Hurricane Milton: The outer bands of Hurricane Milton started to impact the West Coast of Florida this morning, with landfall of the Category 4 or 5 storm expected late tonight or early Thursday morning. The mayor of Tampa this morning urged residents to evacuate while they still could. Major highways leading from the area where Milton was expected to hit were clogged and many gas stations had run out of fuel. Milton continued to grow in size, with tropical storm force winds extending 140 miles from the center.
FEMA: President Biden postponed a planned trip to Germany and Angola in order to concentrate on storm recovery efforts. Biden has been in touch with Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and offered whatever federal aid DeSantis wants to recover from Milton. Biden has personally been working with the Republican governors and mayors of states and cities affected by Hurricane Helene to make sure they have all the federal aid they need. They have praised FEMA’s recovery efforts. Donald Trump and J. D. Vance continue to push their lie that FEMA has no money for storm recovery.
Netanyahu: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a video recording aimed at Lebanon’s citizens in which he said Hezbollah is weaker than it has been in years. He said that Israel will continue to assassinate new leaders of Hezbollah as they replace those Israel kills. Netanyahu said that the Lebanese have a chance to save their country from the same type of suffering that has afflicted Gaza if they abandon Hezbollah.
Trump’s denials: Donald Trump denies reporting by Bob Woodward in Woodward’s new book “War” that he has talked with Russian President Vladimir Putin as many as seven times since leaving the presidency. The Logan Act makes it illegal for U.S private citizens to have unauthorized dealings with foreign governments. Trump also denies reporting by Woodward that during the Covid pandemic when there was a shortage of supplies in the U.S. he secretly shipped Covid testing materials to Putin for his personal use.
Hack: Ukrainian sources say it was computer hackers in Ukraine who caused a shutdown of Russia’s state-owned radio and TV services on Monday. The sources said the cyber attack was Ukraine’s birthday present for Russian President Putin, who was 72 years old on Monday. A Russian source said that in addition to shutting down radio, TV and internet operations the hackers wiped out backup files for Russia’s state-owned media.
Nobel Prize: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to three scientists. One-half of the prize goes to David Baker of the University of Washington in Seattle. The other half goes to Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper of Google DeepMind in London. All three of the scientists worked on the structures of proteins, with Baker creating new proteins and the others using artificial intelligence to predict the structure of proteins.
