Articles chosen with care. Local reporting where possible.
Linked articles in bold purple
◆ Despite more than 4 FEET of rain, search and rescue in Houston, Galveston, Corpus Christi seems efficient. They learned from Katrina mistakes.
Houston paper: rain to continue through tomorrow, some earthen dams at capacity and could fail (Houston Chronicle)
Rain keeps coming and heading in Louisiana, where pumping problems in NOLA could compound the damage.
Pres. Trump has arrived in Texas with multiple cabinet secretaries who have responsibilities for the recovery.
Comment: Trump was wise to delay his visit until now and to avoid the Houston area until the weekend, when it won’t interfere with the real work on the ground.
Currently, it seems like both Washington and Austin governments are handling this well.
⇒ Related: University of Tampa fires a visiting prof. of urban sociology who said the storm was “Karma” because Texas voted for Trump (Chronicle of Higher Ed)
Comment: Maybe getting fired was karma, too.
◆ The parrot’s a stool pigeon (For News)
A Michigan woman was sentenced to life in prison Monday for the 2015 shooting death of her husband — and the man’s pet parrot may have been the only witness to the murder.
Christina Keller, Martin Duram’s ex-wife, said Duram’s pet parrot, Bud, mimicked some of his last words from the night of the murder.
Following the shooting, Bud repeated, “Don’t f—ing shoot,” in Martin Duram’s voice. –Fox News
Comment: The parrot then said, “You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Then who the hell else are you talkin’ … You talkin’ to me? Well, I’m the only one here.”
◆ North Korean missile fired over Japan. Trump says “All options are on the table” (CNN)
Comment: That’s formulaic. But after Trump’s prior warnings and Sec. of State Tillerson’s open hand were slapped down, the US and Japan will want to act decisively in ways the North Korean regime will feel, and China will notice, but still short of war.
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Unprovoked Antifa violence against peaceful demonstrators in Berkeley. Democrats: total radio silence (Fox News)
Thirteen people were arrested, and five were injured after more than 100 black-clad, hooded protesters with masks and weapons attacked conservative demonstrators in Berkeley. They allegedly were associated with the far-left Antifa. –Fox News
Comment: Antifa is a violent, noxious movement. The failure of Democrats to condemn it says they prefer political allies, even violent ones, over the First Amendment. Shameful.
UPDATE: Jelani Cobb of the New Yorker does condemn the Antifa from the left, calling them “morally wrong and politically vacuous.”
He makes an important point in noting that, unlike the Klan, they do not represent a tradition of murderous violence within the US.
That said, Cobb’s main concern is less with Antifa violence or suppression of speech than with the possibility that Trump “will manipulate such situations” to build support.
Thanks to Christina H. for sharing this article with me in her comments.
◆ New therapy for advanced cancers rolling out soon (Wall Street Journal, subscription)
The WSJ treats it as a business story (Gilead Sciences buys Kite Pharma), but the news for most people is why Kite is so valuable.
Kite’s main treatment, which is up for regulatory approval in the U.S. and Europe, could drastically improve treatment of patients with some of the most advanced cases of cancer.
“This technology is really going to be transformative to the field,” Gilead CEO John Milligan said in an interview.
The new breed of treatments, known as CAR-T—or chimeric antigen receptor T-cell—therapy, work by extracting a cancer patient’s T-cells, a type of immune cell. The T-cells are then genetically modified outside the body to make them more effective at hunting down and killing tumors, and then re-injected into the patient.
Several other companies also are developing CAR-T treatments—including Switzerland’s Novartis AG , which already won a key regulatory nod in the U.S. earlier this year, and is expected very soon to get the first official green light to start offering the treatment. –Wall Street Journal
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