Approximately 23 million people were under flood watches across parts of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut on Friday morning, as extreme rainfall shut off subway lines and flooded streets.
A state of emergency has been declared in New York City and two other surrounding areas after “extreme rainfall” caused widespread flooding in the northeast region.
Up to 13cm (five inches) of rain fell in some areas overnight, and as much as 18cm (seven inches) more was expected throughout the day, New York governor, Kathy Hochul, said.
Writing on X (formerly Twitter) on Friday morning, she declared a state of emergency in New York City, Long Island and the Hudson Valley, due to the weather.
Earlier on Friday, Ms Hochul said: “This is a dangerous, life-threatening storm. Count on this for the next 20 hours.”
She said her message to New Yorkers is that the “water is deadly”.
Pic: AP
Approximately 23 million people were under flood watches across parts of New Jersey, New York and Connecticut on Friday morning, with flash flood warnings in effect for parts of Long Island, Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and New Jersey, according to NBC.
Footage posted on social media showed water pouring into underground stations and streets that had been turned into small lakes.
Pic: AP
Zack Taylor, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland, warned people against attempting to travel in the conditions until it clears.
Chaos during rush hour saw some drivers abandon their cars as traffic came to a standstill on a stretch of FDR Drive – a major road along the east side of Manhattan.
It was a moment the diplomatic world was watching for — but didn’t get.
In the end, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov avoided staring each other down Wednesday across the U.N. Security Council’s famous horseshoe-shaped table. Zelenskyy left before Lavrov arrived.
The near-miss was somewhat to be expected. Yet the moment still spoke to the U.N.’s role as a venue where warring nations can unleash their ire through words instead of weapons. The choreography also underscored the world body’s reputation as a place where adversaries sometimes literally talk past each other.
Zelenskyy denounced Russia as “a terrorist state” while Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia sat facing him near the other end of the table’s arc. As Zelenskyy launched into his remarks, the Russian looked at his phone, then tucked the device away.
Zelenskyy left before Lavrov’s arrival, which came as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was accusing Russia of having “shredded” key provisions of the U.N. Charter.
Lavrov, in turn, reiterated his country’s claims that Kyiv has oppressed Russian speakers in eastern areas, violating the U.N. charter and getting a pass on it from the U.S. and other western countries. Across the table was Ukrainian Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya, his eyes on his phone during at least parts of Lavrov’s remarks. (Blinken, for his part, took handwritten notes.)
If there was no finger-pointing face-off, the atmosphere was decidedly prickly.
Before Zelenskyy’s arrival, Nebenzia objected to a speaking order that put the Ukrainian president before the council’s members, including Russia. (Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, the meeting chair, retorted: “You stop the war, and President Zelenskyy will not take the floor.”)
Zelenskyy had been in the same room, but hardly eye to eye, with a Russian diplomat during the Ukrainian leader’s speech Tuesday in the vast hall of the U.N. General Assembly, which this week is holding its annual meeting of top-level leaders. (Russian Deputy Ambassador Dmitry Polyansky later said, wryly, that he’d been focusing on his phone and “didn’t notice” Zelenskyy’s address.) Before that, Zelenskyy last encountered a Russian official at a 2019 meeting with President Vladimir Putin.
A key supply route for Kremlin forces in the war with Ukraine, the Kerch Bridge has come under repeated attack since Russia launched its full-scale invasion
A picture taken from a video shows an explosion near Bakhmut. Twitter
Russia’s defence ministry said early on Saturday that its forces destroyed three Ukrainian naval drones being used in an attempt to attack a key bridge linking Russia to Moscow-annexed Crimea, forcing its temporary closure for a third time in less than a year.
One naval drone was destroyed late on Friday and two others early on Saturday morning, according to Russia’s defence ministry. There was no immediate comment from Ukrainian officials.
A key supply route for Kremlin forces in the war with Ukraine, the Kerch Bridge has come under repeated attack since Russia launched its full-scale invasion.
