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Hurricane Melissa ripped up trees and knocked out power after making landfall in Jamaica on Tuesday as one of the most powerful hurricanes on record, inundating the island nation with rains that threaten flash floods and landslides.The destructive storm struck Jamaica with ferocious sustained winds clocking 185 miles (300 kilometers) per hour on its deadly march across the Caribbean.”This is an extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation!” warned the US National Hurricane Center, urging residents to stay sheltered and as far from windows as possible, including during the brief calm offered by the storm’s eye.Even as wind speeds dipped to 150 miles per hour, Melissa drenched communities and wreaked damage that may take days to assess as communication links remained largely down.Surges in seawater combined with rainfall — which will likely be measured in feet, not inches — could trigger massive floods and landslides on the island with a population of 2.8 million.The hurricane was the worst to ever strike Jamaica and hit land with maximum wind speeds even more potent than most of recent history’s most brutal storms, including 2005’s Katrina, which ravaged the US city of New Orleans.- ‘Severely damaged infrastructure’ -Even before Melissa slammed into Jamaica, seven deaths — three in Jamaica, three in Haiti and one in the Dominican Republic — had been blamed on the deteriorating conditions.Melissa, now downgraded from Category 4 to 5 as its center moved off Jamaica, was set to hit Cuba on Tuesday evening and then the Bahamas.Jamaica’s climate change minister told CNN that Hurricane Melissa’s effect was “catastrophic,” citing flooded homes and “severely damaged public infrastructure” and hospitals.And as if that weren’t enough: health authorities were urging vigilance against crocodiles displaced by the torrential storm.”Rising water levels in rivers, gullies, and swamps could cause crocodiles to move into residential areas,” posted the South East Regional Health Authority (SERHA) in a public service announcement on Instagram.Mathue Tapper, 31, told AFP from Kingston that those in the capital were “lucky” but feared for fellow Jamaicans in the island’s more rural areas.”My heart goes out to the folks living on the Western end of the island,” he said.The mammoth storm could leave devastation on the scale of some of the worst hurricanes in recent memory like Katrina, Maria or Harvey.- Climate change impact -Broad scientific consensus says human-driven climate change is responsible for intensified storms like Melissa that are occurring with increased frequency and higher potential for destruction and deadly flooding.Melissa had quickened slightly, but still lingered over the island enough that the rains were particularly dire.”Human-caused climate change is making all of the worst aspects of Hurricane Melissa even worse,” said climate scientist Daniel Gilford.The Jamaican Red Cross, which was distributing drinking water and hygiene kits ahead of infrastructure disruptions, said Melissa’s “slow nature” exacerbated the anxiety.The UN is planning an airlift of some 2,000 relief kits to Jamaica from a relief supply station in Barbados once air travel is possible. Assistance is also planned to countries including Cuba and Haiti, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a briefing.Jamaican officials said some 25,000 tourists were in the country famed for its normally crystalline waters.Olympian sprinter Usain Bolt, one of Jamaica’s most famous figures, was posting regularly on social media with messages for his home country: “Pray for Jamaica.”

Uber and Nvidia on Tuesday announced an alliance to deploy 100,000 robotaxis starting in 2027.”Together with Uber, we’re creating a framework for the entire industry to deploy autonomous fleets at scale, powered by Nvidia AI infrastructure,” Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said in a release.Nvidia also said it was working with car makers Stellantis, Lucid, and Mercedes-Benz to “bridge today’s human-driven mobility with the autonomous fleets of tomorrow.”The partnerships come as AI chip star Nvidia works to put itself at the core of self-driving vehicle systems.”Robotaxis mark the beginning of a global transformation in mobility — making transportation safer, cleaner and more efficient,” Huang said.”What was once science fiction is fast becoming an everyday reality.”Artificial intelligence, along with super-fast, reliable internet connectivity, promises to be essential to cars reacting safely and smartly on the road.”Nvidia is the backbone of the AI era and is now fully harnessing that innovation to unleash L4 (Level-4) autonomy at enormous scale,” said Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi.Level-4 autonomous vehicles can handle driving demands independently.It was unclear whether Uber planned to have human drivers in robotaxis as a safety measure in areas where such precaution is not mandated by regulations.The companies did not provide details of how quickly robotaxis would roll out or who would make them.”Ride-hailing platforms such as Uber are the ideal channels to deploy robotaxis at scale,” Marc Amblard, managing director of Orsay Consulting, told AFP.”Nvidia is the natural compute tech partner, working side by side with carmakers.”Uber currently lets users in a few US cities hail robotaxis operating by Google-owned Waymo.Uber may turn to Waymo or Chinese autonomous car companies for some of the technology needed, according to Amblard.Waymo recently announced plans to launch its robotaxis in London next year.London would mark the first foray into Europe for Waymo, already present in a growing number of US cities.Chinese internet giant Baidu earlier this year announced plans to launch robotaxis on the rideshare app Lyft in Germany and Britain in 2026, pending regulatory approval.Baidu had announced a similar agreement with Uber in Asia and the Middle East as it seeks to take pole position in the competitive autonomous driving field both at home and abroad.China’s tech companies and automakers have poured billions of dollars into self-driving technology in recent years, with intelligent driving the new battleground in the country’s cutthroat domestic car market.Baidu is not alone among Chinese companies in searching to expand its foothold abroad.

