Biden won’t meet DeSantis in Florida
during tour of hurricane damage
Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is not expected to meet with President Joe Biden on Saturday during the president’s visit to tour the aftermath of Hurricane Idalia, the Category 3 storm that hit the state this week. “In these rural communities, and so soon after impact, the security preparations alone that would go into setting up such a meeting would shut down ongoing recovery efforts,” Jeremy Redfern, the governor’s press secretary, said Friday. The statement came a day after Biden had said during a visit to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s headquarters in Washington that he would travel to Florida.
Record number of families cross
southern border illegally in August
Federal agents arrested a record number of migrant families who crossed the southern border illegally in August, two officials with preliminary data said, highlighting the Biden administration’s most prominent immigration challenge. The roughly 91,000 migrants who crossed together as families exceeded the 84,486 such crossings recorded in May 2019, the height of the border crisis during the Trump administration. Although the government has been removing families who crossed the border illegally at a higher pace, many are released into the country temporarily to face immigration court proceedings and rely on local communities to provide shelter and other support.
Parts of Las Vegas Strip
flood after heavy rain
Fast-moving thunderstorms swept across the Las Vegas valley Friday, causing flash flooding along parts of the Las Vegas Strip as the region braced for more rain into Saturday. The National Weather Service reported that 1.14 inches of rain fell Friday in Boulder City, Nevada, about 26 miles southeast of Las Vegas. Just over 1 inch fell near Interstate 15 at Charleston Boulevard, near Harry Reid International Airport. The weather service said a flash flood warning was in effect for the area until Saturday night. The deluge came just a week after an earlier round of storms inundated the Las Vegas Strip, bringing flooding.
Two more Proud Boys sentenced
in Jan. 6 sedition case
Two more members of the Proud Boys were sentenced to prison Friday for their roles in the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, with a ground commander in the far-right group, Ethan Nordean, given 18 years, and Dominic Pezzola, the man who set off the initial breach of the building by smashing a window, getting 10 years. The sentences were the third and fourth to have been handed down this week to five members of the far-right group who were tried in May for seditious conspiracy and other crimes in one of the most significant prosecutions to have emerged from the Capitol attack.
Meta may offer European users
ad-free subscriptions for a price
Meta is considering paid versions of Facebook and Instagram that would have no advertising for users in the European Union, three people with knowledge of the company’s plans said. Those who pay for Facebook and Instagram subscriptions would not see ads in the apps, said the people. That may help Meta fend off privacy concerns and other scrutiny from EU regulators by giving users an alternative to the company’s ad-based services, which rely on analyzing people’s data. It is unclear how much the paid versions of the apps would cost or when the company might roll them out.
Student loan payments are due again
After about 42 months, the student loan payment hiatus is officially over: Interest on federal loans began accruing again Friday, and monthly payments will become due next month. Many borrowers may be worried about squeezing the payment back into their monthly budget. Life is more expensive than when bills and interest were initially frozen because of a pandemic-relief measure in March 2020. To help borrowers with this transition, the Biden administration has provided some leeway for the first year after payments begin, providing an “on-ramp” to help ease borrowers back into the repayment routine.
Colleges wrestle with AI-aided
admission essays
The easy availability of AI chatbots like ChatGPT, which can manufacture humanlike text in response to short prompts, is poised to upend the traditional undergraduate application process at selective colleges — ushering in an era of automated plagiarism or of democratized student access to essay-writing help. Or maybe both. The personal essay has long been a staple of the application process at elite colleges. Some former students say they felt tremendous pressure to concoct a singular personal writing voice. But new AI tools threaten to recast the college application essay, casting doubt on the legitimacy of applicants’ writing samples as authentic, individualized admissions yardsticks.
Grim struggle begins to identify
victims in South African fire
Families of the victims of a fire in Johannesburg are facing the grim struggle of trying to find out whether their relatives are alive or dead, a day after a devastating blaze tore through an overcrowded building. The fire, which broke out in the early hours of Thursday, consumed a five-story building that was an illegal home for hundreds. At least 74 people died. Officials said that 62 of the bodies recovered from the charred building were so badly burned they were beyond recognition — meaning that DNA testing would be needed to properly identify those victims.
Russia claims its Sarmat intercontinental missile is on ‘Combat Duty’
The head of the Russian space agency said Friday the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, which Moscow claims can deploy 10 or more nuclear warheads and move at hypersonic speeds to outwit defenses, had been put “on combat duty,” according to state media outlet RIA Novosti. Pavel Luzin, a Russian military analyst, said the announcement meant the missile had been deployed in a silo and was ready to be used. The space agency director, Yuri Borisov, did not give details of what he meant by “combat duty” nor say how many of the missiles had been deployed or where.
By wire sources
