Beautiful and strange eyes

Beautiful and strange eyes

Princess Diana charms the Reagans

(CNN)Thursday marks the 20th anniversary of the death of Princess Diana. To mark the solemn anniversary, this week's #TBT looks back on one of the more joyful moments of her too-short life.

In November 1985, President Ronald Reagan and first lady Nancy Reagan welcomed Diana and her husband, Prince Charles, to the White House. President Reagan noted that the trip marked Diana's first trip to the United States.

Reagan, in his address at a gala dinner held in honor of his guests, was clearly flustered. "We have been able to have this affair with Princess David — Princess Diane here on her first trip to the United States," he said. He messed up her name! Twice! That's kind of adorable.

Princess Diana Fast Facts

That evening, Nancy Reagan famously facilitated a dance between Diana and actor John Travolta -- no stranger himself to pop culture immortality when it comes to dancing -- which resulted in some of the most iconic images of the Princess. In the Instagram post above, you can see Diana and Travolta cutting a rug, with the President in the background. She also took a turn on the dance floor with Reagan himself.

It wasn't the first or last time the Reagans interacted with the royals. The couple first met the prince in 1974, and from then on, Nancy and Charles were pen pals of sorts. Many of the letters they exchanged were extremely revealing -- some even detailed Prince Charles' relationship with the Princess around the time of their separation.

Princess Diana died on August 31, 1997 following a car crash in Paris.

Chemical Fire Reported At Flooded Arkema Plant In Crosby, Texas

The Arkema plant in Crosby, Texas, is northeast of Houston. The company says it received reports of two explosions at the plant in the early hours of Thursday.

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Updated at 10:02 a.m. ET

Fire broke out and containers of chemicals burst at the Arkema plant in Crosby, Texas, early Thursday, confirming fears that volatile organic peroxides produced at the plant could pose a threat after Hurricane Harvey knocked out safety systems.

The company had pulled its employees from the facility earlier this week out of concern for their safety. Residents within a 1.5-mile radius of Arkema were also ordered to flee.

Because of flooding from Harvey, the plant lost power — and the ability to safely store chemicals that can explode and cause intense fires.

Early Thursday, Arkema said two explosions were reported at the plant northeast of Houston, adding that the Harris County Emergency Operations Center informed the company that black smoke was rising from the plant.

But at a briefing hours later, the county's emergency and safety officials insisted that nothing at the plant had exploded.

"It wasn't an explosion. I want to be very clear. It was not an explosion," Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said of the incident, which he said was a result of containers "basically popping."

As for the gas and smoke rising from the plant, Gonzalez said, "It is not anything toxic, it's not anything we feel is a danger to the community at all."

The sheriff's department says that 15 of its deputies went to the hospital after getting close to the Arkema plant, and that while eight deputies have been released, seven others are still being evaluated. The agency has said the deputies inhaled a "non-toxic irritant."

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Chemicals At Flooded Texas Plant In Danger Of Exploding

Gonzalez compared the fumes his deputies encountered to "standing over a barbecue pit or something like that."

Whether they're called pops, bangs or explosions, the incident centers on chemical containers in 18-wheeler boxes, said Bob Royall, assistant chief of the Harris County Fire Marshal's Office. Three of the nine boxes have lost refrigeration, but the others are still refrigerated — for now, he said.

"What will happen with these containers that are inside these box vans is, they will pop. And they will heat up, and they will catch on fire. And as such, they will burn with intensity until the fuel is consumed — and then they will die down again."

Royall and Gonzalez refused to call the incident an explosion — a distinction that drew questions from reporters at a dawn briefing in Crosby.

Royall replied that he doesn't want people thinking of "a high-order explosion — something that would be devastating."

"We haven't had massive explosions, because that's not what we expect," he added later. In this case, Royall said, "We've heard these containers pop ... basically, they had container over-pressure."

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration lists organic peroxides under two hazard categories: one for fire, and one for "exploding bomb."

"Explosions of peroxides have caused many fatal accidents," says the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In terms of toxicity, the agency says they are "often highly toxic and irritating to the skin, eyes, and mucous membranes."

Arkema says it had planned for the worst — but that Harvey's impact surpassed those plans, flooding the facility with 6 feet of water. The plant was shut down last Friday, before Harvey made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane.

NPR's Debbie Elliott reports from Beaumont, Texas:

"The plant lost power, and its emergency generators. That knocked out refrigeration that keeps the chemicals stable. They're extremely flammable and burn intensely. A chain reaction of explosions is likely, and Arkema warns an environmental release into floodwaters is possible.

"It's not safe to have anyone on site, so the plan is to let the fire burn out. People within a mile-and-half radius in Crosby were evacuated before the fire."

The company says it began warning officials of the safety risk at the plant days ago, after its contingency plans were defeated.

