“We’d been using bottled water to flush the commode but now that’s all gone,” Riggs said, finishing up a free spaghetti dinner while his daughter, Courtney Riggs-Johnston, and granddaughter Trevlyn, 14, rummaged through boxes of donated clothing.
Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/02/florida-ian-death-toll/
Efforts to reach Ms. Huerta by phone and at her home in Tampa were unsuccessful.
The man who said he worked with her to help sign up other migrants agreed to speak on the condition that his name not be used because the events are under investigation. He said he first met Ms. Huerta on Sept. 10 outside the Migrant Resource Center in San Antonio.
Card 1 of 5
Where were the migrants from? The 48 migrants who were taken from a shelter in San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard in mid-September are Venezuelans who had crossed the southwest border without authorization and had turned themselves in to border officials; many likely planned to claim asylum. After being taken into custody, they had been released to face future proceedings.
What happened to the migrants after they arrived on the land? Volunteers and officials in Martha’s Vineyard welcomed the migrants with food and clothing and gave them shelter at a local church. A few days later, the migrants boarded buses for a temporary shelter at Joint Base Cape Cod.
Are the claims being investigated? Yes. A county sheriff in Texas has opened a criminal investigation into the drop-offs, saying that it was clear that many of the migrants had been misled and lured away from Texas to score political points. The sheriff, who has been a critic of the Republican handling of illegal immigration, added that his decision to open the investigation was not politically motivated.
She asked him to help her recruit other migrants like him from Venezuela. But he said he felt betrayed, because she never mentioned working on behalf of the Florida government. “I was also lied to,” he said. “If I had known, I would not have gotten involved.” All he was told, he said, was that “she wanted to help people head up north.”
The effort to fly migrants to Martha’s Vineyard appeared to have been far less organized than the more sweeping program created by Mr. Abbott in Texas that already had bused more than 11,000 migrants from the state to three northern, Democratic-run cities — Washington, New York and Chicago.
But the goal for both governors was the same: draw attention to the large number of unauthorized migrants arriving daily at the southern border and force Democrats to deal with the migrants whom they profess a desire to welcome.
In the case of the flights to Martha’s Vineyard, Florida state records show that an airline charter company, Vertol Systems, was paid $615,000 on Sept. 8 and $950,000 less than two weeks later. The first payment was for “project 1” and the second payment for “projects two and three.” So far, Florida officials have acknowledged only the initial flights and have not spoken of plans for others.
The money to fly migrants came from a special $12 million appropriation in the state’s last budget, a brief item that gave funds to the state’s Department of Transportation to create a program “to facilitate the transport of unauthorized aliens from this state.”
The program was conceived as a means for Florida to push back on the number of unauthorized migrants being flown into the state by the federal government. As of August, Mr. DeSantis said the funds had yet to be used, because the additional large groups of migrants that had been expected had failed to materialize.
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/02/us/migrants-marthas-vineyard-desantis-texas.html
Sober October, Dry January and Dry July: For one quarter of a year, these campaigns provide a motivation for people to come together and challenge themselves to go without alcohol.
It isn’t a surprise to Annie Grace that these periods to reduce alcohol consumption are becoming more popular. The author of “This Naked Mind: Control Alcohol” said she is seeing more and more people evaluate the relationship that alcohol plays in their lives.
How much is too much? The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention classifies moderate drinking as two drinks or less in a day for men and one drink or less for women. But two-thirds of adult drinkers report drinking more than those levels at least once a month, according to the CDC.
And the pandemic didn’t help. A December 2020 study found that 60% of respondents increased drinking over the year and more than a third said they engaged in binge drinking, which is defined as five or more drinks on an occasion for men and four for women.
Studies show that alcohol isn’t good for healthy living. There is no safe amount when it comes to heart health, according to the World Heart Federation. And even moderate drinking reserved for the weekend can have social, emotional and psychological impacts, according to a 2022 study.
Sober October could be a step to cutting out alcohol entirely, but it doesn’t have to be, said biological psychologist Aaron White, senior scientific adviser to the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
Whatever your level of drinking, a monthlong sobriety challenge could help you be more mindful about your drinking, White added.
Who benefits?
You may think you might not need a break from drinking because you don’t have signs of substance abuse disorder: your drinking causing serious impairment, health problems, disability or issues meeting responsibilities.
But problematic drinking is a spectrum – not just a binary between addicted and fine, Grace said. You may drink a little but not feel good about why or how you drink. You may drink a lot but feel doing so functions well in your life.
Even people who don’t drink heavily may find themselves with less control over when and how much they drink than they would like, Grace said.
She was one of those people. Grace didn’t feel she needed treatment programs, but she found that reducing her drinking was a struggle, which to her was a sign that something needed to change.
Taking on a sobriety challenge doesn’t mean you have to quit forever, but it can help you be more thoughtful in your decisions around drinking rather than doing it because it’s what you usually do, White said.
“It gives somebody a chance to cultivate alternatives,” he added.
How does it help?
Even in just a month, there is evidence that reduced alcohol consumption can be good for your physical health.
“Most people who drink excessively have fatty livers,” White said. “Even taking a break for a month is enough to just bring your liver enzymes down and for your liver to look healthier.”
Some people may find with less or no alcohol they sleep better and make better food choices for themselves, White said.
And for emotional health, a short-term challenge can point out feelings and routines that could be improved, Grace added.
Many of the people she works with – even moderate drinkers – describe their relationship with alcohol as something they are not in full control of, she said.
She encourages people who are using a sobriety challenge to take note of when they feel the urge to drink and what purpose it serves. Does it make you feel part of a community to share a drink at a party? Is that glass of wine after a long day a reliable sense of comfort?
Maybe the drink is an easy way – but not the best – to get those needs met, Grace said. Taking note and trying to find those things without a drink could open you up to new ways of fulfilling those feelings, White added.
How to be successful
There are a couple of stumbling blocks to plan for during a sober month, Grace said.
One is overcoming the desire to drink, and experts had different approaches to solve that problem.
Reducing drinking can have a similar effect as dieting – the more you tell yourself you can’t have it, the more you want it, said Natalie Mokari, a registered dietitian nutritionist in Charlotte, North Carolina.
She recommends starting with one less drink than you would usually have at each occasion or breaking a daily habit by limiting drinking to certain days. You can also have a sparkling water in between drinks or make weaker cocktails than usual to reduce your alcohol consumption, she said.
White said it is important not to feel shame if you end up drinking during your sobriety challenge. Don’t throw out the whole experience by beating yourself up over a glass of wine, he added.
Grace recommended leading with curiosity and information. Learning more about the psychology and biology of alcohol really helped reduce her desire to drink, she said, and approaching her urges with curiosity rather than judgment allowed her to learn more about the role alcohol played in her life.
There is also social pressure to drink. How do you not drink when everyone else is? Especially if friends get uncomfortable when they don’t see you with the beer you always have?
The first thing is to remember that people may make you feel bad because they are uncomfortable about their own relationship with drinking, Grace said.
It often helps to have a nonalcoholic drink in your hand at social events, White said, so the offer to have a drink doesn’t even come up.
Don’t binge on November 1
If you are hoping to curb your habits or boost your health, it is important not to see crossing the finish line as the time to overindulge, Mokari said.
Dramatically reducing your consumption over that time can lower your tolerance, and what was enough for a buzz today could result in a much higher level of intoxication than you expect 30 days later, White said.
You may also be undoing the changes in habit you have been building over the course of the month by going back even harder once it’s over, Grace added.
“In our society, even saying ‘I want to take a break’ is super brave,” she said. “If you don’t change how you feel about it but white-knuckle it the whole month, it becomes like this forbidden fruit syndrome.”
Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/02/health/sober-october-challenge-wellness/index.html
LEE COUNTY, Fla. —
Video above: Before and after side-by-side comparison aerial images of Florida in the wake of Hurricane Ian
Many beach cottages that lined the shores of Sanibel Island were wiped away by Hurricane Ian’s storm surge, new aerial imagery from NOAA shows.
Most homes on Sanibel and Captiva islands are still standing, but appear to have sustained some form of roof damage, in addition to certain storm surge and flooding damage.
Near the Casa Ybel Beach Resort, large scars in the sands are seen — the surge eroded much of the beach and dunes.
