Caribbean Islands Destroyed as Irma’s Wrath Continues: Here’s What We’re Reading
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Here’s what we’re reading today.
1. Hurricane Irma kills 11, leaves thousands homeless as it flattens Caribbean islands
“French, British and Dutch rescuers rushed aid to a string of Caribbean islands Thursday after Hurricane Irma left at least 11 dead and thousands homeless as it traced a course that could lead to a catastrophic strike on Florida this weekend.
“Warships and military planes were dispatched to the stricken zone with food, water and troops after the fearsome Category 5 storm smashed homes, schools and roads.
“Hundreds of the miles to the northwest, Florida braced for the onslaught, with forecasters warning Irma could slam headlong into the Miami metropolitan area of six million people, punish the entire length of the state’s Atlantic coast and push on into Georgia and South Carolina.”
– CBC News
2. Toronto fighting to land Amazon’s new headquarters
“Toronto is fighting to host Amazon’s second headquarters but will face fierce competition for the promised tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in investments. Seattle-based Amazon announced early Thursday its search for a site for ‘Amazon HQ2,’ a second company headquarters in North America.
“‘Amazon expects to invest more than $5 billion (U.S.) in construction and grow this second headquarters to include as many as 50,000 high-paying jobs.'”
3. The first white President
From Ta-Nehisi Coates: “To Trump, whiteness is neither notional nor symbolic but is the very core of his power. In this, Trump is not singular. But whereas his forebears carried whiteness like an ancestral talisman, Trump cracked the glowing amulet open, releasing its eldritch energies. The repercussions are striking: Trump is the first president to have served in no public capacity before ascending to his perch. But more telling, Trump is also the first president to have publicly affirmed that his daughter is a ‘piece of ass.’ The mind seizes trying to imagine a black man extolling the virtues of sexual assault on tape (‘When you’re a star, they let you do it’), fending off multiple accusations of such assaults, immersed in multiple lawsuits for allegedly fraudulent business dealings, exhorting his followers to violence, and then strolling into the White House. But that is the point of white supremacy—to ensure that that which all others achieve with maximal effort, white people (particularly white men) achieve with minimal qualification. Barack Obama delivered to black people the hoary message that if they work twice as hard as white people, anything is possible. But Trump’s counter is persuasive: Work half as hard as black people, and even more is possible.”
4. The fake Americans Russia created to influence the election
“An investigation by The New York Times, and new research from the cybersecurity firm FireEye, reveals some of the mechanisms by which suspected Russian operators used Twitter and Facebook to spread anti-Clinton messages and promote the hacked material they had leaked. On Wednesday, Facebook officials disclosed that they had shut down several hundred accounts that they believe were created by a Russian company linked to the Kremlin and used to buy $100,000 in ads pushing divisive issues during and after the American election campaign.”
+1: Facebook’s Russian ads disclosure could lead to regulation – BuzzFeed News
5. Hollywood’s big bet on China is backfiring
“The film industry wants to make blockbusters that work in the U.S. and overseas, but the plan is tanking.”
