UNITED STATES
Zeta triggers power outages
Tropical Storm Zeta moved across Alabama yesterday after walloping New Orleans, blacking out tens of thousands of homes and businesses and prompting President Donald Trump to declare an emergency for Mississippi. Zeta made landfall near Cocodrie, Louisiana, with winds of 177kph, before weakening to a gale-force storm, the National Hurricane Center said. At least one person was killed in New Orleans, where damages might total as much as US$5 billion. About 2.4 million people were without power yesterday in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, according to PowerOutage.US, a Web site that aggregates utility outage data.
Photo: Reuters
MEXICO
Bodies found in pits
Fifty-nine bodies have been found in a series of clandestine burial pits in Guanajuato state and there could more to be excavated, the National Search Commission said on Wednesday. Commission head Karla Quintana said excavations began a week ago based on a tip-off from relatives of missing people. The bodies were extracted over the past week from 52 pits at a property on the outskirts of the Guanajuato city of Salvatierra. The scene was considered dangerous enough that the army and National Guard provided security for the excavations. Quintana called it “a sad and terrible discovery,” adding that work would continue on “possible positive sites.”
UNITED STATES
Florida governor trolled
Questions have been raised about the security of Florida’s online voter registration system after Governor Ron DeSantis had trouble casting his ballot because someone had illegally changed his address. When DeSantis went a Tallahassee early voting site on Monday, he was told his address had been changed from the governor’s mansion to a small apartment complex in West Palm Beach, 675km away. The problem was quickly resolved, and DeSantis contacted the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate the incident. A 20-year-old man in Naples has been arrested in connection with the case.
UNITED STATES
Trump attacks ‘Anonymous’
President Donald Trump on Wednesday called a former administration official who penned a scathing anti-Trump book under the pen name “Anonymous” a “sleazebag.” Speaking at a rally in Goodyear, Arizona, he said that Miles Taylor, a former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, was “a nobody, a disgruntled employee.” He joked that he thought “Anonymous” might one of his senior advisers, such as son-in-law Jared Kushner, or Republican senators Mike Lee or Rand Paul, who were at the rally.
UNITED STATES
Man builds pirate ship
When Hurricane Sally knocked down his fence and hurled debris across the Florida Panhandle, John Rebolledo gathered up the hurricane’s forgotten treasures from his backyard, and spent a month turning them into a life-sized pirate ship. Now there is a 5m by 3m pirate ship in his driveway, complete with a treasure chest and two skeletons — just in time for Halloween. Rebolledo used wood fencing that had been blown down by the storm to build most of the boat.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing