PARIS — Despite pressure from the United States, the French Parliament on Thursday adopted a new tax aimed at tech giants such as Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple.
The French government has argued that taxes on big tech firms should be based on where they do business, not just where they’re headquartered — as has been the case up to now. And so the measure would levy a 3 percent tax on certain revenue the companies earn in France.
The Trump administration warned on Wednesday that it would investigate whether the tax unfairly discriminates against U.S. businesses.
French officials stood firm Thursday, brushing off the criticism.
“France is a sovereign state, it decides its fiscal provisions in a sovereign manner, and it will continue to decide its tax decisions in a sovereign manner,” said Bruno Le Maire, France’s finance minister, speaking to the French Senate on Thursday.
“I believe profoundly that between allies, we should and we can settle our differences by other means than threats,” he added.
The so-called “taxe GAFA”— based on the acronyms of the big tech companies — had already passed in France’s National Assembly and was approved on Thursday in the French Senate, the upper house. It will become law after getting a signature from President Emmanuel Macron, for whom the tax has been a priority, and it will be retroactively applied for 2019.
The tax will apply to tech companies with revenues of more than $850 million, with at least $28 million earned in France. It will affect about 30 companies, including U.S., British, Chinese, German and Spanish businesses, along with one French advertising company, Criteo.
(Amazon’s founder and chief executive, Jeff Bezos, also owns The Washington Post.)
The tax is the latest move from Europe designed to gain more control over big tech.
Last year, the European Union implemented a sweeping new set data privacy regulations that have forced companies to offer European citizens greater ability to determine how their personal information is used, stored and sold.
European antitrust regulators have also been far more skeptical of U.S. tech companies than their American counterparts, meaning that Google, Apple and others have been hit with major fines in recent years and forced to alter their business practices. And European lawmakers and regulators have talked about doing more, expressing doubts about big tech’s ability to regulate itself.
This muscular approach has drawn the ire of President Trump, who appeared to lash out last month at the E.U. antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager.
“You have a woman in Europe, I won’t mention her name . . . she hates the United States perhaps worse than any person I’ve ever met,” Trump told Fox Business, discussing antitrust law.
But if European leaders have generally been tougher on big tech than the U.S. government, the French tax also highlighted that Europe is far from united on tech policy.
Macron pushed hard for an E.U.-wide digital tax policy. But several E.U. countries resisted. Notable among those in opposition were Ireland (where Google, Facebook and Apple have their European headquarters) and Luxembourg (where Amazon’s European headquarters is located). Those countries have been successful in luring tech companies with low tax schemes.
Another fault line has emerged as the privacy rules have gone into effect. European tech activists have criticized Ireland’s privacy regulatory agency for what they say is the slow pace of its investigations of suspected violations. The agency says it is simply being meticulous before it pursues high-profile cases.
Le Maire, the French finance minister, admitted in the spring that an E.U.-wide tax was a dead-end, as it would require the backing of all 28 members of the bloc. So he proposed instead that France go ahead alone.
Britain, Austria and Poland are among those pursuing their own versions. But because France went first, it will face the consequences.
Washington announced an investigation under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act, which grants the president the power to impose retaliatory measures against U.S. trading partners.
This was the same measure that permitted the Trump administration to slam China with tariffs last year, though it has rarely been used against so close an ally.
Michael Birnbaum and Quentin Ariès in Brussels and Tony Romm in Washington contributed to this report.
Progressive advocacy groups, including CREDO Action, MoveOn, UltraViolet and the American Federation of Teachers, projected the words “Acosta Enabled Sex Trafficking” and “Acosta Must Go” on the building.
“Secretary Acosta’s actions in not disclosing the plea deal of a politically well-connected predator to the victims of that predator were illegal and unconscionable. By breaking the law and hiding the deal from victims, he’s shown that we cannot trust him,” American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said in a statement.
In 2008, as a U.S. Attorney, Acosta approved a deal that allowed Epstein to serve only 13 months and spend 16 hours a day outside of prison. Epstein was arrested on new federal charges of sex trafficking over the weekend. He has pleaded not guilty.
“We believe that we proceeded appropriately,” Acosta told reporters at the Labor Department. “We did what we did because we wanted to see Epstein go to jail. He needed to go to jail.”
The U.S. will not waver from its course of maximum pressure against Iran, White House national security adviser John Bolton said Monday, as the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers appears unraveling with the Trump administration’s pullout. (July 8) AP, AP
LONDON – Iranian ships attempted to obstruct a British-flagged commercial oil tanker as it sailed in the Persian Gulf, Britain’s Defense Ministry said, a move that comes amid heightened tensions over a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.
The Iranian vessels are suspected of belonging to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. They were forced away from the oil tanker “British Heritage” after receiving verbal warnings from a British navy vessel accompanying the commercial vessel through the Strait of Hormuz – a strategically important choke point for oil delivery.
“We are concerned by this action and continue to urge the Iranian authorities to de-escalate the situation in the region,” the British government said in a statement.
No shots were fired and the Iranian vessels heeded the “HMS Montrose”‘s warnings.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. denied the allegations.
The semi-official Fars news agency carried a statement from the Guard’s navy early Thursday saying “there were no clashes with alien boats, especially English boats.”
“HMS Montrose” has since left the Persian Gulf, according to the ministry.
There was no immediate reaction from the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet in Bahrain.
The incident follows a warning from Iran that it would retaliate against British interests after Royal Navy marines helped seize an Iranian oil tanker in the Mediterranean Sea last week allegedly on its way to Syria in breach of European Union sanctions. Iran said the seizure was illegal and that the supertanker was not headed to Syria.
“You, Britain, are the initiator of insecurity and you will realize the consequences later,” Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said, referring to the presence of British warships in the Persian Gulf. The latest incident occurred near the island of Abu Musa.
Britain has sided with the United States in accusing Iran of attacking oil tankers in the Persian Gulf in June, a claim that Iran also denies. The attacks, along with Iran’s shooting down of a U.S. drone, have roiled oil markets. About a quarter of the world’s seaborne crude oil is transported through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow passageway between Oman and Iran that connects the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The United Nations’ atomic watchdog confirmed Monday that Iran has started enriching uranium at levels that breach the nuclear agreement with world powers. It could spark new U.S. reaction over the deal the Trump administration abandoned a year ago and adds fresh pressure on France, Britain and Germany to salvage the accord.
The U.S. has been steadily reimposing sanctions that have damaged Iran’s economy.
“Iran has long been secretly ‘enriching,’ in total violation of the terrible 150 Billion Dollar deal made by John Kerry and the Obama Administration. Remember, that deal was to expire in a short number of years. Sanctions will soon be increased, substantially!,” Trump tweeted Wednesday, making inaccurate claims about the accord.
Iran has been permitted to enrich uranium at lower levels as part of the agreement, and is still doing so even with its recent jump to 4.5% enrichment, breaking the limit of 3.67%, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. And there was no $150 billion deal with Iran, nor was it U.S. money. It was Iran’s money, about $55 billion – for years frozen in international financial institutions – that was unlocked.
Dryad Global, a maritime security risk firm, said on Twitter that “British Heritage” was an oil tanker operated by British oil and gas multinational BP and registered in the Isle of Man. Lloyd’s List, a publication specializing in maritime affairs, said British-Dutch oil giant Shell had chartered the ship from BP. Lloyd’s List, said 20 British-flagged vessels have sailed through the Strait of Hormuz into Persian Gulf waters since July 2.
China and Russia, signatories to the nuclear deal alongside European nations, have called for U.S. and British restraint in the Persian Gulf amid elevated tensions with Iran.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez continued her war of words with Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday night, calling the Speaker of the House “outright disrespectful” for criticizing women of color.
The Bronx Democrat was reacting to Pelosi’s repeated attempts at reigning in some of the more left-wing members of her caucus and chastising the freshman reps for tweeting too much.
“When these comments first started, I kind of thought that she was keeping the progressive flank at more of an arm’s distance in order to protect more moderate members, which I understood,” Ocasio-Cortez told the Washington Post.
“But the persistent singling out — it got to a point where it was just outright disrespectful — the explicit singling out of newly elected women of color.”
Erlier in the week Pelosi mocked her and freshman progressive colleagues — Rep. Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley — for their Twitter-based influence.
“All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” Pelosi told The New York Times in a story published Sunday. “But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.”
Pressley, who called Pelosi’s comments “demoralizing,” was less interested in engaging with the California Democrat.
“Thank God my mother gave me broad shoulders and a strong back. I can handle it. I’m not worried about me,” Pressley told the paper.
“I am worried about the signal that it sends to people I speak to and for, who sent me here with a mandate, and how it affects them.”
President Donald Trump is expected to announce an executive action on getting the citizenship question added to the census, according to an administration official.
Trump announced on Twitter Thursday morning that he will hold a press conference in the afternoon to discuss his latest efforts at including the citizenship question as part of the census.
