| William Barr discovers that he is not immune to Trump's wrath Posted: 10 Oct 2020 08:31 AM PDT  Barr's immunity came to an abrupt end earlier this week, with the president criticizing the attorney general in astonishingly frank terms.
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| Storm-ravaged Louisiana takes stock of Delta damage Posted: 11 Oct 2020 11:14 AM PDT  After Hurricane Delta ripped through Louisiana on Friday, residents, having waited out the storm elsewhere, returned on Sunday to survey damage to their homes. Delta made landfall near the town of Creole on Friday evening as a Category 2 hurricane, packing sustained winds of 100 miles per hour (160 km per hour). Hurricane #Delta makes landfall near Creole, Louisiana, at 6:00 PM CDT as a category 2 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.
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| Ben Sasse: Democrats ending filibuster and expanding Supreme Court would be 'suicide bombing' of government Posted: 11 Oct 2020 10:14 AM PDT  The conservative Nebraska senator sharply criticized Democrats for what he says is an attack on checks and balances in the US government.
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| Australian navy ship tows unexploded bomb out to sea Posted: 10 Oct 2020 05:50 PM PDT  Australian navy divers have removed an unexploded 45-kilogram (100-pound) bomb on a reef off the southeastern coast and a ship towed it to deeper waters because it posed a "significant risk" to the public. The bomb was found by a fisherman on Elizabeth Reef near Lord Howe Island, about 550 kilometers (340 miles) off New South Wales state.
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| Supporter at right-wing 'Patriot Rally' shot dead after macing a TV security guard at Denver protest Posted: 11 Oct 2020 03:09 AM PDT  The incident, which was captured on camera by a photojournalist at the scene. Police said the security guard had no affiliation with antifa.
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| Nigeria dissolves special police unit after protests: presidency Posted: 11 Oct 2020 07:37 AM PDT  Nigeria on Sunday announced the dissolution of a special police unit tackling serious crimes after an outcry over alleged abuses from rights groups and protests both in the streets and online.
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| Three dead as hundreds of wildfires ravage the Middle East Posted: 11 Oct 2020 05:26 AM PDT  Hundreds of massive wildfires ravaged parts of the Middle East over the weekend, forcing thousands to flee their homes. In Syria, the hardest-hit country, three people were killed according to the health ministry. On Friday, the first day of the renewed fires, the health ministry said that 70 people in Latakia province alone had been taken to the hospital with breathing difficulties. The fires continued to spread across the west coast of the country over the weekend, but were brought under control on Sunday according to state media. Mohammed Hassan Qatana, Syria's health minister, told a local radio station on Friday that the fires were the worst in Syria's history. In neighbouring crisis-hit Lebanon, firefighters were tackling blazes in the north, centre and south of the country, backed up by military helicopters. According to the state news agency, fires in villages in the south of the country triggered the explosions of land mines along the border with Israel.
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| Huckabee: Biden might want to read the Constitution when it comes to presidential powers Posted: 11 Oct 2020 05:24 AM PDT  FOX News contributor reacts to Joe Biden casting doubt on the election and his stance on packing the Supreme Court.
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| How Australia-China relations have hit 'lowest ebb in decades' Posted: 11 Oct 2020 04:40 PM PDT  Recent tensions have read like a geopolitical thriller. But with so much at stake, how will the story end?
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| Wisconsin is battling America's worst coronavirus outbreak, and the state's broken politics are partly to blame Posted: 10 Oct 2020 07:36 AM PDT  The state GOP's relentless campaign to delegitimize pandemic precautions as partisan overreach has restricted the government's ability to address a worsening crisis.
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| Nurse who spoke at RNC arrested for shooting woman in the stomach Posted: 11 Oct 2020 05:46 AM PDT  Amy Ford, a West Virginia nurse who spoke at this year's Republican National Convention, was arrested on Saturday after shooting a woman in the stomach in her hometown. Ford, 39, who was identified as Amy Thorn in the court filing, was charged with malicious or unlawful assault after shooting a woman in her abdomen in Williamson, West Virginia. The victim has been identified by WSAZ -TV as Jonda Whitt.
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| White House sends mixed signals on stimulus as Pelosi announces opposition to latest White House proposal Posted: 11 Oct 2020 01:19 PM PDT  On Sunday, Pelosi told House Democrats, "we remain at an impasse" on stimulus negotiations.
