WASHINGTON — A California man with a history of political violence was sentenced on Friday to 20 years in prison for repeatedly attacking police with flagpoles and other makeshift weapons during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

David Nicholas Dempsey’s sentence is one of the longest among hundreds of Capitol riot prosecutions. Prosecutors described him as one of the most violent members of the mob of Donald Trump supporters that attacked the Capitol as lawmakers met to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory.

Dempsey, who is from Van Nuys, stomped on police officers’ heads. He swung poles at officers defending a tunnel, struck an officer in the head with a metal crutch and attacked police with pepper spray and broken pieces of furniture, prosecutors said.

He climbed atop other rioters, using them like “human scaffolding” to reach officers guarding a tunnel entrance. He injured at least two police officers, prosecutors said.

“Your conduct on January 6th was exceptionally egregious,” U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth told Dempsey. “You did not get carried away in the moment.”

Dempsey pleaded guilty in January to two counts of assaulting police officers with a dangerous weapon.

Only former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio has received a longer sentence in the January 6 attack. Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years for orchestrating a plot to stop the peaceful transfer of power from Trump to Biden after the 2020 presidential election.

Dempsey called his conduct “reprehensible” and apologized to the police officers whom he assaulted. “You were performing your duties, and I responded with hostility and violence,” he said before learning his sentence.

Justice Department prosecutors recommended a prison sentence of 21 years and 10 months for Dempsey, a former construction worker and fast-food restaurant employee. Dempsey’s violence was so extreme that he attacked a fellow rioter who was trying to disarm him, prosecutors wrote.

“David Dempsey is political violence personified,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Douglas Brasher told the judge.

Defense attorney Amy Collins, who sought a sentence of 6 years and six months, described the government’s sentencing recommendation as “ridiculous.”

“It makes him a statistic,” she said. “It doesn’t consider the person he is, how much he has grown.”

Dempsey was wearing a tactical vest, a helmet and an American flag gaiter covering his face when he attacked police at a tunnel leading to the Lower West Terrace doors. He shot pepper spray at Metropolitan Police Department Detective Phuson Nguyen just as another rioter yanked at the officer’s gas mask, prosecutors wrote.

“The searing spray burned Detective Nguyen’s lungs, throat, eyes, and face and left him gasping for breath, fearing he might lose consciousness and be overwhelmed by the mob,” they wrote.

Dempsey then struck MPD Sergeant Jason Mastony in the head with a metal crutch, cracking the shield on his gas mask and cutting his head.

“I collapsed and caught myself against the wall as my ears rang. I was able to stand again and hold the line for a few more minutes until another assault by rioters pushed the police line back away from the threshold of the tunnel,” Mastony said in a statement submitted to the court.

Dempsey has been jailed since his arrest in August 2021.

His criminal record in California includes convictions for burglary, theft and assault. The assault conviction stemmed from an October 2019 gathering near the Santa Monica Pier, where Dempsey attacked people peacefully demonstrating against then-President Trump, prosecutors said.

“The peaceful protest turned violent as Dempsey took a canister of bear spray from his pants and dispersed it at close range against several protesters,” they wrote, noting that Dempsey was sentenced to 200 days of jail time.

Dempsey engaged in at least three other acts of “vicious political violence” that didn’t lead to criminal charges “for various reasons,” according to prosecutors. They said Dempsey struck a counterprotester over the head with a skateboard at a June 2019 rally in Los Angeles, used the same skateboard to assault someone at an August 2020 protest in Tujunga, California, and attacked a protester with pepper spray and a metal bat during an August 2020 protest in Beverly Hills, California.

More than 1,400 people have been charged with January 6-related federal crimes. Over 900 of them have been convicted and sentenced, with roughly two-thirds receiving terms of imprisonment ranging from a few days to Tarrio’s 22 years.
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The U.S. presidential campaign is being closely followed in Ukraine as its outcome could significantly impact regional security, U.S. foreign policy, NATO support, aid to Ukraine, and relations with Russia. VOA Eastern Europe Chief Myroslava Gongadze reports. Camera: Daniil Batushchak, Vladyslav Smilianets
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By the beginning of 2024, the war in Ukraine had inflicted over $150 billion of damage on Ukraine’s infrastructure, according to the Kyiv School of Economics. But some scholars in the U.S., alongside Ukrainian anti-corruption activists, are already looking ahead to the end of the war and the opportunity to rebuild. Princeton University recently created a legal database to help. Iuliia Iarmolenko has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Videographer: Oleksii Osyka
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U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to pass the Democratic Party’s torch to Vice President Kamala Harris makes him a lame-duck president – one who remains in office without any hope of an additional term. VOA’s chief national correspondent Steve Herman at the White House looks at how Biden’s legacy may eventually compare to the previous one-term president who did not run for reelection.
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CHICO, California — California’s largest wildfire so far this year continued to grow Thursday as it chewed through timber in very hot and dry weather.

