‘Our entire community is wiped out’: low-income Americans likely to be hit hardest by Hurricane Ian

After the storm knocked out power and destroyed property, people scramble for shelter, funds and news of the missing

For Connie Irvin, 82, and her partner, Cheryl Lange, the cost of Hurricane Ian’s devastating tear across Florida was clear. “Our entire community is wiped out,” said Irvin.

The pair lost their mobile home on Sanibel Island off the state’s west coast and are now homeless, staying in a motel inland about 35 miles away near Naples, Florida, that currently has no electricity.

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‘UK travel is on sale’: plunging pound attracts US visitors

Operators catering for inbound tourists enjoy best month for bookings in three years

The plunging pound may cause British holidaymakers to choke at the prices if and when they next choose to go abroad. But one slice of the travel industry is seeing a silver lining in the storm clouds.

Tour operators catering for visitors are quietly calling it their best month for bookings since October 2019 as US tourists take advantage of sterling’s tumble.

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North Korea fires ballistic missiles in fourth launch in a week after naval drills

Launch follows joint military drills by South Korea, Japan and the US and visit by Kamala Harris

North Korea has fired two more ballistic missiles, South Korea’s military said, its fourth such launch this week as Seoul, Tokyo and Washington ramp up joint military drills.

The launch early on Saturday came after the navies of South Korea, the United States and Japan staged trilateral anti-submarine exercises on Friday for the first time in five years, and the US vice-president, Kamala Harris, made a visit to the region this week.

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Australian woman deported from US says border agency told her questions about abortion were policy

Madolline Gourley says a special agent in the office of professional responsibility told her the questions she was asked were in line with Customs and Border Protection procedures

An Australian woman says the US border agency told her that asking travellers about terminating a pregnancy is in line with their policies after she was detained at an airport and then deported.

Madolline Gourley says she was asked whether she’d had an abortion while detained at Los Angeles airport in June. It came days after Roe v Wade – the landmark court case that legalised abortion – was overturned in the United States.

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Russia’s consulate in New York vandalized in apparent protest

Building defaced hours before Putin announced annexation of Ukrainian territories and Russian forces killed 30 civilians

The Russian consulate in New York has been vandalized with red spray paint, in an apparent protest against Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Officers said they responded to an emergency call just after 1.30am on Friday reporting that paint had been sprayed across the facade of the consulate on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

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California investigates teen’s death in shootout between police and her father

Savannah Graziano’s death reviewed under measure requiring investigations of police shootings of unarmed people

The California department of justice is reviewing the death of a southern California teenager in a shootout with law enforcement this week under a state law requiring the agency to investigate police shootings involving the death of unarmed civilians.

Savannah Graziano, 15, was killed on Tuesday amid a lengthy shootout between police and her father on a stretch of southern California highway.

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Pelosi reportedly resisted Democrats’ effort to impeach Trump on January 6 – as it happened

For all the supreme court’s pomp and ceremony, a new poll finds Americans increasingly are holding it in low regard.

According to Monmouth University, a majority of Americans find it out of touch with their beliefs:

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Elon Musk to showcase humanoid ‘Optimus’ robot at Tesla’s AI Day

CEO also expected to discuss self-driving technology and high-speed computer at Friday event

Elon Musk has said a robot business will be worth more than Tesla’s cars, and on Friday investors, customers and potential workers expect to see a prototype at Tesla’s “AI Day” that could prove whether the bot named “Optimus” is ready for work.

The robot will be the star of the AI show, but Musk is also expected to discuss Tesla’s long-delayed self-driving technology. In May, the CEO said that the world’s most valuable carmaker would be “worth basically zero” without achieving full self-driving capability, and it faces growing regulatory investigations, as well as technological hurdles.

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Writer E Jean Carroll says Trump is stonewalling over defamation case

Lawyer rejects ex-president’s argument that suit, centered on Trump’s denial that he raped her, should be dismissed

The writer suing Donald Trump for defamation after he denied having raped her in the mid-1990s accused him of stonewalling and trying to avoid a scheduled deposition as he tries to delay the case indefinitely.

In a letter filed on Friday in federal court in Manhattan, a lawyer for E Jean Carroll also said Trump was “mistaken” in arguing that the lawsuit should be dismissed altogether because the US government, and not he, was the proper defendant.

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Hurricane Ian moves into South Carolina after rampage in Florida

Twenty-one people dead with toll expected to rise after mega-storm carves wide path of devastation and moves north

The coast of South Carolina was hit on Friday with a direct strike from Hurricane Ian, the deadly mega-storm that carved a wide path of destruction on its earlier rampage through Florida.

The eye of the hurricane crossed over land at Georgetown, between Myrtle Beach and the historic city of Charleston, after strengthening overnight in the Atlantic.

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Hurricane Ian latest updates: storm makes second US landfall in South Carolina

Lee and Charlotte counties in Florida have around 15% of their power restored, governor Ron DeSantis said at a news briefing on Friday morning.

“There is going to be some that require rebuilds,” DeSantis said, adding that the utilities in those counties plan to carry out the restoration process as soon as possible.

“Ian is moving toward the north near 14 mph (22 km/h). Ian is forecast to move more quickly toward the north today followed by a turn toward the north-northwest by tonight,” the advisory said.

“On the forecast track, the center of Ian will reach the coast of South Carolina today, and then move farther inland across eastern South Carolina and central North Carolina tonight and Saturday,” it added.

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Shark tale? Video of large fish in flooded Florida yard goes viral

Man films fish ‘flopping around’ in neighbour’s garden but experts are split over identification

Photos and videos of sharks and other marine life swimming in suburban floodwaters make for popular hoaxes during heavy storms. But a mobile phone video filmed during Hurricane Ian’s assault on south-west Florida isn’t just another fishy story.

