NATION/WORLD
Thursday, October 6, 2016
East Oregonian
Page 7A
Nearly 2M urged to evacuate
as Matthew edges toward U.S.
Associated Press
AP Photo/John Locher
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump
gestures during a campaign rally Wednesday in
Las Vegas.
After testy VP debate,
Trump rebuffs claim
he ‘loves’ Putin
HENDERSON,
Nev.
(AP) — Donald Trump
pushed back Wednesday on
Hillary Clinton’s accusation
that he’s cozying up to
Russian President Vladimir
Putin after the charge put
Trump’s running mate on
the defensive during the
vice presidential debate.
Trump offered effusive
praise for Mike Pence’s
performance — but also
claimed credit for it —
even as both campaigns
acknowledged that the sole
vice presidential debate was
unlikely to alter the race’s
trajectory.
The celebrity busi-
nessman said his relation-
ship with Russia’s leader
would be determined by
how Moscow responds to
strong U.S. leadership under
a Trump administration.
“They say Donald
Trump loves Putin. I don’t
love, I don’t hate. We’ll see
how it works,” Trump told a
rally outside Las Vegas.
Clinton on Wednesday
shrugged that off, saying
Trump has “this weird
fascination with dictators.”
“My opponent seems
not to know the difference
between an ally and adver-
sary,” Clinton said at an
evening fund raiser in Wash-
ington. “There seems to
be some misunderstanding
about what it means to have
a dictatorship and provide
leadership.”
The billionaire candidate
sought to take away an argu-
ment that Clinton and her
running mate, Tim Kaine,
have ramped up in the inal
weeks of the campaign as
they work to portray Trump
as dangerous for American
interests overseas. While
U.S.-Russia relations nose-
dive over failed diplomacy
in Syria, Trump has compli-
mented Putin, calling him
a strong leader and even
encouraging him to track
down Clinton’s missing
e-mails, though Trump later
said he was being sarcastic.
“You guys love Russia,”
Kaine said in Tuesday’s
debate. “You both have said
Vladimir Putin is a better
leader than the president.”
In a forceful rebuke,
Pence described Putin as a
“small and bullying leader,”
but blamed Clinton and
President Barack Obama
for a “weak and feckless”
foreign policy that had
awakened
Moscow’s
aggression in Ukraine and
meddling in the Middle
East.
The U.S. and Russia
back opposing sides in
Syria’s civil war but both
are ighting the Islamic State
group there. The U.S. cut
off talks with Russia about
Syria this week after the
latest cease-ire collapsed,
blaming Russia for failing
to fulill its commitments
under the deal.
“I can say this: If we get
along and Russia went out
with us and knocked the
hell out of ISIS, that’s OK
with me folks,” Trump said,
using an acronym for the
extremist group.
Since last week’s debate,
Trump has faced a barrage
of questions over a leaked
tax return showing he lost
more than $900 million in
1995. In turn, he’s sought
to reframe his life story as
a comeback tale he hopes
to recreate on behalf of a
faltering nation.
“America needs a turn-
around. American needs a
comeback. America needs a
change. And that’s why I’m
running,” Trump said.
MELBOURNE BEACH, Fla. —
Hurricane Matthew marched toward
Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas and
nearly 2 million people along the coast
were urged to evacuate their homes
Wednesday, a mass exodus ahead of a
major storm packing power the U.S.
hasn’t seen in more than a decade.
Matthew was a dangerous and
life-threatening Category 3 storm
with sustained winds of 120 mph as
it passed through the Bahamas, and it
was expected to be very near Florida’s
Atlantic coast by Thursday evening. At
least 16 deaths in the Caribbean have
been blamed on the storm, with heavy
damage reported in Haiti.
The storm was forecast to scrape
much of the Florida coast and any slight
deviation could mean landfall or it
heading farther out to sea. Either way, it
was going to be close enough to wreak
havoc along the lower part of the East
Coast, and many people weren’t taking
any chances.
In Melbourne Beach, near the
Kennedy Space Center, Carlos and
April Medina moved their paddle
board and kayak inside the garage
and took pictures off the walls of their
home about 500 feet from the coast.
They moved the pool furniture inside,
turned off the water, disconnected all
electrical appliances and emptied their
refrigerator.
