Storm Harvey Updates: Storm’s Wrath Shifts After Second Landfall (As the sun emerged)

As the sun emerged and water began to recede in parts of flood-ravaged Houston, Tropical Storm Harvey shifted its wrath to the Beaumont-Port Arthur area of Texas, hitting the region Tuesday and Wednesday with record-breaking rainfall and devastating floods.

“Our whole city is underwater right now but we are coming!” Port Arthur’s mayor, Derrick Freeman, said in a Facebook messageovernight, as desperate residents sent out calls for help on social media.

Water filled homes and submerged roads, evacuees crowded shelters, local officials urged people who needed rescue to hang sheets or towels from windows, forecasters warned that the storm could spawn tornadoes, and the Louisiana State Police closed Interstate 10 heading toward Beaumont, just a few miles from the state line. The rain was expected to continue until Friday.

South Beach's most infamous hotel: Inside the Versace Mansion

The world-famous Ocean Drive is one of the most photographed stretches of Miami Beach.

But, with its neon lights and sidewalk cafes serving beer-garitas for two, it's not known for being a high-end destination.

The exception, nestled amid low-rise Art Deco hotels, with streams of tourists strolling past, is the Villa Casa Casuarina -- better known as the Versace Mansion.

What many of those selfie-snapping tourists outside may not realize is that the former home of late fashion designer Gianni Versace isn't a museum or private home, but a hotel.

And it's a hotel where guests can sleep in what was Versace's bedroom. Or in the bedroom of his sister Donatella. Or perhaps the suite where Madonna used to stay when she visited Versace in the '90s and helped put the Miami Beach neighborhood of South Beach on the national scene.

If a $1,000-plus-a-night hotel room is out of reach, members of the public can indulge in the villa's Baroque grandeur with a dinner reservation at Gianni's, and an aperitif in the intimate, clubby Onyx Bar, in the space that used to be Versace's kitchen.     

A Game You Can Control With Your Mind

When you pull the headset over your eyes and the game begins, you are transported to a tiny room with white walls. Your task is to break out of the room, but you cannot use your hands. There is no joystick or game pad. You must use your thoughts
You turn toward a ball on the floor, and your brain sends a command to pick it up. With another thought, you send the ball crashing into a mirror, breaking the glass and revealing a few numbers scribbled on a wall. You mentally type those numbers into a large keypad by the door. And you are out.

Designed by Neurable, a small start-up founded by Ramses Alcaide, an electrical engineer and neuroscientist, the game offers what you might call a computer mouse for the mind, a way of selecting items in a virtual world with your thoughts.

Incorporating a headset with virtual reality goggles and sensors that can read your brain waves, this prototype is a few years from the market. And it is limited in what it can do. You cannot select an object with your mind unless you first look in its general direction, narrowing the number of items you may be considering.

Intercourse isn't everything for most women, says study -- try 'outercourse'

Many of us equate "sex" with "intercourse" and use those words interchangeably. Yet highly satisfying sex doesn't have to be limited to penetration -- and doesn't even have to include it at all

According to a recent study, many women report that they require clitoral stimulation to have an orgasm.

For the study, Debby Herbenick, director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University and a research fellow and sexual health educator at the Kinsey Institute, and her colleagues assessed data from 1,055 women ages 18 to 94 who answered a detailed online survey about their sex lives.

Tropical storm Harvey displaces 30,000 in Texas

More than 30,000 people are expected to be placed in temporary shelters in the US state of Texas due to widespread flooding caused by Tropical Storm Harvey, US officials said, with more rain expected in the coming days.

Brock Long, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said on Monday that 50 counties in Texas are affected by the floods, which were brought about by an estimated six months-worth of rain falling in the last three days alone.

"We have not seen an event like this. You could not draw this forecast up, you could not dream this forecast up," Long said.

Earlier, Texas Governor Greg Abbott deployed an additional 1,000 National Guard troops, on top of the 3,000 already sent in the flood-stricken state, which is the size of France, Belgium and Switzerland combined.