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| 'The Big Burn' of 1910 transformed wildland firefighting. Will 2020 do the same? Posted: 11 Oct 2020 03:04 AM PDT  "Every acre of California can and will burn someday," a fire official said. "We need to embrace that and become resilient to it."
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| A 30-year-old British woman traveling through London airport was arrested after more than $2.5 million was found in her luggage, reports say Posted: 11 Oct 2020 02:00 PM PDT  UK Minister for immigration compliance and the courts called the find the "largest individual cash seizure at the border so far in 2020."
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| 'We won!': Nigeria dissolves feared police unit after protests Posted: 11 Oct 2020 09:24 AM PDT  Nigeria on Sunday dissolved a special police unit set up to fight violent crimes after deadly protests and a social media campaign backed by music and cinema celebrities rose up against years of alleged abuses.
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| Federal prosecutors did a dry run of family separations in Texas and found that children younger than 12 shouldn't be taken away from their parents Posted: 09 Oct 2020 10:53 PM PDT  In 2018, the Trump administration implemented a "zero-tolerance policy," program that separated kids as young as infants from their detained parents.
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| Israel to 'immediately' bring over 2,000 Ethiopian Jews Posted: 10 Oct 2020 01:08 AM PDT |
| Democrats’ Silence on Court Packing Could Cost Them Senate Control Posted: 11 Oct 2020 03:49 PM PDT  Joe Biden is refusing to answer questions about whether he and his party would support packing the Supreme Court and ending the Senate filibuster. Indeed, on Friday a reporter said to him, "Sir I've got to ask you about packing the courts. I know that you said yesterday you aren't going to answer the question until after the election. But this is the No. 1 thing that I've been asked about from viewers in the past couple of days. . . . Don't the voters deserve to know where you stand?"Biden replied, "No, they don't deserve -- I'm not going to play his [Trump's] game."Biden seems to think that all he has to do to occupy the Oval Office in January is run out the clock and avoid angering his activist left-wing backers close to the election.Court packing may not be the deciding issue in the presidential race. But it could be in close Senate races where several Democratic candidates are imitating Biden's silence and being pummeled for it by effective GOP opponents.In Maine, Democratic candidate Sara Gideon won't rule out backing a court-packing plan. Colorado Democrat John Hickenlooper gave an embarrassing non-answer in his debate this past week with Republican senator Cory Gardner. Iowa Democrat Theresa Greenfield was once opposed to court packing but now can't be pinned down on the issue in her race against GOP senator Joni Ernst.The chances of Democrats winning a Senate majority for Democrats are up in the air because of court packing.The irony is that their candidates are taking all this abuse over an idea that is unlikely to happen. Yet it may nonetheless cost them control of the Senate.Let's look at the state of play in Senate races. Democratic senator Doug Jones is badly trailing his GOP opponent in Alabama. That's one seat gone. Michigan Democratic senator Gary Peters is up only 47 percent to 44 percent in the latest CBS Battleground poll. That's a seat in jeopardy. Republican have a long-shot chance of winning in Minnesota, where Democratic senator Tina Smith leads by 8.5 points in the RealClearPolitics average of polls.Let's assume Democrats lose Alabama and keep Michigan and Minnesota. They will have to take back four GOP-held seats to win a tie in the Senate. That tie could then be broken by Kamala Harris if the Biden-Harris ticket wins.But with only 50 senators, Democrats would need the vote of West Virginia's Joe Manchin to pass court packing and end the filibuster. Manchin is a moderate Democrat who may not be susceptible to pressure. He isn't up for reelection until 2024 when he will be 77 and might retire. Manchin has bluntly said that he opposes court packing and abolishing the filibuster. Arizona Democratic senator Kyrsten Sinema has also said she opposes court packing.If the filibuster remains in place, Democrats would be unlikely to pass a bill admitting either the District of Columbia or Puerto Rico as a state as a means of gaining additional senators.And unless they nuke the filibuster, Democrats can't move forward on their other liberal legislative priorities such as the Biden version of the Green New Deal, gun control, taxpayer financing of campaigns, restricting independent political speech, and weakening ballot integrity protections.It would be arduous for Democrats to deal with a Majority Leader McConnell to win Senate confirmation of every judge and cabinet member.But Democrats would find it almost as painful to deal with Joe Manchin as the swing vote in the Senate. There's not enough pork barrel that can be shipped to West Virginia to attempt to rent Joe Manchin's vote on big issues.So, to govern without Manchin's vote, and to have a chance to enact their agenda, Democrats need at least 51 