Hurricane Delta inflicts new damage on storm-weary Louisiana
LAKE CHARLES, La. — Ripping tarps from already damaged roofs and scattering debris piled by roadsides, Hurricane Delta inflicted a new round of destruction on Louisiana as it struck communities still reeling after Hurricane Laura took a similar path just six weeks earlier.
When Delta came ashore Friday as a Category 2 hurricane, almost all homes and buildings in Lake Charles still bore battered roofs and other damage from Laura. Piles of moldy mattresses, sawed-up trees and other debris still lined the streets.
Mayor Nic Hunter said tarps were flying off homes across the city.
“I’m in a building right now with a tarp on it and just the sound of the tarp flapping on the building sounds like someone pounding with a sledgehammer on top of the building,” Hunter said as he rode out the storm downtown. “It’s pretty intense.”
Delta crashed onshore Friday night near the coastal town of Creole — a distance of only about 15 miles (24 kilometers) from where Laura struck land in August, killing 27 people in Louisiana.
White House ups virus aid offer, resumes talks
with Pelosi
WASHINGTON — The White House is boosting its offer in up-and-down COVID-19 aid talks Friday in hopes of an agreement before Election Day, even as President Donald Trump’s most powerful GOP ally in the Senate said Congress is unlikely to deliver relief by then.
Trump on Friday took to Twitter to declare: “Covid Relief Negotiations are moving along. Go Big!” A top economic adviser said the Trump team was upping its offer in advance of a Friday conversation between Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The two spoke for more than 30 minutes Friday afternoon, said Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill.
A GOP aide familiar with the new offer said it is about $1.8 trillion, with a key state and local fiscal relief component moving from $250 billion to at least $300 billion. The White House says its most recent prior offer was about $1.6 trillion. The aide requested anonymity because the negotiations are private.
“I would like to see a bigger stimulus package than either the Democrats or Republicans are offering,” Trump said on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show Friday. Earlier this week, Trump lambasted Democrats for their demands on an aid bill.
Pelosi’s most recent public offer was about $2.2 trillion, though that included a business tax increase that Republicans won’t go for.
World Food
Program wins
Nobel Peace Prize
for hunger fight
NIAMEY, Niger — The World Food Program won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for fighting hunger and seeking to end its use as “a weapon of war and conflict” at a time when the coronavirus pandemic has driven millions more people to the brink of starvation.
Announcing the prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said it wished “to turn the eyes of the world towards the millions of people who suffer from or face the threat of hunger.”
The committee also said it hoped that bestowing the prize on the U.N. agency would highlight the need to strengthen global solidarity and cooperation in an era of go-it-alone nationalism.
From wire sources
“We are sending a signal to every nation who raises objections to international cooperation,” committee chair Berit Reiss-Andersen said. “We are sending a signal to this type of nationalism where the responsibility for global affairs is not being faced.”
The Rome-based agency was established in 1961 at the behest of U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower and has brought aid to multiple crises, including Ethiopia’s famine of 1984, the Asian tsunami of 2004 and the Haiti earthquake of 2010.
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Armenia, Azerbaijan agree on cease-fire in Nagorno-Karabakh
MOSCOW — With Russia’s mediation, Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed to a cease-fire in Nagorno-Karabakh starting at noon Saturday following two weeks of heavy fighting that marked the worst outbreak of hostilities in the separatist region in a quarter-century.
The countries’ foreign ministers said in a statement that the truce is intended to exchange prisoners and recover the dead, adding that specific details will be agreed on later.
The announcement followed 10 hours of talks in Moscow sponsored by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who read the statement. It stipulated that the cease-fire should pave the way for talks on settling the conflict.
If the truce holds, it would mark a major diplomatic coup for Russia that has a security pact with Armenia but also cultivated warm ties with Azerbaijan.
The latest outburst of fighting between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces began Sept. 27 and left hundreds of people dead in the biggest escalation of the decades-old conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh since a separatist war there ended in 1994. The region lies in Azerbaijan but has been under control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia.
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Biden, Harris dodge questions about Supreme Court expansion
PHOENIX — There are few topics that Joe Biden isn’t willing to opine on — except the Supreme Court.
The Democratic presidential nominee and his running mate, Kamala Harris, are refusing demands from Republicans — and some fellow Democrats — to say whether they would seek to expand the number of justices on the Supreme Court.
Harris dodged persistent questioning about the issue on Wednesday during her debate against Vice President Mike Pence. And facing pressure to take a stance during a campaign swing through Phoenix on Thursday, Biden offered a particularly terse response.