A 65-year-old man convicted of raping and murdering his neighbor is to be executed by lethal injection in the southern US state of Florida on Tuesday.Norman Grim has dropped appeals against his death sentence and is to be executed at 6:00 pm local time (2200 GMT) at the Florida State Prison in Raiford.Grim was convicted of the 1998 murder and sexual battery of Cynthia Campbell, a 41-year-old lawyer who lived next door to him.There have been 40 executions in the United States this year, the most since 2012, when 43 inmates were put to death.Florida has carried out the most executions with 14. There have been five each in Alabama and Texas.Thirty-three of this year’s executions have been carried out by lethal injection, two by firing squad and five by nitrogen hypoxia, which involves pumping nitrogen gas into a face mask, causing the prisoner to suffocate.The use of nitrogen gas as a method of capital punishment has been denounced by United Nations experts as cruel and inhumane.The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while three others — California, Oregon and Pennsylvania — have moratoriums in place.President Donald Trump is a proponent of capital punishment and, on his first day in office, called for an expansion of its use “for the vilest crimes.”

Around two dozen US states run by Democrats sued President Donald Trump’s administration Tuesday over its refusal to tap emergency funds to preserve vital food aid threatened by the government shutdown.Now on its 28th day, the standoff in Congress over spending is increasingly piling pain on the public sector, with the largest federal employees’ union pressuring Senate Democrats to reopen the government.Food stamps are rapidly becoming one of the most pressing pain points in the shutdown, with 42 million low-income Americans set to lose access to vital help with grocery bills from Saturday.The government has indicated that it won’t put a $5 billion “contingency” fund towards the estimated $8 billion required to ensure the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program pays out November’s benefits.Officials in the Agriculture Department (USDA) have argued that the rainy-day fund is for natural disasters and other unforeseeable events rather than shutdowns.”Nearly 600,000 children in our state could be without food in a few days because USDA is playing an illegal game of shutdown politics,” North Carolina attorney general Jeff Jackson, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement.”They have emergency money to help feed children during this shutdown, and they’re refusing to spend it. I warned them last week that I would take them to court if they tried to hurt our kids, and today that’s what we’re doing.”Around 18 million SNAP recipients live in states and districts that Democrat Kamala Harris won in the 2024 presidential election, according to an AFP analysis of federal data, while a much larger 23.7 million live in states that voted for Trump.Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins placed the blame for the crisis squarely with Democrats, arguing that their repeated blocking of a Republican-backed funding bill to reopen the government had driven the country to “the cliff.””I’ve been warning about this for almost a month now — that we have enough money to get us through the end of October, but after that, the government has to reopen,” she told Fox News.”And… that’s where we are right now. It is stunning to me. I don’t understand what they’re thinking.”Legislation has been introduced in Congress to keep SNAP benefits funded throughout the shutdown but it is nowhere near being signed into law.States have meanwhile been encouraging residents reliant on help to go to food banks if their benefits pause.The SNAP cliff, along with federal workers and military service members going without pay, is piling pressure on lawmakers to end the shutdown, which has been grinding government functions to a halt since October 1.The Democratic governors of 23 states and Democratic attorneys general of two further states — along with the capital Washington — are asking a federal judge in Massachusetts to overturn government directives for states to withhold benefits and to rule that officials must use all available funds to keep the food aid flowing.