An explosion in October, which Russian authorities said was caused by a truck bomb, left three people dead. A further attack on the bridge in July, killing a couple and seriously wounding their daughter, left a span of the roadway hanging perilously.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy meets with Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou at the Maximos Mansion in Athens, Greece, August 21, 2023. Theodore Manolopoulos/Greek Presidency Press Office/Handout via REUTERS Acquire Licensing Rights
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, responding to calls by a US senator this week to announce elections in 2024, said on Sunday voting could take place during wartime if partners shared the cost, legislators approved, and everyone got to the polls.
Elections cannot currently be held in Ukraine under martial law, which must be extended every 90 days and is next due to expire on Nov. 15, after the normal date in October for parliamentary polls but before presidential elections which would normally be held in March 2024.
Top American legislators visited Kyiv Aug. 23, among them Senator Lindsey Graham, who heaped praise on Kyiv’s fight against Russian President Vladimir Putin but said the country needed to show it was different by holding elections in wartime.
Zelenskiy, in a television interview with Natalia Moseichuk, an anchor for the 1+1 Channel, said he had discussed the issue with Graham, including the question of funding and the need to change the law.
“I gave Lindsey a very simple answer very quickly,” he said. “He was very pleased with it. As long as our legislators are willing to do it.”
He said it cost 5 billion hryvnia ($135 million) to hold elections in peacetime. “I don’t know how much is needed in wartime,” he said. “So I told him that if the US and Europe provide financial support …”
He added, “I will not take money from weapons and give it to elections. And this is stipulated by the law.”
VILNIUS, Lithuania — The Biden administration is urging U.S. citizens in Belarus to depart the country immediately and warned against travel there in a statement published Monday.
The updated travel warning comes after bordering countries Lithuania, Latvia and Poland have stepped up security along the border over concerns about Russian Wagner mercenary forces exiled in the country.
The State Department, in its warning, encouraged Americans still in Belarus to depart the country immediately and categorized the country as a Level 4 risk, the highest security warning.
Belarus’s longtime leader Alexander Lukashenko, known as Europe’s last dictator, has been a key facilitator of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, and is under a catalog of U.S. sanctions for human rights abuses and political repression against Belarusian people who challenged his claim to election victory in 2020.
The U.S. mission in Belarus is scaled down and only handles emergency American Citizen Services.
Lukashenko’s welcoming of Wagner forces in a deal with Putin that ended the mercenary group’s short-lived rebellion against the Kremlin has raised concern in NATO-member countries on its border.
“Do not travel to Belarus due to Belarusian authorities’ continued facilitation of Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine, the buildup of Russian military forces in Belarus, the arbitrary enforcement of local laws, the potential of civil unrest, the risk of detention, and the Embassy’s limited ability to assist U.S. citizens residing in or traveling to Belarus,” the State Department wrote in its warning.
Last week, Lithuania closed two of its six border crossings with Belarus. The State Department urged Americans to travel through the remaining, open border crossings, warning that the Polish, Lithuanian, and Latvian governments have stated that further closures of border crossings with Belarus are possible.
The police spokesperson said that the bomb exploded in a van in North Waziristan.
As many as 11 labourers were killed and two sustained injured in a bomb blast in the Gulmir Kot area in Pakistan’s North Waziristan(Representational image)
As many as 11 labourers were killed and two sustained injured in a bomb blast in the Gulmir Kot area in Pakistan’s North Waziristan, ARY News reported on Saturday.
The police spokesperson said that the bomb exploded in a van in North Waziristan.
Further details are awaited in the matter.
Notably, this attack comes weeks after the massive suicide blast in Bajaur, in which at least 63 people including 23 children were killed and over 200 people sustained injuries.
The responsibility for the blast was claimed by the Islamic State group, according to Al Jazeera.
The bombing targeted an election rally in Pakistan’s border district of Bajaur.
