North and South Carolina are now officially on Hurricane Dorian watch after the storm has already made its way through the Bahamas and briefly brushed Florida. Dorian hit the Carolina’s Thursday as thousands of residents were asked to evacuate. North Carolina is not new to dealing with storms. The state’s Climate Office says that it faces an average of 2.27 storms per year. As the storm heads north, South Carolina has begun taking southern counties off of evacuation orders, but the state is still cautioning residents of the damage the storm left behind. North Carolina felt the impact many expected for Florida. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called the storm’s near miss a “close call.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/05/us/hurricane-dorian-nc-sc.html
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued eight executive orders Thursday aimed at preventing mass shootings in the state. The orders include a push for better communication between the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Suspicious Activity Reporting Network. It would provide more transparency to the public regarding potential threats. Gov. Abbott also issued an order increasing staff to monitor online activity for suspicious behavior and is pushing for officials to work with mental health professionals and schools to create threat assessment teams. This comes after the mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso last month and the shooting rampage that left seven dead in West Texas last week.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/05/politics/texas-greg-abbott-executive-orders-mass-shootings/index.html
Recent DNA tests are pointing to the possibility that the famous Loch Ness Monster of Scotland may have been a giant eel. Neil Gemmell from the University of Otago ran extensive DNA tests on the water of Loch Ness and found a surprisingly high amount of eel DNA. While the DNA tests did not rule out the possibility of a large number of small eels inhabiting the lake, Gemmell said in a news conference Thursday that the monster could very well have been a large eel. Despite many theorists have believed the Loch Ness Monster to have been a plesiosaur, Gemmell’s DNA tests showed no evidence to support that claim.
https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2019-09-05/loch-ness-monster-eel-dna
Tribune News Service