The Ledes

Sunday, September 29, 2024

Washington Post: “Towns throughout western North Carolina ... were transformed overnight by ... [Hurricane Helene]. Muddy floodwaters lifted homes from their foundations. Landslides and overflowing rivers severed the only way in and out of small mountain communities. Rescuers said they were struggling to respond to the high number of emergency calls.... The death toll grew throughout the Southeast as the scope of Helene’s devastation came into clearer view. At least 49 people had been killed in five states — Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia. By early counts, South Carolina suffered the greatest loss of life, registering at least 19 deaths.”

The Wires
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The Ledes

Saturday, September 28, 2024

Washington Post: “Rescue teams raced to submerged homes, scoured collapsed buildings and steered thousands from overflowing dams as Helene carved a destructive path Friday, knocking out power and flooding a vast arc of communities across the southeastern United States. At least 40 people were confirmed killed in five states since the storm made landfall late Thursday as a Category 4 behemoth, unleashing record-breaking storm surge and tree-snapping gusts. 4 million homes and businesses have lost electricity across Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas, prompting concerns that outages could drag on for weeks. Mudslides closed highways. Water swept over roofs and snapped phone lines. Houses vanished from their foundations. Tornadoes added to the chaos. The mayor of hard-hit Canton, N.C., called the scene 'apocalyptic.'” An AP report is here.

The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI." 

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

Washington Post: “An early Titian masterpiece — once looted by Napolean’s troops and a part of royal collections for centuries — caused a stir when it was stolen from the home of a British marquess in 1995. Seven years later, it was found inside an unassuming white and blue plastic bag at a bus stop in southwest London by an art detective, and returned. This week, the oil painting 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt' sold for more than $22 million at Christie’s. It was a record for the Renaissance artist, whom museums describe as the greatest painter of 16th-century Venice. Ahead of the sale in April, the auction house billed it as 'the most important work by Titian to come to the auction market in more than a generation.'”

Washington Post: The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which houses the world's largest collection of Shakespeare material, has undergone a major renovation. "The change to the building is pervasive, both subtle and transformational."

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Tuesday
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The Commentariat -- January 3, 2012

** NEW. If you're an Iowa Democrat, you should caucus tonight, too, beginning at 6:30 pm (CT, I presume). John Nichols of The Nation tells why. You can find your caucus site here.

My column in today's New York Times eXaminer is on Frank Bruni's apologia for Mitt Romney's flip-flops. The NYTX front page is here. You can contribute to NYTX here, and I hope you do.

 

** Pulitzer Prize winner Jose Antonio Vargas, an undocumented American journalist, in a Guardian op-ed on "the changing face of Iowa."

Peter Maer of CBS News: "The Obama campaign is mapping out plans for the president to speak to his supporters via live web chat at locations across Iowa Tuesday night. A campaign official told CBS News the effort will use technology that was not available four years ago. Screens will show the president, in Washington, communicating with people simultaneously at various gathering places in the Hawkeye State."

Right Wing World

Greg Sargent: rabid Tea Party leader Rep. Steve King (RTP-Iowa) publicly admits to Congressional Tea Party hostage-taking strategy.

Dan Balz of the Washington Post: in Right Wing World, the tail -- being the Tea Party -- is wagging the dog -- the GOP presidential candidates.

Here's Nate Silver's final forecast on the Iowa Caucuses.

In case you think campaign advertising doesn't matter because Americans (a) are smart enough to see through them and/or (b) can make up their own minds -- Kevin Liptak of CNN: "Anyone seeking an explanation of GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich's recent drop in Iowa polls may find answers in a new analysis of Iowa political advertising. The survey, conducted by Kantar Media's Campaign Media Analysis Group, finds 45% of all political ads in Iowa have been attack spots against Gingrich. Only 6% were supportive of the former House speaker." ...

... M. J. Lee of Politico: on CBS News' "Early Show" today, Newt called Mitt a liar. Update: here's the videotape:

The Rupert Bump? Brian Stelter of the New York Times: "The media mogul Rupert Murdoch signaled his support for Rick Santorum on Monday evening, calling him the 'only candidate with genuine big vision' for the United States. His comments were significant not only because Mr. Murdoch controls Fox News Channel and The Wall Street Journal, but also because they were made on Twitter, a Web site that allowed for his support to be forwarded far and wide on the eve of the Iowa caucuses. Mr. Santorum was a paid analyst for Fox News before he announced his bid for the presidency last year." ...