Shalimar Cottages & Motel is gone, too. Its 14 cottages and entire motel building were wiped away by the storm. At least four cottages — or what remains of them — are sitting in the street.
Mitchell’s SandCastles has also been destroyed. There are no buildings left and the property is covered in sand.
Video: Drone footage of Sanibel Causeway collapse
Only one building remains of the Waterside Inn on the Beach. The only thing remaining of the eight buildings on the property, which encircle the swimming pool, is debris.
The roofs of the four buildings that comprise Ocean’s Reach have sustained significant damage. It’s unclear how things fared inside the buildings, but a significant debris field is seen behind the buildings. The covered parking structure behind the buildings has been destroyed as well.
Even though storm surge is no longer covering Sanibel, a number of homes remain underwater located on the Sanibel Island Golf Club.
Timelapse video shows storm surge in Sanibel Island caused by Hurricane Ian
Source Article from https://www.wcvb.com/article/hurricane-ian-storm-surge-sanibel-island-florida/41481325
KYIV, Ukraine—Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the eastern city of Lyman had been cleared of Russian forces and that Ukrainian flags were flying again, scoring a symbolic military and political victory against Moscow on the very territory President Vladimir Putin said last week Russia would annex.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said it was withdrawing troops from the city following days of advances by Ukrainian forces to surround them, but Moscow kept several thousand troops there, most likely encircled until fighting ended.
Source Article from https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-gains-full-control-of-lyman-days-after-putin-claimed-russia-rules-there-11664707959
Officials in hardest-hit Lee County, Florida, are facing mounting questions about why the first mandatory evacuations weren’t ordered until a day before Hurricane Ian’s landfall —despite an emergency plan that suggests evacuations should have happened earlier.
Lee County’s evacuation orders also came a day or more after those of neighboring counties to the north.
The county’s Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan states a 10% chance of 6 feet or more of water “would indicate the need” for hurricane evacuations in the most vulnerable areas.
National Hurricane Center advisories, reviewed by CNN, make first mention of “4-7 feet of surge” for that area as early as 11 p.m. ET Sunday — three days before landfall. That level of surge was predicted for an area from Englewood to Bonita Beach – which includes the entire Lee County coast.
By 8 a.m. ET Tuesday, around the time of the first evacuation message, the NHC upped the storm surge forecast to 5-10 feet. And by 11 a.m. ET, the forecast was expanded to 8-12 feet of storm surge for all of Lee County.
The county’s first announcement of mandatory evacuations was not until Tuesday morning. In a news conference around 7 a.m. ET Tuesday, county officials announced mandatory evacuations for the most vulnerable “Zone A” and parts of “Zone B” in the county.
The county also opened its first shelters at 9 a.m. ET Tuesday. Later that day, the county expanded the order to all of Zone B.
Other counties in Ian’s path, such as Hillsborough, Pinellas, Manatee, Sarasota and Charlotte counties spent the day Monday issuing evacuation orders. And even before Hillsborough County issued the formal order, Tampa’s mayor was urging the public to evacuate.
“If you can leave, just leave now, and we will take care of your personal property,” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor told Kate Bolduan on CNN’s At This Hour around 11 a.m. ET Monday.
GOP Sen. Rick Scott, when pressed by CNN’s Dana Bash, declined to assign blame in Lee County, saying, “We’re going to look and find out” if proper evacuation procedures were followed. “I think once we get through this, we do an assessment. What I’ve always tried to do as governor is say, okay, so what did we learn in each one of these.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis and Lee County officials have defended the county’s decision-making process, pointing to a changing forecast track that shifted the worst impacts South closer to landfall.
At a news conference on Monday, the day before the evacuation order was issued, Lee County Manager Roger Desjarlais rejected the notion that Hurricane Ian had been more challenging to plan for than other storms. He said the fact that his county had been within the predicted track of the center of the storm days prior suggested the storm would ultimately shift elsewhere.
“A couple days ago Fort Myers, Lee County was right in the very center of the cone of… uncertainty, and that’s really the best place to be, three or four days out because the storm will never ever behave that way.” Desjarlais said. “So, those variables always exist, and we train for and plan for all the changes in the characteristics of the storm.”
Desjarlais said on Monday that even though the county had not yet issued an evacuation order, residents should feel free to leave.
“If you’re feeling a little nervous about this storm and the effects, it’s okay to go now if you want,” Desjarlais said. “So, if you feel like it and you think it’s a good idea, now is a good time to get on the road and head to a safer part of the state.”
The delays were first reported by The New York Times, and Lee County Commissioner Kevin Ruane pushed back on the Times’ account in an interview with Boris Sanchez on CNN’s New Day Sunday, calling the report “inaccurate” and defending the timetable.
“Unfortunately, people did get complacent,” Ruane said when talking about why people may not have evacuated sooner. “As far as I’m concerned the shelters were open, they had the ability, they had all day Tuesday, they had a good part of Wednesday as the storm was coming down – they had the ability to do so.”
And Fort Myers Mayor Kevin Anderson told CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday morning that “warnings for hurricane season start in June. And so, there’s a degree of personal responsibility here. I think the county acted appropriately. The thing is that a certain percentage of people will not heed the warnings regardless.”
CNN’s Keith Allen and Andy Rose contributed to this report
Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/hurricane-ian-florida-damage-10-02-22/index.html
Chief Justice Roberts, whose middle-ground approach in the abortion decision attracted not a single colleague’s vote, said the court’s role in the constitutional structure must be respected.
“If the court doesn’t retain its legitimate function of interpreting the Constitution, I’m not sure who would take up that mantle,” he said. “You don’t want the political branches telling you what the law is, and you don’t want public opinion to be the guide of what the appropriate decision is.”
David A. Strauss, a law professor at the University of Chicago, said the chief justice’s failed effort to broker a compromise in the abortion case presented him with an opportunity.
“The reaction to Dobbs would give the chief justice a chance to tell his conservative colleagues ‘I told you so’ — when you go too far, too fast, people will see the court as nothing more than the judicial wing of the conservative political movement,” Professor Strauss said. “But I doubt his colleagues would listen.”
Justice Elena Kagan, part of the court’s three-member liberal wing, spoke frequently over the summer, if in general terms, about ways courts can undermine their own authority.
That could happen, she said in New York in September, when it looks as if judges are “an extension of the political process or when they’re imposing their own personal preferences,” adding that the public has a right to expect “that changes in personnel don’t send the entire legal system up for grabs.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, another liberal, has echoed the point.
The court has near-total power to decide which cases it will hear, and it often uses that discretion to resolve disputes among lower courts. The court agreed to hear many of the major cases in the coming term despite a lack of such conflicts, an indication that the new majority is pursuing an agenda and setting the pace of change.
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/02/us/conservative-supreme-court-legitimacy.html
Brazil’s former leftwing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is on the brink of an astonishing political comeback, with polls suggesting he is poised to defeat his far-right rival Jair Bolsonaro in Sunday’s election.
Eve of election polls suggested Lula was within a whisker of securing the overall majority of votes that would guarantee him a first-round victory against Brazil’s radical incumbent, whose calamitous Covid response, assault on the Amazon and foul-mouthed threats to democracy have alienated more than half of the population.
“I’m going to win these elections so I can give the people the right to be happy again. The people need, deserve and have the right … to be happy once more,” Lula, 76, told journalists on Saturday during a visit to São Paulo – one of the election’s three key battlegrounds, alongside the states of Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais.
José Roberto de Toledo, a political columnist for the news website UOL, said Lula would undoubtedly come out on top when 156 million citizens voted in what is considered Brazil’s most important election in decades.
Pollsters give the leftist veteran a 14-point lead over Bolsonaro, the hardline nationalist who retains the support of about a third of voters, including many evangelical Christians and members of Brazil’s largely white social elites.
But Toledo feared Lula might fall just short of the 50% required to avoid a fractious runoff against Bolsonaro on 30 October, opening the door to a month of uncertainty and political violence.
“I think what’s more likely is that there will be a second round,” Toledo said, warning of “terrible” consequences if that occurred, given the wave of attacks and murders that had marred the lead-up to the election.
“If there’s a second round it will be much worse than it has been thus far. It would mean four weeks of gore,” Toledo warned, adding: “I hope I’m wrong.”
If Lula does prevail, it would represent a once unthinkable political resurrection for a former factory worker and union leader who became Brazil’s first working-class president in 2002.
Lula stepped down after two terms in 2010 with approval ratings close to 90%. But the following decade saw the Workers’ party (PT) he helped found embroiled in a tangle of corruption scandals and accused of plunging Brazil into a brutal recession.
Lula’s apparently irremediable downfall was cemented in 2018 when he was jailed on corruption charges and barred from running in that year’s election, which Bolsonaro went on to win. Lula’s 580-day imprisonment seemed a melancholy end to a fairytale life that saw him rise from rural poverty to become one of the world’s most popular leaders.
But Lula was freed in late 2019 and his convictions were quashed on the grounds that he was unfairly tried by Sérgio Moro, a rightwing judge who later took a job in Bolsonaro’s cabinet.
Lula, who first sought the presidency in 1989, announced his sixth presidential run in May, vowing to beat Bolsonaro by staging “the greatest peaceful revolution the world has ever seen”.
A Lula victory would represent the latest in a series of triumphs for a resurgent Latin American left, which saw the ex-guerrilla Gustavo Petro claim power in Colombia in June and the former student leader Gabriel Boric elected Chile’s president last December. Since 2018, leftists have taken power across the region, from Argentina to Peru and Mexico.
Lula supporters are thrilled by their leader’s rebirth and his pledges to wage war on poverty and hunger in a country where 33 million people struggle to eat. During his two terms, Lula won international plaudits for using a commodities boom to bankroll welfare programmes that helped tens of millions escape poverty.
“After he left power everything went to shit,” said Iracy Batista, a 58-year-old homemaker who was among thousands of supporters at a recent Lula rally in Rio.
“Lula’s one of the people, just like us … All Bolsonaro knows how to do is swear at people,” agreed her friend, Clélia Maria da Silva.
Environmental and Indigenous activists are hopeful that Lula, who has pledged to fight deforestation and stamp out illegal gold mining, will halt the assault on the Amazon that has unfolded under Bolsonaro. “With Bolsonaro we die, with Lula we live,” said the Indigenous rights group Opi, which was co-founded by the recently murdered activist Bruno Pereira.
Such optimism is tempered by nerves over how Bolsonaro, a former soldier notorious for admiring dictators such as Chile’s General Augusto Pinochet, will react if he loses. Some fear the Trump-admiring populist could try to incite turmoil similar to the 6 January insurrection in the US. Bolsonaro has repeatedly questioned Brazil’s electronic voting system and refused to confirm whether he will accept defeat.
Steven Levitsky, a Harvard University Latin America specialist and the author of How Democracies Die, said he was troubled by the possibility of violence or upheaval in the coming days and weeks. “In the US, one factor that prevented us from sliding into an even deeper crisis is that the armed forces were unambiguously not going to intervene on Trump’s behalf. I think the military will also not intervene in Brazil, but it’s less certain,” he said.
Challenged over whether he was plotting a coup during a televised debate on Thursday, Bolsonaro declined to respond. He has painted the election as a battle between the upstanding Christian right and the evil and corrupt heretic left and has claimed, without evidence, that Lula will close churches if elected.
Benedita da Silva, a PT congresswoman and Lula ally, said such divisive rhetoric and an explosion of fake news meant it was crucial the election be decided now. “We can’t afford to drag this out any more … Are we going to have another month of agony and all this insanity that he provokes?” she asked. “This country’s democracy is at stake … it is our duty to win on 2 October.”
For all the pre-election angst, Levitsky said there was also cause for optimism over the resilience of Brazil’s young democracy, reestablished in 1985 after 21 years of military rule.
“People add Brazil to the list of cases of democratic back-sliding in recent years like the Philippines and Indonesia, El Salvador, India and Hungary. But it’s not,” he said.
“Brazilians elected an autocrat – maybe the most egregiously autocratic of all the autocratic leaning presidents that have been elected in recent years. But so far Brazilian democracy has held … Four years after the election of Bolsonaro, Brazilian democracy is not dead. That’s good news.”
Source Article from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/02/polls-put-lula-on-brink-of-comeback-victory-over-bolsonaro-in-brazil
A crime syndicate that hacked into the Los Angeles Unified School District and stole an undisclosed amount of personal and private information has released that data online, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The hackers had claimed to have stolen more than 500 gigabytes of data from the school district during last month’s hack, although authorities have not yet verified that claim.
The crime group originally set Monday as the deadline for the school district to pay a ransom to keep the data off of the internet, but the data was published ahead of time late Saturday night.
The motive for publishing two days ahead of the established deadline appears to be related to Superintendent Alberto Carvalho publicly announcing that the school district would not pay any ransom to the hackers.
“Paying ransom never guarantees the full recovery of data, and Los Angeles Unified believes public dollars are better spent on our students rather than capitulating to a nefarious and illicit crime syndicate,” the district said Friday.
Screenshots viewed and verified by the Times shows the hackers posting a message on the group’s website on the dark web that appear to be taking credit for the hack and ensuing leak and listing the school district as an official partner — or victim — of the group.
The attack and system outage was first reported on Sept. 5, and caused cybersecurity experts and information technology employees to shut down systems in an attempt to remove any traces of the hack.
School resumed following a scheduled day off, at which point the district required IT passwords to be reset in person.
The full extent of the hack remains unclear, but Carvalho has indicated that employee healthcare and payroll have apparently been impacted.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has warned other large school districts across the country about the threat of ransomware attacks following the hacking of LAUSD.
LAUSD, along with more than a thousand education and technology leaders across the country, have requested that the Federal Communications Commission authorize the permanent use of existing E-Rate Program funds to “bolster and maintain IT security infrastructure.”
Anyone with questions about the cyberattack can call a dedicated toll-free line at 855-926-1129.
Officials also urge people to follow LAUSD on its Twitter and Facebook pages for updates.
The school district was not available for comment on Sunday.
Suggest a Correction
Source Article from https://ktla.com/news/local-news/reports-hackers-release-stolen-lausd-data-ahead-of-ransom-deadline/
Russian forces retreated from Lyman, a strategic city for its operations in the east, the Russian defense ministry said Saturday, just a day after Moscow’s annexation of the region that’s been declared illegal by the West.
“In connection with the creation of a threat of encirclement, allied troops were withdrawn from the settlement of Krasny Liman to more advantageous lines,” the ministry said on Telegram, using the Russian name for the town of Lyman.
Russian state media Russia-24 reported that the reason for Russia’s withdrawal was because “the enemy used both Western-made artillery and intelligence from North Atlantic alliance countries.”
The retreat marks Ukraine’s most significant gain since its successful counteroffensive in the northeastern Kharkiv region last month.
Russia’s announcement comes just hours after Ukrainian forces said they had encircled Russian troops in the city, which is located in the Kramatorsk district of Donetsk.
Ukrainian forces said earlier Saturday that they had entered Stavky, a village neighboring Lyman, according to Serhii Cherevatyi, the military spokesperson for the eastern grouping of Ukrainian forces.
“The Russian group in the area of Lyman is surrounded. The settlements of Yampil, Novoselivka, Shandryholove, Drobysheve, and Stavky are liberated. Stabilization measures are ongoing there,” Cherevatyi said in a televised press conference on Saturday morning.
“[The liberation] of Lyman is important, because it is another step towards the liberation of the Ukrainian Donbas. This is an opportunity to go further to Kreminna and Severodonetsk. Therefore, in turn, it is psychologically very important,” he said.
Cherevatyi said the Ukrainian troops actions are setting the tone to “break the course of these hostilities.”
He added that there had been “many killed and wounded,” but could not provide any further details.
The head of Luhansk regional military administration Serhiy Hayday also revealed Saturday further details of the Lyman offensive, suggesting Russian forces had offered to retreat, but to no avail from the Ukrainian side.
“Occupiers asked [their command] for possibility to retreat, and they have been refused. Accordingly, they have two options. No, they actually have three options. Try to break through, surrender, or everyone there will die,” Hayday said.
“There are several thousand of them. Yes, about 5,000. There is no exact number yet. Five thousand is still a colossal grouping. There has never been such a large group in the encirclement before. All routes for the supply of ammunition or the retreat of the group are all completely blocked,” he added.