The US consulate in Lagos has revoked the visa of Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, the Nobel laureate said Tuesday.”I want to assure the consulate… that I’m very content with the revocation of my visa,” Soyinka, a famed playwright and author who won the 1986 Nobel Prize for Literature, told a news conference.Soyinka previously held permanent residency in the United States, though he destroyed his green card after Donald Trump’s first election in 2016.He has remained critical of the US president, who is now serving his second term, and speculated that his recent comments comparing Trump to former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have struck a nerve.Soyinka said earlier this year that the US consulate in Lagos had called him in for an interview to re-assess his visa, which he said he would not attend.According to a letter from the consulate addressed to Soyinka, seen by AFP, officials have now cancelled his visa citing US State Department regulations that allow “a consular officer, the Secretary, or a Department official to whom the Secretary has delegated this authority… to revoke a nonimmigrant visa at any time, in his or her discretion”.Reading the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s economic capital, he jokingly called it a “rather curious love letter from an embassy”, while telling any organisations hoping to invite him to the United States “not to waste their time”.”I have no visa. I am banned,” Soyinka said.- ‘Like a dictator’ -The US embassy in Abuja said it could not comment on individual cases, citing confidentiality rules. The Trump administration has made visa revocations a hallmark of its wider crackdown on immigration, notably targeting university students who were outspoken about Palestinian rights.Soyinka said he had recently compared Trump to Uganda’s Amin, something he said Trump “should be proud of”.”Idi Amin was a man of international stature, a statesman, so when I called Donald Trump Idi Amin, I thought I was paying him a compliment,” Soyinka said. “He’s been behaving like a dictator.”The 91-year-old playwright behind “Death and the King’s Horseman” has taught at and been awarded honours from top US universities including Harvard and Cornell.His latest novel, “Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth”, a satire about corruption in Nigeria, was published in 2021.He left the door open to accepting an invitation to the United States should circumstances change, but added: “I wouldn’t take the initiative myself because there’s nothing I’m looking for there. Nothing.”He went on to criticise the ramped up arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.”This is not about me,” he said. “When we see people being picked off the street — people being hauled up and they disappear for a month… old women, children being separated. So that’s really what concerns me.”Trump’s crackdown has seen National Guard troops deployed to US cities and citizens temporarily detained as part of aggressive raids, as well as the curtailing of legal means of entry.

US forces killed 14 people in strikes that destroyed four alleged drug-smuggling boats in the eastern Pacific Ocean, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday, bringing the death toll from Washington’s controversial anti-narcotics campaign to at least 57.The United States began carrying out the strikes — which experts say amount to extrajudicial killings even if they target known traffickers — in early September, and has now destroyed at least 14 vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific.In three strikes carried out Monday in international waters, 14 “narco-terrorists” were killed and one survived, Hegseth said in a post on X — making it the deadliest day of the US campaign so far.”The four vessels were known by our intelligence apparatus, transiting along known narco-trafficking routes, and carrying narcotics,” he said.”We will track them, we will network them, and then, we will hunt and kill them,” Hegseth said of drug traffickers.But Washington has yet to make public any evidence that its targets were smuggling narcotics or posed a threat to the United States.The Pentagon chief’s post included video of the strikes, the first of which targeted two stationary boats that appeared to be moored together, while the others hit vessels that were speeding across open water.Hegseth said that US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) immediately started searching for the sole survivor of the strikes, and that Mexican authorities “accepted the case and assumed responsibility for coordinating the rescue.”- Galapagos base? -He did not specify what happened to the survivor or if the person was found, and SOUTHCOM referred a question on the survivor to Mexico.Mexico’s Navy said it was searching some 400 nautical miles (740 kilometers) southwest of the port of Acapulco.The announced drug interdiction operation has seen a major US military buildup around Latin America.The US has deployed seven US Navy warships as well as F-35 stealth warplanes, and ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier strike group to the region, bringing a massive increase in firepower.The unusually large US military presence in the Caribbean is coming face to face with Hurricane Melissa, requiring some assets to be moved to safety.Washington has also carried out multiple shows of force with B-52 and B-1B bombers flying near Venezuela’s coast, the most recent of which took place on Monday.Regional tensions have flared as a result of the strikes and the military buildup, with Venezuela saying the United States is plotting to overthrow President Nicolas Maduro, who has accused Washington of “fabricating a war.”Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa, a staunch US ally, meanwhile said Tuesday that his country could host a foreign military base in the famed Galapagos Islands that could be used to combat drug and fuel trafficking, as well as illegal fishing.Noboa did not specify which country could establish the base in Ecuador, a major hub for cocaine trafficking, but has talked of “various countries,” including the United States.