senators. So, assuming a loss in Alabama, they have to beat five Republican incumbents.Democrats think there are three races they're likely to win: Maine, Colorado, and Arizona.But of the next closest six races, they must win at least two. That may not be easy.North Carolina's Senate race has been upended by reports that Democratic nominee Cal Cunningham, a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, had an affair with the wife of Jeremy Todd, a junior officer with whom he served. The U.S. Army Reserve Command is investigating Cunningham for a possible violation of the Code of Military Justice. Todd has called on Cunningham to leave the race.South Carolina, Georgia, Iowa, Montana, and Alaska are the other races where Democrats could pull off an upset.But five of those six races are in deep-red states that consistently vote Republican in most statewide elections.Iowa is a swing state where anything could happen.Republicans in all six states are telling voters that a Democratic Senate majority will unleash plans to pack the Supreme Court, undermine Second Amendment rights, ram through the Green New Deal by regulatory edict, and impose a radical cultural agenda.Democrats who might be able to defeat a GOP incumbent if the race were about other issues might lose if the race becomes focused on an idea as unpopular as court packing.Moderate voters who are thinking about voting for Biden because they dislike Trump may well be scared by the radical idea of packing the Supreme Court.If Biden were a less cautious, and less party-trained politician, he might rethink his silence on court packing. He could take a lesson from Bill Clinton, who convinced moderate voters that he wasn't a knee-jerk liberal when he condemned rapper "Sister Souljah" for her anti-police lyrics.After all, Biden opposed court packing as recently as last year, in two Democratic-primary debates. He would simply be returning to a position he has held for more than 15 years.But I predict he won't do it. He has consistently shown an inability to break with his party's base.But what will happen if key Democratic Senate candidates take the same stance as Biden even though they are running in largely red states? The last time court packing was attempted -- by Franklin Roosevelt, in 1937 -- it stirred up passionate opposition and contributed to Democrats' losing eight Senate seats and 62 House seats in the 1938 midterm elections.Nationally, only 34 percent of registered voters in a new YouGov poll support expanding the number of justices on the Supreme Court. In red states where Democrats need to beat GOP incumbents, support for such an extreme idea is clearly well below that.Indeed, polls show strong support for a "Keep Nine" amendment that simply says, "The Supreme Court of the United States shall be composed of nine Justices." The amendment has been endorsed by nine former Democratic state attorneys general. Three of those former AGs recently wrote in the New York Daily News that, in regard to court packing, "we can think of few threats more serious to the future of constitutional checks and balances that have preserved our Republic for the last two centuries." They reminded their readers that the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg called increasing the number of justices on the Supreme Court a "bad idea."It's unlikely that the silent Senate candidates running as Democrats this year will break with Biden and oppose court packing. Biden apparently believes he can get away with his evasive maneuvers. But it may be a different story for his fellow Democrats further down the ticket.If Democrats end up electing Joe Biden, they will have succeeded in turning the presidential race into a referendum on President Trump's personality. But if they fail to win the Senate, it will be because of an issue they wisely avoided endorsing in their party platform: overturning a 151-year-tradition of having nine justices on the Supreme Court.By stubbornly remaining silent on something that wasn't even part of their agenda a few months ago, they may convince voters they really are the radicals they are accused of being. It could cost them the Senate.
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| Thailand crash: Bus collides with train, killing 18 Posted: 11 Oct 2020 12:35 AM PDT  Passengers on the bus were on their way to celebrate the end of Buddhist Lent, police say.
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| Immigrant family deceived by ICE, father facing deportation Posted: 11 Oct 2020 12:04 PM PDT |
| Iraqi militias say they have halted anti-U.S. attacks Posted: 11 Oct 2020 05:10 AM PDT  An array of Iran-backed Iraqi militia groups have suspended rocket attacks on U.S. forces on condition that Iraq's government present a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops, one of the groups said on Sunday. A spokesman for Kataib Hezbollah, one of the most powerful Iran-backed militia groups in Iraq, said the groups were presenting no set deadline, but that if U.S. troops "insisted on staying" they would unleash much more violent attacks. Washington, which is slowly reducing its 5,000 troops in Iraq, threatened last month to shut its embassy unless the Iraqi government reins in Iran-aligned militias that have attacked U.S. interests with rockets and roadside bombs.