Yurii Mysiagin, Ukrainian member of Parliament and deputy head of the parliament’s committee on national security, referenced the move into Stavky on Saturday by publishing a video on Telegram showing a Ukrainian tank moving up the road with a clear sign indicating the region of Stavky. CNN could not independently verify the original source or the date.
A video posted on social media, and shared by President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, shows two Ukrainian soldiers standing on a military vehicle attaching the flag with tape to a large sign with the word “Lyman.”
“We are unfurling our country’s flag and planting it on our land. On Lyman. Everything will be Ukraine,” one of the soldiers says to the camera.
Chechen leader’s threat
Meanwhile, pressure appears to be growing on Russian President Vladimir Putin to use nuclear weapons on the battlefield.
Ramzan Kadyrov, leader of the Chechen republic, in an angry statement slamming Russian generals in the wake of the withdrawal from Lyman, said it was time for the Kremlin to make use of every weapon at his disposal.
“In my personal opinion we need to take more drastic measures, including declaring martial law in the border territories and using low-yield nuclear weapons,” Kadyrov said on his Telegram channel. “There is no need to make every decision with the Western American community in mind.”
Earlier this week, Dmitry Medvedev, who served as Russia’s President between 2008 and 2012, discussed nuclear weapons use on his Telegram channel, saying it was permitted if the existence of the Russian state was threatened by an attack even by conventional forces.
“If the threat to Russia exceeds our established threat limit, we will have to respond … this is certainly not a bluff,” he wrote.
Concerns have risen sharply that Moscow could resort to nuclear weapons use after Putin’s proclamation on Friday that Russia would seize nearly a fifth of Ukraine, declaring that the millions of people living there would be Russian citizens “forever.”
The announcement was dismissed as illegal by the United States and many other countries, but the fear is the Kremlin might argue that attacks on those territories now constitute attacks on Russia.
In his speech in the Kremlin, the Russian leader made only passing reference to nuclear weapons, noting the United States was the only country to have used them on the battlefield.
“By the way, they created a precedent,” he added.
Nuclear power plant chief held
Also on Saturday, the director-general of Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was detained by a Russian patrol, according to the president of state nuclear company Energoatom.
Director-General Ihor Murashov was in his vehicle on his way from the plant when he was “stopped … taken out of the car, and with his eyes blindfolded he was driven in an unknown direction. For the time being there is no information on his fate,” Energoatom’s Petro Kotin said in a statement.
“Murashov is a licensed person and bears main and exclusive responsibility for the nuclear and radiation safety of the Zaporizhzhya NPP,” Kotin said, adding, that his detention “jeopardizes the safety of operation of Ukraine and Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.”
Kotin called for Murashov’s release, and urged the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to “take all possible immediate actions to urgently free” him.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs “strongly” condemned Murashov’s “illegal detention,” calling it a “another manifestation of state terrorism from the side of Russia and a gross violation of international law.”
“We call on the international community, in particular the UN, the IAEA and the G7, to also take decisive measures to this end,” the ministry said in a statement.
Overnight, Russia hit Zaporizhzhia with four S300 missiles, according to the head of the regional administration Oleksandr Starukh.
And in Kharkiv, the Regional Prosecutor’s Office said Saturday that the bodies of 22 civilians, including 10 children, were found following Russian shelling on a convoy of cars near the eastern town of Kupiansk.
The cars were shot by the Russian army on September 25 “when civilians were trying to evacuate,” it said in a Telegram post, adding that an investigation was ongoing.
Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) and police had “discovered a convoy of seven cars that had been shot dead near the village of Kurylivka, Kupiansk district,” on Friday, Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office said.
The SBU confirmed on Telegram they would be investigating a “war crime” where at least 20 people died in “a brutal attack.”
CNN could not independently verify the allegations. There has been no official Russian response to the claims made.
CNN’s Darya Tarasova, Josh Pennington and Zayn Nabbi contributed reporting.
Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/01/europe/ukraine-russia-lyman-donetsk-intl/index.html
KYIV, Oct 2 (Reuters) – Ukrainian troops said they had retaken the key bastion of Lyman in occupied eastern Ukraine, a stinging defeat that prompted a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin to call for the possible use of low-grade nuclear weapons.
The capture on Saturday came just a day after Putin proclaimed the annexation of nearly a fifth of Ukraine – including Donetsk, where Lyman is located – and placed the regions under Russia’s nuclear umbrella. Kyiv and the West condemned the ornate ceremony as an illegitimate farce.
Ukrainian soldiers announced the capture in a video recorded outside the town council building in the centre of Lyman and posted on social media.
“Dear Ukrainians – today the armed forces of Ukraine … liberated and took control of the settlement of Lyman, Donetsk region,” one of the soldiers says. At the end of the video, a group of soldiers cheer and throw Russian flags down from the building’s roof and raise a Ukrainian flag in their place.
Hours earlier, Russia’s defence ministry had announced it was pulling troops out of the area “in connection with the creation of a threat of encirclement”.
Lyman had fallen in May to Russian forces, which had used it as a logistics and transport hub for its operations in the north of the Donetsk region. Its capture is Ukraine’s biggest battlefield gain since the lightning counteroffensive in the northeastern Kharkiv region last month.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy promised more quick successes in the Donbas, which covers the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that are largely under Russian control.
“Over the past week, the number of Ukrainian flags in Donbas has increased. There will be even more a week’s time,” he said in an evening video address.
Ukraine’s armed forces said in a statement on Sunday morning that its jets had carried out 29 strikes in the last 24 hours, destroying weapons and anti-aircraft missile systems, while ground troops had hit command posts, warehouses containing ammunition and anti-aircraft missile complexes.
Russian forces launched four missiles and 16 air strikes and used Iranian-made “Shahed-136” drones to attack infrastructure, Ukraine’s statement said, adding more than 30 settlements were damaged, chiefly in the south and southest.
Reuters could not verify either side’s battlefield assertions
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin cheered Lyman’s capture, saying it would create new problems for Russia’s military. “We’re very encouraged by what we’re seeing right now,” Austin told a news conference on Saturday.
Austin noted that Lyman was positioned across supply lines that Russia has used to push its troops and materiel down to the south and to the west, as the Kremlin presses its more than seven-month-long invasion of Ukraine.
“Without those routes, it will be more difficult. So it presents a sort of a dilemma for the Russians going forward.”
Austin did not say whether he thought Ukraine’s capture of Lyman might prompt Russian escalation, although U.S. officials have widely denounced Russia’s nuclear rhetoric in recent days and President Joe Biden has publicly urged Putin not to use nuclear weapons.
Ukraine’s successes have infuriated Putin allies such as Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Russia’s southern Chechnya region.
“In my personal opinion, more drastic measures should be taken, right up to the declaration of martial law in the border areas and the use of low-yield nuclear weapons,” Kadyrov wrote on Telegram before Zelenskiy spoke.
Other top officials, including former President Dmitry Medvedev, have suggested Russia may need to resort to nuclear weapons, but Kadyrov’s call was the most urgent and explicit.
Putin said last week that he was not bluffing when he said he was prepared to defend Russia’s “territorial integrity” with all available means, and on Friday made clear this extended to the new regions claimed by Moscow.
Washington says it would respond decisively to any use of nuclear weapons.
Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based think tank, said the Russian military in its current state is almost certainly unable to operate on a nuclear battlefield even though it has historically trained its units to do so.
“The chaotic agglomeration of exhausted contract soldiers, hastily mobilized reservists, conscripts, and mercenaries that currently comprise the Russian ground forces could not function in a nuclear environment. Any areas affected by Russian tactical nuclear weapons would thus be impassable for the Russians, likely precluding Russian advances,” ISW said.
LOGISTICS HUB
Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesperson for Ukraine’s eastern forces, said before the capture that Russia had 5,000 to 5,500 troops at Lyman but the number encircled could be lower.
Ukraine says taking Lyman will allow it to advance into the Luhansk region, whose full capture Moscow announced in early July after weeks of grinding advances.
“Lyman is important because it is the next step towards the liberation of the Ukrainian Donbas,” Cherevatyi said. “It is an opportunity to go further to Kreminna and Sievierodonetsk, and it is psychologically very important.”
The Donbas has been a major focus for Russia since soon it launched the invasion on Feb. 24 that Putin calls a “special military operation” to demilitarise and “denazify” its smaller neighbour.
