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California’s top utility regulator blasted Pacific Gas and Electric on Monday for what she called “failures in execution” during the largest planned power outage in state history to avoid wildfires that she said “created an unacceptable situation that should never be repeated.”
 
The agency ordered a series of corrective actions, including a goal of restoring power within 12 hours, not the utility’s current 48-hour goal.

“The scope, scale, complexity, and overall impact to people’s lives, businesses, and the economy of this action cannot be understated,” California Public Utilities Commission President Marybel Batjer wrote in a letter to PG&E CEO Bill Johnson.
 

PG&E last week took the unprecedented step of cutting power to more than 700,000 customers, affecting nearly 2 million Californians. The company said it did it because of dangerous wind forecasts but acknowledged that its execution was poor.
 
Its website frequently crashed, and many people said they did not receive enough warning that the power was going out.
 
“We were not adequately prepared,” Johnson said at a press conference last week.

PG&E spokespeople did not immediately respond Monday to a request for comment on the sanctions.

In addition to restoring power faster, the PUC said the utility must work harder to avoid such large-scale outages, develop better ways to communicate with the public and local officials, get a better system for distributing outage maps, and work with emergency personnel to ensure PG&E staff are sufficiently trained.
 
She ordered the utility to perform an audit of its performance during the outages that began Wednesday, saying the utility clearly did not adopt many of the recommendations state officials have made since utilities was granted the authority to begin pre-emptive power shutoffs last year. The review is due by Thursday, and she ordered several PG&E executives to appear at an emergency PUC hearing Friday.

Governor’s criticism
 
Gov. Gavin Newsom has also criticized PG&E for its performance during the outage, blaming what he called decades of mismanagement, underinvestment and lousy communication with the public. On Monday the Democratic governor urged the utility to compensate affected customers with a bill credit or rebate worth $100 for residential customers or $250 for small businesses.

Newsom said the shutoffs affected too many customers for too long, and it is clear PG&E implemented them “with astounding neglect and lack of preparation.”

Batjer’s letter also said that PG&E’s service territory, design of its transmission lines and distribution network and “lack of granularity of its forecasting ability” mean it can’t do pre-emptive power shut-offs as strategically as some other utilities, but she said it must work harder to reduce the number of customers affected by future outages.
 

…

Ken Bredemeier contributed to this report.

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper says Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “bears full responsibility” for the resurgence of Islamic State, a growing humanitarian crisis, and possible war crimes.

This was the Pentagon’s strongest condemnation so far of Turkey’s military operation against Kurdish fighters in northern Syria.

Esper calls Turkey’s attacks on the Kurds “unnecessary and impulsive.” He says it has undermined what he calls the “successful” multinational mission to defeat Islamic State in Syria by allowing “many dangerous ISIS detainees” to flee detention camps that had been guarded by the Kurds.

Esper says U.S. relations with Turkey have been damaged. He says he plans to go to Brussels next week to press other NATO allies to slap sanctions on Turkey.

Turkish forces entered into northern Syria last week after U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the pull out of the approximately 1,000 U.S. forces in the area. They will be redeployed elsewhere in the Middle East to “monitor the situation,” according to Trump.

The U.S. had been fighting side-by-side with the Kurds in Syria to defeat Islamic State. The extremists were just one rebel faction trying to overthrow the Syrian government.

Turkey regards the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces as a terrorist group aligned with Kurdish separatists inside Turkey.

Vice President Mike Pence says Trump is sending him to the Middle East in an apparent attempt to push Turkey and the Kurds to the negotiating table.

Pence says Trump spoke to Erdogan on Monday, calling for an immediate end to the military operation.

The U.S. is “simply not going to tolerate Turkey’s invasion of Syria any longer,” Pence said.

‘Irresponsible’ actions 

Syrian Kurds say they feel forsaken by the United States. They also believe much of the Arab world and the U.N. Security Council are ignoring them.

But Esper says Turkey’s “irresponsible” actions have created an unacceptable risk to U.S. forces in northern Syria, including the possibility of the U.S. getting “engulfed in a broader conflict.”

Trump continued Monday to defend his decision to order the U.S. out of the area against strong criticism from both parties and European allies.

“Do people really think we should go to war with NATO Member Turkey?” Trump tweeted. “Never ending wars will end! The same people who got us into the Middle East mess are the people who most want to stay there!”

Trump said he is raising tariffs on Turkish steel imports and is stopping trade talks with Turkey while Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced sanctions on the Turkish defense, interior, and energy ministers and their departments.

“I am fully prepared to swiftly destroy Turkey’s economy if Turkish leaders continue down this dangerous and destructive path,” he said.

‘Gravely concerned’

Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has called on the entire House to pass a resolution condemning Trump’s decision to pull out of Syria. But she also agrees that Turkey must be condemned for its actions.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he is “gravely concerned” about the Turkish offensive, contending it will jeopardize “years of hard-won progress” in destroying Islamic State.

But the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Michael McCaul, says the sanctions Trump and Mnuchin announced “do not go far enough to punish Turkey for its egregious offenses in Syria.”

In Syria, government forces entered a town near the Turkish border Monday, a day after reaching an agreement with Syrian Kurds to move into the region in an attempt to counter the Turkish onslaught.

Syria’s state-run SANA news agency reported Monday’s troop movement in Tal Tamr, about 20 kilometers from the border, saying it was done to “confront the Turkish aggression” and was welcomed by the people there.

The fighting since the Turkish operation began nearly a week ago has killed dozens of civilians, observers say.

The U.S. State Department has condemned reports of pro-Turkish fighters executing civilians.
 

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American Simone Biles became the most decorated gymnast in world championship history on Sunday when she won the beam and floor finals to take her career tally to 25 medals.

Soon after securing a convincing victory on the beam in Stuttgart to overtake Belarusian Vitaly Scherbo’s record tally of 23 world medals, the 22-year-old Biles successfully defended her floor title to win medal number 25.

The four-time Olympic champion is now the owner of 19 gold medals across four championships against 12 for Scherbo, who competed in five world events between 1991 and 1996.

Making her final appearance of the week in front of a raucous crowd, Biles wasted no time as she landed a superb triple-twisting double back flip — known as the Biles II – on her first pass.

Biles’s double layout with a half turn — another skill named after her — put her out of bounds for a 0.1 penalty but she did enough to post a winning score of 15.133.

“Honestly, I just couldn’t move. I was so tired,” Biles said of her final pose on the stage.

“This is really the best worlds performance I have ever put out.”

The Americans took a one-two finish as Sunisa Lee finished with 14.133 for the silver medal, while Russian Angelina Melnikova came third.

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Olympic Champ Simone Biles Says She was Abused by Doctor

Simone Biles watched as her friends and former Olympic teammates came forward to detail abuse at the hands of a now-imprisoned former USA Gymnastics team doctor.Drawing in part from their strength, the four-time gold medalist acknowledged Monday she is among the athletes who were sexually abused by Larry Nassar.Biles, who won five medals overall at the 2016 Olympics, released a statement via Twitter outlining that abuse.

BEAM BRILLIANCE

Earlier, Biles delivered a polished routine on the beam before a full twisting double tuck dismount for an impressive 15.066.

Although Biles had twice before won the world beam title, in 2014 and 2015, it has not always been plain sailing for her on the apparatus.

Her slip on the landing of a front tucked somersault at the 2016 Rio Olympics meant she had to settle for a bronze in the event. Last year again, she dropped off the beam during the women’s all-around final at the world championships.

But she has regained her swagger this week, under the watchful eyes of balance beam coach Cecile Landi, and posted top scores in all four attempts — qualifying, the team and all-around finals and Sunday’s apparatus final.

“It meant a lot because Cecile has really been working on bringing my confidence back up to where it used to be on the beam,” Biles said.

“To go out there and nail the routine, just like I do in practice, it felt really good and I knew she was really proud.”

As another title-winning score was announced in the arena, Biles punched the air in jubilation before joining celebrations with the U.S. team.

“I was really excited,” she added. “I thought it was going to be at least 14.8, 14.9, but to see 15, I was like well that’s pretty crazy, so I was very proud.”

Last year’s winner Liu Tingting of China took silver with 14.433, while team mate Li Shijia won the bronze.

Biles finished her campaign in Stuttgart with five gold medals from six events to mark ideal preparations for next year’s Tokyo Olympics.

Her barnstorming run included a record fifth all-around gold, an individual vault title, as well as helping the U.S. to a fifth straight world team title.

 

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Parents of the British teen killed when his motorcycle collided with car allegedly driven by an American diplomat’s wife are on their way to the U.S. hoping to seek justice.

Harry Dunn, 19, died in August in near the Croughton Royal Air Force base in Northhamptonshire, which is used by the U.S. Air Force as a communications center.

Dunn’s mother, Charlotte Charles, told the BBC the family hopes to meet with the suspected driver, identified by British police and Prime Minister Boris Johnson as Anne Sacoolas, wife of an American intelligence officer based at Croughton.

Sacoolas claimed diplomatic immunity and returned to the United States while the case was still being investigated. She has since written a letter of apology to Dunn’s family.

But Charles said Sunday, “It’s nearly seven weeks now since we lost our boy, sorry just doesn’t cut it.

“That’s not really quite enough,” she told Sky News. “But I’m still really open to meeting her, as are the rest of us. I can’t promise what I would or wouldn’t say, but I certainly wouldn’t be aggressive.”

Charles also said the family was thankful to receive a letter Saturday from the Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab that said since Sacoolas had left Britain, “immunity is no longer pertinent”.

The family is hoping Sacoolas will return to Britain.  They have even called on U.S. President Donald Trump to intervene on their behalf.

But Trump told a news conference Wednesday that Sacoolas would not return. Harry Dunn’s death was a “terrible accident,” the president said but he noted that driving on the worn side of the road “happens”.

 

 

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California has become the first U.S. state to ban all production and sale of animal fur products.

Governor Gavin Newsom signed the bill that will make it illegal to make, sell and even donate any new item made using animal fur starting in 2023.

The bill excludes used items, taxidemy products, fur taken with a hunting license and fur used by Native American tribes for religious purposes.

Violators of the ban will face fines of up to $500, or even $1,000 for repeat offenses.