The Park Fire has scorched more than 1,709 square kilometers since erupting July 24 near the Sacramento Valley city of Chico and burning northward up the western flank of the Sierra Nevada. Containment remained at 34%, Cal Fire said.

The conflagration’s early explosive growth quickly made it California’s fourth-largest wildfire on record before favorable weather reduced its intensity late last week. It reawakened this week due to the heat and very low relative humidity levels.

A large portion of the burned area was in mop-up stage but spot fires were a continuing problem, officials said during Thursday morning’s operational briefing.

The fire’s northeast corner was the top firefighting priority, operations deputy Jed Gaines said.

“It’s not time to celebrate,” he said. “We got several more days of hard work to hold what we got in there.”

The latest Park Fire assessments found 636 structures destroyed and 49 damaged. A local man was arrested after authorities alleged he started the fire by pushing a burning car into a gully in a wilderness park outside Chico.

About 160 kilometers to the south, a new forest fire in El Dorado County was exhibiting extreme behavior, and some Park Fire aircraft were being diverted there.

The Crozier Fire, about 16 kilometers north of Placerville, had burned more than 5.17 square kilometers of timber and chaparral as of Thursday evening and was just 5% contained. The fire threatens 1,625 structures, according to Cal Fire.
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san diego, california — Two Chinese giant pandas are now California residents as their enclosure at the San Diego Zoo opened to the public on Thursday in an international ceremony. 

The pandas, Yun Chuan and Xin Bao, are the first to enter the United States in 21 years and were welcomed by California Governor Gavin Newsom and the Chinese ambassador to the United States, Xie Feng.  

Yun Chuan, a 5-year-old male, is easily recognized by his long, slightly pointed nose, while Xin Bao is a 4-year-old female with big fluffy ears whose name means a “precious treasure of prosperity and abundance.” 

Yun Chuan’s name means “big river of cloud.” His mother, Zhen Zhen, was born at the San Diego Zoo in 2007. 

The zoo is working closely with Chinese experts to help with the adaptation period and understanding of the needs of the two pandas. The pair are enjoying a variety of fresh bamboo and a local adaptation of “wotou,” a traditional Chinese steamed cornbread that’s also called “panda bread.” 

“The arrival of Yun Chuan and Xin Bao, as we celebrate the 45th anniversary of our diplomatic ties, has sent a clear and important message,” said Xie.  

“China-U.S. cooperation on panda conservation will not cease. Our people-to- people exchanges and subnational cooperation will not stop, and once opened, the door of China-U.S. friendship will not be shut again,” he added. 

Newsom said the new pandas were about “celebrating our common humanity. It’s about celebrating the things that bind us together.” 

“And so, for me, this spirit of pride that is associated with this opening today with the experience that so many will have, that we just had at Panda Ridge, is about a deeper meaning,” Newsom added. 

Visitors of all ages to Panda Ridge on Thursday were exuberant about the pandas’ cuteness. 

“I have never seen a panda before. I’ve only seen them on TV and nature documentaries,” said Kobi Davis from Michigan. “They are super cute. They just kind of laze around, you know. There’s charm in that.”  

Keena Butcher from Canada called them “quiet, thoughtful creatures, and just realize we can have hope for our future if we can conserve them.”  

China’s Communist government has long used “panda diplomacy” to enhance the country’s soft power, lending the large but cuddly looking black-and-white bears to zoos in various countries over the decades as goodwill animal ambassadors. 

In late 2023, Washington’s National Zoo said goodbye to its beloved giant pandas, which were returned to China amid heightened tensions between the two global superpowers. 

In May this year, the National Zoo said China would send two young pandas to Washington by the end of the year.  
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CAIRO — Security forces have arrested five people in connection with an attack this week at a military base in Iraq in which five U.S. troops and two U.S. contractors were wounded, Iraqi officials said on Thursday. 

The arrests were announced by the Iraqi Security Media Cell, an official body responsible for disseminating security information. 

“After in-depth legal investigations and listening to witnesses’ statements … five of those involved in this illegal act were arrested,” the Security Media Cell added in a statement. 

In Monday’s attack, two Katyusha rockets were fired at Ain al-Asad air base in the west of the country. On Tuesday, Iraq’s military condemned what it called “reckless” actions against bases on its soil and said it had captured a truck with a rocket launcher. 

The attack came as the Middle East braced for a possible new wave of attacks by Iran and its allies following last week’s killing of senior members of militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah. 

It was unclear whether the incident in Iraq was linked to threats by Iran to retaliate over the killing in Tehran of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. 

