Hurricane Milton weakened slightly to a still powerful Category 4 storm on Tuesday as it threatened Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on its way to Florida, where more than a million people were ordered to evacuate from its path.
The densely populated west coast of Florida, still reeling from the devastating Hurricane Helene less than two weeks ago, braced for landfall on Wednesday.
The US National Hurricane Center projected the storm was likely to hit near the Tampa Bay metropolitan area, home to more than 3 million people and where some evacuees rushed to dispose of mounds of debris left behind by Helene on their way out of town.
With maximum sustained winds of 270kph, Milton eased overnight from the strongest level storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale.
Wind speeds could decrease further to 233kph by the time it approaches Florida, according to the hurricane center, but still capable of causing catastrophic damage, including power outages expected to last days.
Fed by warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico, Milton became the third-fastest intensifying storm on record in the Atlantic Ocean, the Hurricane Center said, as it surged from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane in less than 24 hours.
Its path from west to east was also unusual, as Gulf hurricanes typically form in the Caribbean Sea and make landfall after traveling west and turning north.
“It is exceedingly rare for a hurricane to form in the western Gulf, track eastward, and make landfall on the western coast of Florida,” said Jonathan Lin, an atmospheric scientist at Cornell University. “This has big implications since the track of the storm plays a role in determining where the storm surge will be the largest.”
The Hurricane Center forecast storm surges of 3 to 4.5 meters along a stretch of coastline north and south of Tampa Bay.
Jamie Rhome, deputy director of the National Hurricane Center, said Milton was expected to grow in size before making landfall on Wednesday, putting hundreds of miles of coastline within the storm surge danger zone.
Milton was likely to remain a hurricane for its entire journey across the Florida peninsula, Rhome told a Monday news briefing.
YUCATAN DRENCHED
As of 1 a.m. CDT on Tuesday (0600 GMT), the eye of the storm was 105km north-northeast of Progreso, a Mexican port near the Yucatan state capital of Merida, and 840km southwest of Tampa, moving east at 15kph.
While the eye of the storm appeared to have passed to the north of the Yucatan Peninsula, dangerous conditions were still expected to lash the region the early hours of Tuesday.
“We ask you to be pay attention to the information issued by civil protection officials from the government of Mexico and Yucatan’s government as well and if you live in lowlands it is better to go to the shelters that have been already installed,” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said earlier.
The area is home to the picturesque colonial-era city of Merida, population 1.2 million, several Maya ruins popular with tourists and the port of Progreso.
In Florida, counties along the western coast ordered people in low-lying areas to take shelter on higher ground.
Pinellas County, which includes St. Petersburg, said it ordered the evacuation of more than 500,000 people. Lee County said 416,000 people lived in its mandatory evacuation zones. At least six other coastal counties ordered evacuations including Hillsborough County, which includes the city of Tampa.
With one final day for people to evacuate on Tuesday, local officials raised concerns of traffic jams and long lines at gas stations.
Relief efforts remain ongoing throughout much of the US Southeast in the wake of Helene, a Category-4 hurricane that made landfall in Florida on Sept. 26, killed more than 200 people and caused billions of dollars in damage across six states.
Monster hurricane Milton threatens an already battered Florida
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Monster hurricane Milton threatens an already battered Florida
- The densely populated west coast of Florida braces for landfall on Wednesday
- Milton became the third-fastest intensifying storm on record in the Atlantic Ocean
US actions may set polio eradication back in Pakistan and Afghanistan, WHO says
- WHO works with groups such as UNICEF and Gates Foundation to end polio
- The planned withdrawal of the United States from WHO has impacted efforts
LONDON: The eradication of polio as a global health threat may be delayed unless US funding cuts – potentially totaling hundreds of millions of dollars over several years – are reversed, a senior World Health Organization official has warned.
The WHO works with groups such as UNICEF and the Gates Foundation to end polio. The planned withdrawal of the United States from WHO has impacted efforts, including stopping collaboration with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Last week, UNICEF’s polio grant was terminated as the State Department cut 90 percent of USAID’s grants worldwide to align aid with President Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ policy.
In total, the partnership is missing $133 million from the US that was expected this year, said Hamid Jafari, director of the polio eradication program for the WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean region. The area includes two countries where a wild form of polio is spreading: Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“If the funding shortfall continues, it may potentially delay eradication, it may lead to more children getting paralyzed,” he said, adding that the longer it took to end polio, the more expensive it would be.
He said the partners were working out ways to cope with the funding shortage, which will largely impact personnel and surveillance, but hoped the US would return to funding the fight against polio.
“We are looking at other funding sources ... to sustain both the priority staff and priority activities,” he said.
He said vaccination campaigns in both Afghanistan and Pakistan would be protected.
UNICEF did not respond to requests for comment, and a spokesperson for the Gates Foundation reiterated that no foundation could fill the gap left by the US Saudi Arabia gave $500 million to polio eradication last week.
The partnership already faces a $2.4 billion shortfall to 2029, as it accepted last year that it would take longer, and cost more, to eradicate the disease than hoped.