Texas officials said Monday that six more people are feared to have died in the Houston area as a result of the storm and flooding.

Houston inundated by water as Harvey pummels Texas

Around 13 million people are under flood watches and warnings stretching from Corpus Christi to New Orleans as the remnants of Hurricane Harvey menace drenched Texas and Louisiana.

"Catastrophic and life-threatening flooding" continues in southeastern Texas, where bands of storm have been repeatedly pummeling the same areas.

Over the next few days, Tropical Storm Harvey is forecast to head back into the Gulf of Mexico, where it will pick up moisture before moving back over Galveston and into Houston again, CNN meteorologist Karen Maginnis says, meaning at least four more days of rain.            

Floyd Mayweather retires with perfect record by stopping Conor McGregor in mismatch

Conor McGregor was eventually left bloodied and beaten by Floyd Mayweather Jr in Las Vegas but he proved his point by providing the now 50-0 all-time great with a few moments of panic, writes Declan Taylor.

This fight was described in the build-up as everything between a circus and the biggest event in combat sports history. In many ways it was both.

And what it was, without question, was entertainment, as McGregor, the mixed martial artist turned pure pugilist befuddled his experienced foe with an unorthodox style and switch hitting.

The Honor of Boxing Is at Stake

Everyone, or almost everyone, wants to be a tough guy. Americans are infinitely interested in the question of who can kick whose butt.

As a kid growing up on the New Jersey shore, I was often involved in heated debates as to who was my school’s biggest badass. Even though there was an automatic three-day suspension for fighting, this involuntary vacation was well worth the price to defend your status as someone not to be trifled with. It was a matter of honor; you had to throw hands with anyone who challenged you.

With one exception. It was not considered dishonorable to excuse yourself from a stairwell battle with a boxer. Back then, boxing was considered the supreme martial art. No one messed with boxers. That is precisely why I took up the sport.

Mike Tyson called himself “the baddest man on the planet,” and in his prime most everyone believed him. They believed that mano-a-mano, no judo moves or karate chops could defend against his superhero-like powers of pugilistic destruction.

North Korea fires three missiles into sea

North Korea has fired three short-range ballistic missiles, the US military says.

They were launched from a site in the North Korean province of Gangwon and flew for about 250km (150 miles), officials in South Korea said.

Since firing an intercontinental ballistic weapon last month, Pyongyang has threatened to aim missiles at the US Pacific territory of Guam.

Catastrophic Hurricane Harvey makes landfall in Texas

Hurricane Harvey made landfall as a Category 4 storm in Texas late Friday, bringing with it 130-mph winds and unleashing flash floods, storm surges and up to three feet of rain.

Harvey is the first major hurricane — classified as Category 3 or above — to hit the USA since Hurricane Wilma in 2005.

"This is going to be a very major disaster," said Gov. Greg Abbott, who declared a State of Disaster for 30 counties and requested 700 National Guard members to be activated.  Abbott announced late Friday that federal authorities granted his request for emergency disaster relief associated with the expected damage from Harvey.

He warned of record-setting flooding in multiple regions of the state and urged people to get out of harm's way. “You don’t want to put yourself in a situation where you could be subject to a search and rescue.”

Some forecasts are calling for as much as a mind-boggling 60 inches (that's five feet) of rain from Harvey.

 

NEW: #Harvey continues to intensify and is now a category 4 #hurricanewith maximum sustained winds of 130 mph. https://t.co/tW4KeGdBFbpic.twitter.com/7CkJkuafTb

— NHC Atlantic Ops (@NHC_Atlantic) August 25, 2017

As many as 1.25 million Texans could lose power from the storm, according to forecast models at Texas A&M University.

With some 700,000 people living in the hurricane warning zone — roughly half of them around Corpus Christi — traffic backups tied up heavily traveled roads such as Interstate 37 as people move toward San Antonio and other inland locations.