Iraq is a rare ally of both the U.S. and Iran. It hosts 2,500 U.S. troops and has Iran-backed militias linked to its security forces. It has witnessed escalating tit-for-tat attacks since the Israel-Hamas war erupted in Gaza in October. 

Iraq wants troops from the U.S.-led military coalition to begin withdrawing in September and to formally end the coalition’s work by September 2025, Iraqi sources have said, with some U.S. forces likely to remain in a newly negotiated advisory capacity.
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GEORGETOWN, Texas — As with any desktop 3D printer, the Vulcan printer pipes layer by layer to build an object – except this printer is more than 45 feet (13.7 m) wide, weighs 4.75 tons and prints residential homes.

This summer, the robotic printer from ICON is finishing the last few of 100 3D-printed houses in Wolf Ranch, a community in Georgetown, Texas, about 30 miles from Austin.

ICON began printing the walls of what it says is the world’s largest 3D-printed community in November 2022. Compared to traditional construction, the company says that 3D printing homes is faster, less expensive, requires fewer workers, and minimizes construction material waste.

“It brings a lot of efficiency to the trade market,” said ICON senior project manager Conner Jenkins. “So, where there were maybe five different crews coming in to build a wall system, we now have one crew and one robot.”

After concrete powder, water, sand and other additives are mixed together and pumped into the printer, a nozzle squeezes out the concrete mixture like toothpaste onto a brush, building up layer by layer along a pre-programmed path that creates corduroy-effect walls.

The single-story three- to four-bedroom homes take about three weeks to finish printing, with the foundation and metal roofs installed traditionally.

Jenkins said the concrete walls are designed to be resistant to water, mold, termites and extreme weather.

Lawrence Nourzad, a 32-year-old business development director, and his girlfriend Angela Hontas, a 29-year-old creative strategist, purchased a Wolf Ranch home earlier this summer.

“It feels like a fortress,” Nourzad said, adding that he was confident it would be resilient to most tornados.

The walls also provide strong insulation from the Texas heat, the couple said, keeping the interior temperature cool even when the air conditioner wasn’t on full blast.

There was one other thing the 3D-printed walls seemed to protect against, however: a solid wireless internet connection.

“Obviously these are really strong, thick walls. And that’s what provides a lot of value for us as homeowners and keeps this thing really well-insulated in a Texas summer, but signal doesn’t transfer through these walls very well,” Nourzad said.

To alleviate this issue, an ICON spokeswoman said most Wolf Ranch homeowners use mesh internet routers, which broadcast a signal from multiple units placed throughout a home, versus a traditional router which sends a signal from one device.

The 3D-printed homes at Wolf Ranch, called the “Genesis Collection” by developers, range in price from around $450,000 to close to $600,000. Developers said a little more than one quarter of the 100 homes have been sold.

ICON, which 3D-printed its first home in Austin in 2018, hopes to one day take its technology to the Moon. NASA, as part of its Artemis Moon exploration program, has contracted ICON to develop a construction system capable of building landing pads, shelters, and other structures on the lunar surface.
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HUGER, S.C. — Tropical Storm Debby has made a second landfall in South Carolina on its way up the East Coast, where residents as far north as Vermont could get several inches of rain this weekend.

The National Hurricane Center says Debby came ashore early Thursday near Bulls Bay, South Carolina. The storm is expected to keep moving inland, spreading heavy rain and possible flooding all the way up through the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast by the weekend.

Debby first made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane early Monday on the Gulf Coast of Florida. It is now a tropical storm with maximum sustained winds at 50 mph (80 kph).

Considerable flooding is expected across parts of eastern South Carolina and southeast North Carolina through Friday, with an additional 3 to 9 inches (8 to 23 centimeters) of rain forecast, as well as in portions of Virginia, according to the hurricane center.

Days of rain have forced the deluge-hardened residents of a South Carolina community to begin the near-ritualistic task of assessing damage left behind by Debby, which continued spinning over the Atlantic Ocean and influencing thunderstorms from the East Coast to the Great Lakes on Wednesday. The National Weather Service’s office in Charleston also said survey teams confirmed four-Debby related tornadoes.

In Huger, about 15 miles (24 kilometers) northeast of Charleston, Gene Taylor was waiting in the afternoon for a few inches of water to drain from his house along French Quarter Creek as high tide passed.

Taylor saw the potential for flooding last week and started moving belongings out or up higher in his home. It’s a lesson learned the hard way — Taylor estimated that this is the fourth time he has had floodwater in his home in the past nine years.

“To save everything, we’ve learned from the past it’s better be prepared for the worst. And unfortunately, I think we got it,” Taylor said.

A few doors down, Charles Grainger was cleaning up after about 8 inches (20 centimeters) of water got into his home.

