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.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion