Hurricane Ian veers north to South Carolina after pummelling Florida
CBC
A resurgent Hurricane Ian barrelled north on Friday toward a second landfall in South Carolina, a day after carving a path of destruction across central Florida that left rescue crews racing to reach trapped residents along the state's Gulf Coast.
Ian, which had weakened to a tropical storm during its march across Florida, regained Category 1 hurricane strength on Thursday afternoon while churning toward South Carolina above the Atlantic Ocean, with maximum sustained wind speeds of 120 km/h, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
The hurricane was forecast to hit near low-lying Charleston, S.C., about 2 p.m. ET on Friday, bringing potentially life-threatening flooding, storm surges and winds. Hundreds of miles of coastline, stretching from Georgia to North Carolina, was under a hurricane warning.
The extent of the damage in Florida, where Ian first came ashore on Wednesday as one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the U.S. mainland, became more apparent on Thursday as emergency crews began reaching stranded residents, though the death toll remained uncertain.
Four people were confirmed dead in Florida. They included two residents of hard-hit Sanibel Island along Florida's west coast, Sanibel city manager Dana Souza said late Thursday. Three people were reportedly killed in Cuba after the hurricane struck the island on Tuesday.
At an evening news briefing, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis acknowledged some people had perished but declined to confirm a specific figure, warning that official confirmation was still needed.
"We fully expect to have mortality from this hurricane," he said.
Some of the damage to coastal towns, including Fort Myers Beach, was "indescribable," added DeSantis, who surveyed the affected areas from the air on Thursday.
Earlier on Thursday, President Joe Biden warned Ian could prove to be the deadliest hurricane in Florida history, saying preliminary reports suggested a "substantial" loss of life.
More than 2.3 million homes and businesses remained without power on Thursday evening, according to the tracking website PowerOutage.us.
Officials in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina urged residents to prepare for dangerous conditions.
Charleston is particularly at risk; a city-commissioned report released in November 2020 found about 90 per cent of all residential properties were vulnerable to storm surge flooding. Parts of northeast South Carolina, near Charleston, could also experience up to 20 centimetres of rain.
WATCH | Ian's path was catastrophic and massive:
Predicted storm surges were not as severe as those issued by the NHC when the storm was approaching Florida. Edisto Beach, S.C., a resort destination about 50 kilometres south of Charleston, was expected to see a one- to two-metre surge.
For years, many of Venezuela’s exiles in Spain — leading opposition figures and citizens — have hoped for a day when ousted president Nicolás Maduro would no longer be in power.
The U.S. attack on Venezuela has shifted the ground for guerrilla groups operating across the country's borderlands with Colombia, raising fears of possible betrayal by Venezuelan regime officials, while opening the door to a wider conflict should U.S. boots ever hit the ground, local security experts say.
Protests sweeping across Iran neared the two-week mark on Saturday, with the country’s government acknowledging the ongoing demonstrations despite an intensifying crackdown and as the Islamic Republic remains cut off from the rest of the world.
Russia didn’t just use a hypersonic missile to target a site in western Ukraine near the border with Poland, in the European Union, but high ranking officials then went on to boast about the power of the nuclear-capable weapon, in what some saw as a clear warning to the West.
The official White House narrative of how a U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) officer shot and killed a U.S. citizen in her vehicle in Minneapolis is bumping hard up against what can be seen in videos of the incident.
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent shot and killed a Minneapolis motorist on Wednesday during the Trump administration's latest immigration crackdown on a major American city — a shooting that federal officials claimed was an act of self-defence but that the city's mayor described as "reckless" and unnecessary.
When Marco Rubio took the lectern at Mar-a-Lago shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump announced the country had captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, it was the culmination of a decade of effort from the secretary of state and a clear sign that he had emerged as a leading voice within the Trump administration.
The catchphrase going into Tuesday's coalition of the willing meeting on Ukraine in Paris appears to be: expect the unexpected.
Deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro pleaded not guilty on terrorism and drug-trafficking charges during his first appearance in a New York court on Monday.
The leaders of Denmark and Greenland on Sunday urged U.S. President Donald Trump to stop threatening to take over Greenland, after he reiterated his wish to do so in an interview with The Atlantic magazine.
Venezuela's toppled leader, Nicolás Maduro, was in a New York detention centre on Sunday awaiting drug charges after U.S. President Donald Trump ordered an audacious raid to capture him, saying the United States would take control of the oil-producing nation.
The United States hit Venezuela with a “large-scale strike” early Saturday and said its president, Nicolás Maduro, along with his wife, had been captured and flown out of the country after months of stepped-up pressure by Washington — an extraordinary nighttime operation announced by President Donald Trump on social media hours after the attack.
The United Arab Emirates said early Saturday it had withdrawn all its troops from Yemen after escalating tensions in the war-torn country that pitted the UAE against fellow Gulf powerhouse Saudi Arabia.