Fueled by the warm Gulf waters, Harvey jumped within hours from a Category 2 to Category 4 hurricane on Friday. 

Five ways to cope with migraine

Preventive therapies and treatments to manage severe migraine attacks range from common over-the-counter painkillers to complementary medicine approaches, such as acupuncture.Migraines are not just your average headaches. They can be debilitating, come unexpectedly, and be accompanied by a varied range of upsetting effects, such as extreme nausea, cognitive impairment, and eyesight disturbances. We have investigated the best ways of dealing with them.

According to recent reports, migraine is the seventh leading cause of "years spent with disability" worldwide.

Migraines are severe headache attacks that can last for between 4 and 72 hours. They are often accompanied by severe nausea and vomiting, acute sensitivity to light and sounds, and, in some cases, by temporary cognitive impairment and allodynia, which is when normal touch is felt as painful.

Individuals can start experiencing migraines from childhood, and their prevalence increases well into adulthood, until age 35 to 39. Migraines are up to three times more common in women than they are in men, and the attacks also last longer in women.

Multiple studies link chronic migraine with a decreased quality of life and disrupted activity levels. What, then, are the options of prevention and treatment available to people who face migraines? Here is a list of the five most cited approaches.

India riots: At least 28 killed as violence spreads across India following Ram Rahim Singh's rape conviction

At least 28 people have been killed during violent protests in India which broke out after a popular religious leader was convicted of rape.

Violent protests spread across areas of the country throughout Friday, with mobs setting fire to government buildings, attacking police and TV journalists in the town of Panchkula in Haryana state.

Those killed are believed to be followers of Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, who was found guilty of rape on Friday.

Thousands of his supporters descended on the Chandigarh area for the verdict, reportedly smashing cars and setting media vans alight.

Samsung Heir Lee Jae-yong Jailed for Five Years for Corruption

The billionaire heir-apparent to South Korean electronics giant Samsung has been jailed for five years as part of a whopping corruption scandal that also prompted the impeachment of the East Asian nation’s former President Park Geun-hye late last year

Lee Jae-yong, 49, who effectively ran the world’s biggest cellphone maker in place of his ailing father, stood accused of bribery and embezzlement relating to payoffs to a confidante of Park who lobbied on the $250 billion company’s behalf.

French President Emmanuel Macron Spends €26,000 On Makeup In Three Months

It has been revealed that french president Emmanuel Macron had spent 26,000€ on makeup during his first three months in office.

French magazine Le Point reported on Thursday that his makeup artist, Natacha M., has billed the executive arm once for €10,000, and for a second time €16,000 since he resumed office.

The presidency released a statement clarifying the issue. They had “called in a contractor as a matter of urgency,” they said, causing the cost to be higher than usual.

The issue is particularly infuriating as Macron had implemented severe budget cuts that has head of the French armed forces to resign, and plunged his approval ratings to below 40%.

Whitehouse.gov petition to label antifa as a 'terror group' generates more than 290,000 signatures

A new petition calling on the Trump administration to formally recognize the so-called antifa as a “terrorist organization” has generated nearly 300,000 signatures in a week — well beyond the threshold that is supposed to trigger a formal response from the White House. But there’s been no indication under President Trump that it will.

The petition, created by last week in the wake of the violent clashes between white supremacists and antifascists in Charlottesville, Va., argues that the group’s tactics are akin to ISIS:

Terrorism is defined as “the use of violence and intimidation in pursuit of political aims”. This definition is the same definition used to declare ISIS and other groups, as terrorist organizations. AntiFa has earned this title due to its violent actions in multiple cities and their influence in the killings of multiple police officers throughout the United States. It is time for the pentagon to be consistent in its actions – and just as they rightfully declared ISIS a terror group, they must declare AntiFa a terror group – on the grounds of principle, integrity, morality, and safety.

At a campaign rally in Phoenix earlier this week, Trump himself referred to the masked antifascist protesters by name.

