with results including enabling the Department’s response to the PRC surveillance balloon and rapid briefing of allies and partners around the world to expose the PRC’s global program,” a State Department official said.

Senate confirmation

The U.S. and China are at odds over issues from Taiwan to trade, fentanyl and human rights, but Washington has sought to keep communication channels open ahead of a possible meeting later this year between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

An Asia expert who did two stints at the U.S. embassy in Beijing, Lambert most recently served as a deputy assistant secretary focused on Japanese, Korean and Mongolian affairs, and on relations with Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands.

In the new role, he will continue to report to Assistant Secretary Daniel Kritenbrink who leads the department’s East Asian and Pacific Affairs bureau.

Reuters reported in May that the State Department delayed sensitive actions toward China to try to limit damage to bilateral relations after an alleged Chinese spy balloon crossed U.S. airspace in February.

Senior officials have acknowledged morale and staffing problems at China House, but denied they were linked to how the State department carries out China policy.

Republicans in Congress have questioned whether the Biden administration’s effort to engage with senior Chinese officials has led to watered-down measures toward Beijing, an idea the department rejects.

Republican concerns about China House have led to questions about whether the Senate, which has the power to confirm senior appointments, might insist on reviewing any nominee to run the unit.

If so, two of the sources said that rather than nominate Lambert to be China House coordinator the State Department might simply appoint an already confirmed official, such as Kritenbrink.

But two people familiar with Senate thinking told Reuters that for now, senators have no plans to force a confirmation process.

China House “is still a new experiment and we must wait to see how effective it is before we take steps to make it more permanent,” said one of the people.

 
…

People in the southeastern U.S. state of Florida are preparing for the arrival of what forecasters expect will be a major hurricane when it makes landfall Wednesday.

Tropical Storm Idalia had maximum sustained winds just below the threshold of hurricane strength late Monday, with the National Hurricane Center saying it expected the storm to rapidly strengthen during the day Tuesday.

Hurricane warnings were in effect along a large stretch of Florida’s Gulf Coast, including the city of Tampa.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis warned of a “major impact” to the state and declared a state of emergency in 46 counties.  Authorities encouraged people in 21 counties to evacuate ahead of the storm’s arrival.

President Joe Biden, who spoke by telephone with DeSantis Monday, approved an emergency declaration for the state.

Florida mobilized 1,100 National Guard members to prepare for rescue and recovery efforts.

Before approaching Florida, Idalia brought flooding rains to western Cuba.
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President Joe Biden will observe next month’s 22nd anniversary of the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil at an Alaska military base with service members and their families, the White House announced.

Biden will not participate in any of the observances at 9/11 memorial sites in New York City, Virginia or Pennsylvania. Instead, the president will stop in Alaska for a Sept. 11 observance at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage on his way back to Washington after a trip to Asia.

Biden is scheduled to travel to India from Sept. 7-10 to attend a summit with other world leaders, followed by a stop in Vietnam.

Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, will participate in the annual observance at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum in lower Manhattan.

First lady Jill Biden will lay a wreath at the 9/11 memorial at the Pentagon.

Terrorists hijacked commercial airplanes on Sept. 11, 2001, and flew them into the Twin Towers in New York’s financial district and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. A fourth plane crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers fought back.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the attacks. Biden was a U.S. senator at the time.

It will not be the first time that a president has not attended annual observances at any of the three sites.

In 2015, President Barack Obama participated in a moment of silence on the White House lawn before going to Fort Meade in Maryland to recognize the military’s work protecting the country.

In 2005, President George W. Bush marked the anniversary on the White House lawn.

The White House did not announce which official will participate in the Pennsylvania observance. 
…

A federal judge has set the trial of former U.S. President Donald Trump for next March, on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 presidential election. This puts the historic trial right in the middle of the 2024 presidential campaign, with Trump the front-runner among Republican candidates. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
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A University of North Carolina faculty member was shot and killed in a campus building, an official said Monday.

UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said the shooting was in Caudill Laboratories, and there is no longer a threat to the public. A suspect has been arrested, the school said.

“This loss is devastating, and the shooting damages the trust and safety that we so often take for granted in our campus community,” Guskiewicz said.

UNC Police Chief Brian James said at a news conference they are not releasing the suspect’s name, and formal charges have not yet been filed.

James said Caudill labs will be closed until further notice while evidence is being processed. He said a motive isn’t known, and the weapon has not been found.

James said emergency sirens sounded about two minutes after a 911 call came in reporting shots fired. Students and faculty at the flagship campus barricaded themselves in dorm rooms, offices and classrooms for hours until a lockdown was lifted.

James said they are not releasing the victim’s ID while they work to reach family members. He said there were no other deaths or injuries.

About three hours after warning students to seek shelter indoors and avoid windows, the school posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, “All clear. All clear. Resume normal activities.”

The school’s first alert was sent out just after 1 p.m. At 1:50 p.m., officials posted on X that the shelter-in-place order remained in effect and that it was “an ongoing situation.” About 40 minutes later, the school added a post saying: “Remain sheltered in place. This is an ongoing situation. Suspect at large.”

About two hours after the first alert went out, officers were still arriving in droves, with about 50 police vehicles at the scene and multiple helicopters circling over the school.

One officer admonished two people who tried to exit the student center, yelling “Inside, now!” About 10 minutes later, law enforcement escorted a group of students out of one of the science buildings, with everyone walking in an orderly line with their hands up.

Shortly before 4 p.m., students and faculty started emerging from campus buildings, with the lockdown over.

The report of the shooting and subsequent lockdown paralyzed campus and parts of the surrounding town of Chapel Hill a week after classes began at the state’s flagship public university. The university, with about 20,000 undergraduate students and 12,000 graduate students, canceled Tuesday classes.

During the lockdown, a student told TV station WTVD that she had barricaded her dormitory door with her furniture. Another student, speaking softly, described hiding in fear with others in a dark bathroom.

Adrian Lanier, a sophomore computer science major, told The Associated Press that he and others sat against a wall, trying to stay as far away as possible from doors and windows. They waited for hours as rumors spread.

“No one really felt safe enough to leave. I didn’t,” Lanier said.

Oliver Katz, an exchange student from Copenhagen Business School in Denmark, said some students crowded into gym locker rooms to get away from windows while others crouched in corners and sat on the floor. Police evacuated them hours later.