The areas Putin claimed as Russian – the Donbas regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia – form a swath of territory equal to about 18% of Ukraine’s total surface land area.
Germany said it will deliver the first of four advanced IRIS-T air defence systems to Ukraine in coming days to help ward off drone attacks.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Source Article from https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-celebrates-capturing-key-town-putin-ally-mulls-possible-nuclear-response-2022-10-02/
KYIV, Oct 1 (Reuters) – Ukrainian troops said on Saturday they had taken the key bastion of Lyman in occupied eastern Ukraine, a stinging defeat that prompted a close ally of President Vladimir Putin to call for the possible use of low-grade nuclear weapons.
The capture came just a day after Putin proclaimed the annexation of four Ukrainian regions – including Donetsk, where Lyman is located – and placed them under Russia’s nuclear umbrella, at a ceremony that was condemned by Kyiv and the West as an illegitimate farce.
The Ukrainian soldiers made the claim in a video that was recorded outside the town council building in the centre of Lyman and posted on social media by Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office.
“Dear Ukrainians – today the armed forces of Ukraine … liberated and took control of the settlement of Lyman, Donetsk region,” one of the soldiers says. At the end of the video, a group of Ukrainian soldiers throw Russian flags down from the building’s roof and raise a Ukrainian flag in their place.
Hours earlier Russia’s defence ministry had announced it was pulling troops out of the area “in connection with the creation of a threat of encirclement”.
Russia had used Lyman as a logistics and transport hub for its operations in the north of the Donetsk region. Its capture is Ukraine’s biggest battlefield gain since a lightning counteroffensive in the northeastern Kharkiv region last month.
Zelenskiy promised more quick successes in the Donbas, which covers the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that are largely under Russian control.
“Over the past week, the number of Ukrainian flags in Donbas has increased. There will be even more a week’s time,” he said in an evening video address.
He also indicated Ukrainian troops had taken the village of Torske, on the main road out of Lyman to the east.
The recent successes have infuriated Putin allies such as Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Russia’s southern Chechnya region, who said he felt compelled to speak out.
“In my personal opinion, more drastic measures should be taken, right up to the declaration of martial law in the border areas and the use of low-yield nuclear weapons,” Kadyrov wrote on Telegram before Zelenskiy spoke.
Other top officials, including former president Dmitry Medvedev, have suggested Russia may need to resort to nuclear weapons, but Kadyrov’s call was the most urgent and explicit.
Putin said last week that he was not bluffing when he said he was prepared to defend Russia’s “territorial integrity” with all available means, and on Friday made clear this extended to the new regions claimed by Moscow.
Washington says it would respond decisively to any use of nuclear weapons.
Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesperson for Ukraine’s eastern forces, said before the capture that Russia had 5,000 to 5,500 troops at Lyman but the number encircled could be lower.
Neither side’s battlefield assertions could be independently verified.
LOGISTICS HUB
Kadyrov said Colonel-General Alexander Lapin, the commander overseeing Lyman, was a “mediocrity” who should be stripped of his medals and sent to the front. Kadyrov said he had warned army chief General Valery Gerasimov of a looming disaster.
“The general assured me he had no doubts about Lapin’s talent for leadership and did not think a retreat was possible,” he said.
Ukraine says taking Lyman will allow it to advance into the Luhansk region, whose full capture Moscow announced in early July after weeks of grinding advances.
“Lyman is important because it is the next step towards the liberation of the Ukrainian Donbas. It is an opportunity to go further to Kreminna and Sievierodonetsk, and it is psychologically very important,” Cherevatyi said.
The Donbas has been a major focus for Russia since soon after the start of Moscow’s invasion on Feb. 24 in what it called a “special military operation” to demilitarise its neighbour.
Putin proclaimed the Donbas regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia to be Russian land on Friday – a swathe of territory equal to about 18% of Ukraine’s total surface land area.
Ukraine and its Western allies branded Russia’s move as illegal. Kyiv vowed to continue liberating its land of Russian forces and said it would not hold peace talks with Moscow while Putin remained president.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to Zelenskiy, mocked the Kremlin ceremony on Friday announcing the annexation.
“Now Russian troops are leaving another strategic city and propagandists are looking for culprits. Reality can hurt if you live in fantasy world,” Podolyak wrote on Twitter.
Retired U.S. General Ben Hodges said a Russian defeat in Lyman represented a major political and military embarrassment for Putin.
“This puts in bright lights that his claim is illegitimate and cannot be enforced,” he said.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Source Article from https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-encircles-russian-forces-around-lyman-stronghold-military-2022-10-01/
KYIV, Oct 1 (Reuters) – Ukrainian troops said on Saturday they had taken the key bastion of Lyman in occupied eastern Ukraine, a stinging defeat that prompted a close ally of President Vladimir Putin to call for the possible use of low-grade nuclear weapons.
The capture came just a day after Putin proclaimed the annexation of four Ukrainian regions – including Donetsk, where Lyman is located – and placed them under Russia’s nuclear umbrella, at a ceremony that was condemned by Kyiv and the West as an illegitimate farce.
The Ukrainian soldiers made the claim in a video that was recorded outside the town council building in the centre of Lyman and posted on social media by Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office.
“Dear Ukrainians – today the armed forces of Ukraine … liberated and took control of the settlement of Lyman, Donetsk region,” one of the soldiers says. At the end of the video, a group of Ukrainian soldiers throw Russian flags down from the building’s roof and raise a Ukrainian flag in their place.
Hours earlier Russia’s defence ministry had announced it was pulling troops out of the area “in connection with the creation of a threat of encirclement”.
Russia had used Lyman as a logistics and transport hub for its operations in the north of the Donetsk region. Its capture is Ukraine’s biggest battlefield gain since a lightning counteroffensive in the northeastern Kharkiv region last month.
Zelenskiy promised more quick successes in the Donbas, which covers the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that are largely under Russian control.
“Over the past week, the number of Ukrainian flags in Donbas has increased. There will be even more a week’s time,” he said in an evening video address.
He also indicated Ukrainian troops had taken the village of Torske, on the main road out of Lyman to the east.
The recent successes have infuriated Putin allies such as Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Russia’s southern Chechnya region, who said he felt compelled to speak out.
“In my personal opinion, more drastic measures should be taken, right up to the declaration of martial law in the border areas and the use of low-yield nuclear weapons,” Kadyrov wrote on Telegram before Zelenskiy spoke.
Other top officials, including former president Dmitry Medvedev, have suggested Russia may need to resort to nuclear weapons, but Kadyrov’s call was the most urgent and explicit.
Putin said last week that he was not bluffing when he said he was prepared to defend Russia’s “territorial integrity” with all available means, and on Friday made clear this extended to the new regions claimed by Moscow.
Washington says it would respond decisively to any use of nuclear weapons.
Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesperson for Ukraine’s eastern forces, said before the capture that Russia had 5,000 to 5,500 troops at Lyman but the number encircled could be lower.
Neither side’s battlefield assertions could be independently verified.
LOGISTICS HUB
Kadyrov said Colonel-General Alexander Lapin, the commander overseeing Lyman, was a “mediocrity” who should be stripped of his medals and sent to the front. Kadyrov said he had warned army chief General Valery Gerasimov of a looming disaster.
“The general assured me he had no doubts about Lapin’s talent for leadership and did not think a retreat was possible,” he said.
Ukraine says taking Lyman will allow it to advance into the Luhansk region, whose full capture Moscow announced in early July after weeks of grinding advances.
“Lyman is important because it is the next step towards the liberation of the Ukrainian Donbas. It is an opportunity to go further to Kreminna and Sievierodonetsk, and it is psychologically very important,” Cherevatyi said.
The Donbas has been a major focus for Russia since soon after the start of Moscow’s invasion on Feb. 24 in what it called a “special military operation” to demilitarise its neighbour.
Putin proclaimed the Donbas regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia to be Russian land on Friday – a swathe of territory equal to about 18% of Ukraine’s total surface land area.
Ukraine and its Western allies branded Russia’s move as illegal. Kyiv vowed to continue liberating its land of Russian forces and said it would not hold peace talks with Moscow while Putin remained president.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to Zelenskiy, mocked the Kremlin ceremony on Friday announcing the annexation.