“The White House will be hosting a very big and very important Social Media Summit today,” Trump tweeted. “Would I have become President without Social Media? Yes (probably)! At its conclusion, we will all go to the beautiful Rose Garden for a News Conference on the Census and Citizenship.”
Last week, Trump told reporters on the White House South Lawn when asked if he would issue an executive order: “We’re thinking about doing that.”
“It’s one of the ways,” he added. “We have four or five ways we can do it. It’s one of the ways and we’re thinking about doing it very seriously.”
The news conference comes as two federal judges refused to let the Department of Justice withdraw lawyers from a lawsuit over the Trump administration’s plans to put the citizenship question on the 2020 census form.
This is a developing story, check back for updates.
IPO mania led to record exit value from venture-backed companies…
Uber accounted for almost half of the exit value from venture-backed companies in the quarter, while Slack, Zoom, Pinterest and CrowdStrike made up most of the rest.
President Trump’s threatened deportation raids are “absolutely going to happen,” says senior Department of Homeland Security official Ken Cuccinelli.
“There are approximately 1 million in this people with deportation orders,” the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services told reporters on the White House driveway. “Of course, that isn’t what ICE will go after in this, but that’s the pool of people that have been all the way through the process.”
The former Virginia attorney general, whose agency handles asylum cases, declined to discuss the timing of raids or additional details.
On June 22, Trump wrote on Twitter he would postpone threatened raids “for two weeks to see if the Democrats and Republicans can get together and work out a solution to the Asylum and Loophole problems at the Southern Border. If not, Deportations start!”
As the clock ran out, Trump told reporters Friday that large-scale deportation sweeps would be “starting fairly soon.”
“I don’t call them ‘raids.’ I say they came in illegally, and we’re bringing them out legally,” Trump said. “We’re removing people that have come in — all of these people over the years that have come in illegally — we are removing them and bringing them back to their country.”
As Louisiana and Acadiana prepares for the soon to be named Tropical Storm Barry, the KATC team has gathered information on the storm and its affects on Acadiana and Louisiana.
As the storm moves into the area, the following articles will be updated.
Weather Alerts:
For the Latest track and information on the storm from the KATC Weather team,
Image caption
The HMS Montrose is reported to have driven off the Iranian boats
Iranian boats tried to impede a British oil tanker near the Gulf – before being driven off by a Royal Navy ship, the Ministry of Defence has said.
HMS Montrose moved between the three boats and the tanker British Heritage before issuing verbal warnings to the Iranian vessels, a spokesman said.
He described the Iranians’ actions as “contrary to international law”.
Iran had threatened to retaliate for the seizure of one of its own tankers, but denied any attempted seizure.
Boats believed to belong to Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) approached the British Heritage tanker and tried to bring it to a halt as it was moving out of the Gulf into the Strait of Hormuz.
Guns on HMS Montrose, the British frigate escorting the tanker, were reportedly trained on the Iranian boats as they were ordered to back off. They heeded the warning and no shots were fired.
The BBC has been told British Heritage was near the island of Abu Musa when it was approached and harassed by the Iranian boats.
Although the island is in disputed territorial waters, HMS Montrose remained in international waters throughout.
A UK government spokesman said: “Contrary to international law, three Iranian vessels attempted to impede the passage of a commercial vessel, British Heritage, through the Strait of Hormuz.
“We are concerned by this action and continue to urge the Iranian authorities to de-escalate the situation in the region.”
What does Iran say?
Quoting the public relations office of the IRGC’s Navy, the Fars news agency said, in a tweet, the IRGC “denies claims by American sources” that it tried to seize British Heritage.
“There has been no confrontation in the last 24 hours with any foreign vessels, including British ones,” the IRGC added, according to the AFP news agency.
Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the UK made the claims “for creating tension”.
“These claims have no value,” Mr Zarif added, according to Fars.
Why are UK-Iran tensions escalating?
Image copyright Reuters
Image caption
British Royal Marines helped to detain the Iranian oil tanker, Grace 1, earlier this month
Last week, British Royal Marines helped the authorities in Gibraltar seize an Iranian oil tanker because of evidence it was heading to Syria in breach of EU sanctions.
Iran also summoned the British ambassador in Tehran to complain about what it said was a “form of piracy”.
On Wednesday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani mocked the UK, calling it “scared” and “hopeless” for using Royal Navy warships to shadow a British tanker in the Gulf.
HMS Montrose had shadowed British tanker the Pacific Voyager for some of the way through the Strait of Hormuz, but that journey had passed without incident.