“Eight inches disrupts your whole life,” Grainger said. “You don’t get used to it. You just grin and bear it. It’s part of living on the creek.”

In Georgia, at least four dams were breached northwest of Savannah in Bulloch County, but no deaths had been reported, authorities said at a briefing.

More than 75 people were rescued from floodwaters in the county, said Corey Kemp, director of emergency management, and about 100 roads were closed.

“We’ve been faced with a lot of things we’ve never been faced with before,” Bulloch County Commission Chairman Roy Thompson said. “I’m 78-plus years old and have never seen anything like this before in Bulloch County. It’s amazing what has happened, and amazing what is going to continue to happen until all these waters get out of here.”

For residents on Tappan Zee Drive in suburban Pooler, west of Savannah, Georgia, the drenching that Debby delivered came with a painful dose of déjà vu. In October 2016, Hurricane Matthew overflowed a nearby canal and flooded several of the same homes.

Located roughly 30 miles (50 kilometers) inland from the Atlantic Ocean, with no creeks or rivers nearby, the neighborhood doesn’t seem like a high-risk location for tropical flooding. But residents say drainage problems have plagued their street for well over a decade, despite local government efforts to fix them.

Debby also dumped rain on communities all the way up to the Great Lakes and New York and New Jersey. Moisture from the tropical storm strengthened another system Tuesday evening, which caused strong thunderstorms, according to weather service meteorologist Scott Kleebauer.

“We had a multi-round period of showers and thunderstorms that kind of scooted from Michigan eastward,” Kleebauer said.

As much as 6 inches (15 centimeters) of rain fell in parts of New Jersey in less than four hours.

Emergency officials in New York City warned of potential flash flooding, flying drones with loudspeakers in some neighborhoods to tell people in basement apartments to be ready to flee at a moment’s notice. Multiple water rescues were reported in and near the city.

About 270,000 customers remained without power in Ohio as of Thursday morning, according to PowerOutage.us, following severe storms including two confirmed tornadoes. Utility officials with FirstEnergy’s Illuminating Company said via social media that power restoration would take days due to the damage.

In South Carolina, Gov. Henry McMaster said his state was just entering Act 2 of a three-act play, after more than 60 homes were damaged but roads and water systems were without significant problems.

The final act may come next week if enough rain falls upstream in North Carolina to cause major flooding along rivers as they flow to the Atlantic Ocean.

A state of emergency was in effect for both North Carolina and Virginia. Maryland issued a state of preparedness declaration that coordinates preparations without declaring an emergency.

At least six people have died due to the storm, five of them in traffic accidents or from fallen trees. The sixth death involved a 48-year-old man in Gulfport, Florida, whose body was recovered after his anchored sailboat partially sank.
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MEXICO CITY — A U.S. federal judge in Massachusetts again dismissed a $10 billion Mexican government lawsuit against six U.S. gun manufacturers on Wednesday.

Mexico had argued the companies knew weapons were being sold to traffickers who smuggled them into Mexico and decided to cash in on that market.

However, the judge ruled that Mexico had not provided concrete evidence that any of the six companies’ activities in Massachusetts were connected to any suffering caused in Mexico by guns.

Mexico’s Foreign Relations Department said Wednesday the ruling would allow the lawsuit to proceed against a seventh manufacturer and a gun wholesaler.

Regarding the dismissal against the others, the department said, “Mexico is analyzing its options, among them presenting an appeal.”

The case has been a legal rollercoaster.

In early 2022, six companies — not including the seventh manufacturer — filed to dismiss Mexico’s claims based on the broad protection provided to gun manufacturers by a 2005 U.S. law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, or PLCAA.

The law shields gun manufacturers from damages “resulting from the criminal or unlawful misuse” of a firearm. Later in 2022, the federal judge ruled to dismiss the case on those grounds.

Mexico appealed that ruling, and in January the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Massachusetts revived the lawsuit, saying the PLCAA did not apply to the claims the guns caused deaths, damages and injuries in Mexico.

The appeals court returned the case to the lower court, which again ruled to dismiss the claims against six of the companies.

The Mexican government estimates 70% of the weapons trafficked into Mexico come from the U.S., according to the Foreign Affairs Ministry. 
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washington — President Joe Biden said on Wednesday he was not confident about a peaceful transfer of power in the United States if Republican Donald Trump loses the Nov. 5 presidential election.

“If Trump loses, I’m not confident at all,” Biden said in an interview with CBS News when asked whether he thought there would be a peaceful transfer of power after the vote.

“He means what he says. We don’t take him seriously. He means it. All this stuff about if we lose there’d be a bloodbath,” Biden added.

During a March campaign appearance in Ohio, Trump warned of a “bloodbath” if he fails win the election. At the time Trump was discussing the need to protect the U.S. auto industry from overseas competition, and Trump later said he was referring to the auto industry when he used the term.

Trump has falsely claimed he won the 2020 election against Biden and was criminally charged in Washington and Georgia with illegally trying to overturn the results.

Biden dropped out of the campaign last month after fellow Democrats called for him to step aside following a poor debate performance against Trump that raised questions about the Democratic president’s age and health.

Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris, has since captured the Democratic nomination and is running against Trump.
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Tokyo — Japan this week restated its aim to rid the world of atomic weapons as it marks the 79th anniversary of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — even as the Japanese government seeks assurances the United States would be willing to use its own nuclear arsenal to protect Japan.

At 8:15 a.m. Tuesday — the time that the atomic bomb exploded 600 meters (1,969 feet) above Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 — people across Japan marked a minute’s silence to remember the horrors visited on the city.

“It is the mission of Japan, the only country to have suffered nuclear war, to pass on the reality of the atomic bombings to future generations,” Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told delegates gathered in Hiroshima.

The manner of Japan’s defeat in World War II changed the country, driving an aversion to war and military power that lasted for generations. However, after decades of pacifism, the country is undergoing profound changes in its attitude to military power amid multiple regional threats, said Yee Kuang Heng, a professor of international relations at the University of Tokyo.

“The DPRK’s [North Korea’s] nuclear missile programs; Chinese military assertiveness and territorial claims in the East China Sea; Russia’s closer military cooperation with China in the past couple of years. These are underlying drivers that have been around for the past couple of years,” Heng told VOA.

“There is Prime Minister Kishida’s oft-quoted fear that Ukraine today could be East Asia tomorrow, especially with potential flashpoints close to Japan, such as Taiwan.”

Those threats prompted Japan to last year announce a doubling of defense spending, to 2% of gross domestic product by 2027.

Last week, the United States, Japan’s closest ally, announced a major upgrade of its military command in the country. During the visit by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Tokyo again sought assurances from the U.S. that it would be prepared to use “extended deterrence” — that is, nuclear weapons — to defend Japan.

“They have always had doubts about the American commitment to use all their might to defend them. And that includes nuclear weapons, which gives you some idea of just how somewhat paradoxical Japan’s supposed nuclear allergy is,” said Grant Newsham, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Security Policy and a former U.S. Marines colonel who served in Japan.

For decades, anger among Asian neighbors over Japan’s actions in World War II prevented closer regional cooperation. That’s also changing, said analyst Heng.

“Countries like the Philippines, they’ve recently signed very important defense agreements with Japan, such as the Reciprocal Access Agreement, actually the first Asian country to do so with Japan,” he said. “South Korea, notably under President Yoon [Suk Yeol], has talked up a more forward-looking relationship with Japan.”

But 79 years after the trauma of defeat — the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — are the Japanese people ready to become a military power once more?

“There’s a sea change also in the public opinion in my country as well,” said Kunihiko Miyake of Japan’s Canon Institute for Global Studies.

“We are not rabbits. We are tortoises. We are probably slow, but we always go ahead, and one step forward at a time,” Miyake added. “Maybe this time, two or three steps forward.”

China has reacted with anger to the rapid changes in Japan’s military posture.

“During World War II, Japan invaded and colonized some Southeast Asian countries, including the Philippines, and committed serious historical crimes. Japan needs to seriously reflect on its history of aggression and act prudently in the field of military security,” said Lin Jian, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, during a press conference last month.

At the same time, say analysts, Japan must secure itself against multiple threats — not least from China itself.
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Now that both the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates have selected their running mates, the question is whether those picks will actually help boost the campaigns’ chances of winning the November election. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias looks at the historical relevance of vice presidential candidates and what Tim Walz and JD Vance bring to their respective tickets.
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CHARLESTON, S.C. — Tropical Storm Debby is taking a breather Wednesday over the western Atlantic Ocean but it isn’t done dousing the coastal Carolinas before it slowly marches north.   

Debby was expected to restrengthen and turn north toward the South Carolina coastline for a second landfall late Wednesday or early Thursday, weather officials said. The storm carried the threat not only of additional rainfall but also of tornadoes in coastal sections of the Carolinas spreading north into southeast Virginia on Thursday.   

The slow-moving storm drenched coastal cities in Georgia and South Carolina late Monday into Tuesday, stirring up tornadoes and submerging streets with waist-high floodwaters. The storm has dropped more than a foot (30 centimeters) of rain in some places already and could dump staggering rain totals of up to 25 inches (64 centimeters) in places by the time it ends.   

Charleston and Savannah, Georgia, were deluged into Tuesday, with curfews set and roads blocked by police. Dozens of roads were closed in the city of Charleston because of flooding similar to what it sees several times a year because of rising sea levels.   

