Firefighters on Tuesday continued to battle a wind-driven brush fire that erupted a day earlier near Highway 154 in Santa Barbara County and burned quickly downhill, threatening thousands of properties and sending residents fleeing from their homes.

The Cave fire started just after 4 p.m. Monday near East Camino Cielo and Painted Cave Road in Los Padres National Forest. It has exploded to 4,100 acres with no containment, according to the Santa Barbara County Fire Department. The blaze, fanned by erratic 50 mph sundowner winds, grew quickly overnight and was advancing toward populated areas in the cities of Santa Barbara and Goleta as well as unincorporated areas of the county.

CDC, public health and regulatory officials in several states, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administrationexternal icon (FDA) are investigating a multistate outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 infections linked to romaine lettuce harvested from the Salinas, California growing region.

Japan's industry ministry said Monday it would be safe to release water contaminated by the Fukushima nuclear disaster into the ocean, stressing that the health risk to humans would be "significantly small."

Discharging the water into the Pacific Ocean over the course of a year would amount to between just one-1,600th and one-40,000th of the radiation that humans are naturally exposed to, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry told a government subcommittee on the issue.

Water used to cool the melted-down cores and groundwater near the disabled plant contains some radioactive materials, and is currently being collected and stored in tanks on the plant grounds.

But space is fast running out, and the government is exploring ways to deal with the water -- already more than 1 million tons and increasing every day.

The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program is a no-fault alternative to the traditional legal system for resolving vaccine injury petitions.

It was created in the 1980s, after lawsuits against vaccine companies and health care providers threatened to cause vaccine shortages and reduce U.S. vaccination rates, which would have caused a resurgence of vaccine preventable diseases.

Any individual, of any age, who received a covered vaccine and believes he or she was injured as a result, can file a petition. Parents, legal guardians and legal representatives can file on behalf of children, disabled adults, and individuals who are deceased.

A cursory glance at this may lead one to believe that this program is a reasonable under the circumstances. A more thoughtful analysis, however, can lead to the conclusion that this program may be the greatest coup in the history of the world in favor of business interests over human well-being.

One instance of how Lyndon B. Johnson’s delusions surfaced occurred in 1965, while flying high on Air Force One, when he proclaimed to several reporters on board that he had become the most powerful man in the world, as he announced to them that he was basically now the “King of the World.” Johnson had invited four reporters from the press pool into his suite to share cocktails with him in his quarters. They were flying high above his domain, which was now the entire world. He was in an ebullient mood, and this phase of his mania was strengthened with each drink from his glass of Cutty Sark scotch.

A very strong earthquake registered by the USGS as M6.4 hit Albania at 02:54 UTC (03:54 LT) on November 26, 2019. The agency is reporting a depth of 20 km (12.4 miles). EMSC is reporting M6.4 at a depth of 10 km (6.2 miles). This is Albania's biggest earthquake in decades. Numerous aftershocks were recorded.

Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has scheduled US–Mexico border-wall meetings every two weeks since July to press for quicker progress, as the US President has been increasingly frustrated with the slow pace of construction on the project he campaigned on in 2015.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has once again sounded the alarm on the environment, reportedly telling an audience in San Diego that all heavy industrial activity must be moved to space to save Earth.

Bezos appeared at the San Diego Air & Space Museum on Saturday to be inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame for his work on Blue Origin, the space flight company he founded in 2000. The Times of San Diego reported that Bezos addressed a crowd of about 600 invitees at the private event.

“I believe that, one day, Earth will be zoned residential and light industry. We’ll move all heavy industry into space. That’s the only way, really, to save this planet,” the world’s richest man reportedly told the crowd.

