[FoxNews] Arizona State University student Kaci Sloan, who is accused of stabbing a fellow student twice in a Glendale classroom last month in an apparently random attack, entered a not-guilty plea in Maricopa County on Wednesday after two of her four charges were dismissed last week.
Maricopa County authorities initially arrested and booked Sloan, 19, on four counts, including first-degree attempted murder, in connection with the attack against student Mara Daffron. After a review of the charges submitted and a preliminary hearing on Sept. 30, the county attorney’s office charged Sloan with aggravated assault and disorderly conduct.
Judge Ashley Rahaman also gave Sloan a cash bail of $250,000 and listed the conditions of her release should she be able to post bail in full.
Sloan allegedly walked up to her classmate, Daffron, on Sept. 19 and stabbed her "multiple times," according to an affidavit obtained by Fox News Digital citing multiple witness accounts.
Matthew McCormick, a student who witnessed the attack unfolding in the classroom, took swift action to stop the alleged stabbing, potentially saving Daffron's life, according to FOX 10 Phoenix.
"Another witness described the defendant was sitting in the classroom at a desk and suddenly got up and ran at the victim as the victim entered the classroom and stabbed her multiple times," the affidavit states.
Detectives found a handwritten note inside Sloan’s backpack that apparently referenced an act she was "about to commit," but it did "not specifically state what she was referring to."
Sloan also allegedly expressed the desire to "hurt somebody" in class that day in an interview with detectives after the incident and targeted Daffron because she was "an easier target" than the other person she apparently considered attacking, who she referred to as "a veteran."
Authorities quickly arrived at the scene and took Daffron to a nearby hospital, where she received treatment.
Sloan has an initial pretrial conference scheduled for Nov. 21.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] The famous writer Lili Ebert, who was deported to Auschwitz from Hungary in 1944 and survived the Holocaust, died at the age of 101 in her home in London. This was reported by the Daily Mail.
"Auschwitz survivor Lili Ebert dies at 100," the publication says.
The writer died just under two months short of reaching 101 years of age.
She was the eldest daughter in a Jewish family of six children. Lili, 20, was taken to a Nazi camp with her mother, younger brother, and three sisters. The Germans immediately sent the mother and two children to the gas chamber. The girl and two sisters managed to survive.
Lily Ebert co-founded the Holocaust Survivors Centre in Britain. She published a book, Lily's Promise: How I Survived Auschwitz and Found the Strength to Live On. She also became known for her memoirs, social media videos and media appearances in which she spoke about Auschwitz and her life after the war.
Together with her great-grandson, she ran an account on a social network, where they have almost 2 million subscribers.
The writer received many honorary awards and titles.
[RT] Authorities have issued shelter-in-place orders due to a hydrogen sulfide spill at an oil refinery in Deer Park.
A chemical accident at the Deer Park oil refinery in Texas reportedly killed two people and injured five others on Thursday.
Authorities have urged locals to remain indoors and keep their air conditioners off until the all-clear is given.
The leak was reported at around 4:40pm local time, triggering emergency protocols. According to initial reports, a contractor working at the refinery, owned by the Mexican state petroleum company Pemex, accidentally opened a line containing highly toxic hydrogen sulfide gas. PEMEX, in America?
The contractor is one of the two individuals believed to be dead. Authorities have only confirmed one fatality, but a second body was seen being airlifted from the scene by a Life Flight helicopter.
The Mexican company claimed that “no impact on the community has been reported.” "And if there was, hey, they're just Gringos"
In response to the leak, a shelter-in-place order was issued for all residents of Deer Park and the surrounding areas. The nearby city of Pasadena issued a similar order.
Residents have been advised to remain indoors, close their windows and doors, and keep their air conditioners turned off until the all-clear is given.
Hydrogen sulfide is used in various industrial processes, including petroleum production and refining. Prolonged exposure to high concentrations of the gas can be fatal.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] The name of the Nobel Prize laureate in literature was announced in Stockholm on Thursday — it is South Korean writer Han Kang, the Nobel Committee of the Swedish Academy of Sciences reported in a press release.
