Florida residents evacuate ahead of Category 4 storm landfall

Welcome back to World Brief, what we’re watching Hurricane Milton run towards Floridaanother Israeli stabbing attack and threats against lawmakers Mexico.

Record-breaking storm

Time is running out for Floridians to evacuate their homes before Hurricane Milton, a Category 4 storm, hits the state’s west coast late Wednesday or early Thursday. With maximum sustained winds expected to reach 260 miles per hour, “Milton has the potential to become one of the most destructive hurricanes on record for west-central Florida,” according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.

Welcome back to World Brief, what we’re watching Hurricane Milton run towards Floridaanother Israeli stabbing attack and threats against lawmakers Mexico.

Record-breaking storm

Time is running out for Floridians to evacuate their homes before Hurricane Milton, a Category 4 storm, hits the state’s west coast late Wednesday or early Thursday. With maximum sustained winds expected to reach 260 miles per hour, “Milton has the potential to become one of the most destructive hurricanes on record for west-central Florida,” according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.

Milton is already the third fastest storm ever to hit the Atlantic Ocean. It grew from a Category 1 to a Category 5 – the highest level on the Saffir-Simpson five-step scale – in less than 24 hours before dropping back down to a Category 4. On Wednesday, tornadoes swept more than 12 million people, with tornadoes across the country state at least 10 tornadoes appeared. Residents of a low-lying coastal strip that includes the major cities of Tampa, St. Petersburg and Sarasota were told to prepare for a massive potential storm surge, with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis warning that “absolutely every place on the West Coast of Florida could experience a major storm surge.”

“If you live in a one-story house that gets hit by a 15-foot storm surge, which means water comes in immediately, you have nowhere to go,” said Tampa Mayor Jane Castor. “So when you’re in it, that’s basically the coffin you’re in.”

DeSantis has declared a state of emergency in 51 of 67 counties and said 8,000 National Guard members will be activated. Authorities have ordered people in 11 coastal counties, with a combined population of 5.9 million, to immediately evacuate, leaving clogged highways and nearly 23 percent of Florida’s gas stations out of fuel. Anyone who chooses to ignore the orders and stay put has been told to fend for themselves.

U.S. President Joe Biden this week postponed a trip abroad to address Milton. He was scheduled to visit Germany on Thursday before traveling to Angola, which would have been the first time Biden has traveled to Africa since his presidency began and the first US presidential trip to sub-Saharan Africa since 2015, when President Barack Obama was in the country. office. DeSantis said Wednesday that he has spoken with Biden about Florida’s needs and that “everything we’ve asked for, the administration has approved.”

Milton’s rare west-to-east stretch comes less than two weeks after the region was hit by Hurricane Helene, a Category 4 storm with record high storm surges and a death toll of more than 230 people from Florida to Virginia. “Emotionally, it’s very difficult for everyone to have gone through that (hurricane) two weeks ago, and now that we’re back,” Sarasota Mayor Liz Alpert said. Before Helene came ashore, residents who had not been evacuated were urged to write their names and social security numbers on their bodies so they could be more easily identified post-mortem.

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What we follow

Stabbing attack. At least six people were stabbed at four locations in the central Israeli city of Hadera on Wednesday. Local police said the suspect – a 36-year-old resident of Umm al-Fahm, Israel – has been “neutralized.” Although authorities did not initially label the incident a terrorist attack, they have since classified it as further evidence that their original report was incorrect. Hamas celebrated news of the attack, although no group has claimed responsibility for it.

Terror attacks during a spree have rocked Israel over the past week, around the October 7 one-year anniversary of Israel’s war against Hamas. On Sunday, a gunman opened fire at a bus station in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, killing one person and wounding 10 others. The alleged shooter was a member of the Bedouin minority group in Israel’s Negev desert. And last Wednesday, Hamas claimed responsibility for a stabbing and shooting attack that killed seven people and injured 16 others in Tel Aviv.

Beheading in Mexico. Four mayors in Mexico asked federal authorities for protection on Monday after another mayor, Alejandro Arcos of Chilpancingo, was assassinated just six days into his term. Arcos, a prominent opposition figure, was beheaded on Sunday in Guerrero state while attending a private meeting in the city of Petaquillas. Mexican Security Minister Omar García Harfuch told reporters on Tuesday that Arcos had not requested security escorts on the day of his killing, despite Arcos telling local media he wanted extra protection.

Newly elected President Claudia Sheinbaum on Tuesday presented her national security plan to reduce violent crime, but she ruled out a new war against drug cartels. “The war on drugs will not return,” she said. Sheinbaum campaigned on her predecessor’s “hugs, not bullets” strategy, which focuses on tackling the root causes of crime.

Yet political assassinations by gangs and drug cartels remain a major problem for Mexico. About 20 electoral candidates were murdered in the country ahead of the June 2 general election. At least six people were killed in Guerrero, where two warring drug gangs – the Ardillos and the Tlacos – dominate the capital. And just three days before Arcos’ death, Francisco Tapia, Chilpancingo’s new government secretary, was shot dead.

X returns to Brazil. Brazil’s Supreme Court on Tuesday lifted its ban on X after the social media platform complied with several of its orders. These included the removal of certain accounts, which Judge Alexandre de Moraes said had spread hate speech or threatened Brazilian democracy, but which X CEO Elon Musk had called illegal censorship; paying fines; and the appointment of a new legal representative in the country.

“X is proud to return to Brazil,” the company wrote on Tuesday, adding that it “will continue to defend freedom of expression, within the limits of the law.” Regulators have 24 hours to get X back online, but it may take longer for the site to fully return.

Compliance was difficult to achieve. Musk fought the Supreme Court’s decision for months, even going so far as to close X’s headquarters in Brazil; publish the sealed orders online; and compare Moraes to a ‘dictator’ and the villain of the Harry Potter books, Voldemort. Following Moraes’ ruling, Brazil’s court suspended X in August, blocking access to tens of thousands of users, some of whom turned to the company’s competitors.

Quote of the week

“Too busy.”

—Geoffrey Hinton, a British-Canadian computer scientist known as one of the founders of artificial intelligence, in response to an interview request from FP’s Rishi Iyengar to discuss Hinton’s shared Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday. Reasonable.

Odds and Ends

From Wednesday, three more scientists can add winning the Nobel Prize – this one for chemistry – to their CV. David Baker received half the prize for using amino acids to design a new protein, opening the door for the creation of proteins in other areas such as pharmaceuticals and vaccines. John Jumper and Demis Hassabis took home the other half for their work using artificial intelligence to predict the structure of virtually all known proteins. This was the second Nobel Prize this year related to artificial intelligence.