First Run News

RAQQA, Syria — Every few minutes, a deafening boom. Then a whistle of artillery. Occasionally, the clatter of a pickup truck, piled with soldiers, advancing to the front line.

RAQQA, Syria — Every few minutes, a deafening boom. Then a whistle of artillery. Occasionally, the clatter of a pickup truck, piled with soldiers, advancing to the front line.

It’s time for all of us to play defense, because Equifax clearly did not. In the wake of the epic breach of as many as 143 million of our Social Security numbers, names and addresses from the company’s credit files, the company put up a website that attempted to make sense

Equifax, you had one job. Your only purpose as a corporation, the reason you were created and remain a going concern, is to collect and maintain people’s most private financial data. Now you have fallen down on your only job — and spectacularly so.

Equifax warehouses the most intimate details of Americans’ financial lives, from the credit cards in their wallets to the size of their medical bills. But the company doesn’t face the constant monitoring and auditing that help strengthen banks’ systems and data protections.

CLEWISTON, Fla.

JUCHITÁN DE ZARAGOZA, Mexico — Thousands of homes in this city were severely damaged. Half of the 19th-century city hall, with its 30 arches, collapsed. The main hospital here was so devastated that staff members evacuated patients to an empty lot and worked by the light of their cellphones. By the time the earthquake’s tremors finally faded, at least 36 people in Juchitán de Zaragoza were dead. “It’s a truly critical situation,” Óscar Cruz López, the city’s municipal secretary, said Friday. “The city,” he said, and then paused.

JUCHITÁN DE ZARAGOZA, Mexico — Thousands of homes in this city were severely damaged. Half of the 19th-century city hall, with its 30 arches, collapsed. The main hospital here was so devastated that staff members evacuated patients to an empty lot and worked by the light of their cellphones. By the time the earthquake’s tremors finally faded, at least 36 people in Juchitán de Zaragoza were dead. “It’s a truly critical situation,” Óscar Cruz López, the city’s municipal secretary, said Friday. “The city,” he said, and then paused.

CODRINGTON, Antigua and Barbuda — Paul De Windt abandoned his home and holed up in his office with his family and pet cat on the island of St. Martin to wait out the fury of Hurricane Irma. Days later, his house is uninhabitable, at least 10 people have died on the island, water and power have been knocked out, and half of the homes have lost their roofs. But instead of thinking about the long and painful recovery to come, Mr.

WASHINGTON — As Hurricane Irma barrels dangerously toward Florida, scientists say that a perfect mix of meteorological conditions has conspired over the past week to make the storm unusually large and powerful.