Ron Paul does not want [Iran] to have a nuclear weapon, but the question is do you want someone who’s trigger happy to be your commander in chief? He's also someone who never served in the military. Ron Paul served in the military, will use force against our enemies if it’s required and if Congress approves of it, but I’m a little concerned about someone who didn’t serve in the military like Santorum, who’s a little over-eager to bomb countries because I don’t think he’s maturely thinking through the process and the consequences of war. -- Sen. Rand Paul, Son of Ron on Iowa talk radio (Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link) ...

... BuzzFeed: "Ron Paul -- poised to finish strong in the Iowa caucuses -- has begun to implement a quiet, complex plan to force a long battle with Mitt Romney for delegates to the Republican National Convention in August. His advantages: Experience, organization, and the legacy of the 2010 Tea Party revival, which convinced Republicans that anti-government figures like Paul just aren’t as weird as they’d thought. Paul is following the roadmap set by Barack Obama's 2008 strategy: Start early, learn the rules, and use superior organization and devoted young supporters to dominate the arcane but crucial party procedures in states your rivals are ignoring...."

Burgess Everett of Politico: despite their constant criticisms of President Obama's jobs creation plans, none of the GOP presidential candidates has anything to say about programs to help repair the nation's infamous "crumbling infrastructure."

News Ledes

     ... Update: here's a full transcript.

The Des Moines Register is probably the go-to place for news on the Iowa caucuses. Especially if you are an Iowa Republican, the Register is helpful for such musts as where to find your caucus location.

New York Times: "Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta is set this week to reveal his strategy that will guide the Pentagon in cutting hundreds of billions of dollars from its budget, and with it the Obama administration’s vision of the military that the United States needs to meet 21st-century threats, according to senior officials. In a shift of doctrine driven by fiscal reality and a deal last summer that kept the United States from defaulting on its debts, Mr. Panetta is expected to outline plans for carefully shrinking the military — and in so doing make it clear that the Pentagon will not maintain the ability to fight two sustained ground wars at once."

New York Times: "Giving its first major public sign that it may be ready for peace talks, the Taliban announced on Tuesday that it had struck a deal to open a peace mission in Qatar. The step was a sharp reversal of the Taliban’s longstanding public denials that it was involved or interested in any negotiations to end its insurgency in Afghanistan."

AP: "Iran’s army chief on Tuesday warned an American aircraft carrier not to return to the Persian Gulf in Tehran’s latest tough rhetoric over the strategic waterway, part of a feud with the United States over new sanctions that has sparked a jump in oil prices."

New York Times: "The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s mainstream Islamist party, edged closer to winning a controlling majority of seats in the lower house of Parliament as voters went to the polls Tuesday in the final round of the first elections since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak."

New York Times: "An Iranian court on Tuesday sentenced the daughter of the country’s former president to six months in prison for spreading what it termed 'propaganda against the Islamic system,' the semiofficial Mehr news agency reported.... The sentencing of [Faezeh] Hashemi was the latest in a series of moves by Iran’s leaders to stamp out potential dissent ahead of planned parliamentary elections in March, the first ballot since a disputed presidential vote in 2009 that sparked national protests and a vicious government crackdown."

Los Angeles Times: police have arrested Harry Burkhart, a 24-year-old German suspected in the spree of arsons in Los Angeles. There have been no additional suspicious fires since Burkhart's arrest. More L.A. Times related stories here.

Los Angeles Times: Benjamin Colton Barnes, "a troubled veteran of the war in Iraq suspected in the fatal shooting of a park ranger, was found dead Monday near a steep, snowy slope not far from Mt. Rainier, ending an intense, 24-hour manhunt that left tourists locked down in fear at a visitors center while 200 law enforcement officers combed the wilderness with dogs and planes." The Seattle Times story is here.

Look past the bias of the reporter when you read this CBS News report on "Occupy the Rose Parade." And if you're really, really afraid of Americans exercising their First Amendment rights, no need to worry: "Behind the protesters came three truckloads of Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies in riot gear but no arrests were immediately made and the protest was noisy but peaceful."

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