Category 4: Hurricane Helene hit Florida’s less-populated “Big Bend” on the Gulf Coast as a Category 4 storm overnight with winds up to 140 mph and a powerful storm surge. Helene is now a tropical storm drenching Georgia and the Carolinas.

  Assessment of the situation is still underway but four deaths and as many as 100 water rescues have been reported. Trees have been blown down and roofs ripped off by wind. Two million power customers are in the dark and many people are trapped in their homes. 

  CNN showed one man paddling a kayak in his living room. One woman said she had fish in her yard.

HIS DIZZHONOR: A federal indictment unsealed yesterday accuses New York mayor Eric Adams of bribery, fraud, taking campaign money from a foreign source and accepting $100,000 in graft.

  Adams is the first sitting mayor of New York to be indicted. Prosecutors charge that the corruption began when Adams was the Brooklyn borough president and continued after he became mayor.

  The investigation began back in 2021 looking into whether the 64-year-old Adams conspired with the Turkish government to receive illegal campaign contributions in exchange for acting on Turkey’s behalf. 

  Damian Williams, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, told reporters that Adams had been “showered” with gifts and that, “This was a multiyear scheme to buy favor with a single New York City politician on the rise: Eric Adams.”

  The mayor, a former police captain who vowed to reduce crime, took on the mantle of victimhood saying, “It’s an unfortunate day and it’s a painful day but in spite of all of that it’s a day when we will finally reveal why for 10 months I have gone through this.”  He has so far refused to resign.

  Williams said favors Adams accepted on the Turkish dime … or lira …  included free and discounted Turkish Airlines tickets as well as meals and hotel rooms. Adams tried to hide the gifts or make them appear as if he had paid for them, according to the indictment. Williams said, “That’s just a clumsy coverup.” 

  Prosecutors said that what Adams delivered in exchange was pressure on the New York Fire Department to approve a new Turkish consulate building in Manhattan despite safety concerns. A Fire Department official said he was told he would lose his job if he did not follow the mayor’s order.

IT’S POLITICAL: Republican leaders are criticizing Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky for visiting an ammunition plant in Scranton, Pennsylvania earlier this week claiming the tour was “clearly a partisan campaign event designed to help Democrats.” Zelensky, who was accompanied by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, thanked factory workers for making the artillery shells used by the Ukrainian army.

  Balancing his political books, Zelensky is scheduled to meet with Donald Trump this morning at Trump Tower in New York. Trump and running mate JD Vance have been critical of continuing support for defending Ukraine against Russia but Trump claimed, again without any backing in fact, that, “I believe I will be able to make a deal between President Putin and President Zelensky quite quickly.”

  One of Trump’s latest lines of attack on Vice President Kamala Harris is accusing her of lying about working at McDonald’s while she was in college.

   “She’s a liar. She doesn’t work at McDonald’s. She said she worked at McDonald’s, right?” Trump said at a rally in Arizona this month. “There’s only one problem. She didn’t work at McDonald’s. She’s a liar.”

  Under criticism for not visiting the border so far during the campaign, Harris today is going to a small border town in Arizona. Her campaign says she’s going to speak about Donald Trump killing a bi-partisan border control deal so he would still have the issue to complain about during the campaign season.

  Politicians are under pressure to visit the border to demonstrate concern, but actually going to the border does nothing to solve the problem.

INFLUENCERS: Federal officials warn that October will be the month when Russia, Iran and China step up their election influencing.

   Russia supports Donald Trump and Iran does not, even plotting to assassinate him, according to US intelligence. China is reported to be somewhere in the middle, mostly targeting down ballot races.

UNNATURAL: Oscar-winning actress Meryl Streep spoke yesterday outside the United Nations condemning the treatment of women in Afghanistan. “A cat may feel the sun on her face. She may chase a squirrel into the park,” Streep said. “A bird may sing in Kabul, but a girl may not, and a woman may not in public. This is extraordinary. This is a suppression of the natural law. This is odd.”

THE SPIN RACK:  Just as the jury was being selected for a civil damage trial, the right wing Newsmax, cable news channel settled the lawsuit brought against it by the Smartmatic voting technology company. Smartmatic had accused Newsmax of airing false reports that Smartmatic helped swing the 2020 election for Joe Biden. — NBC’s “Today Show” star Hoda Kotb, 60, says she’s leaving the show early next year to be able to spend more with her daughters ages 4 and 7. She’s been with the show for 26 years.  

BELOW THE FOLD:  Play ball! The 50^th home run ball hit by Dodgers baseball star Shohei Ohtani was going to be up for auction at a starting price of half a million dollars until an 18-year-old fan filed a lawsuit claiming the ball is rightfully his.

  Max Matus says he had the ball until Chris Belanski wrestled it out of his hand amidst a pile of grabby fans.  The ball could auction for several million dollars in the US and go for multiples of that in Ohtani’s home country, Japan.

  Video of the incident appears to support Matus’s claim, but it may be up to a court to decide whether snagging home run balls is a winner-take-all game.

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