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  Democrat John Fetterman is hanging on to a six percentage-point lead   over Republican Mehmet Oz   in the nation's most closely watched Senate race, a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll of Pennsylvania finds, stoking Democratic hopes of keeping control of the Senate in the midterms. The Pennsylvania contest is believed to be the best shot Democrats have to pick up a Senate seat now held by a Republican. A victory in the Keystone State would mean an endangered Democratic incumbent elsewhere could lose re-election and not cost the party the 50-50 split that now gives it control.  Fetterman, the state's lieutenant governor, was backed by 46% of those surveyed. Oz, a celebrity doctor endorsed by former president Donald Trump, was backed by 40%. That's closer than the nine-point lead, 46%-37%, that Fetterman held in the USA TODAY/Suffolk survey taken in June. In the contest for governor, Democrat Josh Shapiro, the state attorney general, is pulling awa...

FORT MYERS, Fla. – Shannon Tolbert and her cousins had no power two days after Hurricane Ian made landfall, so they cooled off in the shade of a compact SUV trunk Friday afternoon in front of the house. They live in Dunbar, a historically Black area of Fort Myers that also houses a growing Hispanic and Latino population. Lining the roads were uprooted trees, straggled power lines, piles of fence remnants and storm debris from Ian’s Category 4 winds. “Every time we have a storm, we’re the last ones to get power,” said Tolbert's cousin, lifetime Dunbar resident Valorie Simmons, steel factory worker. Simmons' daughter Cherell Lindsey nodded along with Tolbert's daughter, who was lounging in the SUV's back seat. “It’s expected," Simmons said. "Where it's Black and brown people ... we get it last." Black residents of Dunbar said they fear the aftermath of Hurricane Ian will be no different, saying the city’s wealthier, majority-white neighborhoods...

R ussian-held regions of Ukraine are voting Friday on referendums that are seen as a step toward annexing the territories by Russia. The referendums ask residents if they want their regions to be part of Russia. If approved, it gives Russia the pretext to claim that Ukrainian forces are attacking Russia itself, dramatically escalating the war. The votes follow Putin's order of a partial mobilization of reservists, which could add about 300,000 Russian troops, and the discovery of mass graves in Izium where dozens of bodies showed signs of torture, officials said A Kremlin-orchestrated referendum got underway Friday in occupied regions of Ukraine that sought to make them part of Russia, with some officials carrying ballots to apartment blocks accompanied by gun-toting police. Kyiv and the West condemned it as a rigged election whose result was preordained by Moscow. In a grim reminder of the 7-month-old invasion, U.N. experts and Ukrainian officials have pointed to new evidence of R...

HIGHLIGHTS England lost to Australia 0-4 in the previous Ashes England recently beat South Africa 2-1 in a 3-match series England won the 3rd Test by 9 wickets England Test skipper Ben Stokes has set his goals clear for the Ashes next summer. Under Stokes, the Three Lions have been on a rampage, having won six out of seven Tests. On Monday, September 12, England beat South Africa by nine wickets in the third Test at Kennington Oval in London, after which they won the three-match series 2-1. Amidst England’s decent run over the last few months, Stokes hasn’t forgotten their dismal campaign against Australia in the Ashes last year. The British team, then captained by Joe Root, lost the five-match Test series 0-4 and was on the verge of losing the Sydney Test as well, where they evaded defeat by one wicket. England are also scheduled to lock horns with Pakistan later this year in a seven-match T20I series in Karachi and Lahore. "When you know you've got an Ashes coming up very so...

  Google has completed its acquisition of Mandiant, bringing a major name in cybersecurity under the tech giant’s ever-growing umbrella. The $5.4 billion acquisition, announced in March, was completed on Monday, according to a Google press release. Per details in the release, Mandiant will keep its own brand while operating under the Google Cloud branch of its new parent company. Google Cloud is the cloud computing platform offered by Google and provides cloud computing and data storage infrastructure for other companies to build products on top of.  Mandiant is best known for uncovering the SolarWinds hack, a massive Russia-linked breach that compromised US government agencies including the departments of Homeland Security, State, Defense, and Commerce. In a blog post, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian highlighted Mandiant’s threat intelligence expertise and said that Google intends to combine that with its enormous data processing and machine learning capabi...

  WhatsApp will soon launch a new camera shortcut for iPhone users A screenshot has emerged online, revealing that the camera shortcut is located within the navigation bar. It appears to be the same as the one used in the WhatsApp beta for Android. This brand-new shortcut is still not visible to users because WhatsApp intends to include it in a future software version. WhatsApp, a Meta-owned messaging network, continues to introduce new services for its customers in order to retain them. According to recent reports, WhatsApp is currently working on a feature that would provide a new camera shortcut to their app for iPhone users. The social messaging juggernaut recently filed a new upgrade through the TestFlight beta programme, according to the most current reports by WABetaInfo. It is now updated to version 22.19.0.75. The TestFlight build is 22.19.0, whereas the most recent version shown in the WhatsApp Settings is 2.22.19.75. A screenshot has emerged online, revealing that the ca...

  Netflix series 'The Witcher' finishes 'emotional' season 3 production Netflix fantasy show  The Witcher  has completed the production for its third season. On September 10, the Henry Cavill-led series completed the shooting of its third season as confirmed by executive producer Steve Gaub through his social media post. The series production started in March and was shot in different locations, like Italy, Predjama castle in Slovenia, Wales, Morocco, Sahara Desert, and Croatia before coming back to the Longcross Studios in England, and surrounding locations in Surrey. The production was briefly postponed in July after the show's lead actor Henry Cavill tested positive for COVID. After the production wrap-up, Cavill shared a note for the cast and crew and wrote, “What a season this has been!” Furthermore, the actor expressed his gratitude to the team for their “determination and dedication through a tough shoot” and hoped that now everyone could “get some well-deser...

After riots in Iraq, the Shiite preacher Muqtada al-Sadr called on his followers to withdraw. A nationwide curfew was lifted. After two days of violent protests that left more than 37 dead, the first supporters of Iraqi Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr left the government district in Baghdad. In a speech at his headquarters, al-Sadr had previously urged his supporters to evacuate the so-called Green Zone in the center within 60 minutes. If they don't do this, he himself will withdraw from his own movement, al-Sadr said in a televised address. He apologized to the Iraqi people. He had hoped for peaceful protests. The unrest in Iraq broke out after al-Sadr's announcement that he intends to withdraw from politics. He accused rivals of having ignored calls for reforms. His followers then took up arms. Several people were killed in the riots on Monday. Government palace stormed In the heavily secured Green Zone, militias from both sides fought each other. According to the Iraqi securit...