As Debby swirls just offshore, the heavy rain is expected to move into parts of South and North Carolina that have already seen two billion-dollar floods in eight years.   

In one Savannah neighborhood, firefighters used boats to evacuate some residents and waded through floodwaters to deliver bottled water and other supplies to those who refused to leave.   

Michael Jones said water gushed into his home Monday evening, overturning the refrigerator and causing furniture to float. Outside, the water seemed to be everywhere and was too deep to flee safely. So Jones spent a sleepless night on his kitchen table before firefighters going door to door came in a boat Tuesday morning.   

“It was hell all night,” Jones said.   

In Charleston, Mayor William Cogswell said the road closures have kept businesses and homes from unnecessary damage and avoided the need for any high-water rescues.   

“We especially don’t need any yahoos driving through the water and causing damage to properties,” Cogswell said.   

Up to 15 inches (38 centimeters) of rain was expected in some places in the Carolinas, totals that are close to what the region saw in a historic flood from Hurricane Matthew in 2016. Two years later, many of those records were broken during Hurricane Florence. Both storms killed dozens.   

North Carolina and Virginia have both declared a state of emergency.   

Several areas along North Carolina’s coastline are prone to flooding, such as Wilmington and the Outer Banks. Virginia could see impacts including strong winds, heavy rains and flooding.   

Debby’s center was about 90 miles (145) kilometers east of Savannah on Wednesday morning, according to a bulletin from the National Hurricane Center. It had maximum sustained winds of 45 mph (73 kph) and was heading east at 5 mph (8 kph).   

“Tropical cyclones always produce heavy rain, but normally as they’re moving, you know, it doesn’t accumulate that much in one place,” said Richard Pasch, of the hurricane center. “But when they move very slowly, that’s the worst situation.”   

There will be lulls in the rain as dry spells appear between bands around the center of the poorly organized storm, forecasters said. But some bands will be heavy and keep moving over the same places.   

Green Pond in rural Colleton County, South Carolina, reported the most rain so far, just over 14 inches (36 centimeters). A nearby dam had water run over its top but did not crumble, while trees and washouts blocked a number of roads, county Fire-Rescue Assistant Chief David Greene said.   

Close to a foot (30 centimeters) fell down-coast from Charleston to Savannah, where the National Weather Service reported 6.68 inches (17 centimeters) just on Monday. That’s already a month’s worth in a single day: In all of August 2023, the city got 5.56 inches (14.1 centimeters).   

Tornadoes knocked down trees and damaged a few homes on Kiawah Island and Edisto Island.   

Crooked Hammock Brewery in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, decided to close early Tuesday.   

“Flash flooding is super unpredictable, and we’d rather our staff and guests be home and safe,” marketing coordinator Georgena Dimitriadis said.   

Far to the north in New York City, heavy storms that meteorologists said were being enhanced by Debby flooded some streets and expressways, stranding motorists. The weather service issued a flood watch until noon Wednesday for the entire city.   

Emergency officials warned of potential flash flooding, flying drones with loudspeakers in some New York City neighborhoods to tell people in basement apartments to be ready to flee at a moment’s notice.   

Debby made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane early Monday along the Gulf Coast of Florida.   

At least six people have died due to the storm, five of them in traffic accidents or from fallen trees. The sixth death involved a 48-year-old man in Gulfport, Florida, whose body was recovered after his anchored sailboat partially sank, WTSP-TV reported.   

About 500 people were rescued Monday from flooded homes in Sarasota, Florida, police said. Just north of Sarasota, Manatee County officials said more than 200 people were rescued.   

Officials said it may take two weeks to fully assess the damage in parts of north-central Florida as they wait for rivers to crest.   

“You’re going to see the tributaries rise. That’s just inevitable. How much? We’ll see,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Tuesday. “It may be that it’s not flooded today and it could be flooded tomorrow.”   

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp also warned of more rain and flooding to come, saying, “Do not let this storm lull you to sleep.”   

President Joe Biden approved emergency declarations making federal disaster assistance available to Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.   

Debby is finally forecast to pick up speed Thursday, and it could move up the middle of North Carolina, through Virginia and into the Washington area by Saturday. 
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The two U.S. presidential tickets are set. Vice President Kamala Harris named her running mate Tuesday. But the presumed Democratic Party nominee wasn’t alone making news in one of America’s oldest cities, Philadelphia, in the northeastern state of Pennsylvania. That’s where we find VOA’s Senior Washington Correspondent Carolyn Presutti.
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NEW YORK — Gone is the bullhorn. Instead, New York City emergency management officials have turned high-tech, using drones to warn residents about potential threatening weather.

With a buzzing sound in the background, a drone equipped with a loudspeaker flies over homes warning people who live in basement or ground-floor apartments about impending heavy rains.

“Be prepared to leave your location,” said the voice from the sky in footage released Tuesday by the city’s emergency management agency. “If flooding occurs, do not hesitate.”

About five teams with multiple drones each were deployed to specific neighborhoods prone to flooding. Zach Iscol, the city’s emergency management commissioner, said the messages were being relayed in multiple languages. They were expected to continue until the weather impacted the drone flights.

Flash floods have been deadly for New Yorkers living in basement apartments, which can quickly fill up in a deluge. Eleven people drowned in such homes in 2011 amid rain from the remnants of Hurricane Ida.

The drones are in addition to other forms of emergency messaging, including social media, text alerts and a system that reaches more than 2,000 community-based organizations throughout the city that serve senior citizens, people with disabilities and other groups.

“You know, we live in a bubble, and we have to meet people where they are in notifications so they can be prepared,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams said at a press briefing on Tuesday.

Adams is a self-described “tech geek” whose administration has tapped drone technology to monitor large gatherings as well as to search for sharks on beaches. Under his watch, the city’s police department also briefly toyed with using a robot to patrol the Times Square subway station, and it has sometimes deployed a robotic dog to dangerous scenes, including the Manhattan parking garage that collapsed in 2023.
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wichita falls, texas — Elon Musk’s social media platform X has sued a group of advertisers, alleging that a “massive advertiser boycott” deprived the company of billions of dollars in revenue and violated antitrust laws.

The company formerly known as Twitter filed the lawsuit Tuesday in a federal court in Texas against the World Federation of Advertisers and member companies Unilever, Mars, CVS Health and Orsted.

It accused the advertising group’s brand safety initiative, called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, of helping to coordinate a pause in advertising after Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in late 2022 and overhauled its staff and policies.

Musk posted about the lawsuit on X on Tuesday, saying “now it is war” after two years of being nice and “getting nothing but empty words.”

X CEO Linda Yaccarino said in a video announcement that the lawsuit stemmed in part from evidence uncovered by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, which she said showed a “group of companies organized a systematic illegal boycott” against X.

The Republican-led committee had a hearing last month looking at whether current laws are “sufficient to deter anticompetitive collusion in online advertising.”

The lawsuit’s allegations center on the early days of Musk’s Twitter takeover and not a more recent dispute with advertisers that came a year later.

In November 2023, about a year after Musk bought the company, a number of advertisers began fleeing X over concerns about their ads showing up next to pro-Nazi content and hate speech on the site in general, with Musk inflaming tensions with his own posts endorsing an antisemitic conspiracy theory.

Musk later said those fleeing advertisers were engaging in blackmail and, using a profanity, essentially told them to go away.

The Belgium-based World Federation of Advertisers and representatives for CVS, Orsted, Mars and Unilever didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

A top Unilever executive testified at last month’s congressional hearing, defending the British consumer goods company’s practice of choosing to put ads on platforms that won’t harm its brand.

“Unilever, and Unilever alone, controls our advertising spending,” said prepared written remarks by Herrish Patel, president of Unilever USA. “No platform has a right to our advertising dollar.”
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Washington — A Pakistani man alleged to have ties to Iran has been charged in a plot to carry out political assassinations on U.S. soil, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

Prosecutors in Brooklyn announced criminal charges against Asif Merchant, accusing him of traveling to New York to try to hire a hitman for the assassinations. The plot was disrupted before it could be carried out.

Court documents do not identify any of the potential targets, but the case was unsealed just weeks after U.S. officials disclosed that a threat on Donald Trump’s life from Iran prompted additional security in the days before a Pennsylvania rally last month in which Trump was injured by a gunman’s bullet. That shooting, carried out by a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man, was unrelated to the Iran threat.

U.S. officials have warned for years about Iran’s desire to avenge the 2020 killing of Qassem Soleimani, who led the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force. That strike was ordered by Trump.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement: “The Justice Department will spare no resource to disrupt and hold accountable those who would seek to carry out Iran’s lethal plotting against American citizens and will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to target American public officials and endanger America’s national security.”
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WASHINGTON/SYDNEY — The United States and Australia kicked off high-level talks Tuesday that will focus on China’s “coercive behavior,” as well as the AUKUS nuclear submarine project, mounting tensions in the Middle East and climate change, officials said.

The annual Australia-U.S. AUSMIN talks, taking place in Annapolis, Maryland, include the top defense and diplomatic officials from both nations.

“We’re working together today to tackle shared security challenges, from coercive behavior by the PRC [People’s Republic of China], to Russia’s war of choice against Ukraine, to the turmoil in the Middle East,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said.

