WEATHER
*Clouds this morning but sunny this afternoon, high 44
LOCAL
*Skimmers were discovered at a gas station in St. Peters. It happened at the Mobil gas station in the 400 block of Mid Rivers Mall Drive. When using the pump to pay, opt to use a credit card instead of a debit card. Unauthorized credit card charges can be easily disputed, whereas debit card information leads directly to the money in your bank account and can take several days to recover.
NATIONAL
An Arctic Blast Will Freeze The Northeast And Beyond This Weekend-
Winter is making an early entrance in parts of the country. The official start of winter is nearly six weeks away but bitter cold is coming to the Upper Midwest and Northeast this weekend. Forecasters say the front will bring near-record cold.
Source: USA Today
Puerto Rico Death Toll From Hurricane Maria Could Be In The Hundreds-
Puerto Rico's government is reporting numbers that could support claims the death toll from Hurricane Maria was in the hundreds.
Their Department of Public Safety reported this week that the U.S. island territory had nearly 500 more deaths in September, when the storm struck, than in September of last year. The official death toll from the monster storm is 55.
The mayor of the capital city of San Juan is one of those who've already said the death toll could be as high as 500. The issue is death certificates not specifying the conditions caused by Maria being a factor in many of the deaths.
Héctor M. Pesquera, the Secretary of Public Safety, addressed the criticism about the inaccurate death count by saying, “We are not going to question 29,649 doctors who signed all those death certificates. There’s a process, and there’s the law, and we follow the process and the law.”
Source: New York Times
Puerto Ricans faced yet another power outage yesterday (Thursday) when a transmission line failed.
After electricity had been restored to 43 percent of the island, a new failure plunged all but 18 percent of customers back into darkness. The federal emergency command center in San Juan was among the buildings affected. The line has been repaired and the affected areas are coming back online.
The line in question had been repaired by tiny Whitefish Energy, the Montana company whose $300 million contract to work on the island's power grid has since been canceled.
SPORTS
*The Blues beat the Coyotes 3-2