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Patients and staff at Unicoi County Hospital in Tennessee are trapped on the roof Friday due to flooding caused by Tropical Storm Helene.

WCYB spoke with Erwin Police Chief Regan Tilson, who said more than 50 people are trapped on the roof.

Ballad Health said as of 12:27 p.m., 54 people were on the roof and seven were in rescue boats.

All roads accessing the hospital are impassable due to flooding. Several cruisers and ambulances have been lost.

A SWAT team happened to be training and was able to save medications for the patients. Tilson said all patients and staff are safe at this time.

Some North Carolina cities were forecasted to receive 10 times their monthly rainfall amount.

The emergency flash flood warning issued by the NWS says that at least 3,000 people are at risk of emergency flooding downstream of the Broad River and Lake Lure Dam

This is in additional to the flash flood warnings happening all over the state.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240927182208/https://abcnews.go.com/US/man-dog-rescued-disabled-boat-25-miles-sea/story?id=114268795

Police in a majority-Black Mississippi city discriminate against Black people, use excessive force and retaliate against critics, the Justice Department said Thursday in a scathing report detailing findings of an investigation into civil rights abuses.

The Lexington Police Department “has created a system where officers can relentlessly violate the law” in one of the poorest counties in America, according to the Justice Department. Investigators found police also sexually harassed women and kept people behind bars for minor offenses because they couldn’t afford to pay fines.

“Today’s findings show that the Lexington Police Department abandoned its sacred position of trust in the community by routinely violating the constitutional rights of those it was sworn to protect,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who represented former President Donald Trump in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, has been disbarred from practicing law in the District of Columbia, a local appeals court ruled Thursday.

Giuliani's law license in the District of Columbia had been temporarily suspended since the summer 2021, but the one-page decision from the District of Columbia Court of Appeals orders the former federal prosecutor to be disbarred. Records show Giuliani was admitted to the D.C. Bar in 1976.

The appeals court ruled that Giuliani should be disbarred in D.C. because he had been disbarred in New York in July, citing rules of reciprocity between the two jurisdictions. The order noted that Giuliani had the opportunity "to show cause why reciprocal discipline should not be imposed" but never filed a response.

Giuliani has also been the focus of a separate disbarment proceeding in Washington. In that case, the D.C. Board of Professional Responsibility recommended in May that Giuliani lose his license for good over his efforts to reverse the election results in Pennsylvania and claims made in a federal lawsuit that elections boards there were engaged in a scheme to rig the election against Trump. President Biden won the state of Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes.

Loss of state-of-the-art vessel in May or June is setback to Chinese push for naval parity with US

China’s efforts to achieve maritime military parity with the US have suffered a serious blow after its newest state-of-the-art nuclear submarine sank in a dock, American officials have confirmed.

The incident happened last May or June at the Wuchang shipyard near Wuhan – the same city where the Covid-19 pandemic is believed to have originated – and came to light, thanks to satellite imagery, despite efforts by the country’s communist authorities to stage a cover-up.

A US defence official told Reuters that the Zhou-class vessel – first of a new kind of Chinese submarines and distinctive for its X-shaped stern that aids manoeuvrability – is believed to have been next to a pier when it sank.

It is not known if there were any casualties – or if the submarine had any nuclear fuel onboard at the time, although experts have deemed that likely, according to the Wall Street Journal, which initially broke the story. The submarine was eventually salvaged but it is believed that it will take many months before it can be put to sea.

Around the country, people with a deep distrust of government want to preemptively ban the use of aerosols to reduce heat from the sun.

At first glance, what happened in Tennessee’s legislature this spring seemed a bit odd.

Republican lawmakers introduced a bill to ban solar geoengineering — putting aerosols into the atmosphere to block some of the radiation from the sun. As climate change drives up temperatures on Earth, there is growing interest in geoengineering as a way to cool the planet. But it’s still largely theoretical, with no evidence that anyone in Tennessee is planning to try it.

The main witness to testify in support of the ban was a physician without any apparent qualifications in atmospheric science, who falsely claimed geoengineering was happening nationwide. Democrats derided the bill as ridiculous and tried to amend it with mentions of Yetis, Bigfoot and Sasquatch to prove their point.

Yet the ban sailed through the legislature. Governor Bill Lee, a Republican, signed it, making Tennessee the first state to outlaw geoengineering.

Non-paywall link

A Detroit judge who was temporarily removed after ordering a teenager into jail clothes and handcuffs during a field trip is back on the bench but assigned to speeding tickets and other relatively minor offenses. 

Judge Kenneth King lost courtroom duties in August and was ordered into social-emotional training by the chief judge at 36th District Court. Instead of handling key hearings in major felonies, he returned this week to the court’s traffic division.

“We appreciate his efforts in preparing for this role, and wish him success as he transitions into this new responsibility,” Judge William McConico said in a written statement.

Rockville Centre diocese in New York settles with more than 530 victims after proposed deal comes close to failure

A Roman Catholic diocese in Long Island, New York, announced a new bankruptcy settlement on Thursday that would pay more than $323m to about 530 sex abuse survivors who alleged they were abused by priests when they were children.