“Now Russian troops are leaving another strategic city and propagandists are looking for culprits. Reality can hurt if you live in fantasy world,” Podolyak wrote on Twitter.
Retired U.S. General Ben Hodges said a Russian defeat in Lyman represented a major political and military embarrassment for Putin.
“This puts in bright lights that his claim is illegitimate and cannot be enforced,” he said.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Source Article from https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-encircles-russian-forces-around-lyman-stronghold-military-2022-10-01/
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had just delivered sobering details of Hurricane Ian’s destruction Friday evening at his third news conference of the day, this time in flood-ravaged St. Augustine.
As he walked away from a stand of microphones, an onlooker shouted, “2028! 2028, Ron!”
“2024!” another supporter called out to DeSantis, a potential future presidential contender.
But as he manages Florida through the aftermath of one of the most powerful storms to ever hit his state, the Republican governor has moved his focus from his many political battles to the crisis at hand. DeSantis has filled the hours meeting with emergency management teams, surveying the damage from the Gulf to the Atlantic and calling Florida lawmakers and the CEOs of large corporations that operate in the state. In on-camera briefings – of which he has held 10 through Friday since the morning of Ian’s arrival – he shares matter-of-fact accounts of the devastation and loss, demonstrating painstaking command of rescue and recovery logistics.
For DeSantis, the tonal shift has required a deliberate exodus from the political environment he helped create amid his ascent to GOP megastar with presidential ambitions. It has meant playing nice with the White House just days after threatening to ship migrants from the southern border to President Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware while lobbying unapologetically for the kind of disaster aid that as a congressman he voted against as wasteful spending. DeSantis, whose reelection campaign hawks “Don’t Tread on Florida” gear, has also welcomed help from several blue-state governors he has often antagonized.
“When people are fighting for their lives, when their whole livelihood is at stake, when they’ve lost everything – if you can’t put politics aside for that, then you’re just not going to be able to,” DeSantis told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson on Wednesday night.
Responding to a crisis
Hours before the appearance, Hurricane Ian had barreled into Florida’s west coast as a 155 mph giant, thrashing the area with a storm surge that swallowed entire neighborhoods and left hundreds of thousands homeless and millions in the state without power. At least 45 fatalities have been attributed to the storm as of Friday night. Fort Myers Beach was obliterated. Sanibel Island, so much as it exists, is cut off from the rest of the peninsula. Orlando flooded. So did St. Augustine – a city 275 miles and on an entirely different coast from where Hurricane Ian’s calamitous eye first breached Florida’s Gulf side.
DeSantis met privately with victims Friday, his office said. He has visited the damage, though he hasn’t allowed reporters or cameras to tag along to capture his reaction. In Punta Gorda on Thursday, DeSantis described the storm surge as “biblical.”
“It washed away roads,” he said. “It washed away structures that were not new and couldn’t withstand that.”
Later that evening, DeSantis told reporters, “We absolutely expect to have mortality from this hurricane,” but urged against speculation of how deadly the storm would be.
DeSantis and his wife, first lady Casey DeSantis, have urged people to donate to the state’s recovery fund, which had raised more than $10 million for direct relief as of Thursday night.
If there are questions about the government’s response to Ian, they have mostly focused on when residents in Southwest Florida were encouraged to evacuate. With early forecasts predicting a landfall further north, Lee County did not order evacuations until Tuesday, one day before the storm hit.
Asked Friday about the state’s preparations for a storm to hit that part of the state, DeSantis defended his administration’s response and said communities “sprung into action” as predictions shifted the storm south.
“Seventy-two hours before landfall, Fort Myers and Naples were not even in the cone,” DeSantis said during a news conference in Lee County, referring to the shape of the storm’s forecasted path.
While the “cone” did not include Fort Myers or Naples three days before landfall, Ian made landfall in Cayo Costa in Lee County – a point inside the cone 72 hours before landfall and in all of the other dozens of cones issued for the storm.
The cone, by definition, is not meant to encompass a storm’s impacts, but rather the likely location of the storm’s center. Phil Klotzbach, a research scientist tracking Atlantic storms at Colorado State University, said one-third of storms over the past five years have had made landfall outside the cone.
The National Hurricane Center “emphasized throughout Ian’s approach to Florida that there was larger than normal uncertainty in its future track,” Klotzbach said. “I think it’s a common misperception with the cone that the forecast will always fall within that cone.”
The initial forecast 120 hours out put most of the Florida peninsula in the storm’s path, including Fort Myers and Naples.
On a Zoom call with reporters Friday, DeSantis’ Democratic opponent Charlie Crist, himself a former governor, said he “might have gotten started a little bit earlier” if he were still in charge.
“Frankly, you know, putting warnings out that I think are appropriate,” Crist said, before saying he would hold off on further armchair quarterbacking this early in the recovery.
A change of course with Washington
DeSantis has praised the assistance the state has received from the Biden administration. Biden has said he has talked with DeSantis several times in recent days and promised the federal government’s help for as long as it is needed.
DeSantis on Wednesday asked the administration for assistance for “all 67 counties, for all categories, and all types of assistance.” In a letter to Biden, DeSantis asked the President to provide the aid sight unseen because “damage assessments would be a clear waste of resources during a time of critical need.” DeSantis has appeared satisfied with the federal response.
“We really appreciate FEMA’s responsiveness to this disaster,” DeSantis told a representative from Biden’s Federal Emergency Management Agency at a news conference on Friday. “So thank you very much and thank you for being here.”
In a statement to CNN, Jaclyn Rothenberg, a spokeswoman for FEMA, said of DeSantis’ requests so far: “Everything the governor has asked for is consistent with how other states make requests for federal support.”
But outside Florida, DeSantis’ asks for help have not gone unnoticed in light of his past opposition to similar aid. DeSantis, who was elected to the US House in 2012 amid the heyday of the tea party movement, stood against a $9.7 billion relief package for the New York and New Jersey victims of Hurricane Sandy in one of his first congressional votes. He described the bill’s price tag as an example of the country’s “‘put it on the credit card mentality.”
“Just a reminder to New York … Ron DeSantis (who was in Congress at the time) voted against aid for Hurricane Sandy,” Yuh-Line Niou, a member of the New York State Assembly, said on Twitter. “But because we are New York, we care about everyone. Even when they don’t care about us.”
The public often expects leaders to put politics aside during emergencies, said Tevi Troy, a senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center and author of “Shall We Wake the President? Two Centuries of Disaster Management From the Oval Office.”
“It’s a huge opportunity to show he’s a competent, hands-on manager, knows what he’s doing, can be compassionate,” said Troy, who was an aide to President George W. Bush when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. “It’s also a vulnerability. If he makes a verbal misstep, it gets elevated. If there’s a community that needs help and he is slow in responding, the media will focus on it. Florida is known for having one of the best disaster prep response teams, and he’s dealing with the best of the best. That makes your job easier, and it also means the expectations are high.”
Steve Schale, a veteran Democratic strategist in Florida, said DeSantis appears to be passing the test so far.
“He’s doing what he’s supposed to do which is focus on being governor,” Schale said. “And he’s saying and doing all the right things.”
DeSantis has not completely shut down his political shop while he deals with the storm. His campaign, which enjoys a 10-to-1 fundraising advantage over Crist, continued to run television ads as Ian hit the state and in the days since. Crist pulled his ads down in most television markets.
Two days before Ian made landfall, with Florida firmly in its path, DeSantis’ political committee recorded a $1 million check from the Seminole Tribe of Florida. During the early months of the pandemic, another crisis that commanded most of his attention, DeSantis did not accept campaign contributions.
It’s not clear when DeSantis will return to the campaign trail. But the longer the storm recovery, the more difficult it also becomes for Democrats to change the conversation back to the issues they hoped to run on, Schale said.
“Anything that stops the calendar probably benefits the incumbent that has the lead,” Schale said. “It’s fair to say DeSantis has both.”
CNN’s Brandon Miller contributed to this report.
Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/01/politics/ron-desantis-florida-hurricane-ian-politics/index.html
Water floods a damaged trailer park in Fort Myers, Fla., on Saturday after Hurricane Ian passed by the area.
Steve Helber/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
Steve Helber/AP
Water floods a damaged trailer park in Fort Myers, Fla., on Saturday after Hurricane Ian passed by the area.
