Tropical Storm Ernesto became a hurricane again Sunday as it churned away from Bermuda and headed further out in the northeastern Atlantic, sending powerful swells toward the U.S. East Coast, generating rip currents associated with at least one death and prompting many rescues.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami said Ernesto’s maximum sustained winds were clocked at 75 mph, just barely Category 1 strength. More strengthening was forecast over the next 12 hours, with Ernesto then expected to weaken and become a post-tropical cyclone on Tuesday, the hurricane center said. The storm was centered about 520 miles south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and was expected to pass near southeastern Newfoundland late Monday and early Tuesday.
Swells generated by Ernesto were affecting portions of the Bahamas, Bermuda, the U.S. East Coast as well as the Canadian Atlantic coast.
Life-threatening surf and rip current conditions are likely in these areas during the next couple of days, the hurricane center said. The National Weather Service earlier posted a coastal flood advisory and warned of a high risk for rip currents along the Atlantic Coast through Monday evening, saying they “can sweep even the best swimmers away from shore into deeper water.” A warning extended from Florida to the Boston area and portions of Maine.
In periods of high risk, rip currents become more likely and potentially more frequent, posing a danger to all levels of swimmers, not just inexperienced ones, said meteorologist Mike Lee in Mount Holly, New Jersey. “It’s going to be really dangerous out in the water today,” he said. At Manasquan Inlet in New Jersey, officials said a fisherman was washed off the north jetty Saturday but was quickly rescued by lifeguards.
The victim had knee and back injuries and a possible concussion and was taken to a hospital, Lifeguard Chief Doug Anderson told NJ Advance Media, and lifeguards rescued at least five other people. In Ventnor to the south, Senior Lt. Meghan Holland of the city beach patrol said eight people were rescued.
Forecasters, citing local emergency management, said a 41-year-old man drowned Saturday in a rip current at Surf City, North Carolina. Two men drowned Friday in separate incidents on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, but it was unclear whether rip currents were involved, The Island Packet of Hilton Head reported, citing a lifeguard services spokesperson. CAIRO Sudan has been stricken by a cholera outbreak that has killed nearly two dozen people and sickened hundreds more in recent weeks, health authorities said Sunday.
The African nation has been roiled by a 16-month conflict and devastating floods. Health Minister Haitham Mohamed Ibrahim said in a statement that at least 22 people have died from the disease, and that at least 354 confirmed cases of cholera have been detected across the county in recent weeks. Ibrahim didn’t give a time frame for the deaths or the tally since the start of the year.
The World Health Organization, however, said that 78 deaths were recorded from cholera this year in Sudan as of July 28. The disease also sickened more than 2,400 others between Jan. 1 and July 28, it said.
Cholera is a fast-developing, highly contagious infection that causes diarrhea, leading to severe dehydration and possible death within hours when not treated, according to WHO. It is transmitted through the ingestion of contaminated food or water. The cholera outbreak is the latest calamity for Sudan, which was plunged into chaos in April last year when simmering tensions between the military and a powerful paramilitary group exploded into open warfare across the country.
The conflict has turned the capital, Khartoum and other urban areas into battlefields, wrecking civilian infrastructure and an already battered health care system. Without the basics, many hospitals and medical facilities have closed their doors. It has killed thousands of people and pushed many into starvation, with famine already confirmed in a sprawling camp for displaced people in the wrecked northern region of Darfur.
Sudan’s conflict has created the world’s largest displacement crisis. More than 10.7 million people have been forced to flee their homes since fighting began, according to the International Organization for Migration.
Over 2 million of those fled to neighboring countries. DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip Israeli strikes across Gaza killed 29 people including young quintuplets overnight and into Sunday, health officials said, as U.S.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel to try to seal a cease-fire deal that could help ease soaring regional tensions. The U.S.
and fellow mediators Egypt and Qatar have said they were closing in on a deal after two days of talks in Doha, with Israeli officials expressing cautious optimism. But Hamas in a statement Sunday accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of setting new conditions, including his refusal of a complete withdrawal of forces from Gaza. The evolving proposal calls for a three-phase process in which Hamas would release all hostages abducted during its Oct.
7 attack, which triggered the deadliest war fought between Israelis and Palestinians. In exchange, Israel would withdraw its forces from Gaza and release Palestinian prisoners. The war has killed over 40,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, displaced the vast majority of the territory's 2.
3 million residents and led experts to warn of famine and the outbreak of diseases like polio. "It is as if we live a primitive life,” said Sanaa Akela, a displaced Palestinian in the central town of Deir al-Balah, where sewage flooded some streets. Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in the Oct.
7 attack and abducted around 250. Of those, some 110 are still believed to be in Gaza, though Israeli authorities say around a third are dead. More than 100 hostages were released in November during a weeklong cease-fire.