The diocese of Rockville Centre, which serves about 1.2 million Catholics in Nassau and Suffolk counties, said earlier this year that it did not think a bankruptcy settlement would be possible after abuse survivors rejected the diocese’s previous $200m settlement offer.

US bankruptcy judge Martin Glenn in Manhattan, who is overseeing the case, said the deal represented “enormous progress” after the bankruptcy came “within a hair’s breadth” of failure.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a bill into law that won't stop companies from taking away your digitally purchased video games, movies, and TV shows, but it'll at least force them to be a little more transparent about it.

As spotted by The Verge, the law, AB 2426, will prohibit storefronts from using the words "buy, purchase, or any other term which a reasonable person would understand to confer an unrestricted ownership interest in the digital good or alongside an option for a time-limited rental." The law won't apply to storefronts which state in "plain language" that you're actually just licensing the digital content and that license could expire at any time, or to products that can be permanently downloaded.

The law will go into effect next year, and companies who violate the terms could be hit with a false advertising fine. It also applies to e-books, music, and other forms of digital media.

On Wednesday, Sanders introduced six resolutions blocking six sales of different weapons contained within the $20 billion weapons deal announced by the Biden administration in August. The sales include many of the types of weapons that Israel has used in its relentless campaign of extermination in Gaza over the past year.

“Sending more weapons is not only immoral, it is also illegal. The Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and the Arms Export Control Act lay out clear requirements for the use of American weaponry – Israel has egregiously violated those rules,” said Sanders. “There is a mountain of documentary evidence demonstrating that these weapons are being used in violation of U.S. and international law.”

This will be the first time in history that Congress has ever voted on legislation to block a weapons sale to Israel, as the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project pointed out. This is despite the U.S. having sent Israel over $250 billion in military assistance in recent decades, according to analyst Stephen Semler, as Israel has carried out ethnic cleansings and massacres across Palestine and in Lebanon.

The resolutions are not likely to pass; even if they did pass the heavily pro-Israel Congress, they would likely be vetoed by President Joe Biden, who has been insistent on sending weapons to Israel with no strings attached.

However, Sanders’s move is in line with public opinion. Polls have consistently found that the majority of the public supports an end to Israel’s genocide; a poll by the Institute for Global Affairs released this week found, for instance, that a majority of Americans think the U.S. should stop supporting Israel or make support contingent on Israeli officials’ agreement to a ceasefire deal. This includes nearly 80 percent of Democrats.

Alan Miller shook and trembled on gurney after becoming second person to be executed by controversial technique

Alabama has carried out the second execution in the US using the controversial method of nitrogen gas, an experimental technique for humans that veterinarians have deemed unacceptable in the US and Europe for the euthanasia of most animals.

Alan Eugene Miller, 59, was pronounced dead on Thursday evening at a south Alabama prison. The lethal method involves being strapped to a gurney, where a respirator mask is applied to the face and pure nitrogen piped in. The resulting oxygen deprivation will cause death by asphyxia.

Miller shook and trembled on the gurney for about two minutes with his body at times pulling against the restraints, followed by about six minutes of gasping breathing, according to the Associated Press.

Miller’s death is the latest in an extraordinary week in the US in which five condemned men in five states are set to be killed over six days. Three prisoners have already been executed – on Friday South Carolina killed Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah in its first execution in 13 years, then on Tuesday Texas killed Travis Mullis and Missouri put to death Marcellus Williams.

X is preventing users from posting links to a newsletter containing a hacked document that’s alleged to be the Trump campaign’s research into vice presidential candidate JD Vance. The journalist who wrote the newsletter, Ken Klippenstein, has been suspended from the platform. Searches for posts containing a link to the newsletter turn up nothing.

The document allegedly comes from an Iranian hack of the Trump campaign. Though other news outlets have received information from the hack, they declined to publish. Klippenstein says in his newsletter that a source called “Robert,” with an AOL email address, offered him the document. Contained in it are what appear to be Vance’s full name, addresses, and part of his social security number.

WILMINGTON, Delaware, Sept 26 (Reuters) - Newsmax Media reached a confidential settlement of a lawsuit by Smartmatic, the voting machine maker that had alleged it was defamed by the news outlet's false claims that its machines were rigged to help steal the 2020 U.S. presidential election from Donald Trump, the companies said on Thursday.

The agreement came on the eve of a four-week jury trial, with opening arguments scheduled to begin in Wilmington, Delaware on Sept. 30.

"Newsmax is pleased to announce it has resolved the litigation brought by Smartmatic through a confidential settlement," the company said in a statement.

Smartmatic also said in a statement it was pleased to have reached a deal. "Lying to the American people has consequences. Smartmatic will not stop until the perpetrators are held accountable."

Smartmatic sued Newsmax in 2021, alleging it broadcast damaging misinformation falsely claiming the company switched votes in the 2020 election, that its machines were hacked and that it was funded by corrupt dictators.

Smartmatic alleged that Newsmax profited from its false reporting. Trump amplified Newsmax's reporting on social media and the broadcaster's audience jumped 10-fold after the election, vaulting it over cable news rivals such as CNBC and Fox Business, according to Nielsen Ratings.