"For her intense, poetic prose that confronts historical trauma and exposes the fragility of human life," the press release said.
Han Kang became the first South Korean to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Han Kang was born in 1970 in Gwangju. She began her writing career with the publication of five poems in the magazine Society and Literature in 1993. Kang's first collection of short stories, Yeosu's Love, was published in 1995.
In 2023, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse, and in 2022, to French writer Annie Ernaux.
Earlier, Regnum News Agency wrote that on October 9, the Nobel Committee announced the names of the laureates in the field of chemistry. They were American scientist David Baker and Google employees Demis Hassabis and John Jumper. Baker received the prize for the synthesis of a new protein. Hassabis and Jumper developed a model based on artificial intelligence, with the help of which the structure of all proteins in the human body was determined.
#3
The Hugo winners used to be wonderful, when they really were readers’ choice. But once the Hugos became the private preserve of an in-group clique, they became pretentious and uninteresting. I watched when the Sad Puppies tried so hard to rescue the award, but in the end they gave up.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] By the evening of October 10, the strongest magnetic storm in the last six months is expected, scientist, head of the Laboratory of Solar Astronomy (IKI) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Sergei Bogachev told IA Regnum.
"This is a level four storm on a five-point scale. This is a strong event, to the point that there is a 10-20% chance of a category four storm," the expert said.
The scientist emphasized that these geomagnetic events will continue for at least two days. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday will be difficult days. Bogachev also indicated the approximate time of the magnetic storm's onset.
"Specifically today, a noticeable flare on the Sun, which threw large clouds of plasma towards the Earth at high speeds, which should arrive at the Earth. The earliest arrival boundaries were set for midday, then approximately at 17-18 hours," the scientist reported.
Bogachev explained that the forecast of magnetic storms also implies the forecast of the polar lights. There is a 60-70% probability of the appearance of the polar lights in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
As reported by IA Regnum, a large cloud of plasma caused by a solar flare is approaching the Earth. Most likely, it will cause magnetic storms.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. Hurricane Milton Causes Massive Destruction in Florida
[Regnum] Hurricane Milton, which hit the American state of Florida, caused powerful tornadoes. Several people became victims of the elements. Wind speed reached 195 km/h. Heavy rains also fell in Florida, and in a few hours the level of precipitation exceeded the multi-month norm.
According to PowerOutage.us, due to the collapse of transmission line supports, broken wires, and destruction of substations, about 2.8 million homes and buildings and over 3 million consumers were left without electricity. In some counties, 97% of consumers lost power.
Strong winds tore off the roof of Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg. Water was cut off to homes due to damage to water systems. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said about 125 homes were destroyed. Flooding was reported in parts of the state in just a few hours. Strong winds tossed cars around. Part of the roof collapsed at Orlando International Airport. DeSantis said the storm was strong, but not the worst-case scenario.
Milton has left land and is moving over the Atlantic Ocean, with a flood threat remaining for the East Coast.
As reported by the Regnum news agency, at least 10 people have died as a result of the Milton tornado in Florida, confirmed US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.
Milton made landfall on the Florida coast on the evening of October 9. Experts predicted that it would be the most destructive hurricane in history, surpassing Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In anticipation of the storm, a mass evacuation began on October 7. More than 5.5 million people were forced to leave the west coast of Florida, which became one of the largest evacuations in the state's history.
Even more from regnum.ru Hurricane Milton Florida death toll rises to 10
At least ten people have died in tornadoes that accompanied the impact of the devastating Hurricane Milton in Florida, US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said.
“We have received information that at least ten people have died from Hurricane Milton,” RIA Novosti quotes him as saying.
NBC News later reported, citing local officials and police, that five people have now been confirmed dead in St. Lucie County on the Atlantic coast.
Preliminary reports indicate two more people have died in St. Petersburg. The Volusia County Sheriff's Office also reported three deaths. In Citrus County, police said one person was killed when a tree fell on a car.
More from regnum.ru Hurricane Milton May Reach Russia, Says Forecaster Pozdnyakova
Hurricane Milton, which hit the United States, has entered the Atlantic Ocean and has begun to slow down. However, there is a risk that its echoes will reach Russia, said Tatyana Pozdnyakova, chief specialist at the Moscow Meteorological Bureau.
“The aftershocks of the hurricane may be felt in the north of Scandinavia and in the north of Russia – in the Murmansk region,” KP.RU quotes the forecaster as saying.
According to Pozdnyakova, if Milton comes to Russia, it can only bring stronger winds and precipitation. But this can in no way be called "hurricane power", the specialist concluded.
As reported by the Regnum news agency, Hurricane Milton reached the coast of Florida on the evening of October 9. According to experts, it could become the most destructive in history, as it is more powerful than Hurricane Katrina, which caused major damage to the United States in 2005.
Amid Hurricane Milton, tornadoes hit the US state of Florida. More than 120 homes were destroyed, there are victims and injured.
Even more from regnum.ru Hurricane Milton Leaves More Than 3.3 Million Florida Residents Without Power
In the state of Florida, due to Hurricane Milton that hit the region, the number of consumers left without electricity has exceeded 3 million. This is evidenced by data from the monitoring resource PowerOutage.
Currently, more than 3.3 million consumers are experiencing power outages.
The New York Times reported that the hardest hit area was Hardee County, about 40 miles from where the storm made landfall, with 98 percent of customers without power.
Power engineers are working in an enhanced mode due to the large number of calls regarding power outages.
The state weather service advised using flashlights in the event of a power outage and using generators with caution.
Has any part of this level of aid yet been delivered to Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina?
[FoxNews] The U.S. military has flooded resources to areas in Florida impacted by Hurricane Milton, including 6,500 members of the state’s National Guard and another 3,000 from 19 other states ready to provide support, as recovery response efforts continue in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters during a briefing on Thursday that 6,500 Florida National Guardsmen had been activated and mobilized along with 500 plus high-water vehicles, 26 helicopters and over a dozen watercraft from a dozen states to help with response and recovery missions.
Along with those resources, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has about 250 people helping with debris and flood control, waterway clearance and more, while U.S. Northern Command and U.S. Army North also stand ready to support the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) when needed, with 60 more high-water vehicles from Fort Stewart, Georgia, and 100 U.S. Marines from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
Ahead of Milton's arrival, personnel from U.S. Special Operations Command and U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) evacuated from its headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, and as of Thursday, they remained evacuated.
"The priority is the safety of personnel and their families and ensuring they have the resources they need as they recover from Hurricane Milton," Ryder said. "Both commands continue to operate out of multiple locations, ensuring no degradation to operations."
Ryder noted that Department of Defense facilities in Florida suffered "some damage, but not extensive damage."
He added that teams will have to go in and assess the damage before additional information can be provided.
[Rudaw] Despite being the home of extravagant and iconic Islamic architecture, mosques in The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire... are increasingly missing one of their core elements - worshippers. A recent study showed that the number of Moslems in the country who pray daily has declined.
The surveying firm Asal Arastirma asked 2,000 people across Turkey how often they pray and nearly half of the participants said they do not pray at all.
According to the poll conducted in August, 44.5 percent of respondents said they do not pray at all and 36.7 percent said they only pray at special times such as Fridays, Eid, and gratitude (shukr) prayers. Only 18.8 percent said they pray daily.
The number of people who do not pray at all has increased from a similar study conducted in April 2022, when it was 41.8 percent, while the number of those who pray daily has plummeted from 23 percent.
The declining numbers of the prayerful can be traced to a "clash within religious families" and a "collapse" in the culture, according to Ottoman Turkish Islamic theologian Ihsan Eliacik.
"Children from religious families are becoming disillusioned with religion. While the religious groups are distancing themselves from religion, they are trying to Islamize the country along with those in power," Eliacik told Rudaw.
Turkey’s religious classes are not fulfilling the needs of the people, according to Eliacik. "Art, literature, culture, religious thought, and philosophy have collapsed. At this point, they have nothing to offer people," he said.
In Istanbul, there is a general belief that family priorities are shifting and this has contributed to a move away from the mosques.
"Let's say it's about the upbringing style. It stems from the parents. They are not teaching our religion. That's all I can say," Melek Sangor, a Ottoman Turkish citizen from Istanbul, told Rudaw.