Saying that the chemicals — which are used in producing plastics, resins and other materials — "could now explode and cause a subsequent intense fire," the company added, "The high water and lack of power leave us with no way to prevent it."

Arkema says the plant "is in a rural area with no hospitals, schools, correctional facilities or recreational areas or industrial/commercial areas in the vicinity."

As NPR's Wade Goodwyn reports:

"According to the EPA, nearly 4,000 people live within a 3-mile radius. The chemical facility too is abandoned since the last 11 employees who had remained to try to keep the products from igniting were pulled out."

...

"Locating chemical and fertilizer plants next to residential areas is not all that uncommon in Texas. In 2013, the West Fertilizer Co. in the small town of West, just south of Dallas, exploded, killing 12 first responders and three others and injuring 160. Property damage to the surrounding neighborhoods was extensive. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives eventually ruled that fire was deliberately set. The water poured onto the blaze by the volunteer firemen very likely facilitated the explosion, which blew up with the force of between 7.5 and 10 tons of TNT."

WOW Airlines Is Offering $69 Flights to Europe

Icelandic airline WOW has announced they’ll be offering $69 flights to Europe out of Logan airport. There will be eight destinations total that you can get to from Bosotn, but all of the flight deals share one thing in common: You have to stop over in Reykjavic on the way to them. But once you’ve enjoyed your Iceland visit, you can head to Paris, Brussels, Stockholm, Dublin, Berlin, London, Copenhagen, and Edinburgh, according to the Boston Business Journal.

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This is after the airline already offered $99 fares back in 2015. But you’ll have to make your travel plans soon—the discounted fares are only available for September through November of this year. On the plus side, that $69 fare does include all the taxes and fees that you normally find tacked on right as you’re about to book your trip. The flights are also available out of Washington D.C., Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Miami. So if you’ve got an out of town friend who’s always ready to travel, there’s still a chance they can join you. Just remember to book through the airline’s website, wowair.us, which is the only place you can get the special rate.

Whole Foods Is Part of Amazon Now, So I Stopped by After Work to See What's Different

Monday was the first day of the rest of Whole Foods Market's life, so to speak, now that it's been officially acquired by Amazon--with big changes promised.

There's a Whole Foods Market at the corner of 7th Avenue and 24th Street in Manhattan, just a few blocks from my office. So I stopped by on my way home from work last night to find out what's different--and what isn't. Here's what I saw:

Lower prices.

Here's the headline grabber: indeed, prices have dropped. Quite a few items had signs that touted what used cost before Amazon bought Whole Foods Market, and of course what they're going for now. So, organic Gala apples? They were $2.99 a pound Sunday, and they're $1.99 a pound today. Haas avocados? They were $2.50 each, are now $1.49.

Bloomberg, Tech Crunch, and Business Insider kind of went to town on this, with the latter compiling a long list of discounted products at a Whole Foods in Brooklyn (hipsters!). Bottom line, prices on a lot of products fell by as much as 43 percent.

Home delivery.

Amazing! Whole Foods will now let you order online and have everything delivered straight to your home! The only thing is, this isn't new. I admit that I had no idea it was a thing, and I will bet that I'm not alone.

For quite some time, you've been able to shop online and get Whole Foods products delivered.

Caveat: Those lower prices I mentioned? At least some of them haven't yet made it to the online interface. The same $1.49 Haas avocados I could have bought in the store were still going for $2.99 each online. And the organic Gala apples cost $3.29 a pound online.

Echo.

Unsurprising, I suppose, but there are now big displays of Amazon Echos and Amazon Echo Dots, for $99.99 and $49.99 respectively, right there in the produce section.

Instacart.

This was sort of in the fine print, but there are signs all over Whole Foods advertising the home delivery option. And they point out that they're powered by Instacart--in which Whole Foods is an investor, and which has a five-year deal with the grocery store chain.

It seems obvious that Instacart would have some of the most to lose as a result of the Amazon-Whole Foods merger. And when the deal was announced in June, an Instacart spokesperson said: "From the beginning, we've been committed to helping grocers compete online. That's more important than ever given Amazon just declared war on every supermarket and corner store in America."

Ouch. Then again, just two days before the Amazon deal, Whole Foods founder and CEO John Mackey called his investors a bunch of "greedy bastards" for trying to find an acquisition. So maybe harsh words ahead of time don't necessarily mean they can't work together.

Long lines.

The lines were long, long, long. But this is New York City, and the lines are always long at Whole Foods Market. However, they zip along pretty quickly. I can't say for sure whether the lines were longer on Monday than they were on any random pre-Amazon day at Whole Foods in New York.

If you are more sane than I am, and live in another part of the country, here's an example of a Manhattan grocery store line. It's from the Trader Joe's a few blocks away from this Whole Foods, but the same principle applies. During the evening rush the line snakes literally through every aisle in the store, and all the way to the entrance.

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Or you can check out this video from nine years ago, showing that things haven't changed. (Bonus, you can suddenly bump up the view count on Jeremy Chase's Vimeo account, and he might not know where the call came from.)

People who had no idea.

OK, totally unscientific, but as an experiment I mentioned to about a dozen people that this was the first day of Whole Foods in the post-Amazon era. Of the people who replied, more than half said some variation of, "I didn't know Amazon bought Whole Foods."

Score one for Amazon's promise to retain Whole Foods' branding. And another, I suppose, for the vast majority of Americans who don't follow this stuff anywhere near as closely as we do.

US Open Tennis 2017: TV Schedule, Picks for Tuesday Afternoon Draw

Rafael Nadal starts his run at the U.S. Open as the No. 1 seed.John Minchillo/Associated Press

Top-seeded Rafael Nadal and Karolina Pliskova will both play their first-round matches in the U.S. Open Tuesday, and both will be in action at Arthur Ashe Stadium.

After Venus Williams, Garbine Muguruza, Maria Sharpova, Marin Cilic and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga won first-round matches Monday, Nadal, Pliskova, Roger Federer and Angelique Kerber will try to match them on the second day of the tournament. Nadal, Pliskova and Kerber are scheduled to play day-time matches, while Federer will compete at night.

The Tennis Channel and the ESPN networks will provide wall-to-wall television coverage once again on the second day of the tournament. The Tennis Channel will have a preview program from 8 a.m. ET until 11 a.m. ESPN3 will follow with two hours of coverage from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m.

ESPN will take over at 1 p.m. and stay on the air until 11 p.m., and The Tennis Channel will provide a one-hour wrap-up show at 11 p.m.

Nadal is the top-ranked player on the ATP Tour in addition to the No. 1 seed on the men's side of the tournament. Nadal will face unseeded Dusan Lajovic of Serbia in the third match of the day at Ashe.

The Spaniard won the French Open earlier this season and has enjoyed a fine campaign after suffering through a series of injuries in recent years. The 31-year-old has won four tournaments this year and earned more that $7.5 million. He takes a 49-9 record this year into the U.S. Open.

Nadal is known as one of the game's great artists, as he typically works the ball around the court, figures out his opponent's weakness and then attacks that spot. He has won 55 percent of the second serves he has faced, and he has converted 45 percent of his break-point chances.

Dominic Thiem will depend on his serve at the U.S. Open.John Minchillo/Associated Press

Austrian Dominic Thiem, the sixth seed on the men's side, will play his first-round match against Alex de Minaur of Australia in the first match of the day scheduled for the Grandstand.

Thiem is the eighth-ranked player in the world, and he is having a productive year with a 41-19 record, one tournament victory under his belt and more than $2.8 million in earnings.

The 23-year-old is often dominant with his serve and has won 82 percent of his service games in his career, but he's only secured 23 percent of the games he has played while returning serve.

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Pliskova gets her tournament underway with the first match of the day at Ashe when she faces Magda Linette of Poland. 

The 25-year-old Czech star has been playing sensational tennis this year and will likely have a long run in New York. Pliskova has won three tournaments this year and has built a 42-12 record in singles matches. Pliskova has won more than $2.3 million this year.

Pliskova is not always on target with her first serve, as she has been accurate 58.4 percent of the time this year. However, she is quite effective overall with her serve, winning 78.6 percent of her service games during the season. She has also converted 44.2 percent of her break points throughout the tennis year.

After Pliskova and Linette finish their match, sixth-seeded Angelique Kerber of Germany and Naomi Osaka of Japan will play the second on Ashe.

The 29-year-old Kerber has had an up-and-down season, and she is still looking for her first tournament victory of the year. She brings a 29-17 match record into play at the U.S. Open, and she has won slightly more than $950,000 this season.

Kerber can have problems with her serving accuracy, as she has 143 double faults this year. She has won 71.2 percent of her service games during the season, but just 35 percent of her return games.

         

Predictions for Tuesday's notable daytime matches (Matches scheduled to start before 5 p.m.)

Karolina Pliskova (1) over Magda Linette
Angelique Kerber (6) over Naomi Osaka
Elina Svitolina (4) over Katerina Siniakova
Svetlana Kuznetsova (8) over Marketa Vondrousova
Eugenie Bouchard over Evgeniya Rodina
Agnieszka Radwanska (10) over Petra Martic
Rafael Nadal (1) over Dusan Lajovic
Juan Martin del Potro (24) over Henri Laaksonen
Dominic Thiem (6) over Alex de Minaur
Gael Monfils (18) over Jeremy Chardy
Ivo Karlovic over Bjorn Fratangelo
Fabio Fognini (22) over Stefano Travaglia