Day: October 9, 2019

Pacific Gas & Electric, the utility serving more than 16 million people across California, shut down power to more than 500,000 customers early Wednesday morning with more outages scheduled in the coming days.

As of Wednesday evening, PG&E’s website was overwhelmed with traffic and the company was directing customers to an alternative site for more information about the outages. (Our sister site Curbed has a list of all the areas affected by the power shutdown).

The forced blackout is a blunt response to the growing risks of disastrous wildfires brought about by a complex combination of suburban sprawl, …

For the fourth time ever in American history, the House of Representatives has launched an impeachment inquiry into a sitting president.

What had been a plodding, tedious process in the House suddenly turned into a whirlwind as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi officially announced the House’s plans to dial up its investigations into President Donald Trump after the president pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the business ties of former Vice President Joe Biden’s son — and allegedly withheld federal military aid from Ukraine in order to make it happen.

“The president must be held accountable,” Pelosi told reporters. “No …

On Tuesday night, the Trump administration sent House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her committee chairs an eight-page letter refusing to comply with their impeachment inquiry — a letter as constitutionally dubious as it was defiant.

“Your inquiry is constitutionally invalid and a violation of due process,” the letter from White House counsel Pat Cipollone states. “Your contrived process is unprecedented in the history of the nation and lacks the necessary authorization for a valid impeachment proceeding.”

The letter raises a number of procedural complaints, chief among them that the House hasn’t conducted a formal vote to authorize impeachment yet. …

We don’t talk much about chlamydia, gonorrhea, or syphilis, in part because it can seem like they’re not big health issues anymore. But it turns out more and more Americans may be quietly suffering from these once nearly eliminated STDs.

According to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were nearly 2.4 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis reported in the United States in 2018 — the highest cumulative number ever recorded.

The leap in cases over the last few years is truly eye-popping. Between 2017 and 2018, the rate of:

• Gonorrhea cases increased

From their ersatz offices in coffee shops, coworking spaces, and living rooms, a growing number of remote workers are quietly remaking the way we work and live.

Take Eden Rehmet, who was able to parlay her wages working in trade services at a New York City commodities broker into buying a home and opening a small business upstate.

Rob Osario, a web developer, works remotely from Brooklyn half of the week to skip a commute to his Manhattan office.

And interior designer Meg Lavalette gets the best of both worlds by living and doing the majority of her work in …

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The White House tries to stonewall impeachment

• The Trump administration is refusing to cooperate with House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry: “Put simply, you seek to overturn the results of the 2016 election and deprive the American people of the President they have freely chosen,” the White House counsel wrote. [Washington Post / Felicia Sonmez, John Wagner, and Colby Itkowitz]
• Democrats see an