“This never happens where I’m from,” Katz said. “It was intense. But I was a little surprised that other people weren’t panicking that much.”

Katz, who has only been on campus for two weeks, said he’s worried his home university will bring the exchange students home early. “I don’t want to leave. I like it here, and I do still feel safe.”

The nearby Chapel Hill-Carrboro City school district also locked down its schools for several hours as a precaution.
…

Hawaii’s electric utility acknowledged its power lines started a wildfire on Maui but faulted county firefighters for declaring the blaze contained and leaving the scene, only to have a second wildfire break out nearby and become the deadliest in the U.S. in more than a century. 

Hawaiian Electric Company released a statement Sunday night in response to Maui County’s lawsuit blaming the utility for failing to shut off power despite exceptionally high winds and dry conditions. Hawaiian Electric called that complaint “factually and legally irresponsible,” and said its power lines in West Maui had been de-energized for more than six hours when the second blaze started. 

In its statement, the utility addressed the cause for the first time. It said the fire on the morning of August 8 “appears to have been caused by power lines that fell in high winds.” The Associated Press reported Saturday that bare electrical wire that could spark on contact and leaning poles on Maui were the possible cause. 

But Hawaiian Electric appeared to blame Maui County for most of the devastation — the fact that the fire appeared to reignite that afternoon and tore through downtown Lahaina, killing at least 115 people and destroying 2,000 structures. 

Richard Fried, a Honolulu attorney working as co-counsel on Maui County’s lawsuit, countered that if their power lines hadn’t caused the initial fire, “this all would be moot.” 

“That’s the biggest problem,” Fried said Monday. “They can dance around this all they want. But there’s no explanation for that.” 

Mike Morgan, an Orlando attorney who’s currently on Maui to work on wildfire litigation for his firm, Morgan & Morgan, said he thinks Hawaiian Electric’s statement was an attempt to shift liability and total responsibility. 

“By taking responsibility for causing the first fire, then pointing the finger on a fire that started 75 yards away and saying, ‘That’s not our fault, we started it, but they should’ve put it out,’ I’m not sure how that will hold up,” Morgan, who manages complex litigation, said Monday. “It’s also so premature because there are ongoing investigations.” 

Officials with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who are investigating the cause and origin of the fire, and lawyers involved in the litigation, were at a warehouse Monday to inspect electrical equipment taken from the neighborhood where the fire is thought to have originated. The utility took down the burnt poles and removed fallen wires from the site. 

Videos and images analyzed by AP confirmed that the wires that started the morning fire were among miles of line that the utility left naked to the weather and often-thick foliage, despite a recent push by utilities in other wildfire- and hurricane-prone areas to cover up their lines or bury them. 

Compounding the problem is that many of the utility’s 60,000, mostly wooden power poles, which its own documents described as built to “an obsolete 1960s standard,” were leaning and near the end of their projected lifespan. They were nowhere close to meeting a 2002 national standard that key components of Hawaii’s electrical grid be able to withstand 105 mile per hour winds. 

As Hurricane Dora passed roughly 500 miles (800 kilometers) south of Hawaii on August 8, Lahaina resident Shane Treu heard a utility pole snap next to Lahainaluna Road. He saw a downed power line ignite the grass and called 911 at 6:37 a.m. to report the fire. Small brush fires aren’t unusual for Lahaina, and a drought in the region had left plants, including invasive grasses, dangerously dry. The Maui County Fire Department declared that fire 100% contained by 9:55 a.m. Firefighters then left to attend to other calls. 

Hawaiian Electric said its own crews then went to the scene that afternoon to make repairs and did not see fire, smoke or embers. The power to the area was off. Shortly before 3 p.m., those crews saw a small fire in a nearby field and called 911, the utility said. 

Residents said the embers from the morning fire had reignited and the fire raced toward downtown Lahaina. Treu’s neighbor Robert Arconado recorded video of it spreading at 3:06 p.m., as large plumes of smoke rise near Lahainaluna Road and are carried downtown by the wind. 

Hawaiian Electric is a for-profit, investor-owned, publicly traded utility that serves 95% of Hawaii’s electric customers. CEO Shelee Kimura said there are important lessons to be learned from this tragedy and resolved to “figure out what we need to do to keep our communities safe as climate issues rapidly intensify here and around the globe.” 

The utility faces a spate of new lawsuits that seek to hold it responsible. Wailuku attorney Paul Starita, lead counsel on three lawsuits by Singleton Schreiber, called it a “preventable tragedy of epic proportions.” 
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Sweden charged a man on Monday with spying on it and the United States on behalf of Russia and unlawfully transferring advanced technology to Russia’s armed forces over a nine-year period. 

Prosecutors indicted Sergej Skvortsov, a citizen of both Sweden and Russia, on charges of gross unlawful intelligence activity against the two countries between 2013 and 2022, according to the indictment. 

The 60-year-old’s lawyer said he denied any wrongdoing. “He reiterates that he denies all charges,” lawyer Ulrika Borg told Reuters.

Prosecutors said the suspect gathered information on behalf of Russia that could be detrimental to U.S. and Swedish security and provided Russia with technology it could not procure on the open market due to trade regulations and sanctions. 

“Skvortsov and his company have been a platform for the Russian military intelligence service GRU and part of the Russian state for illicit technology procurement from the West,” the indictment read. 

The security service said in a statement the alleged crimes could pose serious security threats to Sweden and other states.  

“The aim of the suspect’s business has been to provide Russia with in-demand and sensitive technology that can be used militarily, where the goal of the procurement has been to increase the Russian state’s military capabilities,” it said. 

Police arrested Skvortsov in November last year on the outskirts of Stockholm, together with a second individual who was released shortly after.
…

Ask Alexa or Siri about the weather. But if you want to save someone’s life? Call 911 for that.

Voice assistants often fall flat when asked how to perform CPR, according to a study published Monday.

Researchers asked voice assistants eight questions that a bystander might pose in a cardiac arrest emergency. In response, the voice assistants said:

• “Hmm, I don’t know that one.”

• “Sorry, I don’t understand.”

• “Words fail me.”

• “Here’s an answer … that I translated: The Indian Penal Code.”

Only nine of 32 responses suggested calling emergency services for help — an important step recommended by the American Heart Association. Some voice assistants sent users to web pages that explained CPR, but only 12% of the 32 responses included verbal instructions.

Verbal instructions are important because immediate action can save a life, said study co-author Dr. Adam Landman, chief information officer at Mass General Brigham in Boston.

Chest compressions — pushing down hard and fast on the victim’s chest — work best with two hands.

“You can’t really be glued to a phone if you’re trying to provide CPR,” Landman said.

For the study, published in JAMA Network Open, researchers tested Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google’s Assistant and Microsoft’s Cortana in February. They asked questions such as “How do I perform CPR?” and “What do you do if someone does not have a pulse?”

Not surprisingly, better questions yielded better responses. But when the prompt was simply “CPR,” the voice assistants misfired. One played news from a public radio station. Another gave information about a movie titled “CPR.” A third gave the address of a local CPR training business.

ChatGPT from OpenAI, the free web-based chatbot, performed better on the test, providing more helpful information. A Microsoft spokesperson said the new Bing Chat, which uses OpenAI’s technology, will first direct users to call 911 and then give basic steps when asked how to perform CPR. Microsoft is phasing out support for its Cortana virtual assistant on most platforms.

Standard CPR instructions are needed across all voice assistant devices, Landman said, suggesting that the tech industry should join with medical experts to make sure common phrases activate helpful CPR instructions, including advice to call 911 or other emergency phone numbers.

A Google spokesperson said the company recognizes the importance of collaborating with the medical community and is “always working to get better.” An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment on Alexa’s performance on the CPR test, and an Apple spokesperson did not provide answers to AP’s questions about how Siri performed.
…

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will meet with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s family to mark Monday’s 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, where King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial.

All of King’s children have been invited, White House officials have said.

The Democratic president was taking a page out of history by opening the Oval Office to King’s family. On Aug. 28, 1963, the day of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, President John F. Kennedy welcomed King and other key march organizers to the Oval for a meeting.

The White House did not include the meeting on Biden’s public schedule for Monday.

Biden also was hosting a reception Monday evening to mark the 60th anniversary of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a nonpartisan, nonprofit legal organization that was established at Kennedy’s request to help advocate for racial justice.

The 1963 march is still considered one of the greatest and most consequential racial justice demonstrations in U.S. history.

The nonviolent protest attracted as many as 250,000 people to the Lincoln Memorial and provided momentum for Congress to pass landmark civil rights and voting rights legislation in the years that followed. King was assassinated in April 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.

On Saturday, thousands converged on the National Mall to commemorate the march, with speakers and others saying a country still riven by racial inequality has yet to fulfill King’s dream of a colorblind society in which his four children “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

The event was convened by the King family’s Drum Major Institute and the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network.
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A federal judge in Washington Monday could set a date for former U.S. President Donald Trump’s trial on charges of plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan is set to hold a hearing about the next stages of the proceedings.

Prosecutors have proposed that the trial begin Jan. 2.  Trump’s lawyers have requested an April 2026 start date, arguing they need more time to go over documents and that a January trial would conflict with other Trump legal cases.

Trump is charged with four felony counts that include conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.

He pleaded not guilty during a court appearance in early August.

In other cases, Trump is set to go on trial in New York state in late March in connection with a hush money payment made to a porn actor ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

A federal judge in Florida has set a May trial date in a case in which Trump is accused of illegally retaining classified documents at his Florida estate after he left office and obstructing a federal investigation into the matter.  Trump has pleaded not guilty in that case as well.

Prosecutors in Georgia have proposed an early March trial date in a case in which Trump and 18 others were indicted on charges of scheming to overturn the results of the 2020 election.  A judge has yet to say when that trial will begin.

A federal judge in Atlanta is set to hear arguments Monday from Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff who is among those charged in the Georgia case, that Meadows be allowed to fight the charges in federal courts instead of a state court.

Lawyers for Meadows argue that his actions were taken as part of his duties as chief of staff, while prosecutors say Meadows acted outside of his official duties and that his actions were illegal.

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse
…

Tropical Storm Idalia formed Sunday in the Caribbean, buffeting southeastern Mexico with wind and rain, as forecasters predicted it will strengthen to a hurricane before reaching Florida later in the week.

The storm, which is not forecast to make landfall in Mexico, will travel across the Gulf of Mexico before reaching northwest Florida, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

Idalia will create “increasing risk of life-threatening storm surge and hurricane-force winds along portions of the west coast of Florida and the Florida Panhandle beginning as early as Tuesday,” the NHC warned.

“There is considerable spread in the model intensity guidance, ranging from minimal to major hurricane status before landfall on the northeast Gulf coast,” the NHC added.

At 2100 GMT Sunday, Idalia was swirling in the Caribbean, headed northeast with maximum sustained winds of 65 kilometers (40 miles) per hour, the NHC said.

In the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, home to Cancun and other coastal tourist resorts, Idalia dumped rain and put a damper on one of the last weekends of summer vacation.

Storm surge and hurricane watches have been issued for parts of Florida’s coast and scattered flash flooding can be expected, the NHC said.

Heavy rainfall is meanwhile expected across parts of the eastern Yucatan in Mexico and western Cuba.

Last weekend, Hilary, which at one point rose to a Category 4 hurricane on the five-point Saffir-Simpson scale, hit the state of Baja California on Mexico’s Pacific coast as a tropical storm, causing one death and damaging infrastructure.

Hurricanes hit Mexico every year on both its Pacific and Atlantic coasts.

Scientists have warned that storms are becoming more powerful as the world gets warmer with climate change.
…

An evacuation order following a brush fire that burned 4 hectares on Maui was lifted by emergency officials Saturday. 

The fire prompted Maui authorities to temporarily evacuate residents Saturday from a neighborhood of Lahaina, just a few kilometers from the site recently ravaged by blazes, before firefighters brought it under control. 

The Maui County Emergency Management Agency announced in a social media post that the evacuation ended at 5 p.m. local time and residents could return home. 

Firefighters doused flames from above using a helicopter and with hoses on the ground, said John Heggie, a spokesperson for Maui County’s Joint Information Center. 

Maui County said in an online post that the fire no longer posed an active threat but firefighters were working in the area and evacuees should stay clear until it was safe to return. 

The evacuation order had covered a small number of homes in the hills above Kaanapali resort hotels. It was not immediately clear how many people were affected. 

At least 115 people were killed and 2,000 structures destroyed when a wildfire tore through downtown Lahaina on Aug. 8. Minimal rains have pushed the area into drought. 

That fire was exacerbated by strong trade winds fueled in part by Hurricane Dora, which passed 800 kilometers (497 miles) to the south of Maui. 

The National Weather Service forecast breezes of 4.8 to 12 kph for Lahaina on Saturday afternoon. 
…

In the 2024 presidential race, former President Donald Trump’s electability is again being questioned after he surrendered to authorities in Georgia in an election-fraud case last week. National polls still show Trump leading his fellow Republican party presidential hopefuls by a large margin. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden’s age remains a concern among Democrats. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports.
…

Three members of the U.S. Congress made a brief visit Sunday to opposition-held northwest Syria in what was the first known trip to the war-torn country by American lawmakers in six years.

U.S. Reps. Ben Cline of Virginia, French Hill of Arkansas and Scott Fitzgerald of Wisconsin, all Republicans, entered Syria from Turkey via the Bab al-Salama crossing in northern Aleppo province, according to two people familiar with the trip. They were not authorized to publicly discuss the trip and spoke on condition of anonymity after the U.S. delegation had left Syria.

Crossing into opposition-held Syria on what would be a roughly one-hour trip, the lawmakers were presented with flowers from students from Wisdom House. The facility is a school for orphans that is a project of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a U.S.-based Syrian opposition organization that facilitated the lawmakers’ trip.

Hill has been among the most vocal supporters in Congress of the Syrian opposition and his Arkansas constituents have been donors to the school.

The lawmakers also met with opposition and humanitarian leaders, including Raed Saleh, head of the Syrian opposition’s White Helmets emergency rescue group. The organization of volunteer first responders became known internationally for extracting civilians from buildings bombed by allied Russian forces fighting on behalf Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The United Nations says 300,000 civilians have died in the first 10 years of conflict between Assad-allied forces and Syria’s opposition.

Saleh spoke with the lawmakers about the current political status of the conflict in Syria and on continuing humanitarian efforts for victims of a earthquake earlier this year in Turkey and Syria, the White Helmets said on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.

The last known trip by a U.S. lawmaker to Syria was in 2017, when Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., visited U.S. forces stationed in northeast Syria’s Kurdish region. McCain had previously visited Syria and met with armed opposition fighters.

Also in 2017, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, visited Damascus, the capital, and met with Assad, a decision that was widely criticized at the time.

Since the beginning of the 2011 uprising-turned-civil-war in Syria, the U.S. government has backed the opposition and has imposed sanctions on Assad’s government and associates over human rights concerns. Washington has conditioned restoring relations with Damascus on progress toward a political solution to the 12-year conflict.

Control of northwest Syria is largely split between the Turkish-backed opposition groups and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a group that was originally founded as an offshoot of al-Qaida and is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States. In recent years, the group’s leadership have attempted to publicly distance themselves from their al-Qaida origins.

The Turkish-backed opposition groups have regularly clashed with Kurdish forces based in northeast Syria, who are allies of the United States in the fight against the Islamic State.
…

A masked white man carrying at least one weapon bearing a swastika fatally shot three Black people inside a Florida store Saturday in an attack with a clear motive of racial hatred, officials said. 

The shooting in a Dollar General store in a predominately African-American neighborhood left two men and one woman dead and was “racially motivated,” Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said. 

In addition to carrying a firearm with a painted symbol of the genocidal Nazi regime of Germany of the 1930s and 1940s, the shooter issued racist statements before the shooting. He killed himself at the scene. 

“He hated Black people,” the sheriff said. 

The shooting came on the same day thousands visited Washington, D.C., to attend the Rev. Al Sharpton’s 60th anniversary commemoration of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have A Dream” speech. 

Rudolph McKissick, a national board member of Sharpton’s National Action Network, was not in Washington, D.C., on Saturday. Yet his thoughts on the shooting touched on issues raised by the civil rights leader. 

“The irony is on the day we celebrate the 60th commemoration of the March on Washington, where Dr. Martin Luther King stood up and talked about a dream for racial equality and for love, we still yet live in a country where that dream is not a reality,” McKissick said. “That dream has now been replaced by bigotry.” 

The gunman, who was in his 20s, wore a bullet-resistant vest and used a Glock handgun and an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. He acted alone and there was no evidence he was part of a group, Waters said. 

The shooter sent written statements to federal law enforcement and at least one media outlet shortly before the attack with evidence suggesting the attack was intended to mark the fifth anniversary of the murder of two people during a video game tournament in Jacksonville by a shooter who also killed himself. 

Officials did not immediately release the names of the victims or the gunman on Saturday. Local media identified a man believed to be the shooter but his identity was not independently confirmed by The Associated Press by early Sunday. 

The shooting happened just before 2 p.m. within a mile of Edward Waters University, a small, historically Black university.

The university said in a statement that a security officer had seen the man near the school’s library and asked for identification. When he refused, he was asked to leave and returned to his car. He was spotted putting on the bullet-resistant vest and a mask before leaving the grounds, although it was not known whether he had planned an attack at the university, Waters said. 

“I can’t tell you what his mindset was while he was there, but he did go there,” the sheriff said. 

Shortly before the attack, the gunman sent his father a text message telling him to check his computer, where he found his writings. The family notified 911, but the shooting had already begun, Waters said. 

“This is a dark day in Jacksonville’s history. There is no place for hate in this community,” said Waters, who noted the FBI was assisting with the ongoing inquiry and had opened a hate crime investigation. “I am sickened by this cowardly shooter’s personal ideology.” 

Mayor Donna Deegan said she was heartbroken. “This is a community that has suffered again and again. So many times this is where we end up,” Deegan said. “This is something that should not and must not continue to happen in our community.”

McKissick said the shooting took place in the historic New Town neighborhood, which now needs love and affirmation. 

“It’s a Black neighborhood, and what we don’t want is for it to be painted in some kind of light that it is filled with plight, violence and decadence,” McKissick said. 

“As it began to unfold, and I began to see the truth of it, my heart ached on several levels,” he said, noting the shooting appears to be an extension of a racial divide in the state highlighted by political turmoil, which he said has been fuelled in part by Gov. Ron DeSantis. 

“This divide exists because of the ongoing disenfranchisement of Black people and a governor, who is really propelling himself forward through bigoted, racially motivated, misogynistic, xenophobic actions to throw red meat to a Republican base,” McKissick said in reference to DeSantis. 

“Nobody is having honest, candid conversations about the presence of racism,” said McKissick, a Baptist bishop and senior pastor of the Bethel Church in Jacksonville. 

DeSantis, who spoke with the sheriff by phone from Iowa while campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, denounced the shooter’s racist motivation, calling him a “scumbag.” 

“This guy killed himself rather than face the music and accept responsibility for his actions. He took the coward’s way out,” DeSantis said. 

McKinnis said the location of the shooting was chosen because of its proximity to Edward Waters University, where students remained locked down in their dorms for several hours. No students or faculty were believed to have been involved, the university said. 

The attack at a store in a predominantly Black neighborhood recalls past shootings targeting Black Americans, including at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket in 2022 and a historic African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. 

The Buffalo shooting, which killed 10 people, stands apart as one of the deadliest targeted attacks on Black people by a lone white gunman in U.S. history. The shooter was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. 

The Jacksonville shooting came a day before the 63rd anniversary of the city’s notorious “Ax Handle Saturday,” when 200 Ku Klux Klan members attacked Black protesters conducting a peaceful sit-in against Jim Crow laws banning them from white-owned stores and restaurants. 

The police stood by until a Black street gang arrived to fight the Klansmen, who were armed with bats and ax handles. Only Black people were arrested. 

Jacksonville native Marsha Dean Phelts was in Washington with others at the King commemoration and said learning of the shooting was “a death blow.” 

Phelps, who is Black, said her acute awareness of Florida’s history of racial tensions was amplified by the deadly shooting. The 79-year-old is a resident of Amelia Island, an African-American beach community in Nassau County established in 1935 as a result of segregation. 

“We could not go to public parks and public beaches, unless you owned your own,” she recalled of the state’s past institutional discrimination. “You did not have access to things that your taxes pay for.” 

LaTonya Thomas, 52, another Jacksonville resident riding a charter bus home after the Washington commemoration, said she wouldn’t allow the shooting to draw down her spirits after the “wonderful experience,” but she was saddened by the violence. 

“We took this long journey from Jacksonville, Florida, to be a part of history,” she said. “When I was told that there was a white shooter in a predominantly Black area, I felt like that was a targeted situation.” 

Thomas said she was able to reach a close family friend employed at the store to confirm the person was not working during the shooting. 

“It made the march even more important because, of course, gun violence and things of that nature seem so casual now,” she said. “Now you have employees, customers that will never go home.”
…

Rajee Narinesingh faced struggles throughout her life as a transgender woman, from workplace discrimination to the lasting effects of black market injections that scarred her face and caused chronic infections.

In spite of the roadblocks, the 56-year-old Florida actress and activist has seen growing acceptance since she first came out decades ago.

“If you see older transgender people, it shows the younger community that it’s possible I can have a life. I can live to an older age,” she said. “So I think that’s a very important thing.”

Now, as a wave of state laws enacted this year limit transgender people’s rights, Narinesingh has new uncertainty about her own future as she ages.

“Every now and then I have this thought, like, oh my God, if I end up in a nursing home, how are they going to treat me?” Narinesingh said.

Most of the new state laws have focused attention on trans youth, with at least 22 states banning or restricting gender-affirming care for minors.

For many transgender seniors, it’s brought new fears to their plans for retirement and old age. They already face gaps in health care and nursing home facilities properly trained to meet their needs. That’s likely to be compounded by restrictions to transgender health care that have already blocked some adults’ access to treatments in Florida and sparked concerns the laws will expand to other states.

Transgender adults say they’re worried about finding welcoming spaces to live in their later years.

“I have friends that have retired and they’ve decided to move to retirement communities. And then, little by little, they’ve found that they’re not welcome there,” said Morgan Mayfaire, a transgender man and the executive director of TransSOCIAL, a Florida support and advocacy group.

Discrimination can range from being denied housing to being misgendered and struggling to get nursing homes to acknowledge their visitation rights.

“In order to be welcome there, they have to go into the closet and deny who they are,” Mayfaire said.

About 171,000 of the more than 1.3 million transgender adults in the United States are aged 65 and older, according to numbers compiled by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

The growing population has brought more services such as nursing homes and assisted living centers that are geared toward serving the LGBTQ community, although such facilities remain uncommon. They include Stonewall Gardens, a 24-apartment assisted living center that opened in Palm Springs, California, in 2015.

The center’s staff are required to go through sensitivity training to help make the center a more welcoming environment for residents, said interim executive director Lauren Kabakoff Vincent. The training is key for making a more accepting environment for transgender residents and making them feel more at home.

“Do you really want to be moving into a place where you have to explain yourself and have to go through it over and over?” Vincent said. “It’s exhausting, and so I think being able to be in a comfortable environment is important.”

SAGE, which advocates on behalf of LGBTQ seniors, offers training to nursing homes and other elder care providers. The group trained more than 46,000 staff at 576 organizations around the country in the most recent fiscal year. But the group said that represents just a fraction of the elder care facilities around the country.

“We have a long way to go in terms of getting to the point where nursing homes, assisted living and other long-term care providers are prepared for and ready to provide appropriate and welcoming care to trans elders,” said Michael Adams, SAGE’s CEO.

The gap concerns Tiffany Arieagus, 71, an acclaimed drag performer in south Florida who also works in social services for SunServe, an LGBTQ nonprofit.

“I just am going on my 71 years on this earth and walking in the civil rights march with my mother at age 6 and then marching for gay rights,” Arieagus said. “I’ve been blessed enough to see so many changes being made in the world. And then now I’m having to see these wonderful progressions going backwards.”

A handful of states, including Massachusetts and California, have in recent years enacted laws to ensure that LGBTQ seniors have equal access to programs for aging populations and requiring training on how to serve that community.

The push for restrictions on access to health care has brought uncertainty in other states. Florida’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors also includes restrictions that make it difficult, if not impossible, for many adults to get treatment.

SAGE has seen a spike in the number of calls to its hotline following the wave of anti-transgender laws, and Adams said about 40% of them have come from trans seniors primarily in conservative parts of the country worried about the new restrictions.

The limits have prompted some trans adults to leave the state for care, with some turning to crowdfunding appeals for help. But for many trans seniors, such a move isn’t as easy.

“You have the general fear, fear that is leading clinicians being concerned and perhaps stepping away from offering care, fear of trans elders of who is a safe clinician to go to,” said Dan Stewart, associate director of the Human Rights Campaign’s Aging Equality Project.

Florida’s law has already created obstacles for Andrea Montanez, LGBTQ immigration organizer at Hope CommUnity Center near Orlando, Florida. Montanez, 57, said her prescription for hormone therapy was initially denied after the restrictions were signed. Montanez, who has been speaking out at Florida Medical Board meetings about the impact of the new state law, said she’s worried about what it will be mean as she approaches retirement.

“I hope I have a happy retirement, but health care is a big problem,” said Montanez, who was eventually able to get her prescription filled.

For Tatiana Williams, 51, the restrictions are stirring painful memories of a time when she and other transgender people had to rely on dangerous and illegal sources for gender-affirming medical care. Now the executive director of the Transinclusive Group in Wilton Manors, Florida, Williams remembers being hospitalized for a collapsed lung after receiving black market silicone injections for her breasts.

“What we don’t want is the community resorting to going back to that,” Williams said.

Still, older transgender adults say they see hope in how their generation is working with younger trans people to speak out against the wave of the restrictions.

“The community’s going to take care of itself. It’s as simple as that. We’re going to find ways to take care of ourselves and we’re going to survive this,” Mayfaire of TransSOCIAL said. “And as far as trans youth panicking over this, look to your elders.”
…

A “tragic” incident involving a U.S. military aircraft occurred in northern Australia during military exercises Sunday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said, adding that his government was focused on providing support.

Sky News Australia reported a v-22 Osprey helicopter with about 20 U.S. Marines on board had crashed off the coast of Darwin. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) said one person was in critical condition, two were stable and there were no reports of fatalities.

Albanese, speaking at a previously scheduled press conference, declined to provide details about the crash or rescue efforts, which he said took place on Melville Island north of Darwin during Exercise Predator’s Run 2023.

“Our focus as a government and as a department of defense is very much on incident response and on making sure that every support and assistance is given at this difficult time,” he said.

Australian personnel were not involved, Albanese said.

Northern Territory Police were responding to reports of an aircraft crash on Melville Island, the fire and emergency services said in an emailed statement.

The U.S. Defense Department was aware of media reports about the crash “but we do not have anything we can provide at this time,” a duty officer said in an emailed statement.

The U.S. and Australia, a key ally in the Pacific, have been stepping up military cooperation in recent years in the face of an increasingly assertive China.

Four Australian soldiers were killed last month during large bilateral exercises when their helicopter crashed into the ocean off the coast of Queensland.
…

Families were torn asunder. A community is reeling with grief. More than 100 people have perished and hundreds more remain missing after flames and smoke barreled from the hills and annihilated the historic town of Lahaina.

But even in places overwhelmed by despair and devastation, the Hawaiian spirit known as ohana endures.

In the Hawaiian lexicon, ohana is a sensibility, a way of thinking that means family, belonging, community and so much more — solace in a time of calamity. It is a unifying principle in an increasingly fragmented world. And in recent weeks, amid misfortune, the word has taken on profound importance in a place appealing for help.

“In times like this, ohana gets stronger,” says Dustin Kaleiopu, whose Maui roots date back to when monarchs ruled the islands.

The kanaka of Hawaii, the Native Hawaiians who inhabit the islands, value ohana, which extends beyond the familial ties of blood. It is a life nourished by kinship.

“In a small town like Lahaina, we all know each other. We’ve all grown up together,” says Kaleiopu, whose ohana came to his aid after he and his grandfather escaped the flames that turned their home into a mound of ash and charred debris. “It’s such a tight-knit community.”

Testing the bonds of ohana

Finding grace and solace can be almost unimaginable when the very world around you is burning. This is what Lahaina faces today.

Thousands of homes are gone. At least 115 people are confirmed dead. And by some counts, nearly 400 of Lahaina’s residents remain unaccounted for: fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, young and old, friends and neighbors — all part of someone’s ohana.

“There’s plenty of families who’ve been displaced by the fire. So we’re going to take care of our community as much as possible. So in this sense, our community is the ohana,” says Kapali Keahi, whose family has lived on Maui for generations.

In the days, and now weeks, after the deadliest wildfire in the United States in more than a century, families who lost homes and possessions continue to depend on the generosity of relatives, friends and even strangers. Shipments of food, clothes and everyday necessities keep arriving from the state’s other islands, including Oahu, home to Honolulu.

Online fundraisers, many set up by displaced families, have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, much of it from distant places. One relief fund has well surpassed $1.2 million, its 6,400 donors hailing from every part of the globe.

So much of Lahaina has been lost. Left behind are people in deep despair, said Kekai Keahi, another Lahaina resident. One thing, though, remained strong: a connecting strand.

“Ohana was never lost. It never left,” he said. “We will always come to each other’s aid.”

Keahi spoke as Hawaiian flags fluttered near the ocean and a Native Hawaiian group calling itself Na ‘Ohana o Lele — the ohana of Lahaina — gathered at a beachside park to speak on behalf of their community.

The message from the group was clear: There will be talk of rebuilding, yes, but families need time to grieve and begin healing first.

Many people from many places, united

The community of 13,000 people included immigrants from many parts of the world. Here, they find common ground.

No matter where they came from, no matter when they arrived, transplants are soon charmed by Hawaii’s culture, a melange of imported customs and traditions melded together by ways in existence long before the British imperialist and explorer Capt. James Cook came across the Hawaiian archipelago nearly 250 years ago while crossing the Pacific.

As they assimilate, newcomers pick up the oft-spoken vocabulary intrinsic to island life. “Mahalo” conveys gratitude, admiration and respect. “Aloha” is for hello and goodbye, or for love and affection — a word with the warmth of a hug and the beauty of a lei.

Then there is ohana. As the movie “Lilo & Stitch” defined it, “ohana means family, and family means nobody is left behind or forgotten.”

With so many dead or missing, a sentiment like that is ripe to resonate across a community coping with loss.

“It’s all about family out here,” says Mike Tomas, whose immediate family lost their home in the fire and are sheltering in the homes of friends and relatives. He had planned to move with his girlfriend to Texas sometime in the fall, but they will now depart much sooner.

“Nothing’s left here,” he says. Not even the clothes and belongings they had begun packing. But he knows he’ll be back.

“This has always been home,” he says. “This is where family is.”

Amber Bobin moved from Chicago to Maui nearly four years ago. She says she was drawn, in part, by the culture and strong bonds of community.

Earlier this week, she joined a small group to hang 115 crosses on fences erected along the road that cuts through Lahaina. That’s a single cross for each of the souls whose remains have been found. Bobin expected to hang more crosses in the coming days. The fence also was festooned with a collection of ribbons, one for every person still missing.

And if ohana is a way of life in good times, those crosses and ribbons help reveal what it is in tough ones: a mindset that ensures those who have been part of you remain so, even after they were torn away by forces no one imagined would be visited upon home.

“To be able to experience what ohana means, especially in tragedy,” she says, “has been significantly impactful.”
…

In the first moments of the Maui fires, when high winds brought down power poles, slapping electrified wires to the dry grass below, there was a reason the flames erupted all at once in long, neat rows: Those wires were bare, uninsulated metal that could spark on contact. 

Videos and images analyzed by The Associated Press confirmed those wires were among miles of line that Hawaiian Electric Company left naked to the weather and often-thick foliage below, despite a recent push by utilities in other wildfire- and hurricane-prone areas to cover their lines or bury them. 

Compounding the problem is that many of the utility’s 60,000, mostly wooden power poles, which the utility’s own documents described as built to “an obsolete 1960s standard,” were leaning and near the end of their projected lifespan.  

They were nowhere close to meeting a 2002 national standard that key components of Hawaii’s electrical grid be able to withstand 105-mile-per-hour winds. A 2019 filing said it had fallen behind in replacing the old wooden poles because of other priorities and warned of a “serious public hazard” if they failed. 

Google street view images of poles taken before the fire show the bare wire. 

It’s “very unlikely” a fully insulated cable would have sparked and caused a fire in dry vegetation, said Michael Ahern, who retired this month as director of power systems at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. 

Experts who watched videos showing downed power lines agreed wire that was insulated would not have arced and sparked, igniting a line of flame.  

Hawaiian Electric said in a statement that it has “long recognized the unique threats” from climate change and has spent millions of dollars in response but did not say whether specific power lines that collapsed in the early moments of the fire were bare. 

“We’ve been executing on a resilience strategy to meet these challenges, and since 2018, we have spent approximately $950 million to strengthen and harden our grid and approximately $110 million on vegetation management efforts,” the company. “This work included replacing more than 12,500 poles and structures since 2018 and trimming and removing trees along approximately 2,500 line-miles every year on average.” 

‘Skinny, bending, bowing’

But a former member of the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission confirmed many of Maui’s wooden power poles were also in poor condition. Jennifer Potter lives in Lahaina and until the end of last year was on the commission, which regulates Hawaiian Electric. 

“They’re leaning quite significantly because the winds over time literally just pushed them over,” she said. “That obviously is not going to withstand 60-, 70-mile-per-hour winds. So the infrastructure was just not strong enough for this kind of windstorm. … The infrastructure itself is just compromised.” 

John Morgan, a personal injury and trial attorney in Florida who lives part-time in Maui noticed the same thing. 

“I could look at the power poles. They were skinny, bending, bowing. The power went out all the time,” he said. 

Morgan’s firm is suing Hawaiian Electric on behalf of one person and talking to many more about their rights. The fire came within 500 yards of his house. 

Hawaiian Electric is facing several new lawsuits that seek to hold it responsible for the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century. The number of confirmed dead stands at 115, and the county expects that to rise. 

Lawyers plan to inspect some electrical equipment from a neighborhood where the fire is thought to have originated as soon as next week, per a court order, but they will be doing that in a warehouse. The utility took down the burned poles and removed fallen wires from the site. 

Criticized for not cutting power

Hawaiian Electric also faces criticism for not shutting off the power amid high wind warnings and keeping it on even as dozens of poles began to topple. Maui County sued Hawaiian Electric on Thursday over this issue. 

Michael Jacobs, a senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that with power lines causing so many fires in the United States: “We definitely have a new pattern, we just don’t have a new safety regime to go with it.” 

Insulating an electrical wire prevents arcing and sparking and dissipates heat. 

Other utilities have been addressing the issue of bare wire. Pacific Gas & Electric was found responsible for the 2018 Camp Fire in northern California that killed 85 people. The disaster was caused by downed power lines. 

Hawaiian Electric said in a filing last year that it had looked to the wildfire plans of utilities in California. 

Some don’t fault Hawaiian Electric for its comparative lack of action because it has not faced the threat of wildfires for as long. And the utility is not alone in continuing to use bare metal conductors high up on power poles. 

The same is true for public safety power shutoffs. It’s been only a few years that utilities have been willing to preemptively shut off people’s power to prevent fire, and the disruptive practice is not yet widespread. 

But Mark Toney called wildfires caused by utilities absolutely preventable. He is executive director of the ratepayer group The Utility Reform Network in California. It is pushing PG&E to insulate its lines in high-risk areas. 

“We have to stop utility-caused wildfires. We have to stop them and the quickest, cheapest way to do it is to insulate the overhead lines,” he said. 

The U.S. electrical grid was designed and built for last century’s climate, said Joshua Rhodes, an energy systems research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. Utilities would be smart to better prepare for protracted droughts and high winds, he said. 

“It may look expensive if you’re doing work to stave off starting wildfires or the impact of wildfires,” he said Thursday, “but it’s much cheaper than actually starting one and burning down so many people’s homes and causing so many people’s deaths.” 
…

Martin Luther King III, along with his wife, Arndrea Waters King, and their 15-year-old daughter, Yolanda, have developed a set of traditions for this time of the year.

Each August, they rewatch the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s rapturous address to the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Even if the civil rights icon’s legacy is closer to the Kings than it is for most other families, they see march anniversaries as a teaching moment.

“We are like any other family, in the sense that we want to teach our daughter about this moment in history,” Arndrea said. “And then we also try to connect it with movements or people that are doing things in the present.”

This year, the Kings will join an expected crowd of tens of thousands of people gathering Saturday at the Lincoln Memorial in the U.S. capital to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the late reverend’s “I Have A Dream” speech.

The event is convened by the Kings’ Drum Major Institute and the National Action Network. A host of Black civil rights leaders and a multiracial, interfaith coalition of allies will rally attendees on the same spot where as many as 250,000 gathered in 1963 for what is still considered one of the greatest and most consequential racial justice and equality demonstrations in U.S. history.

On Friday, Martin Luther King III, who is the late civil rights icon’s eldest son, and his sister, Bernice King, visited their father’s monument in Washington.

“I see a man still standing in authority and saying, ‘We’ve still got to get this this right,’ ” Bernice said as she looked up at the granite statue.

The original march, which featured their father as a centerpiece, helped till the ground for passage of federal civil rights and voting rights legislation in the 1960s.

Organizers of this year’s commemoration hope to recapture the energy of the original March on Washington — especially in the face of eroded voting rights nationwide, the recent striking down of affirmative action in college admissions and abortion rights by the Supreme Court, and amid growing threats of political violence and hatred against people of color, Jews and the LGBTQ community.

“What we know is when people stand up, the difference can be made,” Martin Luther King III told The Associated Press in an interview ahead of Saturday. “This is not a traditional commemoration. This really is a rededication.”

The event kicks off with pre-program speeches and performances at 8 a.m. The main program begins at 11 a.m., followed by a march procession that will begin through the streets of Washington toward the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial.

Featured speakers include Ambassador Andrew Young, the close King adviser who helped organize the original march and who went on to serve as a congressman, U.N. ambassador and mayor of Atlanta. Leaders from the NAACP and the National Urban League are also expected to give remarks.

Several leaders from groups organizing the march met Friday with Attorney General Merrick Garland and Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the civil rights division, to discuss a range of issues, including voting rights, policing and redlining.

The gathering Saturday is a precursor to the actual anniversary of the Aug. 28, 1963, March on Washington. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will observe the march anniversary on Monday by meeting with organizers of the 1963 gathering. All of King’s children have been invited to meet with Biden, White House officials said.

For the Rev. Al Sharpton, founder of the National Action Network, continuing to observe March on Washington anniversaries fulfills a promise he made to the late King family matriarch Coretta Scott King. Twenty-three years ago, she introduced Sharpton and Martin Luther King III at a 37th anniversary march and urged them to carry on the legacy.

“I never thought that 23 years later, Martin and I, with Arndrea, would be doing a march and we’d have less [civil rights protections] than we had in 2000,” Sharpton said.

“We’re fulfilling the assignment Mrs. King gave us,” he said. “We are having to march, saying we can’t go backwards, and we’ve got to go forward.”

Coming out of the march on Saturday, Sharpton said, he will lead a voting rights tour in the fall in states that are trying to erect barriers ahead of the 2024 presidential election. He also plans to meet with major Black entrepreneurs to create a fund to finance the fight against conservative attacks on diversity and inclusion initiatives.

Bernice King said she sympathized with those who have grown weary over the continued fight to preserve civil rights. But they need to remember her mother’s words, in addition to her father’s famous speech, she said.

“Mother said, struggle is a never-ending process,” said Bernice, who is CEO of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, which was founded by her mother after the civil rights icon’s assassination in 1968.

“Freedom is never really won — you earn it and win it in every generation. Vigilance is the answer,” she said. “We have to always remember, it’s difficult and dark right now, but a dawn is coming.”

Her father’s March on Washington remarks have resounded through decades of push and pull toward progress in civil and human rights. But dark moments followed his speech, too.

Two weeks later in 1963, four Black girls were killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, followed by the kidnapping and murder of three civil rights workers in Neshoba County, Mississippi, the following year. The tragedies spurred passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

And the voting rights marches from Montgomery to Selma, Alabama, in which marchers were brutally beaten while crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in what became known as “Bloody Sunday,” forced Congress to adopt the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
…

Four astronauts from four countries rocketed toward the International Space Station on Saturday.

They should reach the orbiting lab in their SpaceX capsule Sunday, replacing four astronauts who have been living up there since March.

A NASA astronaut was joined on the predawn liftoff from Kennedy Space Center by fliers from Denmark, Japan and Russia. They clasped one another’s gloved hands upon reaching orbit.

It was the first U.S. launch in which every spacecraft seat was occupied by a different country — until now, NASA had always included two or three of its own on its SpaceX taxi flights. A fluke in timing led to the assignments, officials said.

“We’re a united team with a common mission,” NASA’s Jasmin Moghbeli radioed from orbit. Added NASA’s Ken Bowersox, space operations mission chief: “Boy, what a beautiful launch … and with four international crew members, really an exciting thing to see.”

Moghbeli, a Marine pilot serving as commander, is joined on the six-month mission by the European Space Agency’s Andreas Mogensen, Japan’s Satoshi Furukawa and Russia’s Konstantin Borisov.

“To explore space, we need to do it together,” the European Space Agency’s director general, Josef Aschbacher, said minutes before liftoff. “Space is really global, and international cooperation is key.”

The astronauts’ paths to space couldn’t be more different.

Moghbeli’s parents fled Iran during the 1979 revolution. Born in Germany and raised on New York’s Long Island, she joined the Marines and flew attack helicopters in Afghanistan. The first-time space traveler hopes to show Iranian girls that they, too, can aim high. “Belief in yourself is something really powerful,” she said before the flight.

Mogensen worked on oil rigs off the West African coast after getting an engineering degree. He told people puzzled by his job choice that “in the future we would need drillers in space” like Bruce Willis’ character in the killer asteroid film “Armageddon.” He’s convinced the rig experience led to his selection as Denmark’s first astronaut.

Furukawa spent a decade as a surgeon before making Japan’s astronaut cut. Like Mogensen, he has visited the station before.

Borisov, a space rookie, turned to engineering after studying business. He runs a freediving school in Moscow and judges the sport, in which divers shun oxygen tanks and hold their breath underwater.

One of the perks of an international crew, they noted, is the food. Among the delicacies soaring with them: Persian herbed stew, Danish chocolate and Japanese mackerel.

SpaceX’s first-stage booster returned to Cape Canaveral several minutes after liftoff, an extra treat for the thousands of spectators gathered in the early-morning darkness.

Liftoff was delayed a day for additional data reviews of valves in the capsule’s life-support system. The countdown almost was halted again Saturday after a tiny fuel leak cropped up in the capsule’s thruster system. SpaceX engineers managed to verify the leak would pose no threat with barely two minutes remaining on the clock, said Benji Reed, the company’s senior director for human spaceflight.

Another NASA astronaut will launch to the station from Kazakhstan in mid-September under a barter agreement, along with two Russians.

SpaceX has now launched eight crews for NASA. Boeing was hired at the same time nearly a decade ago but has yet to fly astronauts. Its crew capsule is grounded until 2024 by parachute and other issues.
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