Strike settlement: Members of the International Longshoremen’s Association are returning to work today in East and Gulf Coast ports. The strike by the union has been settled with an extension of the current contract into January while a new contract is put into place. The new contract will give union members a 61.5% wage increase over its six-year term. President Biden is being credited with helping to bring both sides together and ending the Longshoremen’s strike.
Employment: New employment statistics show that total nonfarm payroll employment in the U.S. increased by 254,000 in September, and the unemployment rate changed little at 4.1%. The report came from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics today. Employment continued to trend up in food services and drinking places, health care, government, social assistance, and construction. Both the unemployment rate at 4.1% and the number of unemployed people at 6.8 million changed little in September. These measures are higher than they were a year earlier when the jobless rate was 3.8% and the number of unemployed people was 6.3 million.
Rallies: Republican former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, daughter of former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney, told a Kamala Harris rally at Ripon, Pennsylvania, yesterday that anyone who did what Donald Trump did that culminated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, “can never be trusted with power again.” At a rally in Michigan yesterday, Donald Trump told a new lie. He falsely claimed that Vice President Harris stole money that FEMA needs for hurricane relief and spent it on housing and gift cards for illegal immigrants.
Death toll: The confirmed death toll from the storm Helene in the southeast U.S. rose to 213 with several hundred people still listed as missing. North Carolina’s Buncombe County, where Asheville is located, reported 72 storm-related deaths. Officials say the death toll from the storm will continue to rise and that Helene is the deadliest hurricane to hit the U.S. since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Bird flu: The centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that the risk of Americans contracting bird flu remains low and there have been 16 cases in humans reported in the U.S. since March. The CDC said yesterday that two farm workers in California have tested positive for bird flu and that they are the first confirmed cases of the disease in California. The CDC said that the California cases were not related to each other and that the bird flu had been contracted from animals at a dairy.
Iran’s threat: An Israeli airstrike overnight cut the major highway used by Lebanese to leave their country and enter Syria to escape from the increasing attacks on Lebanon by Israel. Iran’s foreign minister was in Beirut for meetings with Lebanese officials and said today that if Israel attacks Iran there will be a strong response. He said that when Iran fired missiles at Israel it was a legitimate response to Israel staging two attacks on the Iranian Embassy in Beirut.