"We see it because people are drifting further away from religion every day. What other reason could there be for this? Their only thought is for them to go to school. Let them go to school and study, regardless of what happens, that is also a wrong perspective," said Ahmet Tenger.
Erkan Tosun, another resident of Istanbul, said that the media has affected the way people think and blamed it for disrupting family and societal structures.
"Visual media, print media, and TV series are disrupting people's and society's structure. They are undermining the family structure. For this reason, in my opinion, the number of people attending mosques is decreasing," Tosun said.
[MYRGV] Days before a possible test launch of Starship from SpaceX’s Boca Chica launch site, the nonprofit, local environmental group Save RGV has filed a lawsuit in federal court against SpaceX over the alleged release of untreated industrial wastewater at the facility.
The suit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Brownsville Division, under the Clean Water Act (CWA), seeks declaratory and injunctive relief, the imposition of civil penalties and "other appropriate relief" to bring a halt to SpaceX’s "recurring, unpermitted discharges of untreated industrial wastewater from the deluge system at the SpaceX Boca Chica Launch Site into waters of the United States," according to the suit.
The launch site’s water deluge system is designed to dampen the effects of rocket engine blast during liftoff and static fire engine testing.
Save RGV said it had sent a June 4 letter via certified mail to Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX president and chief operating officer, giving notice of the violations contained in the complaint and stating its intention to file suit after 60 days "should those violations continue."
On July 19, Save RGV sent another letter via certified mail to Shotwell — and also Boca Chica launch site General Manager Kathy Lueders — giving notice of additional violations identified in the complaint, and again giving notice of intention to sue after 60 days if the alleged violations continued.
Copies of the letters also were sent to the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, regional administrator for EPA Region 6, the Justice Department, the state of Texas through the attorney general, and the executive director of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The lawsuit claims that "neither the EPA nor the State has commenced or is diligently prosecuting an action to redress the violations described in Save RGV’s notice letters and alleged in this Complaint."
Further, the violations are "continuing at this time and are reasonably likely to continue in the future," according to the suit.
SpaceX has argued that it has never operated the deluge system without permission from state and federal authorities, though on March 13 the EPA notified SpaceX that the company had violated the Clean Water Act in deploying the deluge system. The EPA did not assess a fine, but did order SpaceX to comply with federal regulations.
SpaceX deployed the system again the following day during liftoff for its third Starship test flight. The company deployed the system for three test flights, and tested the system multiple times between launches, before applying to TCEQ for a permit.
In late August, TCEQ assessed a $3,750 fine against SpaceX for what the agency said was the illegal discharge of wastewater into wetlands surrounding the website after TCEQ learned the company had not applied for a Texas Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (TPDES) permit before operating the deluge system.
On Aug. 30, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk posted on X, the social media company he owns, "Just to be clear, this silly fine was for spilling potable drinking water! Literally, you could drink it."
What Save RGV describes as untreated industrial wastewater releases by SpaceX "degrade water quality and harm aquatic life in these waters and thus impair Save RGV’s members’ use and enjoyment of the waters," according to the suit. "SpaceX’s industrial discharges from its deluge system are ongoing and continuous, occurring regularly during each launch and each static fire test."
Injuries to Save RGV are "unlikely to be redressed except by an order from this Court requiring Defendant to take immediate and substantial action to stop the unpermitted discharges, and to comply with other relief that this Court deems necessary," according to the lawsuit.
TCEQ published a legal notice on Wednesday in The Brownsville Herald announcing a Nov. 14 to gather public input on SpaceX’s application for a permit for a TPDES permit, which would "authorize the discharge of treated domestic wastewater ... not to exceed 200,000 gallons per day." TCEQ said it received the application on May 10, 2023.
The public meeting is scheduled for Nov. 14 at 7 p.m. at Amigoland Events Center, 1010 Mexico Blvd., in Brownsville.
SpaceX has announced its fifth Starship test flight from Boca Chica could take place as early as Sunday, with alternate dates on Monday and Tuesday.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[FoxNews] Arizona State University student 
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire...