Steve Helber/AP
FORT MYERS, Fla. — Dozens of Florida residents left their flooded and splintered homes by boat and by air on Saturday as rescuers continued to search for survivors in the wake of Hurricane Ian, while authorities in South Carolina and North Carolina began taking stock of their losses.
The death toll from the storm, one of the strongest hurricanes by wind speed to ever hit the U.S., grew to nearly three dozen, with deaths reported from Cuba, Florida and North Carolina. The storm weakened Saturday as it rolled into the mid-Atlantic, but not before it washed out bridges and piers, hurdled massive boats into buildings onshore and sheared roofs off homes, leaving hundreds of thousands without power.
At least 34 people were confirmed dead, including 27 people in Florida mostly from drowning but others from Ian’s tragic aftereffects. An elderly couple died after their oxygen machines shut off when they lost power, authorities said.
As of Saturday, more than 1,000 people had been rescued from flooded areas along Florida’s southwestern coast alone, Daniel Hokanson, a four-star general and head of the National Guard, told The Associated Press while airborne to Florida.
Chris Schnapp was at the Port Sanibel Marina in Fort Myers on Saturday, waiting to see whether her 83-year-old mother-in-law had been evacuated from Sanibel Island. A pontoon boat had just arrived with a load of passengers from the island — with suitcases and animals in tow — but Schnapp’s mother-in-law was not among them.
“She stayed on the island. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law own two businesses over there. They evacuated. She did not want to go,” Schnapp said. Now, she said, she wasn’t sure if her mother-in-law was still on the island or had been taken to a shelter somewhere.
On Pine Island, the largest barrier island off Florida’s Gulf Coast, houses were reduced to splinters and boats littered roadways as a volunteer group went door-to-door Saturday, asking residents if they wanted to be evacuated. Helen Koch blew her husband a kiss and mouthed the words “I love you” as she sat inside a rescue helicopter that was lifting her and seven of the couple’s 17 dogs to safety.
Recovery will be complicated in various communities
River flooding posed a major challenge at times to rescue and supply delivery efforts. The Myakka River washed over a stretch of Interstate 75, forcing a traffic-snarling highway closure for a while Saturday on the key corridor linking Tampa to the north with the hard-hit southwest Florida region that straddles Port Charlotte and Fort Myers. Later Saturday, state officials said, water levels had receded enough that I-75 could be fully reopened. However, they said monitors were out keeping close watch on constantly changing river levels.
While rising waters in Florida’s southwest rivers have crested or are near cresting, the levels aren’t expected to drop significantly for days, said National Weather Service meteorologist Tyler Fleming in Tampa.
Elsewhere, South Carolina’s Pawleys Island — a beach community roughly 75 miles (115 kilometers) up the coast from Charleston — was among the places hardest hit. Power remained knocked out to at least half of the island Saturday.
Eddie Wilder, who has been coming to Pawleys Island for more than six decades, said Friday’s storm was “insane to watch.” He said waves as high as 25 feet (7.6 meters) washed away the local pier — an iconic landmark — near his home.
“We watched it hit the pier and saw the pier disappear,” said Wilder, whose house 30 feet (9 meters) above the ocean stayed dry inside. “We watched it crumble and and watched it float by with an American flag.”
The Pawleys pier was one of at least four along South Carolina’s coast destroyed by battering winds and rain. Parts of the pier, including barnacle-covered pylons, littered the beach. The intracoastal waterway was strewn with the remnants of several boat houses knocked off their pilings.
John Joseph, whose father built the family’s beige beach house in 1962, said Saturday he was elated to return from Georgetown — which took a direct hit. He found his Pawleys Island home entirely intact.
“Thank God these walls are still here, and we feel very blessed that this is the worst thing,” he said of the sand that swept under his home. “What happened in Florida — gosh, God bless us. If we’d had a Category 4, I wouldn’t be here.”
Damage assessments will take time
Steve Gibson, left background, helps Maria Zoltac into the back of his truck as her sister Susan Zoltac, left, makes herself comfortable with her dogs after being rescued from Florida’s Sanibel Island on Saturday.
Steve Helber/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
Steve Helber/AP
Steve Gibson, left background, helps Maria Zoltac into the back of his truck as her sister Susan Zoltac, left, makes herself comfortable with her dogs after being rescued from Florida’s Sanibel Island on Saturday.
Steve Helber/AP
In North Carolina, the storm claimed four lives and mostly downed trees and power lines, leaving over 280,000 people statewide without power Saturday morning, officials said. Two of the deaths were from storm-related vehicle crashes while officials said a man also drowned when his truck plunged into a swamp, and another man was killed by carbon monoxide poisoning from a generator in a garage.
In southwest Florida, authorities and volunteers were still assessing the damage as shocked residents tried to make sense of the disaster.
“I want to sit in the corner and cry. I don’t know what else to do,” Stevie Scuderi said, mud clinging to her purpole sandles as she shuffled through her mostly destroyed apartment in Fort Myers.
On Saturday, a long line of people waited outside an auto parts store in Port Charlotte, where a sign read, “We have generators now.” Hundreds of cars were lined up outside a gas station, and some people walked, carrying gas cans to their nearby cars.
At Port Sanibel Marina in Fort Myers, charter boat captain Ryan Kane inspected damage to two boats Saturday. The storm surge pushed several boats and a dock onshore. He said the boat he owns was totaled so he couldn’t use it to help rescue people. Now, he said, it would be a long time before he’d be chartering fishing clients again.
“There’s a hole in the hull. It took water in the motors. It took water in everything,” he said, adding: “You know boats are supposed to be in the water, not in parking lots.”
Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2022/10/01/1126380022/florida-south-carolina-hurricane-ian-death-toll-recovery
Brazil’s hotly contested presidential election is less than 24 hours away, and for many Brazilians, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Two household names – former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and current leader Jair Bolsonaro – are battling to become the country’s next president. Depending on who ultimately wins, Latin America’s largest economy will likely either continue on Bolsonaro’s conservative, pro-business path, or else take a left turn under Lula.
In recent weeks, both candidates have ramped up efforts to woo voters. But this is an arduous task in a country where 85% of voters say they have already made up their minds, according to a Datafolha poll released Thursday.
For Lula, more votes could mean victory in the first round of voting, with no need for a runoff. Meanwhile, Bolsonaro needs to catch up, after slipping 14 points behind his rival in the same survey.
When is Brazil’s election?
Brazilians will vote for their next president on Sunday, October 2, in the first round of the elections. On the same date, governors, senators, federal and state deputies for the country’s 26 states plus the federal district will also be chosen.
Voting is scheduled to start at 8 a.m. local time in Brasilia (7 a.m. ET) and concludes at 5 p.m. local (4 p.m. ET).
In the Brazilian electoral system, a winning candidate must gain more than 50% of the vote. If no candidate crosses that threshold, a second round of voting will be organized, in which the options will be narrowed down to the two frontrunners from the first round.
In Brazil, opinion polls always estimate candidates’ potential performance in the first round (competing against with all other candidates) and in the second round (with just two top candidates).
Over 156 million Brazilians are eligible to vote.
Who are the candidates?
Bolsonaro and Lula are by far the candidates to watch. Though other candidates are also in the race, they’re polling with one-digit percentages and are unlikely to pose much competition.
Lula, 76, was Brazil’s President for two terms – from 2003 to 2006 and 2007 to 2011. A household name, he first came into the political scene in the 1970s as a leader of worker strikes which defied the military regime.
In 1980, he was one of the founders of the Workers’ Party (PT), which went on to become Brazil’s main left-wing political force. Lula’s presidential terms were marked by programs aimed at reducing poverty and inequality in the country but also rocked by revelations of a corruption scheme involving the payment of congressional representatives to support government proposals. Due to lack of evidence of his involvement, Lula himself was never included in the investigation of this scheme.
Lula’s campaign for the presidency now promises a new tax regime that will allow for higher public spending. He has vowed to end hunger in the country, which has returned during the Bolsonaro government. Lula also promises to work to reduce carbon emissions and deforestation in the Amazon.
Bolsonaro is a former army captain who was a federal deputy for 27 years before running for President in 2018. A marginal figure in politics during much of this time, he emerged in the mid-2010s as a leading figure of a more radically right-wing movement, which perceived the PT as its main enemy.