“The signing of AB44 underscores the point that today’s consumers simply don’t want wild animals to suffer extreme pain and fear for the sake of fashion,” Kitty Block, the head of the Humane Society of the United States said in a statement.

But the Fur Information Council of America condemned the ban as being part of a “radical vegan agenda” and has threatened a court challenge.

Along with the fur ban, Newsom also approved a ban on the use of most animals in circuses. Exceptions will be made for dogs and horses.

“California is a leader when it comes to animal welfare, and today that leadership includes banning the sale of fur,” Newsom said in a statement. “But we are doing more than that. We are making a statement to the world that beautiful wild animals like bears and tigers have no place on trapeze wires or jumping through flames.”

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Humanitarian groups on Sunday said they have rescued 74 migrants on a rubber boat in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Libya while Tunisian authorities reported blocking a smuggling boat carrying 110 migrants from setting off for Italy.

Doctors Without Borders and SOS Mediterranee said their Ocean Viking ship rescued the migrants Sunday morning about 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the Libyan coast near an oilfield. The groups said six children were among those rescued.

Tunisia’s Interior Ministry said three coast guard boats pursued the smuggling boat after it left Friday night from the city of Sfax. Officers shouted through loudspeakers at the boat and passengers threw projectiles that injured two officers and broke windows.

The coast guard eventually forced the boat back toward Tunisia and rescued 25 migrants who had jumped into the sea.

Meanwhile, three small boats carrying migrants reached Italian shores on Sunday. ANSA, the Italian news agency, said two boats – one carrying 15 people, the other 11 – landed on the island of Lampedusa. The agency says a third boat with 15 Tunisians aboard landed in southern Sicily.

 

…

Indian police and intelligence agencies detained a freelancer for the Voice of America’s Tibetan service as he arrived in Chennai Friday (October 11) to cover the informal summit between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

A freelancer for Radio Free Asia’s Tibetan service was also detained.  Both VOA and RFA are part of the U.S. Agency for Global Media.

Cyaltsen Choedak for VOA and Pema Ngudup for RFA, were held for more than 40 hours, first at the Chennai railway station, then at a police station and finally at two guesthouses before they were released.

 

…

One of Australia’s most senior government ministers has accused the Chinese Communist Party of behaving in ways that are “inconsistent” with his country’s values. Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton warned Canberra would work to counter foreign interference in Australian universities, as well as cyber espionage.

Peter Dutton’s comments are some of the most uncompromising language yet from an Australian government minister on the perceived threat posed by China.

Tensions between Canberra and Beijing have risen in recent times because of allegations of cyber attacks by China, and that it has meddled in Australia’s domestic politics. There’s also been friction over the detention of a Chinese-Australian writer in Beijing, and differences over Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Australia also has concerns about Chinese interference in its universities, including allegations that students who have supported democracy protests in Hong Kong have been harassed or monitored by Chinese agents on campus.

Peter Dutton said Australia must be wary of China’s ambitions.

“My issue is with the Communist Party of China and their policies to the extent that they are inconsistent with our own values, and in a democracy like ours we encourage freedom of speech, freedom of the expression of thought, and if that is being impinged, if people are operating outside of the law then whether they are from China or from any other country we are right to call that out,” he said.

The comments prompted a stinging response from the Chinese government.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, told a press conference that he hoped “Australia will reject the Cold War mentality and bias, and work to advance bilateral relations and mutual trust.”

The Chinese Embassy in Canberra said it rejected “Mr Dutton’s irrational accusations … which are shocking and baseless.”

Australia is a liberal, middle-ranking world power. China is its biggest trading partner by some distance, and three of the main pillars of the Australian economy, mining, tourism and education, rely heavily on demand from China.

The challenge for Australia, which has a close military alliance with the United States, is to be able to criticize and challenge China while maintaining a key trade relationship that has underpinned its recent prosperity.

 

…

Human rights organizations say they are preparing for a long-lasting displacement of civilians in northeastern Syria as a result of a military operation by Turkey and its aligned Syrian militants against the U.S.-allied Syrian Democratic Forces.

The new Turkish offensive into Syria on Wednesday started after U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision Sunday to withdraw U.S. troops from the region.

As the Turkish government on Thursday said its military pushed deeper into the region in its operation, humanitarian agency Care International told VOA that approximately 90,000 people have become internally displaced since its beginning on Wednesday.

“Following the launch of a new military operation in the area, civilians in northeast Syria are at high risk,” said Fatima Azzeh, the senior regional communications manager for the Syria crisis at Care International.

“Reports from responders on the ground say civilians are already on the move and some vital services, such as medical facilities and water supplies, have been interrupted,” Azzeh said, adding that thousands more civilians are expected to leave the area in coming days.

The new wave of violence has forced several aid agencies to ask their staffs to evacuate the area with their families.

“This would cause further vulnerability and increased reliance on humanitarian aid, which the international community is not in a position to provide,” she said.

Turkish officials say their military operation, code named Operation Peace Spring, is to pursue a Kurdish armed group known as the Peoples’ Protection Units or the YPG. Turkey considers the YPG a terrorist organization — alleging that the group is linked to Kurdish separatists inside Turkey, known as the PKK.

