Author: Reporter

The deadly firestorm in Hawaii and Hurricane Idalia’s watery storm surge helped push the United States to a record for the number of weather disasters that cost $1 billion or more. And there is still weeks ahead on what looks like a calendar of calamities. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced in September that there have been 23 weather extreme events in America that cost at least $1 billion this year through August, eclipsing the year-long record total of 22 set in 2020. So far this year’s disasters have cost more than $57.6 billion and claimed at least...

An Israeli shell landed in a gathering of international journalists covering clashes on the border in south Lebanon on October 13, killing a Reuters videographer and injuring six other journalists. An Associated Press photographer at the scene saw the body of Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and the six who were wounded, some of whom were rushed to hospitals in ambulances. Images from the scene showed a charred car. “We are deeply saddened to tell you that our videographer, Issam Abdallah, has been killed,” the Reuters news agency said in a statement. The agency added that Abdallah was part of...

After nearly 20 months of waging war in Ukraine, Russia was suspended by the IOC on October 12 for a land grab in sports administration. The International Olympic Committee’s executive board imposed the suspension on the Russian Olympic Committee for a breach of the Olympic Charter — a book of rules and principles for international sports bodies — by incorporating sports councils in four regions in eastern Ukraine. The suspension does not immediately affect any Russians who are returning to compete in international sports as neutral athletes, including in some qualifying events for next year’s Paris Olympics. Russian Olympic...

Leading up to the 2020 election, Facebook ads targeting Latino and Asian American voters described Joe Biden as a communist. A local station claimed a Black Lives Matter co-founder practiced witchcraft. Doctored images showed dogs urinating on Donald Trump campaign posters. None of these claims was true, but they scorched through social media sites that advocates say have fueled election misinformation in communities of color. As the 2024 election approaches, community organizations are preparing for what they expect to be a worsening onslaught of disinformation targeting communities of color and immigrant communities. They say the tailored campaigns challenge assumptions...

Hughes Van Ellis was the youngest known survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre. He spent his latter years pursuing justice for his family and other descendants of the attack on “Black Wall Street.” He died at 102. The World War II veteran and published author who was affectionately called “Uncle Redd” by his family and community died on October 9 while in hospice in Denver, said his family’s publicist, Mocha Ochoa. After the war, Van Ellis worked as a sharecropper and went on to raise seven children, all in the shadow of the Tulsa massacre in 1921, when a...