Ferocious winds and torrential rain tore into Jamaica Tuesday as Hurricane Melissa made landfall, the worst storm ever to strike the island nation and one of the most powerful hurricanes on record.The extremely violent Category 5 system was still crawling across the Caribbean, promising catastrophic floods and life-threatening conditions as maximum sustained winds reached a staggering 185 miles per hour (295 kilometers per hour).”This is an extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation!” warned the US National Hurricane Center, urging residents to stay sheltered and as far from windows as possible, including during the brief calm offered by the storm’s eye.Melissa’s sustained wind speed was even more potent than most of recent history’s big storms, including 2005’s Katrina, which ravaged the US city of New Orleans.”For Jamaica it will be the storm of the century so far,” said Anne-Claire Fontan of the World Meteorological Organization.Seven deaths — three in Jamaica, three in Haiti and one in the Dominican Republic — have already been blamed on the deteriorating conditions, but officials were concerned that many people were ignoring pleas to get to safety.”Jamaica this is not the time to be brave,” local government minister Desmond McKenzie told a briefing.He lamented that many of the country’s approximately 880 shelters were still in large part empty.Surges in seawater combined with rainfall — which will likely be measured in feet, not inches — could trigger deadly floods and landslides.”Keep Safe Jamaica,” posted Olympian sprinter Usain Bolt, one of Jamaica’s most famous figures, on X.Ishack Wilmot, who was hunkered down with family in Kingston, told AFP they were safe and dry for now but had lost electricity and water overnight.”The winds are up and gusting,” he said. “Even though we are away from the eye, it’s still really intense and loud.”- Lumbering giant -The Jamaican Red Cross, which was distributing drinking water and hygiene kits ahead of infrastructure disruptions, said Melissa’s “slow nature” made the anxiety worse.The hurricane had quickened slightly but had been lumbering along at a human walking pace, meaning there it could linger over the tropical island renowned as a tourist destination.Usually, “you anticipate that maybe within four hours it would be gone… but Melissa is not looking like that,” Red Cross spokesperson Esther Pinnock told AFP.Melissa was set to strike nearby eastern end of Cuba late Tuesday after pummeling Jamaica.The mammoth storm appeared set to wreak devastation on the scale of some of the worst hurricanes in recent memory like Katrina, Maria or Harvey.Scientists say human-driven climate change has exacerbated massive storms and increased their frequency.Meteorologist Kerry Emanuel said global warming was causing more storms to rapidly intensify as Melissa did, raising the potential for enormous rains.”Water kills a lot more people than wind,” he told AFP.The last major hurricane to impact Jamaica was Beryl in July 2024 — an abnormally strong storm for the time of year.”Human-caused climate change is making all of the worst aspects of Hurricane Melissa even worse,” said climate scientist Daniel Gilford.

Climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise,” billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates has said in a long memo in which he argued that tackling global disease and poverty will help prepare the planet’s poorest for a warming world.The missive was seen as a pivot by the 70-year-old Microsoft co-founder, a major backer of green technologies through his Breakthrough Energy organization, and comes days ahead of the COP30 climate summit in Brazil, whose leadership Gates praised for placing climate adaptation and human development high on the agenda.Gates acknowledged that critics may charge him with hypocrisy because of his significant carbon footprint or argue the memo was a “sneaky way of arguing that we shouldn’t take climate change seriously.”But he said that while climate change will have “serious” consequences, “people will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future.”Gates’s memo outlined his “Three tough truths about climate”: climate change will not end civilization, limiting temperature is not the best measure of progress, and health and prosperity are the strongest defenses against climate destabilization.He also pointed to significant progress in cutting emissions to date and said he was optimistic future technology innovation would pave the way for more.While the planet is dangerously off course in meeting the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting long-term warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, Gates argued that rather than fixating on the precise figure, the world should strengthen its resilience.For most of the world’s poor, he added, poverty and disease remain the more pressing problems, he added.”Our chief goal should be to prevent suffering, particularly for those in the toughest conditions who live in the world’s poorest countries,” he said.That means, for example, less focus on limiting extremely hot and cold days, and more on ensuring “fewer people live in poverty and poor health so that extreme weather isn’t such a threat to them.”Looking ahead, Gates said a key climate strategy should be to reduce the so-called green premium — the cost difference between clean and dirty ways of doing something — to zero for materials such as cement, steel, and jet fuel.He compared the memo to one he wrote at Microsoft 30 years ago urging the company to put the internet at the heart of everything it did.Likewise, he said, the climate community needs a “strategic pivot” at COP30 and beyond.”Prioritize the things that have the greatest impact on human welfare,” he said.Critics said Gates’ essay lacked substance and posed a false choice between climate action and reducing human suffering.”Mr. Gates has set up a false frame that pits improving lives against science-based temperature and emissions goals. In fact, the two are intrinsically connected,” Rachel Cleetus of the Union of Concerned Scientists told AFP.”The warming climate is directly undermining poverty eradication and human development goals around the world.”Hurricane Melissa, a climate change-fueled monster storm, is just the latest example of the deadly and costly consequences of climate change for nations already struggling with complex humanitarian challenges.”Transitioning away from fossil fuels will bring health and economic benefits while disrupting the “malign influence” of Big Oil on the future of the planet, she added.