WASHINGTON Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and running mate Tim Walz visited small towns and rallied local campaign volunteers while embarking on a bus tour of southwestern Pennsylvania on Sunday, hoping to ride a wave of enthusiasm for her candidacy to their party's nominating convention in Chicago this week. Vice President Harris and Walz, the governor of Minnesota, were joined by their spouses, Doug Emhoff and Gwen Walz, as they made their first stop visiting local volunteers making phone calls at a campaign office in the borough of Rochester in Beaver County. Harris, while speaking to a group of supporters and volunteers outside the campaign office, spoke about strength and leadership.
She appeared to make a veiled reference to Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, who is known for his pugilistic style and projection of a strongman image, when she said the “real and true measure of a strength of a leader is based on who you lift up,” rather than who they beat down. “Anybody who is about beating down other people is a coward,” she yelled, drawing cheers and applause. “This is what strength looks like.
” Walz in his remarks seemed to assume the role of his former job coaching high school football and told the volunteers: “Let’s leave it all on the field. Let’s get this thing done.” Trump won the county in 2020.
But the Democrats are riding on renewed enthusiasm after President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid exactly four weeks ago and endorsed Harris to replace him on the ticket. As Harris' motorcade left town, it rolled by a group of about 50 Trump supporters waiting near the road with signs of support for the former president. A handful of Harris supporters were standing nearby with their own signs.
The vice president next stopped at a firehouse in Aliquippa, where she met firefighters, petted the station's dog and gave the crew almond pastries, before heading to a nearby junior and senior high school. WILKES-BARRE, Pa. Former President Donald Trump on Saturday repeatedly swerved from a message focused on the economy into non sequiturs and personal attacks, including thrice declaring that he was better looking than Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump wound back and forth between hitting his points on economic policy and delivering a smattering of insults and impressions of President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron as he held a rally in northeastern Pennsylvania. The former president has seemed to struggle to adjust to his new opponent after Democrats replaced their nominee. Over the past week, he has diverged during campaign appearances away from the policies he was billed to speak about and instead diverted to a rotation of familiar attack lines and insults.
As he attacked Democrats for inflation at the top of his speech, Trump asked his crowd of supporters, “You don’t mind if I go off teleprompter for a second, do you? Joe Biden hates her.” Joseph Costello, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign, responded to Trump in a statement by saying, “Another rally, same old show" and that Trump “ resorts to lies, name-calling, and confused rants," because he can't sell his agenda. “The more Americans hear Trump speak, the clearer the choice this November: Vice President Harris is unifying voters with her positive vision to protect our freedoms, build up the middle class, and move America forward — and Donald Trump is trying to take us backwards," Costello said.
Trump's rally in Wilkes-Barre was in a swath of a pivotal battleground state where he hopes conservative, white working-class voters near Biden’s hometown of Scranton will boost the Republican's chances of winning back the White House. His remarks Saturday came as Democrats prepare for their four-day national convention that kicks off Monday in Chicago and will mark the party's welcoming of Harris as their nominee. Her replacement of Biden less than four months before the November election has reinvigorated Democrats and their coalition.
It has also presented a new challenge for Trump. Trump hammered Harris on the economy, associating her with the Biden administration’s inflation woes and likening her latest proposal against price gouging to measures in communist nations. Trump has said a federal ban on price gouging for groceries would lead to food shortages, rationing and hunger.
On Saturday asked why she hadn't worked to solve prices when she and Biden were sworn into office in 2021. “Day one for Kamala was three and a half years ago. So why didn’t she do it then? So this is day 1,305," Trump said.
To address high prices, Trump said he would sign an executive order on his first day sworn in as president “directing every cabinet secretary and agency head to use every power we have to drive prices down, but we’re going to drive them down in a capitalist way, not in a communist way,” he said. He predicted financial ruin for the country, and Pennsylvania in particular, if Harris wins, citing her past opposition to fracking, an oil and gas extraction process commonly used in the state. Her campaign has tried to soften her stance on fracking, saying she would not ban it, even though that was her position when she was seeking the 2020 presidential nomination.
“Your state’s going to be ruined anyway. She’s totally anti-fracking,” Trump said. But he also meandered, going from ripping the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 to doing impressions of Macron’s French accent.
Trump laced in attacks on Harris’ laugh and said she was “not a very good wordsmith” and mocked the names of the CNN anchors who moderated the debate he had with Biden in June. When he began musing on Harris' recent image on the cover of Time magazine, he commented on the picture's resemblance to classic Hollywood icons Sophia Loren and Elizabeth Taylor and then took issue with a Wall Street Journal columnist remarking earlier this month on Harris' beauty. "I am much better looking than her," Trump said, drawing laughs from the crowd.
“I’m a better looking person than Kamala." He also took issue with the way his style is typically portrayed in news reports. “They will say he’s rambling.
I don’t ramble. I’m a really smart guy,” he said. — The Associated Press.
