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UPDATE 10:52 AM – The suspect accused of stealing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s Gucci bag containing approximately $3,000 in cash has been identified as a Chilean undocumented migrant. According to a report by the New York Post, Mario Bustamante-Leiva, 49, was detained on Saturday after reportedly stealing the shoulder bag when Noem, 53, was celebrating Easter with her family at The Capital Burger in Washington, DC. Bustamante-Leiva, who is illegally in the United States, is considered to be a member of a vast east coast robbery network, and law enforcement is still looking for another undocumented immigrant who served...

Sept 30 (Reuters) - U.S. East and Gulf Coast port workers are set to go on strike at midnight on Monday with no talks currently scheduled to head off a stoppage threatening to halt container traffic from Maine to Texas and cost the economy as much as $5 billion a day. The labor contract between the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) union representing 45,000 port workers and the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) employer group expires late Monday, with negotiations at an impasse over pay. A port strike will go ahead starting Tuesday at 12:01 a.m. ET, the ILA said on...

First came the spotted lanternflies, then the cicadas — and now, the spiders? The Northeast U.S. is bracing for an invasion of giant venomous spiders with 4-inch-long legs that can parachute through the air.

Former President Donald Trump said recently that "windmills are causing whales to die in numbers never seen before."(Illustration by The Epoch Times)His comments, made at a campaign rally in South Carolina, were quickly ground through the fact-checking mills of legacy media outlets such as The Guardian and the BBC."They’re washing up ashore. I saw it this weekend, three of them came up. You wouldn’t see it once a year. Now they’re coming up on a weekly basis," President Trump said.The Guardian called his allegation a "lengthy and largely baseless attack on wind turbines for causing large numbers of whales to...

The Northeast looks to another wet weekend ahead as the remnants of Tropical Storm Philippe and an incoming cold front will soak New England and potentially flood New York for a second time in a fortnight. Tropical Storm Philippe lashed Bermuda with heavy rains and winds but lost steam and was downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone Friday as it churned northward on a path toward Atlantic Canada and New England. But the East Coast won't be spared by the storm as its remnants combined with a eastward-moving cold front will make for another rainy weekend. Maine is set to be...

Models show Hurricane Lee could slam into the East Coast next week, bringing deadly storm surge and heavy rains to Boston and New York City, as it conjures memories of Superstorm Sandy's catastrophic impact on the region. On Thursday, Hurricane Lee was churning in the open waters to the northeast of the Caribbean as a Category 4 storm and heading toward the Leeward Islands. The storm has picked up steam in the last day and now has winds in excess of 130mph. 'Lee continues to strengthen at an exceptional rate,' the National Hurricane Center stated. The European model of the...

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg fired back at Republican criticism over his response to the derailment of a train carrying toxic chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio, blasting his critics as “card-carrying members of the East Coast elite.” “It’s really rich to see some of these folks — the former president, these Fox hosts — who are literally lifelong card-carrying members of the East Coast elite, whose top economic policy priority has always been tax cuts for the wealthy, and who wouldn’t know their way around a T.J. Maxx if their life depended on it, to be presenting themselves as if they...

One of the worst major coastal flooding events on record — likely near Superstorm Sandy levels — is imminent for parts of the Eastern Seaboard as a soon-to-be bomb cyclone enters the Northeast. This comes in the absence of blizzard conditions on the warm side of the dangerous winter storm that is walloping the Midwest and Great Lakes as it begins to spread toward the East Coast ahead of the Christmas holiday weekend. The Fox Forecast Center said windswept rain is expected Friday in the Northeast as powerful winds blast the region with widespread 50-plus-mph wind gusts. In addition, 60-...

In a time of rising gasoline demand and refinery bottlenecks, the US could use more octane as the spread between premium gas (octane level of 93) and regular gas (octane level of 87) has blown out. Premium fuels eliminate engine knock in high-performance vehicles that have high compression engines. For most vehicles, using regular gas is advised and cheaper. Wholesale premium fuel sells for 62.50 cents more per gallon, a record high. Bloomberg explains the blowout of the spread is due to “low supplies of octane,” which may exacerbate gasoline supply tightness this summer for premium fuel, adding it could...

The authors say the arachnids are harmless to people and pets and may even eat pests like stink bugsLast year in Georgia, the non-native Joro spider population exploded. Golden webs draped porches, powerlines and mailboxes across at least 25 counties in the state, per the Hexapod Herald’s Michele Hatcher. “I have several hundred, and they actually make the place look spooky with all the messy webs—like a scene out of 'Arachnophobia,'” entomologist Will Hudson of the University of Georgia Extension told the Herald last fall. The spiders are large and eye-catching, about the size of a human adult’s palm, with...

