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Today’s edition of quick hits.
* Deady fires in Hawaii: “At least six people have died in fires in Maui, officials said Wednesday. ... Crews continue to battle fires in Maui and the Big Island, which have been fanned in part by strong winds from Hurricane Dora, a Category 4 storm.”
* A scary scene in Utah: “The FBI on Wednesday shot and killed a Utah man who allegedly made online threats to kill President Joe Biden and New York prosecutor Alvin Bragg while serving a warrant at his Provo home, officials said. The investigation involved the suspect making alleged threats against politicians and public figures, according to charging documents obtained by NBC News.”
* In Ukraine: “In the center of a small Ukrainian city, rescuers shrouded in smoke and dust dug through what remained of buildings and bodies on Tuesday, looking for survivors after a pair of missile strikes that President Volodymyr Zelensky said had killed at least nine people and wounded 82 others. Two Russian missiles hit the city center of Pokrovsk, in the Donetsk region, just 37 minutes apart and in nearly the same location on Monday evening.”
* The judge in this case, if you were curious, was a George W. Bush appointee: “A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked enforcement of Colorado’s new law raising the age to purchase all firearms to 21, a blow to Democrats who passed a major slate of gun control measures this year. The law was set to go into effect on Tuesday.”
* The judge in this case, if you were curious, was a Donald Trump appointee: “Civil rights groups asked a federal judge Tuesday to stop Florida officials from enforcing a section of a new state immigration law that criminalizes transporting someone who has entered the United States unlawfully. But the jurist denied the request immediately on a technicality.”
* The latest on Feinstein: “Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., fell at home Tuesday and visited the hospital to get checked out, her office said. ‘Senator Feinstein briefly went to the hospital yesterday afternoon as a precaution after a minor fall in her home. All of her scans were clear and she returned home,’ a Feinstein spokesperson told NBC News in an email Wednesday.”
* This debacle started with an automated facial recognition search: “Porcha Woodruff was getting her two daughters ready for school when six police officers showed up at her door in Detroit. They asked her to step outside because she was under arrest for robbery and carjacking. ‘Are you kidding?’ she recalled saying to the officers. Ms. Woodruff, 32, said she gestured at her stomach to indicate how ill-equipped she was to commit such a crime: She was eight months pregnant.”
* A different kind of governmental turf-battle: “Do you know who Hugh McCulloch was? Don’t feel bad. Almost no one else remembers him either. Yet here in America’s hidebound capital, where power sometimes takes the shape of a rectangular gilded frame, two federal agencies are squabbling over the 143-year-old portrait of a long-dead public servant so obscure he’s more like Who McCulloch to Americans today.”
See you tomorrow.