Gordon expected to hit
Gulf Coast as hurricane
GULFPORT, Miss. — Families filled sandbags, took patio furniture inside and stocked up on batteries and bottled water as the Gulf Coast prepared Tuesday for Tropical Storm Gordon, which could strengthen and become the second hurricane to hit the region in less than a year.
Just hours before the storm was expected to come ashore, a few people remained on the beach, soaking in the sun before the tropical rain bands became more numerous. Others did their familiar pre-storm preparation rituals, including the staff at The Hotel Whiskey in Pass Christian, Mississippi, only about a block from the Gulf of Mexico. The hotel restaurant planned to stay open Tuesday evening as usual, fortified by sandbags to keep out torrential rains, the manager said.
“All the outside furniture has to come in, but honestly it’s not even a freak-out kind of hurricane, so we’re not super-stressed right now,” Ashley Peeples said around midday Tuesday.
Gulfport was providing sand and bags to residents, and Kenny Macdonald was filling them up for himself and older residents.
“This is kind of routine to some degree,” Macdonald said. “You don’t know what the intensity of the storm is going to be. You don’t want to take it lightly, of course.”
Tell-all book by Watergate reporter roils Trump WH
WASHINGTON — An incendiary tell-all book by a reporter who helped bring down President Richard Nixon is roiling the White House, as current and former aides of President Donald Trump are quoted calling him an “idiot” and claiming they took papers off his desk to prevent him from withdrawing from a pair of trade agreements.
The book by Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward is the latest to throw the Trump administration into damage-control mode with explosive anecdotes and concerns about the commander in chief. The Post on Tuesday published details from “Fear: Trump in the White House,” the Watergate reporter’s forthcoming examination of Trump’s first 18 months in office.
Trump pushed back in an interview with The Daily Caller, saying: “It’s just another bad book. He’s had a lot of credibility problems.”
The president denied accounts in the book that senior aides snatched sensitive documents off his desk to keep him from making impulsive decisions. He said: “There was nobody taking anything from me.”
The publication of Woodward’s book has been anticipated for weeks, and current and former White House officials estimate that nearly all their colleagues cooperated with the famed Watergate journalist. The White House, in a statement from press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, on Tuesday dismissed the book as “nothing more than fabricated stories, many by former disgruntled employees, told to make the President look bad.”
Fragments found in Brazil fire provide small hope
RIO DE JANEIRO — Firefighters found bone fragments from a collection in the still-smoldering National Museum, an official said Tuesday, raising hopes that a famed skull might somehow have survived a massive blaze that turned historic and scientific artifacts to ashes.
Flames tore through the museum Sunday night, and officials have said much of Latin America’s largest collection of treasures might be lost. Aerial photos of main building showed only heaps of rubble and ashes in the parts of the building where the roof collapsed.
The firefighters “found fragments of bones in a room where the museum kept many items, including skulls,” said Cristiana Serejo, the museum’s vice director. “We still have to collect them and take them to the lab to know exactly what they are.”
In its collection of about 20 million items, one of the most prized possessions is a skull called Luzia, which is among the oldest fossils ever found in the Americas.
Museum spokesman Marcio Martins noted that the collection contains hundreds of skulls, and all material would first need to be examined by the Federal Police, who are investigating the still-unknown cause of the fire. Experts will then examine them to determine their identity.
Amazon 2nd U.S. company to reach $1 trillion market value
NEW YORK — Amazon on Tuesday became the second publicly traded company to reach $1 trillion in market value, hot on the heels of iPhone maker Apple.
The milestone is another sign of Amazon’s swift rise from an online bookseller to a behemoth that sells toilet paper, TVs and just about anything. In its two decades, Amazon has expanded far beyond online shopping and into health care, advertising and cloud computing.
Its growth has boosted the fortunes of its founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos. His 16 percent stake in Amazon is now worth more than $160 billion. Forbes magazine placed him at the top of its list of billionaires for the first time this year, surpassing Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and investor Warren Buffett.
Amazon’s stock has increased almost 600 percent in the last five years, including a more than 70 percent surge so far in 2018 alone. On Tuesday morning, the stock climbed enough to push the company’s valuation pass the $1 trillion mark, although it dropped back slightly after that. The stock closed at $2,039.51 Tuesday, about $11 short of keeping its valuation above $1 trillion.
Apple topped the $1 trillion mark in early August. Saudi Arabia’s national energy company, Aramco, is widely believed to be worth much more than either Amazon or Apple.
By wire sources