They then hopped in a truck illed
with legal documents, jewelry and
a decorative carved shell that had
once belonged to April Medina’s
great-grandfather and headed west to
Orlando, where they planned to ride out
the storm with their daughter’s family.
“The way we see it, if it maintains
its current path, we get tropical storm-
strength winds. If it makes a little shift
to the left, it could be a Category 2 or 3
and I don’t want to be anywhere near it,”
Carlos Medina said. “We are just being
a little safe, a little bit more cautious.”
About 20 miles away in the town
of Cape Canaveral, John Long said
Hurricane Matthew is just hype as his
neighbors in his RV park packed up
and evacuated inland. Even though his
32-foot RV is just feet from the Banana
River and a half mile from the beach, he
had no plans to leave.
Long, who owns a bike shop and
has lived along the Space Coast for
30 years, said he has a generator and
enough food and water for himself and
his cats to last a week.
“There’s always tremendous buildup
and then it’s no stronger than an after-
noon thunderstorm,” he said. “I’m not
anticipating that much damage.”
In Fort Lauderdale, about 200 miles
south, six employees at a seven-bed-
room Mediterranean-style mansion
packed up for an evacuation fearing any
storm surge could lood the property.
The homeowners planned to move to
another home they own in Palm Beach
that’s further from the water.
AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery
A boy stands inside a church after it was damaged by Hurricane Matthew
in Saint-Louis, Haiti, Wednesday.
Two Lamborghinis and a Ferrari
had been placed inside the garage, but
employee Mae White wasn’t sure what
they would do with a Rolls Royce,
Mustang and other cars still parked in
the driveway.
“This storm surge. It’s scary,” White
said. “You’re on the water, you’ve got
to go.”
The last Category 3 storm or higher
to hit the United States was Wilma in
October 2005. It made landfall with 120
mph winds in southwest Florida, killing
ive people as it pushed through the
Everglades and into the Fort Lauderdale
and Palm Beach area. It caused an
estimated $21 billion in damage and left
thousands of residents without power
for more than a week. It concluded
a two-year span when a record eight
hurricanes hit the state.
As of 5 p.m. EDT Wednesday,
Matthew was centered about 400
miles southeast of West Palm Beach
and moving northwest, according to
the National Hurricane Center . Hurri-
cane-force winds extended 45 miles
from the center.
“When a hurricane is forecast to take
a track roughly parallel to a coastline, as
Matthew is forecast to do from Florida
through South Carolina, it becomes
very dificult to specify impacts at any
one location,” said National Hurricane
Center forecaster Lixion Avila.
Florida can expect as much as 10
inches of rain in some isolated areas.
In South Carolina, Gov. Nikki Haley
reversed the lanes of Interstate 26 so
that all lanes of trafic were headed west
and out of Charleston. It was the irst
time the lanes had been reversed. Plans
to reverse the lanes were put in place
after hours-long trafic jams during
Hurricane Floyd in 1999.
The governor planned to call for
more evacuations on Thursday, which
would bring the total to about 500,000
people in the state. Florida urged or
ordered about 1.5 million to leave the
coast, said Jackie Schutz, spokeswoman
for Gov. Rick Scott. Georgia had around
BRIEFLY
NSA contractor
accused of
taking classiied
information
WASHINGTON
(AP) — A contractor for the
National Security Agency
has been arrested on charges
that he illegally removed
highly classiied information
and stored the material in
his house and car, federal
prosecutors said Wednesday.
Harold Thomas Martin
III, 51, of Glen Burnie,
Maryland, was arrested
by the FBI in August after
authorities say he admitted
to having taken government
secrets. A defense attorney
said Martin did not intend to
betray his country.
The arrest was not made
public until Wednesday,
when the Justice Department
released a 5-page criminal
complaint that accused
Martin of having been in
possession of top-secret
information.
Among the classiied
documents found with
Martin, according to the
FBI, were six that contain
sensitive intelligence
— meaning they were
produced through sensitive
government sources or
methods that are critical
to national security — and
date back to 2014. All the
documents were clearly
marked as classiied
information, according to a
criminal complaint.
The complaint does not
specify what documents
Martin was alleged to have
taken. The arrest was made
around the same time that
U.S. oficials acknowledged
an investigation into a cyber
leak of purported hacking
tools used by the NSA. The
tool kit consists of malicious
software intended to tamper
with irewalls, the electronic
defenses protecting
computer networks. Those
documents were leaked by
a group calling itself the
“Shadow Brokers.”
