By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS today

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — They call it the Cosmic Crisp. It’s not a video game, a superhero or the title of a Grateful Dead song.

It’s a new variety of apple, coming to a grocery store near you Dec. 1

Cosmic Crisp is the first apple ever bred in Washington state, which grows the majority of the United States’ apples. It’s expected to be a game changer.

Already, growers have planted 12 million Cosmic Crisp apple trees, a sign of confidence in the new variety. While only 450,000 40-pound (18-kilogram) boxes will be available for sale this year, that will jump to more than 2 million boxes in 2020 and more than 21 million by 2026.

The apple variety was developed by Washington State University. Washington growers, who paid for the research, will have the exclusive right to sell it for the first 10 years.

https://www.apnews.com/b108210233784b3fb1753d1bf6315a14

A brief history of the Red Delicious apple:

https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/rise-and-fall-once-red-delicious-apples

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/05/03/607384579/the-apple-that-changed-the-world

By DAISY NGUYEN an hour ago

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — As many as 100,000 Californians are eligible to receive payments for the damages they suffered from a series of devastating wildfires over the last several years. But tens of thousands of them have not sought compensation.

They face a Monday deadline to file claims against Pacific Gas & Electric, the utility blamed for many of the fires and required to cover a wide range of wildfire-related losses as part of its bankruptcy plan.

Concerned that as many as 70,000 victims may miss out on payments, attorneys filed court papers Friday to alert the bankruptcy judge that wildfire survivors — many still traumatized and struggling to get back on their feet — aren’t aware of their rights to file a claim.

“People really are overwhelmed and don’t understand what they need to do,” said Cecily Dumas, an attorney for the Official Committee of Tort Claimants, a group appointed by the court to represent all wildfire victims in the bankruptcy.

https://www.apnews.com/fe26f8947275451683f0487a95597af0

By THOMAS BEAUMONT and ALEXANDRA JAFFE today

AMES, Iowa (AP) — In the liberal strongholds of Des Moines’ west side and the Iowa State University campus in Ames, not once was South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg asked by voters recently about the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump.

It’s not that the investigation into the president’s request for foreign help in his reelection effort is an afterthought for Democrats whose votes in Iowa will start the nominating process. Quite the opposite.

Instead, it’s that the impeachment inquiry is so ingrained in the 2020 campaign that there’s little point in bringing it up.

Democratic voters say they don’t expect that the president will be removed from office, so they are concentrating instead of selecting the strongest opponent to unseat him.

https://www.apnews.com/7c11c02ea09d4c7ea7a39a63a70b127c

By MICHAEL CASEY 36 minutes ago

DURHAM, N.H. (AP) — New England is awash in historic markers, but a handful of plaques popping up in a New Hampshire town are different.

Rather than commemorating important people or places in history, many of these dinner plate-size signs detail events like rising sea levels and an explosion of ticks that have yet to happen — part of an effort to draw attention to the potential effects of climate change.

The signs are based on possibilities laid out in the scientific research that the towns have used to develop their climate plans and written from the perspective of someone in the 22nd century looking back.

“The concept is to just really take that information that is on the websites and package it in a way to insert it into the landscape where people will bump into it,” said Northeastern University’s Thomas Starr, who came up with the project known as ”Remembrance of Climate Futures.” He has placed 11 plaques in Durham, New Hampshire, six in Essex, Massachusetts, and is planning to install some in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as well.

https://www.apnews.com/273bc827d08a4f98b6f546733cc3485c

Source: Associated Press

By REBECCA SANTANA 41 minutes ago

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Officials in New Orleans say that plans to safely topple two giant cranes leaning precariously over the crumbled remains of a partially collapsed hotel must be delayed by a day.

Officials said at a press conference that the demotion, scheduled for Saturday, will take place on Sunday, no earlier than noon.

The towers — one around 270 feet (82 meters) high, the other about 300 feet (91 meters) — weigh tons and have loomed over the wreckage for a week. The Hard Rock Hotel under construction at the corner of Canal and Rampart Streets partially collapsed Oct. 12, killing three workers. Two bodies remain in the unstable wreckage and Mayor LaToya Cantrell said recovering the remains would be a top priority once the area was rendered safe.

If the plans succeed, the towers will drop vertically, sparing neighboring structures that include the Saenger Theatre and the New Orleans Athletic Club, both built in the 1920s. Officials said shelter would be provided for anyone needing it as a result of an evacuation around the site.

Read more: https://www.apnews.com/37b935181c504f21a4530d1220357962

By
Josh Israel -
October 18, 2019

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) is very angry that House Democrats are not letting him dictate how the impeachment inquiry should be run.

A day after the acting White House chief of staff admitted that the Trump administration withheld security aid to Ukraine in an effort to pressure its governor to investigate political opponents, a Republican congressman authored an op-ed on Friday comparing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff to a "military coup." His reasoning: He doesn't like the way they are conducting the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump.

Though Trump has not yet been impeached — the process by which the House of Representatives brings charges against a president who has committed "high crimes and misdemeanors" — Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) claimed that the House Democrats investigating his likely illegal behavior "have more in common with the leaders of a military coup than they think." With a two-thirds vote required in the GOP-controlled Senate for Trump to be removed from office, this process is nothing like a military coup.

https://shareblue.com/andy-biggs-impeachment-donald-trump-military-coup-ukraine-arizona-republican-gop/

Yep this is the same "guy" that won the $10 million American Family Publishers sweepstakes in 1993..............................and thinks that if you are sick you don't need health care........................

https://ballotpedia.org/Andy_Biggs

By
Josh Israel -
October 18, 2019

Republicans in Congress voted against a bill that would disincentive companies' shipping jobs overseas and lying about it.

The House of Representatives passed a bill on Friday to require public companies to disclose how many people they employ in the United States and abroad, a transparency measure aimed at showing who outsources jobs to foreign countries. The vote was 226-184, but 183 of the 185 Republican members of Congress present voted against the measure.

The Outsourcing Accountability Act, proposed by Rep. Cindy Axne (D-IA), simply changes existing disclosure laws for publicly traded companies to require them to publish annually the number of employees they have in each state and country. Axne noted that many of her constituents have been told they are being "laid off due to 'technological advances,' only to then be asked to train their replacement overseas."

"By holding companies accountable for outsourcing, this bill will help disincentivize the practice and give employees, consumers, and investors the information they need to make informed decisions about supporting companies that support American jobs," she explained.

But most Republicans opposed the bill, objecting to it as a mandate on companies aimed at making them look bad.

https://shareblue.com/house-republicans-vote-companies-jobs-overseas-outsourcing-accountability-act-cindy-axne-gop-congress/

Virginia Republican linked to tax-filing companies that scammed poor Virginians
By
Dan Desai Martin -
October 18, 2019

Del. Tim Hugo is linked to Intuit and H&R Block, two companies that allegedly steered low-income Virginians away from free tax-filing options to increase their profits.

Virginia Republican Del. Tim Hugo is linked to two companies that steered low-income Americans — including Virginians — away from free tax-filing programs even though they were eligible to use them. Instead, the companies used "deceptive design and misleading advertising to trick lower-income Americans into paying to file their taxes," according to an April ProPublica investigation.

Hugo is the executive director of the Free File Alliance, a nonprofit organization representing 12 tax software companies. The Free File Alliance entered into an agreement with the IRS to provide free tax-filing services to millions of low-income Americans. In return, the IRS would not provide free tax software for Americans.

But two of the Free File Alliance's biggest members, Intuit, which owns Turbo Tax, and H&R Block, intentionally made it harder for Americans to find and use the free versions, even if they qualified for it. Through using computer code on their website, "TurboTax Free File is effectively hidden from Google," ProPublica reported. Further, "Intuit's smaller competitor in the market, H&R Block, also hid its H&R Block Free File product from Google using the same sort of code."

https://shareblue.com/virginia-republican-tim-hugo-tax-filing-companies-scam-intuit-h-r-block-gop/

Published 1 min ago
on October 19, 2019

By Tom Boggioni

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/10/trump-advertised-he-would-be-a-corrupt-president-in-the-first-hour-after-he-was-sworn-in-here-is-how/