The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
U.S. lacks leverage as assault looms
CALIFORNIA
Obama, on campaign swing, urges ‘sanity in our politics’
Former President Barack Obama said Saturday that November midterm elections would give Americans “a chance to restore some sanity in our politics,” taking another swipe at his successor as he raises his profile campaigning for fellow Democrats to regain control of the House.
Obama didn’t mention President Donald Trump by name during a 20-minute speech in the key Southern California battleground of Orange County, but the allusions were clear.
“We’re in a challenging moment because, when you look at the arc of American history, there’s always been a push and pull between those who want to go forward and those who want to look back, between those who want to divide and those are seeking to bring people together, between those who promote the politics of hope and those who exploit the politics of fear,” he said.
His appearance — one day after a strongly worded critique of Trump at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign — touched on themes of retirement security, climate change and education.
“If we don’t step up, things can get worse,” the former president told the audience at the Anaheim Convention Center. “In two months, we have the chance to restore some sanity to our politics. We have the chance to flip the House of Representatives and make sure there are real checks and balances in Washington.”
WEATHER
Powerful hurricane could be headed to U.S.
The U.S. East Coast could be hit with a powerful hurricane next week as Tropical Storm Florence continues to strengthen as it moves toward the mainland, forecasters said Saturday.
Florence is expected to become a major hurricane by Monday, the National Hurricane Center said, adding that “a significant phase of intensification” is expected late Saturday.
The Miami-based weather center said although the storm could intensify to a Category 4 hurricane by midweek, its path was still unclear.
“Florence is forecast to be a dangerous major hurricane near the southeast U.S. coast by late next week, and the risk of direct impacts continues to increase,” the hurricane center said Saturday.
Officials in the Carolinas warned residents to prepare and to brace for impact.
NORTH KOREA
Nation to fete 70th birthday with tanks, dancing masses
Workers with paint brushes and brooms put the final touches on Pyongyang’s iconic Kim Il Sung Square on Saturday as North Korea prepared for what promises to be its biggest celebration in years - the 70th anniversary of the country’s official birth as a nation.
The spectacle, months in the making, will center on a military parade and mass games that will likely put both advanced missiles and leader Kim Jong Un’s hopes for a stronger economy front and center.
Although North Korea stages military parades almost every year, and held one just before the Olympics began in South Korea in February this year, Sunday’s parade comes at a particularly sensitive time.
Kim’s effort to ease tensions with U.S. President Donald Trump have stalled since their June summit in Singapore. Both sides are now insisting on a different starting point. Washington wants Kim to commit to denuclearization first, but Pyongyang wants its security guaranteed and a peace agreement formally ending the Korean War.
With tensions once again on the rise, a parade featuring the very missiles that so unnerved Trump last year, and led to a dangerous volley of insults from both leaders, could be seen as a deliberate provocation.
ENVIRONMENT
Massive boom will corral Pacific Ocean’s plastic trash
Engineers set to sea Saturday to deploy a trash collection device to corral plastic litter floating between California and Hawaii in an attempt to clean up the world’s largest garbage patch in the heart of the Pacific Ocean.
The 2,000-foot-long floating boom was being towed from San Francisco to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — an island of trash twice the size of Texas.
The system was created by The Ocean Cleanup, an organization founded by Boyan Slat, a 24-year-old innovator from the Netherlands who first became passionate about cleaning the oceans when he went scuba diving at age 16 in the Mediterranean Sea and saw more plastic bags than fish.
“The plastic is really persistent and it doesn’t go away by itself and the time to act is now,” Slat said, adding that researchers with his organization found plastic going back to the 1960s and 1970s bobbing in the patch.
The buoyant, U-shaped barrier made of plastic and with a tapered 10-foot deep screen, is intended to act like a coastline, trapping some of the 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic that scientists estimate are swirling in that gyre but allowing marine life to safely swim beneath it.
SYRIA
Despite dire U.S. warnings and fears of a humanitarian disaster, the Trump administration has little leverage to stop Russia, Iran and Syria pressing ahead with a massive military assault against Syria’s northwest Idlib province.
Washington has threatened military action in case of a chemical weapons attack but its mixed messaging on retaining a U.S. presence in Syria and a cut in aid has diminished its already limited influence over the seven-year conflict.
So the administration, which has criticized former President Barack Obama for his inaction on Syria after the war started in 2011, risks appearing powerless to prevent the three nations’ plan to retake Syria’s last rebel-held area. It’s an operation that many warn will cause major bloodshed among a vulnerable population of 3 million people.
And on Saturday, Syrian government and Russian warplanes targeted the province’s southern edge in what activists described as the most intense airstrikes in weeks. More than 60 air raids killed at least four civilians in southern Idlib, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and rescue workers.
While the new U.S. special envoy for Syria said this week that America will stay in Syria until the complete eradication of the Islamic State group, there’s little assurance that President Donald Trump won’t again seek the withdrawal of the roughly 2,000 U.S. troops in the country. And in a sign of the administration’s shrinking commitment to Syria, it has pulled more than $200 million in stabilization funding for liberated areas, telling other nations they should step up to pay.
IRAQ