“They’ll know my position on court packing when the election is over,” he said.
In the final weeks of the campaign, Biden is in a bind when it comes to the future of the judiciary. Republicans, increasingly fearful of losing both the presidency and the Senate, are seizing on the issue to make a last-minute argument to voters that a Biden administration would upend norms and install liberals on an expanding Supreme Court. Some progressive Democrats are pressing Biden to embrace all means possible to counter Republican power plays that have pushed the court to the right.
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Anti-government groups shift focus from Washington to states
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — The alleged foiled plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor is a jarring example of how the anti-government movement in the U.S. has become an internet-driven hodgepodge of conspiracy theorists who have redirected their rage from Washington toward state capitols.
That’s in contrast to the self-styled “militia” movement that took shape in the 1990s — loosely connected groups whose primary target was the federal government, which they considered a tyrannical force bent on seizing guns and imposing a socialist “new world order.”
Deadly standoffs between FBI agents and extremists at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas, stoked those groups’ anger. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, convicted in the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building that killed 168 people, were reported to have met with Michigan paramilitary activists.
Public revulsion over that massacre damaged the movement, which largely faded from public view. But recent protests over racial injustice, the coronavirus and other turmoil during the Trump administration have fueled a resurgence, with paramilitary groups blending into a mishmash of far-right factions that spread their messages on websites and social media.
In many ways, their focus is unchanged, including contempt for authority, reverence for the Second Amendment and backwoods military-style training exercises.
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Heat force Game 6, top Lakers to stave off elimination
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — The trophy was ready.
Jimmy Butler and the Miami Heat delayed its appearance. The NBA Finals are not over, not after Butler and the Heat pulled off a virtuoso performance in Game 5 on Friday night.
Butler had 35 points, 12 rebounds and 11 assists, and the Heat watched Danny Green’s wide-open 3-pointer in the final seconds bounce off the rim on the way to beating Los Angeles 111-108 — cutting the Lakers’ lead in the title series to 3-2.
Game 6 is Sunday night.
Duncan Robinson had 26 points for Miami, which used seven players. Kendrick Nunn had 14 points, Bam Adebayo 13, Tyler Herro 12 and Jae Crowder 11. The seventh player, Andre Iguodala, didn’t score.
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Brosseau homer off Chapman lifts Rays over Yanks, into ALCS
SAN DIEGO — Mike Brosseau said he wasn’t seeking revenge against hard-throwing Aroldis Chapman, just the chance to keep playing.
He ended up getting both.
Brosseau hit a dramatic home run off Chapman with one out in the eighth inning, and the Tampa Bay Rays beat the New York Yankees 2-1 Friday night to reach the AL Championship Series for the first time in 12 seasons.
The first career postseason homer for the 26-year-old utilityman came after a 10-pitch at-bat against the Yankees’ vaunted, hard-throwing closer, who entered in the seventh inning. Brosseau drove a 100 mph fastball into the left field seats at Petco Park for the Rays’ third hit.
Brosseau and Chapman have a history: Chapman threw a 101 mph fastball near Brosseau’s head Sept. 1 in the ninth inning of a Rays’ 5-3 victory. Chapman likely had nothing against Brosseau personally, but the pitch was an apparent escalation of a feud between the AL East rivals, and it prompted Tampa Bay manager Kevin Cash’s infamous declaration that he has “a whole damn stable full of guys that throw 98 miles an hour.”
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McConnell tries to salvage Senate majority with court vote
WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spent a year prepping his Republican colleagues for this moment, telling them the confirmation of a Supreme Court justice is the “most important” vote they will take as senators, the chance to make “seismic change” that will stay with the nation for generations to come.
Now, three weeks before Election Day, the GOP leader needs this moment more than ever.
Confirmation hearings are set to begin Monday for President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee giving Republicans one last chance to salvage their Senate majority by wresting attention away from the White House and its COVID-19 response and onto the GOP’s longtime goal of fashioning a conservative court.
The arrival of conservative Judge Amy Coney Barrett offers a long-shot opportunity to bring wayward Republican voters back in the fold. As Trump’s standing drops in internal polls, McConnell hopes to remind voters why they stuck with Trump in 2016: the promise of another conservative justice ruling on abortion access and other big issues. Democrats are within range of seizing Senate control Nov. 3.
“It’s going to do what it’s going to do — energize the base,” said Doug Deason, a wealthy Dallas donor who is the Northern Texas fundraising chairman for Trump and helps congressional Republicans.