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| State AG fires investigator accused of 'disrespectful' conduct over waitress's BLM pin Posted: 10 Oct 2020 12:40 PM PDT |
| Transcript: Don McGahn on "Face the Nation" Posted: 11 Oct 2020 09:26 AM PDT  The following is a transcript of an interview with Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari that aired Sunday, October 11, 2020, on "Face the Nation."
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| A Black man is suing a Texas city for $1 million after he was tied to police on horseback during an arrest Posted: 11 Oct 2020 10:34 AM PDT  Donald Neely's lawsuit says the situation has caused him "embarrassment, humiliation, and fear," according to local news reports.
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| Jewish reporter says he was beaten up and called a Nazi by Orthodox Jews in New York City amid tensions over new coronavirus lockdowns Posted: 11 Oct 2020 11:35 AM PDT  The incident occurred at a protest following a decision by New York's governor to enforce local lockdowns in communities with large populations of Orthodox Jews.
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| Taiwanese detained in China 'confesses' on state TV Posted: 11 Oct 2020 08:12 AM PDT  A Taiwanese man detained in China and accused of "endangering national security" appeared on Chinese television Sunday evening, admitting to illegally filming military exercises in a city bordering Hong Kong during protests there last year.
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| Gingrich on the state of the 2020 race Posted: 10 Oct 2020 05:45 PM PDT  Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich weighs in on the 2020 race as election day draws near.
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| Taliban denies endorsing Donald Trump Posted: 11 Oct 2020 03:44 AM PDT  Afghan militant group says CBS misrepresented its words
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| Federal judge blocks Texas order limiting ballot drop-off sites to 1 per county Posted: 09 Oct 2020 08:20 PM PDT  Abbott's Oct. 1 absentee voter proclamation, which he said was aimed at preventing election fraud, required the closure of more than a dozen satellite drop-off box locations in at least two counties. "These burdens fall disproportionately on voters who are elderly, disabled, or live in larger counties," Pitman, who sits in Austin, the state capital, wrote in his 46-page decision. Abbott's order was imposed after absentee voting in the state had begun for the Nov. 3 U.S. presidential election, with multiple absentee-ballot collection centers advertised in some counties for weeks.
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| Spanish Canary Islands overwhelmed by migrant arrivals after Covid forces Morocco to seal border Posted: 11 Oct 2020 06:12 AM PDT  Tighter control of its coastline and borders by Morocco during the Covid-19 crisis has led to the largest migrant arrival numbers in the Canary Islands for more than a decade, with local politicians warning the Spanish government that they cannot cope with the influx. In around 48 hours between Thursday night and Saturday more than 1,000 migrants used small boats to reach the archipelago, a dangerous crossing of Atlantic waters where the minimum distance from the island closest to the African continent, Fuerteventura, is around 60 miles. The Red Cross said that all of the 1,015 migrants who reached the islands on 37 boats would survive, although some were showing signs of hypothermia and exhaustion. The migrants have also been tested for coronavirus. Earlier this year Spain and Morocco agreed to boost cooperation on the detection of migrants attempting to cross the Strait of Gibraltar.
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| Florida won’t be releasing new coronavirus cases and deaths on Saturday. Here’s why Posted: 10 Oct 2020 02:25 PM PDT  UPDATE 10/11/2020: Florida adds 5,570 COVID-19 cases a day after duplicate tests led state to hold report
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| Minneapolis Business at Site of George Floyd Killing Threatens to Sue City over ‘Autonomous Zone’ Posted: 10 Oct 2020 08:33 AM PDT  The owner of a grocery store at the site of the George Floyd killing in Minneapolis, Minn., has threatened to sue the mayor and city council over the establishment of an "autonomous zone" that the owner says is hurting businesses in the area, KTSP News reported on Thursday.Employees of the Cup Foods grocery store called police in May after Floyd allegedly attempted to use a counterfeit $20 bill during a purchase. The officers who responded have now been indicted for causing Floyd's death. The killing sparked massive riots in the city during which arsonists destroyed businesses as well as the city's third police precinct.Activists have barricaded an area of several blocks around Cup Foods for several weeks, turning the space into what is called an "autonomous zone." Seattle saw the establishment of an "autonomous zone" in June, but the area was evacuated following a series of shootings and an uptick in crime in the area.Now, the owner of Cup Foods, Mahmoud Abumayyaleh, is threatening to sue the city government due to what he says is an uptick in crime in the area of the store."After dark, the area is basically a lawless zone that is too dangerous to conduct business," the owner's attorney wrote in a letter to Mayor Jacob Frey and the Minneapolis City Council. "In fact, due to the city's barricades and refusal to provide law enforcement in the area, the city has created and is maintaining this lawless zone. This is unacceptable." The letter accused the city government of causing "significant financial losses" by refusing to send law enforcement to the area."We cannot sit idly by and watch crime increase with our eyes wide shut. That's dangerous," Jamar Nelson, a spokesperson for Abumayyaleh and a community activist, told KTSP. Nelson emphasized that crime has visibly gone up in the neighborhood, and that "for anybody to say otherwise is simply fooling themselves."Abumayyaleh has condemned the killing of Floyd repeatedly, calling it an "execution." However, in the wake of the incident, Abumayyaleh received death threats and commenters on social media threatened to burn his store down."There have been countless death threats," Nelson told the Sahan Journal in May. "They threatened to do harm to the store, and they threatened to do bodily harm to individuals in the store."