What should the United States do about Iran? The question is easily asked, but for nearly 30 years, Washington has had difficulty coming up with a good answer. The Islamic Republic presents a particularly confounding series of challenges for the United States. Many Iranian leaders regard the United States as their greatest enemy for ideological, nationalistic, and/or security reasons, while a great many average Iranians evince the most pro-American feelings of any in the Muslim world. Unlike other states that may also fear or loathe the United States, Iran’s leaders have consistently acted on these beliefs, working assiduously to undermine American interests and influence throughout the Middle East, albeit with greater or lesser degrees of success at different times.

The Syrian Army is developing its advance on positions of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other radical groups in Greater Idlib.

Following the liberation of Misherfah in southern Idlib, the army pushed militants back from the villages of Um Khalakhil, Dahret Zarzour as well as al-Sayeer and al-Musheirfeh farms. Government forces also advanced on al-Farjah, where clashes are now ongoing.

Pro-militant sources claim that intense airstrikes by the Syrian Air Force and the Russian Aerospace Forces were the main reason of the army success. Pro-government sources argue that the participation of the 25th Special Mission Forces (formerly the Tiger Forces) is the corner stone of the operation.

Academy Award winning actor Jon Voight ripped the impeachment inquiry and Democrats Monday, saying Americans are witnessing firsthand that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff are "not well."

"It's a lie," Voight said of the impeachment inquiry Monday on "The Ingraham Angle." "It's the culmination of a commitment to take down this president."

Authored by Jeremiah Poff via The College Fix,

As the issue of college affordability continues to be a prominent talking point on the campaign trail ahead of the 2020 presidential election, a new study shows that the cost of a college education is still increasing at a rate that far outpaces inflation.

The study, put out by the financial technology company Self, found that on average, college costs have risen $2,835 since 2015, increasing 112 percent more than the rate of inflation during the same period.

“While it is somewhat understandable for universities to increase costs in line with inflation, especially when you consider the number of wages and resources needed to keep a university running, the price hikes we have found in some states are double (if not triple) the rate of inflation; posing the question of where is this money going,” Self CEO James Garvey said in an emailed statement to The College Fix.

Authored by Christoph Gisiger via TheMarket.ch,

Tad Rivelle, Chief Investment Officer of the Californian bond house TCW, doubts that the Central Banks can prevent the impending economic downturn. He spots increasing signs of stress in the credit sector and recommends holding safe assets to be prepared for turmoil in the financial markets.

Mr. Rivelle, who rarely gives interviews, views the prospects on the financial markets with skepticism. In his opinion, it’s clear that the business cycle is in its final stages. He warns that the power of unconventional monetary policy is largely exhausted and nervousness in the credit sector is growing.

Against this background, he advises a defensive calibration of the portfolio and a careful approach when it comes to security selection – especially in the investment grade segment where many companies are more leveraged than their rating indicates.

The “Syrian regime” and chemical weapons has become a constant mantra in the Western World and has become synonymous with the Syrian War since it began in 2011. One of the most famous cases was the April 2018 chemical weapon attack in the Damascene satellite city of Douma that led to the U.S., UK and France conducting airstrikes against Syrian Army positions, despite the lack of evidence that the Syrian government was responsible for the incident.

Investopedia says, “In the United States, the Federal Reserve acts as the lender of last resort to institutions that do not have any other means of borrowing, and whose failure to obtain credit would dramatically affect the economy.”

The Fed has created $billions in the past ten weeks (more on the way) and fed those billions into troubled banks, hedge funds, foreign banks and others. Lack of Fed transparency forces us to guess which institutions the Fed helped with $billions of nearly free currency units.

The Fed “Party Line:” We don’t disclose the recipients because it might cause a run on that institution. The Fed is important because it protects the economy from massive and destabilizing failures.

This is like announcing that we ignore graft and corruption in congress because telling the truth about our “leaders” could destabilize trust in congress.

Ostensibly the meetings are for the aspiring candidates to gain some wisdom from the last Democrat to win an open presidential primary and the presidency, but they also allow Obama to collect his own intelligence about what he and his closest advisers have made clear is all that matters to him: who can beat Donald Trump.