Palace announces Prince William, Kate expecting third child
LONDON (AP) — Prince William and his wife, the Duchess of Cambridge, will soon welcome a third child to the royal nursery.
Kensington Palace officials announced Monday that the former Kate Middleton is pregnant, but was not feeling well enough to attend an engagement later in the day.
As with her other two pregnancies, she is suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum, or acute morning sickness. She is being cared for at the royal couple’s apartment in London’s Kensington Palace.
The sickness failed to dampen the buoyant mood among the royals, however. Prince Harry will be bumped down in the line of succession, but was overjoyed, describing the news as “fantastic,” and offering a thumb’s up while on a visit to Manchester.
And asked how the Duchess was he said: “I haven’t seen her for a while but I think she’s OK.”
National park icons threatened by wind-frenzied wildfires
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Winds wreaked havoc on wildfires that were threatening two crown jewels of the National Park Service on Monday, pushing the flames toward man-made and natural icons in and around Glacier and Yosemite national parks.
The wind-driven fires, combined with high temperatures and dry conditions, disrupted holiday travel and hampered firefighters throughout the West during a Labor Day weekend that capped a devastating summer in which an area larger than Rhode Island has burned.
The dozens of fires burning across the West and Canada have blanketed the air with choking smoke from Oregon, where ash fell on the town of Cascade Lakes, to Colorado, where health officials issued an air quality advisory alert.
A fire in Montana’s Glacier National Park emptied the park’s busiest tourist spot as wind gusts drove the blaze toward the doorstep of a century-old lodge.
Outside California’s Yosemite National Park, a wind-fueled fire on Sunday drove deeper into a grove of 2,700-year-old giant sequoia trees, but officials were not immediately sure whether trees were killed.
Giant sequoias are resilient and can withstand low intensity fires, said fire information officer Anne Grandy.
Israeli PM sheds statesmanlike persona as scandals mount
JERUSALEM (AP) — With a slew of corruption scandals closing in on him, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is dropping what remains of his statesmanlike persona in favor of an angry nationalism that’s popular with his base.
Casting himself as an innocent outsider, the long-serving prime minister blames Israel’s old guard “elites” for the array of inquiries into his financial conduct. He has been lashing out against the media and an all-powerful “left wing” for supposedly conducting a witch-hunt against him, while associates have taken to sniping at the court system and police as well.
Recent days’ headlines have been dominated by arrests of Netanyahu confidants, a court ruling forcing him to reveal phone records, leaks from inside the investigation and indications that his wife Sara will be indicted for fraud.
With each new complication Netanyahu seems to grow more bellicose.
Last week he visited a West Bank settlement and vowed never to evacuate any settlements on occupied land — his latest indication of backing off from a past pledge to pursue a two-state solution to the long conflict with the Palestinians. “We have returned here for eternity,” he said. At his weekly Cabinet meeting Sunday, Netanyahu pledged new roads and other infrastructure projects for the settlements.
San Francisco official pushes robot tax to battle automation
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Security guard Eric Leon watches the Knightscope K5 security robot as it glides through the mall, charming shoppers with its blinking blue and white lights. The brawny automaton records video and sounds alerts. According to its maker, it deters mischief just by making the rounds.
Leon, the all-too-human guard, feels pretty sure that the robot will someday take his job.
“He doesn’t complain,” Leon says. “He’s quiet. No lunch break. He’s starting exactly at 10.”
Even in the technology hotbed stretching from Silicon Valley to San Francisco, a security robot can captivate passers-by. But the K5 is only one of a growing menagerie of automated novelties in a region where you can eat a delivered pizza made via automation and drink beers at a bar served by an airborne robot. This summer, the San Francisco Chronicle published a tech tourism guide listing a dozen or so places where tourists can observe robots and automation in action.
Yet, San Francisco is also where workers were the first to embrace mandatory sick leave and fully paid parental leave. Voters approved a $15 hourly minimum wage in 2014, a requirement that Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law for the entire state in 2016. And now one official is pushing a statewide “tax” on robots that automate jobs and put people out of work.
