Laura thrashes Louisiana, nearby states face tornado threats
LAKE CHARLES, La. — One of the strongest hurricanes ever to strike the U.S., Laura barreled across Louisiana on Thursday, shearing off roofs and killing at least six people while carving a destructive path hundreds of miles inland.
A full assessment of the damage wrought by the Category 4 system was likely to take days, and the threat of additional damage loomed as new tornado warnings were issued after dark in Arkansas and Mississippi even as the storm weakened into a depression.
But despite a trail of demolished buildings, entire neighborhoods left in ruins and almost 900,000 homes and businesses without power, a sense of relief prevailed that Laura was not the annihilating menace forecasters had feared.
“It is clear that we did not sustain and suffer the absolute, catastrophic damage that we thought was likely,” Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said. “But we have sustained a tremendous amount of damage.”
He called Laura the most powerful hurricane to strike Louisiana, meaning it surpassed even Katrina, which was a Category 3 storm when it hit in 2005. The storm toppled trees and damaged structures as far north as central Arkansas.
Kenosha shooting strains relationship between Blacks, police department
KENOSHA, Wis. — Until the police shooting of Jacob Blake, the bedroom community of Kenosha had been largely untouched by the level of demonstrations that were seen in nearby Milwaukee and Chicago after the death of George Floyd.
Like other places in America, Kenosha’s Black residents saw inequality in the way police treated them. But there had been nothing like the shooting that left Blake, who is Black, paralyzed. An officer shot Blake in the back Sunday as the 29-year-old leaned into his SUV, three of his children seated inside.
Now the city of 99,000 residents along Lake Michigan finds itself as the latest flashpoint in a larger discussion about racism and police brutality in the U.S.
“We’ve had some situations where we’ve thought the Police Department hasn’t been treating some minorities fairly. This incident, it’s just changed,” Anthony L. Davis, president of the Kenosha NAACP branch, said.
The shooting, captured on cellphone video, led to several nights of protests and unrest, with some demonstrators destroying buildings, setting fires and hurling objets at police, who responded at times with tear gas. On Wednesday, a 17-year-old from a nearby Illinois community killed two demonstrators, according to authorities.
From wire sources
5th federal execution of 2020 on again after late ruling
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. — The scheduled federal execution of a 10-year-old Kansas girl’s killer was back on track Friday after an appellate panel tossed a lower court’s ruling that would have required the government to get a drug prescription before it could use pentobarbital to kill the inmate.
Questions about whether pentobarbital causes pain prior to death has been a focus of last-minute appeals for Keith Nelson, who would be the fifth person to die this year and the second this week in the Trump administration’s resumption of federal executions after a 17-year hiatus. All the executions by lethal pentobarbital injection have been carried out at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.
If Nelson’s lawyer appeals Friday to the Supreme Court on the prescription issue, the decision on whether Nelson lives or dies Friday could still come down to the high court. But similar moves to delay three other executions last month failed, with the high court ruling 5-to-4 allow them to proceed.
A flurry of filing by Nelson’s legal team over several weeks zeroed in on pentobarbital, a barbituate that depresses the central nervous system and, in high doses, eventually stops the heart.
In one filing in early August, attorneys for the 45-year-old Nelson cited an unofficial autopsy on one inmate executed last month, William Purkey, saying it indicated evidence of pulmonary edema in which the lungs fill with fluid and causes a painful sensation akin to drowning.
Lute Olson, Hall of Fame coach, Arizona icon, dies at 85
TUCSON, Ariz. — Lute Olson, the Hall of Fame coach who turned Arizona into a college basketball powerhouse, has died. He was 85.
Olson’s family said he died Thursday evening. The cause of death wasn’t given.
“Coach Olson is the absolute best, one of the greatest coaches ever and one of the greatest human beings ever,” Georgia Tech coach and former Arizona player Josh Pasnter tweeted. “My feelings of gratitude and appreciation cannot be put in words. I love him dearly. My heart hurts, but I know he is now in heaven. May god bless his family. #RIP”
Olson spent 24 seasons at Arizona, revitalizing a fan base in the desert while transforming a program that had been to the NCAA Tournament just three times in 79 years before he was hired in 1983.
Olson first took the Wildcats to the NCAA Tournament during his second season in Tucson to start a string of 25 straight appearances. The streak would have been the third-longest in NCAA history, but the 1999 and 2008 appearances were later vacated by the NCAA for impermissible benefits to players and recruiting violations.