Mother Nature, you need to calm down. There's all kinds of new extreme weather news, plus everything else you need to know to Get Up to Speed and Out the Door.
Puerto Rico is facing a worst-case scenario: The beleaguered island is set to get the full force of Hurricane Maria's Category 4 winds. When will it happen? Literally, any minute now. Luckily, thousands of Puerto Ricans heeded calls to take refuge in shelters as the Caribbean island braces for a direct hit. And a convention center in San Juan that's still housing Hurricane Irma evacuees is now preparing to welcome thousands more residents.
If you're wondering why this hurricane season feels so extreme, weather experts point to "rapid intensification" to explain the powerful storms: It usually takes several days to a week for a tropical storm to grow into a hurricane, but if conditions are just right, a powerful major hurricane can develop in just hours, which is what we saw with the likes of Maria, Harvey, Irma and Jose. And unfortunately, we still have a few more weeks of peak hurricane season.
3. Trump at UN
President Trump ruffled some feathers (stop us if you've heard that one) during his speech yesterday at the United Nations. In an address meant to admonish rogue nations, he called North Korean leader Kim Jong Un "Rocket Man" (again) and said the US would "totally destroy North Korea" if forced to defend itself or its allies.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and French President Emmanuel Macron were among the leaders who questioned the characteristically bombastic rhetoric. "Our responsibility to all of our partners, including China and Russia, is through resolve to bring North Korea to the negotiation table for a political settlement to this conflict," Macron said. "France rejects escalation."
4. Paul Manafort
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team is reaching back more than a decade in its investigation of Paul Manafort, a sign of the pressure Mueller is placing on President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman. The FBI's warrant for a July search of Manafort's Alexandria, Virginia, home said the investigation centered on possible crimes committed as far back as January 2006, according to a source briefed on the investigation. The broad time frame is the latest indication that Mueller's team is going well beyond Russian meddling during the campaign as part of its investigation of Trump campaign associates.
5. Human trafficking
The President wasn't the only Trump to deliver a speech at the UN. Ivanka Trump gave an anti-human trafficking speech, calling it "the greatest human rights issue of our time." "It is hard to grasp how tens of millions of people across the globe can experience this scale of human suffering. It is unacceptable," she said. Indeed, a new report finds there are 40 million slaves in the world -- and about a quarter of them are children.
This video is titled "The Happiest Moment in Human History" -- and it's no lie I don't know, it just felt like the right day for a puppy surprise video. (Click to view)
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