“You know, they show up in the helmets and the black masks and they’ve got clubs and they’ve got everything,” the president told the crowd. “Antifa!”

The State Department maintains a list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) that are designated by the secretary of state. There are currently 61, including ISIS, al-Qaida and Boko Haram.

The petition to add antifa to that list has more than 290,000 signatures — nearly triple the number it needed by Sept. 16 to get “an official response.”

The digital platform, which was created in 2011 under President Barack Obama, drew nearly half a million petitions during his presidency. And the Obama White House answered many of them, including a petition to forgive student loan debt, a call for Obama to pardon Edward Snowden and, most memorably, a plea for the federal government to begin construction on a Death Star, the galactic superweapon featured in the “Star Wars” film franchise.

“The Administration does not support blowing up planets,” Paul Shawcross, a White House science and technology adviser, replied in a statement. “Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?”

But the Trump administration has yet to respond to any of the 10 other petitions that have crossed the 100,000 threshold.

A petition calling on the Trump administration to immediately release the president’s tax returns, launched on the day of Trump’s inauguration, crossed that mark a day later. It now has more than a million signatures.

Russian ambassadors keep dying in mysterious ways

Russia's ambassador to Sudan was found floating dead in a swimming pool in his Khartoum home on Wednesday.

Mirgayas Shirinskiy, 63, "was found in his residence with evidence of an acute heart attack," Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian foreign ministry, told BBC on Thursday.

While the cause of death is initially being considered natural, since Shirinskiy suffered from high blood pressure, seven Russian ambassadors have died in mysterious ways over the last two years.

Two of them died from heart attacks, and Shirinsky would be the third.

Most notable was former Russian ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, who died of a heart attack in February in New York. The US State Department asked the New York City medical examiner's office to not release his autopsy.

Roman Skrynikov, the former Russian ambassador to Kazakhstan, also died of an apparent heart attack in December 2016.

Police gun down husband of slain "Nairobi's prettiest thug"

Months after his wife and partner in crime met her death in the hands of the police, notorious thug Mwaniki aka Mwanii Sparta has been gunned down.

Mwanii, one of the most wanted criminals in Nairobi, was killed by police last weekend at Witeithie Estate in Juja.

Actress Eucharia Anunobi's son passes on at age 15 from sickle cell anemia

The 15-year old son of Nollywood actress and Evangelist, Eucharia Anunobi, Raymond Ekwu, has passed on. Raymond who she had by her ex-husband, Charles Ekwu, in 2002, has been living with Sickle Cell Anemia since birth. He died from complications associated with the disease on Tuesday, August 22nd.  

May his soul rest in peace...Amen.

Anatoly Antonov named new Russian ambassador to US

Antonov takes the job at a time when US-Russia relations are badly strained [File: AP]

Russian President Vladimir Putin has named Anatoly Antonov, a career diplomat who is on the European Union's sanctions list because of Moscow's role in the Ukraine, as Russia's new ambassador to the United States.

Antonov, whose appointment was announced on Monday, takes the job at a time when US-Russia relations are badly strained following the approval of a new wave of US sanctions against Moscow, and the Kremlin's decision to sharply cut American diplomatic personnel in Russia.

Antonov succeeds Sergei Kislyak, who found himself in the centre of controversy amid claims of Russia's interference in the US presidential vote.

Kislyak's contacts with members of Trump's team have been part of congressional and FBI investigations into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Russia has denied any interference in the US election.

Tensions in Togo as anti-Gnassingbe rally turns deadly

Togolese forces used tear gas to disperse protesters in Lome [Photo courtesy Emmanuelle Sodji]

Tensions have erupted in Togo after protests against the ruling Gnassingbe family dynasty over the weekend turned deadly. 

Two protesters were killed and 12 gendarmes were wounded in Sokode, 338km north of the capital, Lome, when security forces opened fire to break up demonstrations, the security ministry said on Saturday. 

Tikpi Atchadam, Togo's opposition leader and president of the PNP party, put the death toll at seven on Saturday night. 

President Faure Gnassingbe has been in power in the West African country since the 2005 death of his father, Gnassingbe Eyadema, who had been at the helm for 38 years.

BLAC CHYNA Sure, She Gave Rob Lambo and Ferrari THEY WERE LEASED!!!

Blac Chyna was so incensed Rob Kardashian kept the Range Rover she gave him, some eyewitnesses say she tried to steal it ... but we've learned none of the whips in question were owned by either of them.

We broke the story ... Chyna and Rob met at a Century City office building to try and hash out their custody dispute, Rob called the valet to get the Rover but stayed back until Chyna left.

10 New Artists You Need to Know: August 2017

Once again, we talked to 10 of the hottest artists who are climbing the charts, breaking the Internet or just dominating our office stereos. This month: "Everyday We Lit" hitmaker YFN Lucci, Chicago producer Knox Fortune, genre-blurring Argentinean trio Fémina and more.

YFN Lucci

Terrence Navalta

Sounds Like: The next sing-song Atlanta rapper to take over the radio

For Fans of: Future, Fetty Wap, Rich Homie Quan

Why You Should Pay Attention: YFN Lucci was a success story this summer, earning a radio hit with "Everyday We Lit" featuring PnB Rock, working in the tradition of melodic Atlanta MCs like collaborator and former labelmate Rich Homie Quan. Though the single peaked at Number 33, it spent weeks in the Top 40, accumulating 45 million Spotify streams and earning a remix featuring Wiz Khalifa and Lil Yachty. Last year he teamed with Migos and Trouble for "Key to the Streets," another warm weather radio staple.

He Says: "I have my own style," he says. "A bunch of people from Atlanta don't really rap about what I rap about: I rap about things that happened. I'm talking about what I been through. I ain't just talkin' 'bout the money I have. I talk about how I grew up. I grew up in the struggle. A lot of people can relate to the struggle."

"Everybody tryin' to make the same-sounding beats, same type of shit – Metro Boomin and shit," Lucci adds. "June [James, producer of many of Lucci's recent songs] give me another sound."

Hear for Yourself: In "Everyday We Lit," the piano stays serene while the drums communicate exuberance. "I got the hottest 16, one of the best you've ever seen," Lucci boasts. "But she like it when I sing on it." Elias Leight

Suspected driver in Barcelona attack shot and killed, appeared to be wearing explosive belt: Police

Spanish authorities announced that Younes Abouyaaqoub, the suspected driver in a deadly vehicle attack in Barcelona that killed 13 people, was shot and killed Monday. He was wearing what appeared to be an explosive belt at the time, police said.

Earlier this morning, police named Abouyaaqoub as the driver of a van that plowed down Barcelona's crowded Las Ramblas promenade Thursday, killing 13 and injuring many more.

7 home remedies for getting fair skin naturally

Dark spots, age spots, acne -- all of these imperfections can get to you. Looking at your reflection, you may wish you could simply get rid of the uneven tones.

Fair skin can't be gotten overnight, but with a little bit of patience and some TLC, you may be able to lighten some of the blemishes and get the tones you desire. Try the 7 home remedies for fair skin below and see what a difference they can make.

A scientist reveals the secrets to beating jet lag

• Jet lag is the disruption of your body clock.
• Your body or circadian clock regulates a host of different functions including your sleep, metabolism, and digestion.
• Before and during your flight, shift your activity pattern to match that of your destination.

Jet lag.

That dreaded side effect of international travel hell bent on ruining a great time.

After all, days of insomnia, nausea, constipation, and general discomfort can quickly throw a wrench in any vacation or business trip.

Unfortunately, most travelers don't have a great understanding of what really is this thing we call "jet lag." As a result, we are woefully under equipped to beat it. 

That is why we asked a world-renowned biologist for an explanation and some tips.