Kremlin: Someone needs to force Zelensky to make peace after clash with Trump
- ‘Someone has to make Zelensky want peace. If the Europeans can do it, they should be honored and praised’
MOSCOW: The Kremlin said on Monday that someone needed to force Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to make peace after a clash with US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office that showed just how hard it would be to find a way to end the war.
“What happened at the White House on Friday, of course, demonstrated how difficult it will be to reach a settlement trajectory around Ukraine,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. “The Kyiv regime and Zelensky do not want peace. They want the war to continue.”
“It is very important that someone forces Zelensky himself to change his position,” Peskov said. “Someone has to make Zelensky want peace. If the Europeans can do it, they should be honored and praised.”
President Vladimir Putin sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in 2022, triggering the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West since the depths of the Cold War.
The conflict in eastern Ukraine began in 2014 after a pro-Russian president was toppled in Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution and Russia annexed Crimea, with Russian-backed separatist forces fighting Ukraine’s armed forces.
President Vladimir Putin, Peskov said, was familiar with the “unprecedented event” in the Oval Office – which showed, Peskov said, Zelensky’s lack of diplomatic abilities at the very least.
“In addition, we see that the collective West has partially begun to lose its collectivity, and a fragmentation of the collective West has begun,” Peskov said.
UK says ‘no agreement’ on Ukraine partial truce proposal
- Emmanuel Macron said such a truce would not, initially at least, cover ground fighting
LONDON: France and Britain have not agreed on a partial truce plan for Ukraine, a UK minister said on Monday, after French President Emmanuel Macron said it had been proposed by the two nations.
Macron told France’s Le Figaro newspaper on Sunday that London and Paris are proposing a one-month truce in Ukraine “in the air, at sea and on energy infrastructure.”
Macron said such a truce would not, initially at least, cover ground fighting.
“No agreement has been made on what a truce looks like,” UK armed forces minister Luke Pollard told Times Radio.
“But we are working together with France and our European allies to look at what is the path to how... we create a lasting and durable peace in Ukraine,” he added.
A UK government official also played down any agreement.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the person said: “There are various options on the table, subject to further discussions with the US and European partners but a one-month truce has not been agreed.”
Macron’s comments came after UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer convened crisis talks over Ukraine with European leaders, NATO chief Mark Rutte and Canada in central London on Sunday.
“As the PM said in his press conference, we need and want to progress with momentum and are pleased today’s summit has enabled discussions to move forward. Those discussions will continue at pace,” said a Downing Street spokesperson.
UN rights chief concerned by ‘fundamental shift’ in US direction
- The UN rights chief on Monday expressed serious concern over the United States’ “fundamental shift” in direction “both domestically and internationally“
GENEVA: The UN rights chief on Monday expressed serious concern over the United States’ “fundamental shift” in direction “both domestically and internationally.”
“Policies intended to protect people from discrimination are now labelled as discriminatory... Divisive rhetoric is being used to distort, deceive and polarize,” Volker Turk told the United Nations Human Rights Council, implicitly decrying the shift seen since US President Donald Trump returned to power in January, without mentioning him by name.
Thailand mulls wall at Cambodia border as scam center crackdown widens
- Multi-national effort to dismantle a sprawling network of illicit scam centers mounts
- Thailand and Cambodia share a border of 817 kilometers
BANGKOK: Thailand is studying the idea of building a wall on part of its border with Cambodia to prevent illegal crossings, its government said on Monday, as a multi-national effort to dismantle a sprawling network of illicit scam centers mounts. The crackdown is widening against scam centers responsible for carrying out massive financial fraud out of Southeast Asia, especially those on Thailand’s porous borders with Myanmar and Cambodia, where hundreds of thousands of people have been trafficked by criminal gangs in recent years, according to the United Nations. At the weekend, Thai police received 119 Thai nationals from Cambodian authorities after a raid in the town of Poipet pulled out over 215 people from a scam compound.
“If it is done, how will it be done? What results and how will it solve problems? This is a study,” Thai government spokesperson Jirayu Houngsub said of the wall proposal, without specifying its length.
Cambodia’s government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the wall proposal.
Thailand and Cambodia share a border of 817km. The Thai defense ministry has previously proposed a wall to block off a 55 km natural crossing between Thailand’s Sa Kaeo province and Poipet, which at present is only protected by razor wire.
Telecom fraud centers have been operating for years in Southeast Asia, ensnaring people of multiple countries as far away as West Africa. They have faced heightened scrutiny after the rescue in January of Chinese actor, Wang Xing, who was lured to Thailand with the promise of a job before being abducted and taken to a scam center in Myanmar. In Myanmar’s Myawaddy, more than 7,000 foreigners – mostly from China – are waiting to cross from into Thailand, which is coordinating with embassies to try to streamline their repatriations. Hundreds of foreigners pulled out of the compounds are in limbo in squalid conditions in a militia camp and struggling to secure a route home, according to some detainees, while a top Thai lawmaker last week said the crackdown is insufficient, estimating 300,000 people have been operating in compounds in Myawaddy alone.
