Deadly weekend storms have left at least 14 dead in the midwestern and southern US, as eastern regions faced potential damaging winds and isolated tornadoes into yesterday.
At least four tornadoes were confirmed by the US National Weather Service in Canton, a city about 95km east of Dallas, Texas.
The winds flipped over cars, snapped trees, destroyed houses, and left roads strewn with debris and fallen power lines, according to photographs and video published by the Dallas Morning News.
Photo: EPA
“We have at least four fatalities,” Canton Mayor Lou Ann Everett told a news conference on Sunday, adding that number could rise. “The damage was extensive in the affected area. It is heartbreaking and upsetting.”
Forty-nine people had been treated for injuries, she said.
Earlier, a Canton fire department captain said he believed five people had been killed.
The mayor urged people to stay away from a sprawling flea market known as First Monday Trade Days as crews tried to clean up debris.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott sent a search-and-rescue team to the area.
The storms caused floods in neighboring states, killing a 72-year-old woman in southwestern Missouri who was washed away in her car, according to local media reports.
In Arkansas, a woman was killed when a tree fell on her mobile home in DeWitt, and a 10-year-old girl was killed after flood waters swept her away in Springdale, ABC News reported.
A fire chief responding to the storm on Sunday was killed in Cleburne County, the county sheriff said.
At least two other people reportedly died in storm-related incidents, while two children were missing after their mother’s car was swept from a road by floodwaters in Madison County.
As many as 100,000 homes and businesses lost power, and Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson on Sunday night declared a state of emergency.
In Mississippi, a person was killed after a tree fell on their house in Durant, ABC reported.
The governors of Missouri and Oklahoma declared states of emergency.
In the St Louis area, severe thunderstorms were forecast through Sunday.
Some people were told to evacuate and 33 rescues were conducted, mostly in the state’s central and southwestern regions, Missouri Governor Eric Greitens said.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
Cook Islands officials yesterday said they had discussed seabed minerals research with China as the small Pacific island mulls deep-sea mining of its waters. The self-governing country of 17,000 people — a former colony of close partner New Zealand — has licensed three companies to explore the seabed for nodules rich in metals such as nickel and cobalt, which are used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Despite issuing the five-year exploration licenses in 2022, the Cook Islands government said it would not decide whether to harvest the potato-sized nodules until it has assessed environmental and other impacts. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown
STEADFAST DART: The six-week exercise, which involves about 10,000 troops from nine nations, focuses on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine. The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year. The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and
RSS