A statue of a general for the pro-slavery Confederacy during the Civil War has been reinstalled in the US capital after being toppled during racial justice protests in 2020.The National Park Service (NPS) had announced plans in August to return the statue of General Albert Pike to the downtown park where it once stood.The statue, which honors Pike’s contributions to freemasonry, was the only memorial to a Confederate general in the US capital before it was torn down.It was restored to its pedestal by the NPS over the weekend.Statues honoring the Confederacy were a prime target during protests that broke out nationwide in June 2020 following the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man who was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis.Donald Trump, who was president at the time, called the removal of the Pike statue a “disgrace” and after taking office in January for a second time he signed an executive order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”Trump ordered the restoration of the names of several US military bases that honored officers who fought for the Confederacy in the 1861-1865 Civil War.The names had been changed under Democratic president Joe Biden. Several facilities have been returned to their original names but with a twist — the bases now ostensibly honor military personnel who have the same names, and not those who fought to maintain slavery in the South.Fort Bragg, for example, which originally honored Confederate general Braxton Bragg, now commemorates Roland L. Bragg, a little-known World War II hero.Efforts to remove Confederate monuments gathered momentum after a white supremacist shot dead nine African Americans at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015 and they picked up again following Floyd’s death.

Rising floodwater and extreme winds hit Jamaica Tuesday as the Caribbean island braced for imminent landfall of Hurricane Melissa and officials pleaded with residents to take shelter.The Category 5 storm, one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes on record and the largest ever to hit Jamaica, gathered pace as it closed in.”Last chance to protect your life,” said the US National Hurricane Center mid-morning. “This is an extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation! Take cover now!”The NHC said Melissa’s winds had reached a staggering maximum speed of 185 miles (295 kilometers) per hour.That sustained speed was even more potent than most of recent history’s most devastating storms, including 2005’s Katrina, which ravaged the US city of New Orleans.”For Jamaica it will be the storm of the century so far,” said Anne-Claire Fontan of the World Meteorological Organization.Seven deaths — three in Jamaica, three in Haiti and one in the Dominican Republic — have already been blamed on the deteriorating conditions, but officials were concerned that many people were ignoring pleas to get to safety.”Jamaica this is not the time to be brave,” local government minister Desmond McKenzie told a briefing.”There is still a small window of opportunity,” McKenzie said. “Let us see if we can use it wisely.”He lamented that many of the country’s approximately 880 shelters were still in large part empty.Surges in seawater combined with rainfall — which will likely be measured in feet, not inches — could trigger deadly floods and landslides.”Keep Safe Jamaica,” posted Olympian sprinter Usain Bolt, one of Jamaica’s most famous figures, on X.Ishack Wilmot, who was hunkered down with family in Kingston, told AFP they were safe and dry for now but had lost electricity and water overnight.”The winds are up and gusting,” he said. “Even though we are away from the eye, it’s still really intense and loud.”- Lumbering giant -The Jamaican Red Cross, which was distributing drinking water and hygiene kits ahead of infrastructure disruptions, said Melissa’s “slow nature” had made the anxiety worse.The hurricane had quickened slightly but had been lumbering along at a human walking pace, meaning there it could linger over the tropical island renowned for tourism.”You anticipate that maybe within four hours it would be gone… but Melissa is not looking like that,” Red Cross spokesperson Esther Pinnock told AFP.Melissa was set to strike nearby eastern end of Cuba late Tuesday after pummeling Jamaica.The mammoth storm appeared set to wreak devastation on the scale of some of the worst hurricanes in recent memory like Katrina, Maria or Harvey.Scientists say human-driven climate change has exacerbated massive storms and increased their frequency.Meteorologist Kerry Emanuel said global warming was causing more storms to rapidly intensify as Melissa did, raising the potential for enormous rains.”Water kills a lot more people than wind,” he told AFP.The last major hurricane to impact Jamaica was Beryl in July 2024 — an abnormally strong storm for the time of year.”Human-caused climate change is making all of the worst aspects of Hurricane Melissa even worse,” said climate scientist Daniel Gilford.