The United States, however, considers the YPG a key ally, and it became the main local ground force to remove Islamic State (IS) from a wide range of Syrian territory, including the self-proclaimed IS capital, Raqqa.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that in addition to pursuing YPG fighters, his government in northern Syria will take charge of nearly 10,000 IS fighters who are currently held in Kurdish prisons and establish a safe zone to return millions of Syrian refugees from Turkey.

Warning to Europe

Responding to a demand by the European Union to cease the offensive, Erdogan on Thursday threatened to open Turkey’s door to allow the Syrian refugees to flood Europe.

“Hey, European Union, pull yourself together. If you try to label this operation as an occupation, it is very simple: we will open the gates and send 3.6 million refugees your way,” Erdogan said in a speech to ruling party officials in Ankara.

Kurds consider Turkey’s refugee transfer plan an attempt to change the demographic balance of the region by moving large numbers of Sunni Arab Syrians into a traditionally Kurdish heartland.

The conflict in Syria broke out in 2011 following a popular uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s government. The United Nations estimates nearly half of Syria’s population has been displaced, with an estimated 6.6 million refugees fleeing the country.

Demographic shifts, displacements

The U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria, in a statement Thursday, said Turkey’s scale-up of the operation in northeast Syria also could cause mass displacement of vulnerable populations that already have been displaced multiple times by conflict and live in camps. It warned that the campaign could lead to insecurity and chaos, which could create circumstances for the resurgence of IS.

“The last thing Syrians need now is a new wave of violence,” the commission said.

Amnesty International told VOA that roughly 700,000 people within the region have fled war from other Syrian areas and depend on U.N. aid and assistance from other humanitarian organizations for their basic needs. Another million local residents could be gravely affected by the conflict.

“When [Islamic State] took over large swaths of Syria and sent many religious minority communities from other parts of Syria, and in addition to tens of thousands of just regular civilians who were terrified of living under ISIS, they fled into this part of Syria feeling like it was a safe area for them to be in,” said Philippe Nassif, the human rights group’s advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“So, what’s happening is with the Turkish incursion you’ve got a very large population of internally displaced people and civilians that were already living in this part of Syria, many of them Kurdish, who are now beginning to flee the currently ongoing Turkish intervention,” Nassif told VOA.

Even after Turkey’s operation, Nassif charged that a second phase of humanitarian crisis likely will unfold as the Turkish government tries to implement its so-called safe zone. “You’re going to eventually see this idea of Turkey sending a whole bunch of Syrian refugees from Turkey and resettling them into these newly captured areas.”

“Assuming that happens, they’re going to need humanitarian support and assistance as well. So, you have a second crisis in the future that will result from the current crisis that we’re experiencing right now,” he added.

…

Arab League foreign ministers condemned Turkey’s military incursion into northern Syria. The League’s secretary general, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, said the group is calling on the U.N. Security Council to take action against Turkey. 

At a meeting Saturday in Cairo, Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit called Turkey’s military action an “invasion” and an “aggression” against an Arab state.

He said the Arab League “condemns the invasion and that the world must not accept it, either, since it contradicts international norms and international law, no matter what pretext the invader uses.”

Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Ali Hakim, who presided over the session, said the Turkish “invasion” would cause a further deterioration of the situation in Syria and a worsening of terrorism both in Syria and neighboring states, like Iraq.

He said Turkey’s action represents a dangerous escalation that will worsen the humanitarian situation and increase the suffering of the Syrian people, in addition to allowing terrorists to regroup and weakening international efforts to fight terrorist groups, especially the Islamic State terror group, which threatens both the region and world.

The United Arab Emirate’s minister of state for foreign affairs, Anwar Ghargash, also blasted what he called “Turkey’s blatant aggression” against Syria and urged the international community to condemn it.

Ghargash said the Arab League is meeting at a time when the entire Arab nation is facing unprecedented threats and the region is facing a period of extreme danger, which requires a carefully thought out response, as some regional parties are behaving compulsively without consideration for the unity or sovereignty of a fraternal Arab state.

“Turkey’s naked military aggression on northeast Syria,” he said,”represents a threat to the sovereignty of all Arab states and exploits chaos in the country to flout all international norms and destabilize the region.”

Egyptian state TV didn’t broadcast the statement of Qatar’s foreign minister, but Arab media reported that Qatar refused to endorse the Arab League decision to condemn the Turkish military operation. Qatar and Turkey have kept close ties since Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain imposed an economic boycott against Doha in June of 2018, for what they say is its support for terrorism.

Egyptian political sociologist Said Sadek told VOA the Arab League should have taken “stronger steps like economic sanctions” to punish Turkey for its aggression. “Turkey is an imperialist regional power with a long history of massacres in the area.”

Dr. Paul Sullivan, a professor at the U.S. National Defense University, agrees with Sadek, saying, “The Turkish invasion has been condemned by most Arab states, [but] that condemnation needs to be followed up by actions to prevent bad things from happening,” such as the “release of ISIS prisoners” and “ethnic cleansing in northern Syria.  Operation ‘peace spring’ is not peace,” he says, “and it will not bring springtime to Syria.”

