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.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
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