“And I know that [this] year’s AUSMIN will deliver results for both of our peoples.”

The U.S. and China are at odds on a range of issues, including U.S. support for Taiwan. Another topic will be Chinese military activity in the South China Sea. China claims control over most of the sea, including the disputed Second Thomas Shoal, where U.S. ally the Philippines has maritime claims.

Austin spoke in the wake of a rocket strike on Monday in Iraq that wounded seven U.S. personnel, as the Middle East braced for a possible new wave of attacks by Iran and its allies following last week’s killing of senior leaders of militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defense Minister Richard Marles held meetings in Washington on Monday, a day before the AUSMIN talks.

Marles highlighted the expanding role of a U.S. Marine rotational force in northern Australia and defense industry cooperation.

“We’re seeing America’s force posture in Australia grow really significantly. AUKUS is part of that, but it’s not the only part of that,” Marles said in talks with Austin, according to a statement.

Under the AUKUS program, Washington will sell three nuclear-powered submarines to Australia in the next decade. Wong said there was bipartisan U.S. political support for the program.

U.S. Ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy told ABC Television that China and climate change — priorities for the Pacific Islands, where the U.S. and Australia are competing with China for security ties — would be discussed.

“Obviously with China being such an important … trading partner and competitor for both of us, that is obviously one of the main topics,” she said.

“We are also talking about what we can do together to fight climate change [and] to help the Pacific Islands to build critical infrastructure to connect them,” she said.

As part of cooperating on environmental and resource issues, Australia will spend $200 million ($130 million U.S.) to upgrade ground station facilities in its remote central desert to process data from NASA’s Landsat Next satellite.

Landsat Next is an earth observation program the U.S. space agency says will provide early warnings on the onset of fires or ice melting. The program is scheduled to be launched in 2030.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the satellite data would also be used to target resource exploration in Australia, as the two nations develop a supply chain for critical minerals.

The U.S. and its allies are seeking to reduce China’s market dominance in rare earths and critical minerals used in electric vehicles and defense technology.
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New York — Some calm is returning to Wall Street, and U.S. stocks are holding steadier after Japan’s market soared earlier Tuesday to bounce back from its worst loss since 1987.

The S&P 500 was 0.2% higher in early trading and on track to break a brutal three-day losing streak. It had tumbled a bit more than 6% after several weaker-than-expected reports raised worries the Federal Reserve had pressed the brakes too hard for too long on the U.S. economy through high interest rates in order to beat inflation.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 47 points, or 0.1%, as of 9:43 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.3% lower.

Stronger-than-expected profit reports from several big U.S. companies helped support the market. Kenvue, the company behind Tylenol and Band-Aids, jumped 13.5% after reporting stronger profit than expected thanks in part to higher prices for its products. Uber rolled 4.3% higher after easily topping profit forecasts for the latest quarter.

Caterpillar veered from an early loss to a gain of 1.7% after reporting stronger earnings than expected but weaker revenue.

Several technical factors may have accelerated the recent swoon for markets, beyond the weak U.S. hiring data and other reports, in what strategists at Barclays call “a perfect storm” for causing extreme market moves. One is centered in Tokyo, where a favorite trade for hedge funds and other investors began unraveling last week after the Bank of Japan made borrowing more expensive by raising interest rates above virtually zero.

That scrambled trades where investors had borrowed Japanese yen at low cost and invested it elsewhere around the world. The resulting exits from those trades may have helped accelerate the declines for markets around the world.

But Japan’s Nikkei 225 jumped 10.2% Tuesday, following its 12.4% sell-off the day before, which was its worst since the Black Monday crash of 1987. Stocks in Tokyo rebounded as the value of the Japanese yen stabilized a bit against the U.S. dollar following several days of sharp gains.

“The speed, the magnitude and the shock factor clearly demonstrate” how much of the moves were driven by how traders were positioned, rather than just worries about the economy, according to the strategists at Barclays led by Stefano Pascale and Anshul Gupta.

Still, some voices along Wall Street are continuing to urge caution.

Barry Bannister, chief equity strategist at Stifel, is warning more drops could be ahead because of a slowing U.S. economy and sticky inflation. He had been predicting a coming “correction” in U.S. stock prices for a while, including an acknowledgement in July that his initial call was early. That was two days before the S&P 500 set its latest all-time high and then began sinking.

While fears are rising about a slowing U.S. economy, it is still growing, and a recession is far from a certainty. The U.S. stock market is also still up a healthy amount for the year so far. The S&P 500 has romped to dozens of all-time highs this year, in part due to a frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology and critics have been saying prices looked too expensive.

Elsewhere, European markets were mostly left out of the rebound, with stock indexes down modestly in Germany France and the United Kingdom.
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