“You, Britain, are the initiator of insecurity and you will realise the consequences later,” Mr Rouhani said.
The UK has also been pressing Iran to release British-Iranian mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe who was jailed for five years in 2016 after being convicted for spying, which she denies.
Could things get worse?
Iran appears to have been attempting to make good on its threat against British-flagged vessels in the wake of the seizure of an Iranian tanker off Gibraltar.
But though this incident has a specifically bilateral dimension, it is also a powerful reminder that the tensions in the Gulf have not gone away.
And with every sign that the dispute over the nuclear agreement with Iran is set to continue, things may only get worse.
The episode may add some impetus to US-brokered efforts to muster an international naval force in the Gulf to protect international shipping.
But most worrying of all, it shows that elements within the Iranian system – the Revolutionary Guard Corps’s naval arm, or whatever – are intent on stoking the pressure.
This inevitably plays into President Trump’s hands as Britain and its key European partners struggle to keep the nuclear agreement alive.
What about US-Iran relations?
Media captionWhy does the Strait of Hormuz matter?
The US has blamed Iran for attacks on six oil tankers in May and June.
The chairman of the US military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said, on Wednesday, it wants to create an multi-national military coalition to safeguard waters around Iran and Yemen.
The Trump administration – which has pulled out of an international agreement on Tehran’s nuclear programme – has reinforced punishing sanctions against Iran.
Its European allies, including the UK, have not followed suit.
Iran’s ambassador to the UN has insisted Europeans must do more to compensate Tehran for economic losses inflicted by US sanctions – otherwise Iranians will continue to exceed limits on their nuclear fuel production.
House Democrats on Wednesday will hold a hearing titled “Kids in Cages: Inhumane Treatment at the Border.” It will once again be an attempt to divert attention from the real reason why migrants kids are dying at the southern border.
The root of each and every death at the border is traced to a belief, on the part of hundreds of thousands of Central Americans, that they can and should show up after a dangerous 2,000-mile journey and throw themselves into the care of a stretched-thin U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
It’s not the “cages” that infected these exhausted, worn down people with the flu. It’s not the overcrowded ICE detention facilities that have compromised their health. It’s not a lack of medical attention that has turned southern Texas into an infirmary for all of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.
It’s Congress, and Democrats in particular. It’s the absolute refusal to do anything that would stop these people from risking their lives in the first place.
Anyone who has been listening to the desperate warnings from the Departments of Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, and Defense for the past year already knows that our immigration system is collapsing. It’s being crushed under the weight of countless migrants showing up at the border, all of them aware that we can’t cope with the sheer number of them and thus will have to eventually be turned loose in to the country.
But the national news media play stupid. The Washington Postdescribed the hearing scheduled for Wednesday as an opportunity for Democrats “to question the impact of Trump’s immigration policies.”
No, “Trump’s immigration policies” aren’t having an impact. They were to build a wall, move to a merit-based immigration system, and halt illegal border crossings. He has accomplished precisely none of those things. The administration has instead been thrown into chaos trying to manage — not reduce or stop, but manage — the new gush of migrants pushing their way into Texas.
The only “impact” we should be asking about is the impact on the American taxpayer, tasked with providing endless food, clothing, medicine, and legal services to all of these migrants, while Congress does nothing to solve the problem.
President Trump’s threatened deportation raids are “absolutely going to happen,” says senior Department of Homeland Security official Ken Cuccinelli.
“There are approximately 1 million in this people with deportation orders,” the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services told reporters on the White House driveway. “Of course, that isn’t what ICE will go after in this, but that’s the pool of people that have been all the way through the process.”
The former Virginia attorney general, whose agency handles asylum cases, declined to discuss the timing of raids or additional details.
On June 22, Trump wrote on Twitter he would postpone threatened raids “for two weeks to see if the Democrats and Republicans can get together and work out a solution to the Asylum and Loophole problems at the Southern Border. If not, Deportations start!”
As the clock ran out, Trump told reporters Friday that large-scale deportation sweeps would be “starting fairly soon.”
“I don’t call them ‘raids.’ I say they came in illegally, and we’re bringing them out legally,” Trump said. “We’re removing people that have come in — all of these people over the years that have come in illegally — we are removing them and bringing them back to their country.”
“Nightline” looks at the fallout from the indictment of Epstein, who allegedly abused “dozens” of underage girls and recruited a “vast network” of victims. READ MORE: https://abcn.ws/2JskRu0
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Embattled Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta defended his handling of a decade-old plea deal with billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein on sex crime charges when Acosta was the U.S. attorney in Florida’s Southern District. Acosta is facing renewed scrutiny and criticism over the case after Epstein was arrested on new federal sex trafficking charges in New York last week.
