South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Pacific storm set to flood California with rain and mud
A powerful Pacific storm is set to slam into California and the Pacific Northwest, bringing hurricane-like winds and heavy rains that could touch off mudslides in areas burned by this year’s wildfires.
The storm off the coast of Washington will direct “a fire hose” of moisture onshore, starting Saturday and continuing through Monday, said Lara Pagano, a senior branch forecaster at the U.S. Weather Prediction Center. The worst impacts will be in California, where
8 to 10 inches of rain in a few hours could wash mulch and dead trees down hillsides and drop snow by the foot across mountain tops.
“We have a big one coming up here and it is going to be impacting much of the West,” Pagano said by telephone. “The impacts are hurricane-like in terms of its winds and wave action, but the actual system itself isn’t a hurricane.”
Often called atmospheric rivers, these big Pacific storms can pump as much water as the mouth of the Mississippi River when they crash ashore. A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study found such events caused
84% of flood damage across
11 western states over a
40-year period. On average, they cause about $1.1 billion in damage.
The storm has some positives. It could quench wildfires burning across Northern California and help alleviate drought, which currently affects all of California. Fires have killed
3 people, burned almost 2.5 million acres and destroyed
3,629 structures so far this year, according to state statistics.
Money laundering ring busted:
Federal prosecutors in Detroit have seized about $12 million in cash they allege was part of a massive money-laundering operation, called “The Shadow Exchange,” operating between the U.S. and the United Arab Emirates.
A forfeiture complaint unsealed last week in federal court in Detroit alleges that some of the laundered money was used to buy armored vehicles for an illegal drug trafficking operation based in Michigan.
The shell companies involved in the scheme, mostly located in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, used fake invoices and other methods to disguise the origins of money, sent to banks — including major U.S. banks — using dozens of wire transfers, the complaint alleges.
“An organized group of individuals operated an unregistered U.S. dollar money transmitting and money laundering business (the ‘Shadow Exchange’) based in Dubai,” the complaint alleges.
“The Shadow Exchange provided services to persons seeking to transfer U.S. dollars in a manner calculated to avoid anti-money laundering measures of the financial system and the scrutiny of international law enforcement.” Also, “customers of the Shadow Exchange also included at least one international criminal organization.”
The forfeiture complaint did not identify any specific individuals, in the U.S. or Dubai, suspected of being involved in the alleged money-laundering operation, and it was not clear whether any arrests have been made.
Singapore vaccine mandates: Although only 4% of the workforce in Singapore is unvaccinated
for COVID-19, the government announced Saturday that a vaccine-or-test mandate would take effect in January for practically every worker in the public and private sectors.
Those who refuse vaccination will have to pay for a daily test and receive a negative result before they return to the workplace.
The announcement by the health ministry comes as the country is experiencing its worst wave of infections yet.
“There is still no sign of cases falling,” Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said Wednesday, when the country reported 18 new deaths, its highest number on a single day since the pandemic’s start. On Tuesday, Singapore reported a record 3,994 daily cases.
The government has maintained some of the world’s strictest curbs against COVID-19 transmission. It announced in June that it would be abandoning its zero-COVID strategy — a shift that was possible
thanks to the country’s high vaccination rate. About 82% of the population was fully vaccinated as of Friday.
Iranian governor slapped:
The new governor of a northwestern Iranian province was slapped in the face by an angry man during his inauguration Saturday, an unusual breach of security in the Islamic Republic during a ceremony attended by the country’s interior minister. A motive for the attack in Iran’s Eastern Azerbaijan province remained unclear, though it targeted a new provincial governor who once served in the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and reportedly had been kidnapped at one point by rebel forces in Syria. One report referred to it as a personal dispute.
The new governor, Brig. Gen. Abedin Khorram, had taken the podium in the provincial capital of Tabriz when the man strode out from offstage and immediately swung at the official.
Video aired by state television recorded the gathered crowd gasping in shock, the sound of the slap echoing on the sound system. It took several seconds before plainclothes security forces reached him.
They dragged the man off through a side door, knocking down a curtain. Others rushed up, knocking into each other.
Later footage showed Khorram return to the stage and speak to the unsettled crowd, now all standing up.
Nevada man allegedly voted twice:
Speaking to a local news station in November, Donald Kirk Hartle described being “surprised” by the possibility that someone had stolen his dead wife’s mail-in ballot and used it to vote in the 2020 election. “That is pretty sickening to me, to be honest with you,” he told KLAS-TV in Las Vegas.
But last week, the Nevada attorney general filed two charges of voter fraud
against Hartle, 55, claiming that he was the one who forged his wife’s signature to vote with her ballot.
“Voter fraud is rare, but when it happens, it undercuts trust in our election system and will not be tolerated by my office,” Aaron D. Ford, the attorney general, said in a statement Thursday.
The announcement from Ford’s office comes months after waves of Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, falsely asserted that the 2020 election had been tainted by widespread voter fraud, including in Nevada, a state that Trump lost.
Hartle, a registered Republican, was charged with voting using the name of another person and voting more than once in the same election, the attorney general’s office said in the statement. Each charge carries a prison sentence of up to four years and a fine of up to $5,000, prosecutors said.