The arrest could turn
into another embarrassment
for the U.S. intelligence
community. It would be
the second case of an
intelligence worker illegally
removing secret data from
the NSA in recent years.
The agency monitors
and collects sensitive
information and data, mostly
from overseas.
At the White House,
spokesman Josh Earnest said
President Barack Obama
takes the situation “quite
seriously. And it is a good
reminder for all of us with
security clearances about
how important it is for us
to protect sensitive national
security information.”
Plane evacuated
after Samsung
smartphone starts
smoking
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP)
— An overheating, smoking
Samsung smartphone
forced the evacuation of
a Southwest Airlines jet
that was preparing to take
off Wednesday from the
Louisville airport.
The incident raised fresh
trouble for Samsung, which
saw its new Galaxy Note 7
device recalled last month
because of overheating
batteries.
Samsung, Southwest
and federal aviation-safety
oficials declined to say what
model of Samsung phone
was involved, saying they
were still investigating.
But an Indiana woman,
Sarah Green, told The
Courier-Journal of
Louisville that it was her
husband’s Galaxy Note 7
that made popping noises
and started to smoke after he
powered it down while the
plane sat at the gate.
Green told the newspaper
that her husband, Brian,
received the Galaxy Note 7
about two weeks ago as a
replacement for his recalled
phone. He called her from
someone else’s phone to tell
her what happened.
Texas man who
killed neighbor
couple has been
executed
HUNTSVILLE, Texas
(AP) — An East Texas man
who pleaded guilty to killing
a neighbor couple during a
shooting rampage 13 years
ago and said he wanted to
be put to death for the crime
was executed Wednesday
evening.
Barney Fuller Jr., 58, had
asked that all his appeals
be dropped to expedite his
death sentence.
Fuller never made eye
contact in the death chamber
with witnesses, who
included the two children of
the slain couple.
Asked by Warden James
Jones if he had any inal
statement, Fuller responded:
“I don’t have anything to
say. You can proceed on,
Warden Jones.”
Fuller took a deep breath
as Texas Department of
Criminal Justice oficials
injected a lethal dose of
pentobarbital into each arm,
then blurted out: “Hey, you
ixin’ to put me to sleep.”
He took a couple of
breaths, then began snoring.
Within 30 seconds, all
movement stopped.
Fuller became the seventh
convicted killer executed
this year in Texas and the
irst in six months in the
nation’s most active capital
punishment state.
50,000 people told to go.
At Folly Beach, South Carolina,
southwest of Charleston, Gaby Trom-
peter loaded her car at her beachfront
home preparing to evacuate to Augusta,
Georgia.
Trompeter, a 50-year-old goldsmith
who designs and makes jewelry,
remembers Hurricane Hugo when she
stayed in Savannah, Georgia, in 1989.
A year ago when what has been
described as a 1,000-year lood inun-
dated South Carolina there was so much
water on the road near her house she
couldn’t get out for three days.
“If it brings a lot of rain, more than
the storm last year, why would I want to
stay?” she said.
President Barack Obama visited
the Federal Emergency Management
Agency’s headquarters Wednesday
to be briefed on preparations. FEMA
has deployed personnel to emergency
operation centers in Florida, Georgia,
South Carolina and North Carolina. It’s
also positioning commodities and other
supplies at Fort Bragg in North Carolina
and in Albany, Georgia.
On the Georgia coast, 92-year-old
Lou Arcangeli saw two of his adult
children come to his home on Tybee
Island to help prepare and evacuate if
necessary.
“It’s serious,” said Arcangeli, who
has lived in the Savannah area since
1979, when Hurricane David became
the last hurricane to make landfall on
Georgia’s 100-mile coast. “I’m going
to keep an eye on it and not wait until
the last minute. As far as I’m concerned,
what’s going to happen is going to
happen.”
Farmers in Matthew’s path scrambled
to protect their crops. In South Carolina,
Jeremy Cannon was harvesting his
soybeans a week early after waiting too
long before last year’s record rainstorm.
He watched his soybeans and cotton
crops slowly drown as 20 inches of rain
fell, costing him $800,000.
“I don’t want to lose a single soybean
if I don’t have to,” Cannon said.
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