The plea deal reached with Epstein in 2008 meant he dodged federal charges and spent just 13 months in county jail on state prostitution charges. He was allowed to leave six days a week for work.
At a nearly hour-long press conference at the Labor Department on Wednesday, Acosta described Epstein’s actions as “despicable,” insisting Epstein might have gotten away with no jail time if his office hadn’t gotten involved in the case that was being handled by the state. But Acosta struggled to answer questions about whether he would handle the case differently today, offering no apology to Epstein’s victims.
Asked if he would make the same deal now, Acosta responded: “We live in a very different world. Today’s world treats victims very, very differently.”
Acosta claimed many alleged victims were reticent to come forward at the time, making the case more difficult to prosecute. It’s often difficult for prosecutors in such cases, Acosta said, to decide between accepting a guilty plea or risk going to trial, if a trial is “viewed as the roll of a dice.”
Labor Secretary Alex Acosta speaks during a media availability at the Department of Labor on Wednesday, July 10, 2019, in Washington.
Alex Brandon / AP
“Facts are important and facts are being overlooked,” Acosta said, defending how he and his colleagues at the time handled the plea agreement and case overall.
CBS News White House correspondent Ben Tracy asked Acosta if he believes he got the best plea deal possible and whether he has any regrets. A federal judge in February said prosecutors had violated victims’ rights by keeping the non-prosecution agreement secret.
“We believe that we proceeded appropriately, that based on the evidence … There was value to getting a guilty plea and having him register,” Acosta responded. “Look, no regrets is a very hard question.”
Epstein’s actions, Acosta said, “absolutely” deserved harsher punishment. The new charges, brought by prosecutors in the Southern District in New York, allege Acosta abused dozens of young girls for years at his residences in Manhattan and Florida. Investigators allegedly found a trove of inappropriate photos at his home, including photos of underage girls. Acosta has pleaded not guilty.
President Trump encouraged Acosta to hold the press conference, an administration official told CBS News’ Fin Gomez.
Acosta addressed his handling of the case for the first time on Twitter Tuesday.
“The crimes committed by Epstein are horrific, and I am pleased that NY prosecutors are moving forward with a case based on new evidence,” Acosta tweeted.
Mr. Trump has defended Acosta’s work as labor secretary, but suggested Tuesday his administration is looking “very carefully” at Acosta’s handling of the Epstein case. The president himself has faced questions over his relationship with Epstein, since the two used to interact and Epstein used to visit Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.
“I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him,” Mr. Trump said of Epstein Tuesday. “People in Palm Beach knew him. He was a fixture in Palm Beach. I had a falling out with him a long time ago. I don’t think I’ve spoken to him for 15 years. I wasn’t a fan — I was not — yeah, a long time ago. I’d say maybe 15 years.”
“I was not a fan of his. That I can tell you,” the president continued. “I was not a fan of his. So, I feel very badly for actually for Secretary Acosta because I’ve known him as being somebody that works so hard and has done such a good job. I feel very badly about that whole situation. But we’re going to be looking at that and looking at it very closely.”
The House Oversight Committee has invited Acosta to testify on the plea deal on July 23. Acosta has yet to say whether he’ll appear.
— CBS News’ Paula Reid and Arden Farhi contributed to this report.
Federal officials charged financier Jeffrey Epstein with creating and maintaining a sex trafficking network. USA TODAY
Federal agents who searched the East Side Manhattan mansion of wealthy sex offender Jeffrey Epstein turned up a “vast trove of lewd photographs” of young-looking girls, including hundreds of meticulously labeled nude pictures locked in a safe, according to federal court documents.
The description, laid out ina memo by prosecutors from the Southern District of New York, was aimed at convincing a federal judge that Epstein, who was arrested July 6 upon return from Paris on his private jet, should not be freed pending trial on charges of sex trafficking.
Agents used crowbars to force open the front door of the seven-story Upper East Side mansion.
The memo said the search turned up not only evidence supporting its sex trafficking allegations against Esptein but also “hundreds – and perhaps thousands – of sexually suggestive photographs of fully – or partially – nude females.”
While investigators were still reviewing the material, the memo said one of the girls, according to her attorney, “was underage at the time the relevant photographs were taken.”
It noted that other photographs were found in a locked safe that included CDs with handwritten labels including the descriptions ““Young [Name] + [Name],” “Misc nudes 1,” and “Girl pics nude.”