Theodore Karasik, a Washington-based Mideast analyst, insisted that we are “witnessing a shift in the landscape in the Arab world regarding this [Turkish] military action.  Arab opinion,” he argues, “is steeped in the ills of the Ottoman Empire and how Erdogan’s actions fit the description.”

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The United States has hailed FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, for slapping a five-year ban on a former senior official of the Afghanistan Football Federation (AFF) for failing to act on sexual abuse allegations brought by the country’s female players.

“Survivors of sexual abuse deserve justice & we look to Afghan authorities to ensure accused officials are held accountable,” Alice Wells, acting U.S. assistant secretary for south and central Asia, tweeted Saturday.

We welcome @FIFAcom’s Ethics Committee’s suspension of an official who failed to act on allegations brought by the @AfghanistanWNT. Survivors of sexual abuse deserve justice & we look to Afghan authorities to ensure accused officials are held accountable. AGW

— State_SCA (@State_SCA) October 12, 2019

FIFA announced a day earlier its ongoing investigation into complaints, lodged by several female Afghan football players, has found Sayed Aghazada, the former AFF general secretary, guilty of breaching the world body’s code of ethics.

The complainants accused the former AFF president, Keramuudin Karim, of “repeated” sexual abuse between 2013 and 2018 when Aghazada was the general secretary. The players went public with the allegations last year, prompting FIFA to investigate and ban Karim for life in June. It also imposed a $1 million penalty on the former AFF president.

FIFA said Friday that Aghazada was aware of the abuse and had the duty to report and prevent it. Consequently, he has been banned from all football-related activity at both national and international level for five years. A financial penalty of about $10,000 was also imposed on him.

Aghazada was also serving as a member of the FIFA standing committee and as Asian Football Confederation (AFC) executive committee.

 

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The lights were back on Friday for many of the nearly 2 million Northern California residents who lost electricity when the state’s largest utility switched it off this week in an effort to prevent wildfires, as the first death linked to the outages was reported — a man who relied on oxygen.

The threat of widespread outages loomed in Southern California after the winds moved to the Los Angeles area, where a wildfire fueled by strong Santa Ana winds prompted officials to order the evacuation of 100,000 people from their homes in the foothills of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County.

In that fire, one man went into cardiac arrest and died at the scene.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. restored power in Northern California after workers inspected power lines to make sure it was safe to do so. The winds had increased the possibility of transmission lines toppling to the ground and starting wildfires.

The utility said 543,000 Northern California businesses and residences got their power back — but that nearly 195,000 customers were still in the dark. More than half of those who lost power in the San Francisco Bay Area had it again on Friday. The city itself was not subject to the preventive outages. Experts have said there are between two and three people for every electrical customer.

El Dorado County officials on Friday said a man dependent on oxygen died about 12 minutes after PG&E cut off power this week. Marie Aldea of Pollock Pines said her 67-year-old father Robert Mardis Sr. was asleep when the electricity went out around 3:30 a.m. Wednesday and likely couldn’t wake up in time to get his back up machine, which ran on battery.
 “We were all asleep, we heard my mom scream. She was crying,” she told KTXL-TV in Sacramento . “My dad went down in her arms, he was going for this oxygen machine.”

Aldea said her father’s health was poor, but she doesn’t understand why the utility turned off the power.
“No winds at all. And because of that, my father is gone,” she said.

PG&E spokesman Jeff Smith said the utility has not been able to confirm the report.
 
“It’s devastating beyond words,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom. “Losing a family member is horrific and to the extent this was the reason why I hope that is investigated and I hope those responsible are held to account.”
 
The death was first reported by the Mountain Democrat in Placerville.

Some people in the largely rural Butte, Plumas and Yuba counties and in Northern California’s wine country counties were in their third day without electricity.

Butte County is where a fire started by PG&E equipment last year decimated the town of Paradise and killed 85 people. In Napa and Sonoma counties north of San Francisco, the outages began on the two-year anniversary of deadly wildfires that killed 44 and destroyed thousands of homes.
 
PG&E said in a statement that employees located 11 spots where parts of its systems were damaged during the strong winds, but Smith said he could not provide damage details. That information will be in a state-mandated report the utility must give regulators within 10 business days after the outage ends.
 
PG&E faced hostility and second-guessing over the shut-offs, which prompted runs on supplies like coolers and generators and forced institutions to shut down.

Ryan Fisher, a partner in consumer goods and retail practice at global consultancy A.T. Kearney estimated $100 million in $200 million in fresh food was likely lost because of the outages along with $30 million a day in consumer spending.
 
PG&E cast the blackouts as a matter of public safety to prevent the kind of blazes that have killed scores of people over the past couple of years, destroyed thousands of homes, and ran up tens of billions of dollars in claims that drove the company into bankruptcy.

The utility suggested it was already seeing the wisdom of its decision borne out as gusts topping 77 mph (122 kph) raked some hilltops where wildfire risk was extremely high.

“We have found multiple cases of damage or hazards” caused by heavy winds, including fallen branches into overhead lines, said Sumeet Singh, a vice president for the utility.
 
Utility CEO Bill Johnson promised if future wind events require similar shut-offs, the utility will  “do better” at communicating with customers. It’s unacceptable that its website crashed, maps were inconsistent and call centers were overloaded, Johnson said.

“We were not adequately prepared,” he said.

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The United States is finding itself bogged down in northeastern Syria, caught in the middle of an increasingly dangerous fight between two key allies — Turkey and the Syrian Kurds — with neither side giving any sign it will back down. 
 
Further complicating matters, U.S. military and intelligence officials say they see indications that the Islamic State terror group, also known as ISIS or Daesh, is finding ways to take advantage of the chaos. 
 
U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Friday became the latest senior U.S. official to voice his disapproval, decrying Turkey’s military incursion during a hastily scheduled news conference at the Pentagon.  

“We oppose and are greatly disappointed by Turkey’s decision to launch a unilateral military incursion into northern Syria,” he said, describing the decision as “impulsive.” 
 
“This operation puts our SDF [Syrian Democratic Forces] partners in harm’s way,” he said. “It risks the security of ISIS prison camps and will further destabilize the region.” 
 
Turkish operation 
 
U.S. military officials said the Turkish incursion, named Operation Peace Spring by Ankara, has so far encompassed a 125-kilometer stretch along the Turkish-Syrian border, from Tal Abyad to Ras al-Ayn, both Syrian cities. 
 
“It’s been relatively limited in terms of ground forces,” Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Friday, noting the Turkish military has been relying on several commando units and fighters with the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army.  

Officials with the mainly Kurdish SDF said Turkey was also pounding their positions with artillery, warplanes and armed drones, adding there were no signs Turkish forces would ease off anytime soon, a view shared by the Pentagon. 
 
“I have no indication that they are willing to stop,” Esper said, noting he had emphasized to his Turkish counterpart “the damage this is doing.” 
 
Turkish officials said their goal was to create a 30-kilometer-wide zone along the border to protect Turkey from the Kurdish forces, which they say have long-standing ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). 
 
Both Turkey and the U.S. see the PKK as a terror group, though U.S. and Western officials say the Kurdish militias in Syria have been an effective and steadfast partner in the fight against Islamic State. 
 
“We are not abandoning our Kurdish partner forces,” Esper said. 
 
The U.S. announced Friday that it was drafting “very significant” new sanctions to pressure Turkey to ratchet down its operations. 
 
“We can shut down the Turkish economy if we need to,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin warned.
 
Staying the course 
 
Turkey seemed intent on staying the course, however. 
 
The Turkish operation “will not stop … no matter what anyone says,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. 
 
Separately, the Turkish ambassador to the U.S., Serdar Kılıç, said Friday, “The path forward is clear.”

“We are going to clear YPG-PYD elements from that region,” he said, using acronyms for the Kurdish militias. “We gave unreserved support to the United States in its fight against terrorism. We do not expect less.” 
 
Kılıç also promised Turkey would “pay utmost attention in order to avoid collateral damage and civilian casualties.” 
 
Senior U.S. officials said that despite such guarantees, U.S. President Donald Trump had ordered them to negotiate a settlement between Turkey, a NATO ally, and the Kurds. But Turkish officials seemed to dismiss such moves Friday, emphasizing the government does not negotiate with those they see as terrorists. 
 
Speaking by phone through an interpreter, from near the front lines, the top Kurdish military commander described the situation as frustrating and disappointing. 
 
“We are now preparing ourselves for a long military operation that might take more than a year,” SDF General Mazloum Abdi said Friday. 
 
“They want to attack all the Kurdish towns. … They want to destroy all of our area,” he said, adding that in addition to meeting with top U.S military officials earlier in the week, he was taking his case directly to the White House with a letter to Trump. 
 
“I ask him to mediate between us and Turkey, not through war but through dialogue and discussion,” Abdi said. 
 
“We want them [the Americans] just to impose a no-fly zone,” Abdi added. “President Trump is capable of doing this.” 
 
US, SDF forces 
 
For now, U.S. military officials said U.S. forces in northeast Syria remained “co-located” with the SDF, with the exception of “two small outposts” in the area from Tal Abyad to Ras al-Ayn, as part of the fight against Islamic State. 
 
A U.S. commander on the ground, 30 kilometers south of Tal Abyad, also told VOA’s Kurdish service U.S. forces were staying in the area to make sure Turkey’s incursion did not go too far. 
 
“We are still conducting operations,” Milley said at the Pentagon. “Obviously, this incursion that was initiated by the Turks has had some effect.” 
 
Turkish operations inside Syria also appeared to be the cause of a close call for U.S. troops in the town of Kobani, where artillery landed near their position, the Pentagon said in a statement. 
 
Navy Captain Brook DeWalt, director of Defense Press Operations, said in a statement that the explosion occurred “in an area known by the Turks to have U.S. forces present.” 
 
Turkey denied intentionally firing on the U.S. forces, and a U.S. official told VOA that no one was hurt in the explosion. 
 
“There are no indications this was intentional,” the official added without saying who was responsible. 
 
DeWalt said, “U.S. forces have not withdrawn from Kobani.” 
 
Only SDF officials raised additional concerns, accusing Turkey of bombing the abandoned American outposts in Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn. 
 