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| Fresh explosions in Karabakh capital despite ceasefire Posted: 10 Oct 2020 01:56 PM PDT  Fresh explosions rocked the capital of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region on Saturday despite a ceasefire agreed between warring neighbours Armenia and Azerbaijan that brought a brief lull in shelling and missile strikes earlier in the day.
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| Trump news: President attacks ‘unscientific lockdowns’ and slams Biden in White House speech Posted: 10 Oct 2020 02:24 PM PDT  Follow the latest updates
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| WHO discourages lockdowns as U.S. hospitalizations continue climb; 11 states set records for new COVID-19 cases Posted: 11 Oct 2020 12:00 PM PDT  Coronavirus hospitalizations are on the rise. WHO discourages lockdowns. 11 states set 7-day records for new infections. World also struggling.
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| 'I could be one of the diers': Trump recognized own mortality after COVID-19 diagnosis, according to a report from New York Magazine Posted: 09 Oct 2020 09:54 PM PDT  "This thing could go either way," Trump said, according to New York Magazine's Intelligencer. "It's tricky. They told me it's tricky. You can tell it can go either way."
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| Fauci rips new Trump campaign ad, says it uses his comments 'out of context' Posted: 11 Oct 2020 12:57 PM PDT  Fauci said the quote was "taken out of context from a broad statement I made months ago about the efforts of federal public health officials."
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| Canary Islands sees biggest migrant surge since 2006 Posted: 10 Oct 2020 11:32 AM PDT  More than 1,000 migrants reached the Canary Islands in the past 48 hours, the Red Cross said on Saturday, the largest number since a 2006 crisis in the archipelago. Beefed-up security on Morocco's Mediterranean coast is pushing traffickers and migrants south to risk the perilous crossing to the Canaries, located around 60 miles (97 km) to the west of the Atlantic coast, analysts and rights groups say. Between Thursday and Saturday, 1,015 migrants landed in 485 boats in the seven Spanish islands, a Red Cross spokesman said.
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| A 33-year-old Texas man may have posed as a Black man when he killed the mother of his 1-year-old child, authorities say Posted: 10 Oct 2020 08:08 PM PDT  According to the Dallas Morning News, police discovered dark makeup foundation and a fake beard in Andrew Charles Beard's cars.
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| How to watch October's spectacular Orionids meteor shower Posted: 10 Oct 2020 12:57 PM PDT  Skywatchers have the chance to see a spectacular meteor shower as Earth passes through the debris from Halley's Comet.
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| Hong Kong police arrest smuggling group for helping speedboat fugitives Posted: 09 Oct 2020 10:12 PM PDT  Hong Kong police on Saturday arrested a group accused of helping 12 pro-democracy activists detained in mainland China for nearly two months after attempting to flee to Taiwan in a speedboat.
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| Belarus' authoritarian leader visits his foes in prison Posted: 10 Oct 2020 09:26 AM PDT  Belarus' authoritarian president on Saturday visited a prison to talk to opposition activists, who have been jailed for challenging his re-election that was widely seen as manipulated and triggered two months of protests. President Alexander Lukashenko spent more than four hours talking to his jailed political foes at the Minsk prison that belongs to Belarus' State Security Committee, which still goes under its Soviet-era name, KGB. Lukashenko's office said that "the goal of the president was to hear everyone's opinion."