In calling for Epstein to remain in jail, the memo noted that he is a registered sex offender after a 2008 conviction in Florida and “is not reformed, he is not chastened, he is not repentant, rather he is a continuing danger to the community and an individual who faces devastating evidence supporting deeply serious charges.”
Epstein, 66, has pleaded not guilty to one federal count of sex trafficking and one count of sex trafficking conspiracy for allegedly sexually exploiting minor girls at his homes in Manhattan, Palm Beach, Florida, and other locations, according to the federal indictment.
In a report on the mansion, valued at more than $55 million, The New York Times noted that its artwork includes, on the second floor, a commissioned mural of a “photorealistic prison scene that included barbed wire, corrections officers and a guard station, with Mr. Epstein portrayed in the middle.”
The Times quotes R. Couri Hay, a public relations specialist who recently met with Epstein at his home, as saying, “(Epstein) said, ‘That’s me, and I had this painted because there is always the possibility that could be me again.’”
The home also includes such oddities as a hallway covered with artificial eyeballs originally made for wounded soldiers, a life-size female doll hanging from a chandelier, and a chess board with custom figures, many dressed suggestively and modeled after one of Epstein’s staffers, The Times reported.
Federal prosecutors said in the indictment that they were moving to seize the mansion as part of the proceedings against Epstein.
The National Hurricane Center is predicting the season’s first hurricane, to be named Barry, will develop over the Gulf of Mexico and strike the coast of Louisiana or Texas on Saturday.
The storm is predicted to be a massive rainmaker, unloading double-digit rainfall totals that will probably trigger serious inland flooding. Assuming it attains hurricane strength, damaging wind gusts are likely near where it comes ashore as well as a dangerous storm surge, which is a rise in water above normally dry land that can inundate homes, roads and businesses.
Tropical storm and storm surge watches have already been issued ahead of the storm in coastal eastern and central Louisiana. The storm surge watch includes New Orleans, where levees protecting the city may be tested as the Mississippi River is expected to rise.
Forecast track for tropical weather system predicted to become Hurricane Barry. (National Hurricane Center)
Tropical storm and hurricane watches are likely to be added farther to the west in Louisiana and possibly into Texas late Wednesday or early Thursday.
The responsible weather system originated over land and drifted from the southeastern United States into the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday. It is centered about 100 miles off the Florida Panhandle.
The warm gulf waters are feeding the rapidly organizing storm system, which is on the cusp of becoming a tropical depression. The Hurricane Center predicts the system will become Tropical Storm Barry by some time Thursday.
Even before earning a name, the developing storm was unloading heavy rain along the northern Gulf Coast from eastern Louisiana to the eastern Florida panhandle. Thunderstorms associated with the system dumped a half-foot of rain on New Orleans on Wednesday morning, prompting a flash flood emergency for the city.
The areas affected by rainfall will persist into the weekend and expand westward. In addition to New Orleans, places such as Mobile, Ala., Gulfport, Miss., and Baton Rouge are predicted to receive at least several inches of rain.
Through the end of the weekend, places further inland like Montgomery, Ala., Jackson, Miss., and Shreveport, La., are likely to see multiple inches of rain. Ultimately, some areas of Louisiana, near where the center of Barry is forecast to come ashore, could see 18 inches. This is not welcome news for places along the already swollen and flooded Mississippi River.
Hurricane hunters flights are planned for today to investigate the system. If a closed surface circulation is found along with the already-present, persistent, strong thunderstorms, it would get upgraded to a tropical depression. The Air Force will fly the first mission Wednesday afternoon, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will fly a second mission in the evening. Such flights will continue until it dissipates and/or makes landfall.
The odds of Barry becoming the season’s first hurricane have increased noticeably since Tuesday as models have come into better agreement on its intensity, but there is a chance it peaks at tropical storm strength. Models also agree on the storm’s general timing: making landfall Saturday, although heavy rain and storm surge flooding are likely to begin before that.
While models show a range of possible track forecasts, the most likely landfall point is along the central or western Louisiana coast, but eastern Texas is not off the hook yet.
Five-day track and intensity forecasts from the 50-member ECMWF ensemble and the 20-member GFS ensemble. (weathernerds.org)
Irrespective of exactly where the storm makes landfall, storm effects from heavy rain and strong winds will expand well to the north, east and west of its track. Along the coast, the predicted storm surge of three to five feet above normally dry land could also extend considerable distances away from the center on the east side.
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