SDF-run prisons 
 
More worrisome, they said, is Turkey’s willingness to target SDF-run prisons, which are home to 9,000 to 12,500 IS fighters captured by Kurdish troops during the U.S.-led campaign to roll back the terror group’s self-declared caliphate. 
 
The SDF said Friday that at least two such prisons had been targeted by Turkish artillery and that the attack on a prison in the city of Qamishli allowed five prisoners to escape. 
 
The SDF’s Abdi said none of the escapees had been recaptured, and that because of Turkey’s actions, the SDF could no longer make the prisons a top priority. 
 
“If they [Turkey] don’t stop the war, our soldiers are going to have to leave,” Abdi said of the troops he had assigned to guard the prisons. He added that some of those troops had already been pulled to fight on the front lines. 
 
“All of these people are going to go to protect their villages, their towns, their families,” he added. 
 
Separately, IS claimed responsibility Friday for a deadly car bomb in Qamishli.
 
Top U.S. officials, including Trump, have said Turkey would be responsible for any IS prisoners in areas Turkish troops entered. 
 
But there have been no discussions about how such a transfer of control would take place. And the SDF was refusing to cooperate. 
 
“We will never, ever give these terrorists to Turkey,” Abdi said, adding the SDF would take its chances by releasing the IS prisoners if necessary. 
 
“Everybody is attacking us,” he said. “They can attack us, as well.” 

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A federal appeals court ruled Friday that President Donald Trump’s financial records must be turned over to the House of Representatives.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that lawmakers should get the documents they have subpoenaed from Mazars USA. The firm has provided accounting services to Trump.

Trump went to court to prevent Mazars from turning over the records. He could appeal to the Supreme Court.

Tax returns not included

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform subpoenaed records from Mazars in April. They include documents from 2011 to 2018 that the House wants for investigation into the president’s reporting of his finances and potential conflicts of interest. The list of documents makes no mention of Trump’s tax returns, which are the subject of separate legal disputes.

In a 2-1 ruling, the appeals court batted away Trump’s legal claims.

“Contrary to the President’s arguments, the Committee possesses authority under both the House Rules and the Constitution to issue the subpoena, and Mazars must comply,” Judge David Tatel wrote, joined by Judge Patricia Millett. Tatel was appointed by President Bill Clinton. Millett is an appointee of President Barack Obama.

Trump appointee Neomi Rao wrote in dissent that the committee should have asked for the records under the House’s impeachment power, not its legislative authority.

“The Constitution and our historical practice draw a consistent line between the legislative and judicial powers of Congress. The majority crosses this boundary for the first time by upholding this subpoena investigating the illegal conduct of the President under the legislative power,” Rao wrote.

Several records fights

The case is one of several working its way through courts in which Trump is fighting with Congress over records. The House Ways and Means Committee has sued the Trump administration over access to the president’s tax returns. In New York, Trump sued to prevent Deutsche Bank and Capital One from complying with House subpoenas for banking and financial records. A judge ruled against him, and Trump appealed. Trump also is in court trying to stop the Manhattan District Attorney from obtaining his tax returns.

Trump had argued that Oversight committee seeking the records from Mazars is out to get him and lacks a legitimate “legislative purpose” for its request. His lawyers have argued that congressional investigations are valid only if there is legislation that might result from them.

The committee, for its part, has said it is seeking the Trump financial statements, accounting records and other documents as part of its investigation into whether the president has undisclosed conflicts of interests, whether he has accurately reported his finances and whether he may have engaged in illegal conduct before and during his time in office.

The committee says the House is considering legislation related to government conflicts of interest and presidential financial disclosures, among other things.

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Two rockets struck an Iranian tanker traveling through the Red Sea off the coast of Saudi Arabia on Friday, Iranian officials said, the latest incident in the region amid months of heightened tensions between Tehran and the U.S. 

There was no word from Saudi Arabia on the reported attack, and Saudi officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

Iranian state television said the explosion damaged two storerooms aboard the unnamed oil tanker and caused an oil leak into the Red Sea near the Saudi port city of Jiddah.

The state-run IRNA news agency, quoting Iran’s National Iranian Tanker Co., identified the stricken vessel as the Sabity. That vessel last turned on its tracking devices in August near the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas.

US 5th Fleet ‘aware’

Lt. Pete Pagano, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet overseeing the Mideast, said authorities there were “aware of reports of this incident,” but declined to comment further. 

The reported attack comes after the U.S. has alleged that in past months Iran attacked oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz, at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, something denied by Tehran. 

Friday’s incident could push tensions between Iran and the U.S. even higher, more than a year after President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the nuclear deal and imposed sanctions now crushing Iran’s economy. 

The mysterious attacks on oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz, Iran shooting down a U.S. military surveillance drone and other incidents across the wider Middle East followed Trump’s decision. 

The latest assault saw Saudi Arabia’s vital oil industry come under a drone-and-cruise-missile attack, halving the kingdom’s output. The U.S. has blamed Iran for the attack, something denied by Tehran. Yemen’s Houthi rebels, whom the kingdom is fighting in a yearslong war, claimed that assault, though analysts say the missiles used in the attack wouldn’t have the range to reach the sites from Yemen.

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U.S. President Donald Trump says the U.S. mission of defeating Islamic State in Syria is accomplished and that he plans to keep Turkey in line through economy and not military power. Trump told reporters Thursday that there are no U.S. combat forces in Syria and he does not think Americans would want to send thousands of troops to fight there. Turkey’s assault on Kurdish-held villages in northern Syria has sparked an exodus of civilians from their homes and is threatening to exacerbate a humanitarian crisis in the region. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
 

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Antigovernment protests and unrest in Hong Kong continues after nearly four months. Among those affected by the turmoil are about 400,000 foreign domestic workers, mostly women from Indonesia and the Philippines. VOA’s Patsy Widakuswara brings this report from Hong Kong. 
 

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U.S. President Donald Trump says he’s planning to get involved in the case of an American diplomat’s wife who left the U.K. after she was involved in a fatal wrong-way crash.
 
Trump on Wednesday called what happened “a terrible accident” and said his administration would seek to speak with the driver “and see what we can come up with.”
 
British police say the 42-year-old woman is a suspect in an Aug. 27 collision between a car and a motorcycle near RAF Croughton, a British military base in England used by the U.S. Air Force. The 19-year-old motorcyclist, Harry Dunn, was killed.
 
Trump says: “The woman was driving on the wrong side of the road. And that can happen.”
 
The woman’s name hasn’t been officially released.

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Two-thirds of the votes cast for incumbent Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in last month’s presidential election were cast without proper biometric verification and fraudulent, a leading rival candidate, former warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar said Oct. 7, joining a chorus of candidates making similar accusations.
 
“This election has no winner in the first round. Both teams [Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah] claiming victory are lying. If only biometric votes are considered valid and the rest discarded, I can say with confidence that Ghani’s team will be in the third position,” he told VOA in an interview in the sprawling Kabul house where he has been living since he moved to the city in 2017 after making a peace deal with the government of his now political rival, Ghani.
 
He also expressed his willingness to join hands with other candidates alleging fraud, including Ghani’s chief rival, Abdullah. Such a move could give significant momentum to allegations of pre- and post-poll rigging primarily targeting Ghani.
 
Ghani’s team rejects such allegations and Ghani himself, in his polling day speech, urged the electoral bodies to thoroughly investigate any complaints.   
 
Independent analysts, like those of the Kabul-based Afghanistan Analysts Network, have also questioned at least some of the turnout data presented publicly so far, calling some of the numbers “implausible.”

The province of Nangarhar, “which reported a turnout of 22,813 votes from 309 polling centres on Saturday, a day later, suddenly reported 254,871 votes from 390 polling centres – more than ten times the number reported on E-Day,” an AAN analysis on its website pointed to as one of several examples.    
 
Such observations have increased pressure on Afghanistan’s two electoral bodies, the Independent Election Commission and the Independent Electoral Complaints Commission, which are responsible for handling the vote count and complaints respectively.
 
The initial results from the September 28 polls are not expected till later this month. Final results are expected next month. The IEC has run into technical and logistical issues in gathering and transferring biometric data to its servers from over 26,000 biometric devices used to record fingerprints and pictures of voters, which may delay the results.  
 
The winning candidate is required to get more than 50% of the votes cast. If no candidate fulfills this criterion, the election goes to a second round in which the two leading candidates compete.
 
However, Abdullah and Ghani, two of the stronger candidates out of the 18 registered, have already declared victory. Ghani’s running mate, Amrullah Saleh, told VOA Pashto the day after the polls that their ticket had received more than 60% of the vote.

In response, Abdullah said in a press conference the same week that his total votes were “the highest in the election, and the election will not go to a second round.”
 
Two others, Hekmatyar and former Afghan intelligence head Rahmatullah Nabil, have hinted at a win but have not declared victory outright .
 
A disagreement between Ghani and Abdullah in the last presidential election, in 2014, led to a crisis so destabilizing that then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had to step in and help negotiate a deal between the two rivals.
 
International stakeholders in Kabul have been urging all sides to abstain from creating a similar situation. The American and British embassies, as well as the European Union delegation, have been tweeting their support for the electoral bodies and asking all candidates to be patient.
 
“Calling on everyone to respect the time required for @AfghanistanIEC and @ECCAfghanistan to deliver accurate and transparent election results for brave #Afghan voters,” tweeted the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.
 
In a similar tweet, the British Embassy asked everyone to give the electoral bodies “time & space to deliver robust & transparent results.”
 
The IEC and IECC have indicated that they will follow procedures and weed out all unverified votes. That would likely deliver a more transparent and accurate result, but if the vote count, already at a historical low, falls further, it could run into a different set of problems.
 
“This election had a very low turnout. Any government formed from such a low voter participation will have no legitimacy. It will be a weak government that will not be able to control the situation,” Hekmatyar claimed.
 
The Afghan Constitution and election law do not require a minimum number of votes to declare the election credible.

 

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Californians are playing a waiting game – waiting for the power to go out. The region’s power company is cutting off electricity to reduce the risk of forest wildfires. Residents are being told to prepare. Michelle Quinn went to one town waiting for the lights to go off

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