The second major snowstorm in five days hit the East Coast on Thursday, and AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Joe Lundberg said it could develop into the first bomb cyclone of 2022. A bomb cyclone is said to occur when a storm's central pressure plummets 24 millibars within 24 hours. The mid-latitude cyclone rapidly intensifies, causing the atmospheric pressure to quickly drop and strengthening the storm. The lower the pressure, the more powerful the storm. Lake-effect snow has already hit Buffalo, NY, accumulating almost 10 inches as of 10 a.m., according to AccuWeather. "Heavy snow at the Buffalo airport this morning has...

If so many container ships are stuck in the Pacific Ocean, waiting for weeks for a berth in Los Angeles or Long Beach, why not reschedule calls to another port? Why not make like Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken in the circa-1996 film and “Escape from LA”?It’s not that simple, given how much warehousing and transloading capacity is built around the Southern California gateway — and congestion is affecting every port in America. Even so, shippers and carriers are indeed moving to sidestep Los Angeles/Long Beach. In the ongoing battle for Asian imports between the West Coast and East Coast,...

Why should people in the eastern United States be concerned about earthquakes? 1) Severe earthquakes have occurred in the eastern U.S. In November of 1755, an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 6.0 and a maximum intensity of 7.0 occurred about 50 miles northeast of Boston, Massachusetts. Boston was heavily damaged. Other strong earthquakes recorded in the continental US were centered in southeastern Missouri near the border with Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee. In the winter of 1811-1812, a series of three powerful earthquakes of magnitudes about 7.0 to 7.8 and hundreds of aftershocks occurred near New Madrid, Missouri.

ATLANTA - Days after an Alpharetta-based energy company reported a ransomware attack and halted its operations amid an investigation, it's still unclear how consumers will be affected and if a fuel shortage on the East Coast is imminent. Colonial Pipeline moves gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and home heating oil from refineries primarily located on the Gulf Coast through pipelines running from Texas to New Jersey. It is a major supplier of fuel and delivers an estimated 45% of all fuel consumed on the East Coast. The Georgia-based company said it transports more than 100 million gallons of fuel daily, through...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. energy company says a cyberattack forced it to temporarily halt all operations on a major pipeline that delivers roughly 45% of all fuel consumed on the East Coast. Colonial Pipeline said the attack took place Friday and also affected some of its information technology systems. The company transports gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and home heating oil from refineries primarily located on the Gulf Coast through pipelines running from Texas to New Jersey. The Alpharetta, Georgia-based company said it hired an outside cybersecurity firm to investigate the nature and scope of the attack and has also...

A cyberattack forced the shutdown of one of the largest pipelines in the United States, in what appeared to be a significant attempt to disrupt vulnerable energy infrastructure. The pipeline carries refined gasoline and jet fuel up the East Coast from Texas to New York. The operator of the system, Colonial Pipeline, said in a statement late Friday that it had shut down its 5,500 miles of pipeline, which it says carries 45 percent of the East Coast’s fuel supplies, in an effort to contain the attack on its computer networks. Earlier Friday, there were disruptions along the pipeline, but...

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday the state is “controlling the spread” of the coronavirus, and it appears that “the worst is over ... if we continue to be smart going forward.” But he pointed to a flattening of the daily death toll, the flattening in the net number of hospitalizations and a drop in the number of people on ventilators as evidence that radical measures such as the shuttering of nonessential businesses have helped to contain the virus. Cuomo said he will make an announcement later Monday about plans for reopening the state in conjunction with some other...

More than 190 people reported seeing the gleaming rock between 6:35 a.m. and 6:45 a.m., in seven states on the East Coast, according to the American Meteor Society, a not-for-profit that tracks meteor sightings. Video posted on Twitter shows what appears to be the fireball dipping down in the clear blue sky over West New York in Hudson County, N.J. One person reported seeing the astronomical event in Flushing, Queens, at 6:35 a.m., and two minutes later, another lucky onlooker spotted the fireball from Pelham Parkway in the Bronx, AMS said. Thousands of fireballs and meteors occur in the earth’s...

Tropical Storm Florence is quickly approaching the eastern United States, and according to the National Hurricane Center, the storm's threat to the East Coast keeps rising. The storm is traveling over warm water, and is expected to increase its speed and become a hurricane Saturday night. The National Hurricane Center forecasts Florence will be a dangerous major hurricane near the southeast U.S. coast by late next week, "and the risk of direct impacts continues to increase." "However, given the uncertainty in track and intensity forecasts at those time ranges," the National Hurricane Center tweeted, "it's too soon to determine the...

Energy Secretary Rick Perry on Thursday christened the first natural gas export terminal on the East Coast, at the Cove Point facility in Maryland outside of Washington. “We can become a reliable competitive alternative anywhere in the world, and we will,” Perry said in remarks opening the second natural gas export terminal in the country. Energy exports are key to Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda, and Perry said the president fully supports the new terminal. “This president understands the power of energy and he is eager to unleash our bounty to the world, which is why he is so supportive of...