The video, which showed a large, dark fish with distinct dorsal fins thrashing around an inundated Fort Myers back yard, racked up more than 12m views on Twitter within a day, as users responded with disbelief and comparisons to the “Sharknado” film series.

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Newly purchased firearms may play a role in US murder surge, data suggests

However, lack of information limits understanding whether the data suggests heightened enforcement or improved reporting

Murder rose at an unprecedented rate in the United States in 2020 and likely rose again in 2021, but concrete answers about why this surge occurred have been hard to come by.

New data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) provides enticing clues regarding the potential role of newly purchased firearms in the nationwide increase in murders.

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Boston bans artificial turf in parks due to toxic ‘forever chemicals’

The city joins a growing number across the US in limiting the use of artificial turf made with dangerous PFAS compounds

Boston’s mayor, Michelle Wu, has ordered no new artificial turf to be installed in city parks, making Boston the largest municipality in a small but growing number around the nation to limit use of the product because it contains dangerous chemicals.

All artificial turf is made with toxic PFAS compounds and some is still produced with ground-up tires that can contain heavy metals, benzene, VOCs and other carcinogens that can present a health threat. The material also emits high levels of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and sheds microplastics and other chemicals into waterways.

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‘Catastrophic’ damage in Florida as storm heads to South Carolina | First Thing

Biden says storm could be deadliest in state’s history as it regains strength and heads for South Carolina. Plus, meet Uganda’s first female pro cyclist

Good morning.

As South Carolina braces for Hurricane Ian to make a second landfall today, the “catastrophic” scale of the damage wreaked by Ian’s 150mph deadly rampage across Florida has become clearer as authorities express fears of a growing death toll.

How many rescues have taken place? Florida governor Ron DeSantis gave a briefing on Thursday night where he said at least 700 rescues, mostly by air, had been conducted so far, involving the US Coast Guard, the National Guard and urban search-and-rescue teams. Meanwhile, Biden said Ian “could be the deadliest hurricane in Florida’s history”.

Is climate change making things worse? In short, yes. Rainfall and storm surge – the latter thanks to rising sea levels – are both becoming more intense and destructive thanks to global heating, changing the pattern of hurricanes across the world.

What did Citizen Lab find? Using just a single website and publicly available material, Citizen Lab said it identified a network of 885 websites that it attributed “with high confidence” as having been used by the CIA. It found that the websites purported to be concerned with news, weather, healthcare and other legitimate websites.

What have the CIA said in response? CIA spokesperson Tammy Kupperman Thorp said: “CIA takes its obligations to protect the people who work with us extremely seriously and we know that many of them do so bravely, at great personal risk. The notion that CIA would not work as hard as possible to safeguard them is false.”

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Weather tracker: Typhoon Noru wreaks havoc across south-east Asia

As Hurricane Ian hits the Americas, Noru has been ripping through the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand

Hurricane Ian has been in the headlines but it is not the only storm that has been causing havoc in the past week.

On Tuesday, Typhoon Noru struck south of the city of Da Nang in Vietnam, heading westwards to Thailand. Initially a tropical storm, Noru originated in the Philippine Sea on 23 September, propagating westwards while gathering moisture and strengthening.

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More than 700 rescues in Florida as ‘historic storm’ heads towards South Carolina – as it happened

In a press conference, Ron DeSantis said food, water and other supplies are being distributed to those who did not evacuate

26 states have provided support to Florida amid the damages that Hurricane Ian has left across the state.

“It’s going to be put to use,” DeSantis said on Thursday morning.

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Fears of layoffs as Facebook parent Meta announces hiring freeze

Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg says tech company aims to ‘plan somewhat conservatively’ and will ‘further restructure’

Meta employees have been warned of potential layoffs after the Facebook parent company announced on Thursday it would freeze hiring and “further restructure”, Bloomberg News has reported.

In company communication with employees, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg cited the uncertain macroeconomic environment for the changes. The announcement comes after several tech companies have been forced to slash headcount in recent months, as advertisers trim spending in anticipation of a recession.

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Senate passes short-term deal to avoid government shutdown – as it happened

Top Democrat says he hopes to finalize deal to fund government until mid-December by the end of today

With a speech on the Capitol steps, top House Republican Kevin McCarthy was stumping again today for his party’s Commitment to America platform and plans for “firing Nancy Pelosi”.

McCarthy last week debuted the plan, which offered a broad if vague outline of what the party would do should they take Congress’s lower chamber in the 8 November midterms:

Kevin McCarthy’s pitiful display this morning is only further proof that the MAGA cult in his conference has him in a chokehold. House Republican Leaders spent their morning detached from reality: bragging about their dangerous, extreme, unpopular agenda to ban abortion in all fifty states, send prescription drug costs soaring and steal your right to choose your leaders. Truthfully, a desperate press conference is about par for the course for an uninspiring and incoherent politician like the Minority Leader, whose only real accomplishment to date is typing up a radical right-wing wish list that sends a clear message to the American people that House Republicans have gone off the deep end.

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Hurricane Ian: ‘catastrophic’ damage in Florida as trapped residents are rescued

Biden says storm could ‘be deadliest in state’s history’ as authorities express fears of a growing death toll

The “catastrophic” scale of damage wreaked by Hurricane Ian’s 150mph deadly rampage across Florida gradually became clearer on Thursday as emergency crews rescued trapped residents from flooded homes, and authorities expressed fears of a growing death toll.

Search and rescue crews conducted hundreds of missions in areas of south-west Florida that were submerged by a storm surge of up to 18ft after one of the most powerful storms ever to strike the US swept ashore on Wednesday.

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