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| Netherlands records second highest case increase in Europe despite faith in 'intelligent' lockdown Posted: 11 Oct 2020 05:53 AM PDT  It prided itself on a successful 'intelligent' lockdown earlier this year, but criticism is growing in the Netherlands as infection rates near the top of European charts. Statistics suggest 20-30 year olds are driving the flare, which is acute in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague. On Sunday, the ECDC recorded the 14-day cumulative number of Covid-19 cases per 100,000 people as 345 in the Netherlands, with only Belgium and the Czech Republic higher. The UK's cumulative case number stands at 242. In a press conference on Friday, prime minister Mark Rutte was uncharacteristically prickly when urging 17.4 million Dutch people to follow the rules: a 10pm curfew for nightlife, facemasks advised in public spaces, three guests maximum in houses and an appeal to work from home. "We aren't keeping to the rules enough," said Mr Rutte. "There are too many people, young people but also other groups, who think it will be okay for them. But it's not okay: it's completely predictable that if lots of young people are infected, they infect their parents and then their grandparents."
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| How another president tried to hide his illness during a pandemic — and the disaster it created Posted: 11 Oct 2020 07:35 AM PDT  President Trump's White House and medical team have been criticized for not being transparent enough about the president's condition after he tested positive for COVID-19. But this isn't the first president to contract a deadly pandemic virus. President Woodrow Wilson's personal physician tried to downplay the severity of the president's illness during a crucial moment in American history when he became sick during the 1918 influenza pandemic.
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| U.S. troops in Germany see their fate as critical, and at stake, in presidential election Posted: 11 Oct 2020 01:30 AM PDT  "Whether that's info war, whether that's mercenary groups, whether that's bombings — anything we can do to replicate what is actually happening in the world right now, " said Capt. Matthew Likes.
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| Killer Mike's majority Black and Latin-American owned online bank already has 'tens of thousands' on the waiting list Posted: 11 Oct 2020 10:59 AM PDT  Greenwood is a virtual banking platform aiming to fill the gaps in how "the current financial system ... failed Black and Latinx communities."
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| Will the Atlantic basin churn out yet another storm this week? Posted: 11 Oct 2020 07:33 AM PDT  As Delta's rain spreads across the eastern United States, AccuWeather meteorologists are turning their attention to a tropical wave cruising across the tropical Atlantic this week. As of Sunday morning, the tropical wave was centered around 1,200 miles east of the Windward Islands and was moving to the west. Satellite imagery revealed that the feature was producing disorganized shower and thunderstorm activity and had yet to form a circulation center at the low levels of the atmosphere, an indication of strengthening. This satellite image of the tropical Atlantic shows the tropical disturbance well to the east of the Lesser Antilles on Sunday morning, Oct. 11, 2020. (CIRA/RAMMB) "This tropical wave will move to the west-northwest into the middle of the week," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Mike Doll said. "It will reach the Lesser Antilles Wednesday, then the far eastern Caribbean by Thursday," Doll said. CLICK HERE FOR THE FREE ACCUWEATHER APP A track into the Caribbean would bring areas of tropical downpours and gusty winds to the Lesser Antilles, and if the storm is able to strengthen, it could bring stronger wind gusts to the region. However, forecasters say there are a couple of hurdles for this wave to overcome before it can develop -- one being strong westerly wind shear. Wind shear is the increase in wind speed with altitude as well as the change in wind direction from one location to another. Strong wind shear can prevent tropical waves from fully developing. In addition, pockets of dry air across the tropical Atlantic could get embedded into the wave, decreasing shower and thunderstorm activity and lessening the risk for tropical development. "As a result, the chance of this feature developing into a tropical system is low," Doll said. Elsewhere in the Atlantic basin, there are no other areas currently being monitored for tropical activity, but forecasters say there is still a ways to go before one can call it quits on the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season. Thus far, there have been 25 named storms in the Atlantic basin. AccuWeather meteorologists predict that 2020 will tie the previous seasonal record set with a total of 28 named storms now projected. The record-setting 28 named storms was set during the historic 2005 hurricane season which churned out powerhouse hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma. That season was also the only other year in which Greek letters had to be used, with storms Alpha to Zeta being named. This year, more storms are likely to be given Greek letters for names in the coming weeks and perhaps even into December, beyond the official end of the Atlantic hurricane season on Nov. 30. The next two storms that reach tropical storm strength, which is when sustained wind speeds reach 39 mph, will be given the names Epsilon and Zeta. Keep checking back on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier and Verizon Fios.
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