As a President, Bolsonaro has pursued a conservative agenda, supported by important evangelical leaders. His government also became known for its support for ruthless exploitation of land in the Amazon, leading to record deforestation figures. Environmentalists have warned that the future of the rainforest could be at stake in this election.
In his program, Bolsonaro promises to increase mining, privatize public companies and generate more sustainable energy to bring down energy prices. He has vowed to continue paying a R$600 (roughly US$110) monthly benefit known as Auxilio Brasil.
When will we know the results?
Vote counting begins right after ballots (mostly electronic) close on Sunday.
Brazil’s electoral authorities say they expect final results from the first round to be officially announced that evening, on October 2. They will be published on the electoral court’s website.
In the last few elections, results were officially declared two to three hours after voting finished. If the leading candidate does not manage to muster more than half of all valid votes, a second round will take place on October 30.
Observers will be watching closely to see if all candidates accept the vote result publicly. Bolsonaro, who has been accused of firing up supporters with violent rhetoric, has sought to sow doubts about the result and said that the results should be considered suspicious if he doesn’t gain “at least 60%.”
Both he and his conservative Liberal Party claimed that Brazil’s electronic ballot system is susceptible to fraud – an entirely unfounded allegation that has drawn comparisons to the false election claims of former US President Donald Trump.
There have been no proven instances of voter fraud in the electronic ballot in Brazil.
The Supreme Electoral Court has also rejected claims of flaws in the system, as “false and untruthful, with no base in reality.”
Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/01/americas/brazil-election-explainer-intl-latam/index.html
Ms. Maloney also requested that the archives “seek a personal certification from Donald Trump that he has surrendered all presidential records that he illegally removed from the White House after leaving office.”
The federal government tried and failed for more than a year and a half to retrieve classified and sensitive documents from Mr. Trump before resorting on Aug. 8 to a search of his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, according to government documents and statements by his lawyers.
Two months before the search, Mr. Trump’s lawyer certified that all documents bearing classified markings had been returned and that no “copy, written notation or reproduction of any kind was retained.”
Yet the F.B.I. search revealed that the former president still had more than 11,000 government records, including more than 100 with classified markings and documents with the highest classification markings, some related to human intelligence sources. There were additional classified documents in Mr. Trump’s office desk drawer.
The search also turned up 48 folders with classified markings that were empty. Although it was unclear why they were empty, the committee said, the apparent separation of classified material and presidential records from their designated folders raised questions about how the materials were stored and whether sensitive material might have been lost or obtained by third parties.
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/01/us/politics/trump-white-house-records-national-archives.html
Vice President Harris came in for a torrent of criticism after telling an audience that “communities of color” would be first in line for relief in the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Ian.
“We have to address this in a way that is about giving resources based on equity, understanding that we fight for equality, but we also need to fight for equity,” she said during a discussion with Priyanka Chopra at the Democratic National Committee’s Women’s Leadership Forum on Friday.
“If we want people to be in an equal place sometimes we need to take into account those disparities and do that work,” she added.
Harris’ remarks immediately came in for backlash, including from Christina Pushaw, rapid response director for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“This is false. @VP’s rhetoric is causing undue panic and must be clarified. FEMA Individual Assistance is already available to all Floridians impacted by Hurricane Ian, regardless of race or background,” Pushaw said.
Sadanand Dhume, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute added that “real people don’t talk like this.
“If a hurricane hits a state, we should expect the government to help all those affected: black, brown white, purple, green,” he said.
Even Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, chimed in saying resource allocation “should be according to greatest need, not race or anything else.”
Source Article from https://nypost.com/2022/10/01/vp-harris-slammed-for-saying-hurricane-ian-aid-will-be-based-on-equity/
KYIV, Oct 1 (Reuters) – Russia said on Saturday its troops had abandoned a key bastion in occupied eastern Ukraine, a stinging defeat that prompted one of President Vladimir Putin’s most hawkish allies to call for Russia to consider resorting to low-grade nuclear weapons.
The fall of Lyman came just a day after Putin proclaimed the annexation of four Ukrainian regions – including Donetsk, where Lyman is located – and placed them under Russia’s nuclear umbrella, at a ceremony that was condemned by Kyiv and the West as an illegitimate farce.
“In connection with the creation of a threat of encirclement, allied troops were withdrawn from the settlement of Krasny Liman to more advantageous lines,” Russia’s defence ministry said, using the Russian name of the town.
The statement ended hours of official silence from Moscow after Ukraine first said it had surrounded thousands of Russian troops in the area and then that its forces were inside the town of Lyman.
Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of the southern Chechnya region who describes himself as a footsoldier of Putin, said he felt he had to speak out after the loss of the territory.
“In my personal opinion, more drastic measures should be taken, right up to the declaration of martial law in the border areas and the use of low-yield nuclear weapons,” Kadyrov wrote on Telegram.
Other top Putin allies, including former president Dmitry Medvedev, have suggested Russia may need to resort to nuclear weapons, but Kadyrov’s call was the most urgent and explicit.
Putin said last week he was not bluffing when he said he was prepared to defend Russia’s “territorial integrity” with all available means, and on Friday made clear this extended to the new regions that Moscow has claimed.
Washington says it would respond decisively to any use of nuclear weapons and has spelled out to Moscow the “catastrophic consequences” it would face.
“WE’RE ALREADY IN LYMAN”
The Russian defence ministry’s statement made no mention of its troops being encircled at Lyman, diverging starkly from Ukraine’s version of events.
“The Russian grouping in the area of Lyman is surrounded,” Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesperson for Ukraine’s eastern forces, said hours earlier.
He said that Russia had 5,000 to 5,500 troops at Lyman but the number of encircled troops could be lower because of casualties. He confirmed Ukraine was inside the town later that afternoon.
“We’re already in Lyman, but there are battles,” he said.
Two grinning Ukrainian soldiers taped the yellow-and-blue national flag on to the “Lyman” welcome sign at the town’s entrance in Donetsk region’s north, a video posted by the president’s chief of staff showed.
“Oct. 1. We’re unfurling our state flag and establishing it on our land. Lyman will be Ukraine,” one of the soldiers said, standing atop a military vehicle.
Neither side’s battlefield assertions could be independently verified.
LOGISTICS HUB
In his comments, Kadyrov launched a blistering attack on Colonel-General Alexander Lapin, the commander overseeing Lyman, who he derided as a “mediocrity”. Kadyrov also said he personally had warned Russia’s army chief, General Valery Gerasimov, of a looming disaster.
“The general assured me he had no doubts about Lapin’s talent for leadership and did not think a retreat was possible in … Lyman and its surroundings,” he said.
Russia has used Lyman as a logistics and transport hub for its operations in the north of the Donetsk region. Its capture is Ukraine’s biggest battlefield gain since a lightning counteroffensive in the northeastern Kharkiv region last month.
The Ukrainian military has said its capture would allow Kyiv to advance into the Luhansk region, whose full capture Moscow announced at the beginning of July after weeks of slow, grinding advances.
“Lyman is important because it is the next step towards the liberation of the Ukrainian Donbas. It is an opportunity to go further to Kreminna and Sievierodonetsk, and it is psychologically very important,” Cherevatyi said.
Donetsk and Luhansk regions together make up the wider Donbas region that has been a major focus for Russia since soon after the start of Moscow’s invasion on Feb. 24 in what it called a “special military operation” to demilitarise its neighbour.
Putin proclaimed the Donbas regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia to be Russian land in Friday’s ceremony – a swathe of territory equal to about 18% of Ukraine’s total surface land area.
Ukraine and its Western allies branded Russia’s move as illegal. Kyiv vowed to continue liberating its land of Russian forces and said it would not hold peace talks with Moscow while Putin remained as president.
Retired U.S. General Ben Hodges, a former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, said a Russian defeat in Lyman after Putin’s declaration would be a major political and military embarrassment for the Russian leader.
“This puts in bright lights that his claim is illegitimate and cannot be enforced,” he said.
It remained to be seen how Ukrainian commanders would exploit the rout, he said, adding it likely would further erode the morale of Moscow’s troops holding other Ukrainian territory.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Source Article from https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-encircles-russian-forces-around-lyman-stronghold-military-2022-10-01/