A bomber detonated an explosives-packed vest near the platform as some 400 members of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F) party, a significant government coalition partner led by hardline politician Fazlur Rehman, awaited the start of the speeches.
The suicide bomber detonated explosives when JUI-F members and supporters gathered in the town of Khar, near the border with Afghanistan. The convention started at 2 pm, and the explosion happened at 4:10 pm, according to the officials.
About 30,000 households have been ordered to evacuate in Canada’s British Columbia province, where nearly 400 wildfires are raging.
Two huge fires in the Shuswap region merged overnight, destroying blocks of houses and other buildings.
To the south, travel to the waterside city of Kelowna has been restricted, and smoke from nearby fires hangs over Lake Okanagan.
Fires have charred homes in West Kelowna, a nearby city of 36,000.
The travel restriction around Kelowna is designed to ensure enough accommodation for evacuees and emergency workers. It also applies to the towns of Kamloops, Oliver, Penticton and Vernon and Osoyoos.
Hundreds of miles north, a huge fire continues to edge towards the city of Yellowknife.
An official deadline to evacuate the city – the capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories – lapsed on Friday. A local official said later that day that nearly all residents had left, either by car or plane.
About 19,000 of the city’s 20,000 inhabitants had evacuated. Authorities said 39 patients were moved out of a hospital to alternative facilities on Friday evening, making them the last people to be evacuated from the city.
Environment and communities minister Shane Thompson said some people had chosen “to shelter in place”, but urged locals to leave.
In British Columbia, evacuation orders grew from covering 15,000 homes on Friday to at least 30,000 by Saturday evening. Another 36,000 homes are under evacuation alert.
The province’s emergency management minister said officials “cannot stress strongly enough how critical it is to follow evacuation orders”.
Bowinn Ma added: “They are a matter of life and death not only for the people in those properties, but also for the first responders who will often go back to try to implore people to leave.”
Premier of the province, David Eby, put the total number of people ordered to leave at 35,000, with 30,000 told to be prepared to evacuate.
One Kelowna resident told the BBC the fires came over the mountainside like an “ominous cloud of destruction”Smoke from wildfires is hanging over Lake Okanagan, on which Kelowna sits
Canada is having its worst wildfire season on record, with at least 1,000 fires burning across the country, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC).
Experts say climate change increases the risk of the hot, dry weather that is likely to fuel wildfires.
Extreme and long-lasting heat draws more and more moisture out of the ground – which can provide fuel for fires that can spread at an incredible speed, particularly if winds are strong.
Although no deaths have been reported in the latest fires, at least four firefighters have lost their lives during this record-breaking season.
Forest fires in Canada’s western province of British Columbia intensified on Saturday, with the number of people under evacuation orders doubling from a day earlier, as authorities warned of difficult days ahead.
The province declared a state of emergency on Friday to access temporary authoritative powers to tackle fire-related risks, as out-of-control fires ripped through interior British Columbia, partially shutting some sections of a key highway between the Pacific coast and the rest of western Canada, and destroying many properties.
“The current situation is grim,” Premier Daniel Eby told reporters on Saturday, saying some 35,000 people were under an evacuation order, and a further 30,000 were under an evacuation alert.
Eby said the province is in dire need of shelter for evacuees and firefighters and ordered a ban on non-essential travel to make more temporary accommodation available. Officials also urged residents to avoid operating drones in the fire zone, saying it could impede firefighting efforts.
The fire is centered around Kelowna, a city some 300 kilometres (180 miles) east of Vancouver, with a population of about 150,000.
Forest fires are not uncommon in Canada, but the spread of blazes and disruption underscore the severity of its worst wildfire season yet.
About 140,000 square km (54,054 square miles) of land, roughly the size of New York state, have already burned, and government officials project the fire season could stretch into autumn due to widespread drought-like conditions in Canada.
B.C. had experienced strong winds and dry lightning in the past few days due to a cold mass of air interacting with hot air built-up in the sultry summer. That intensified existing forest fires and ignited new ones.
“We are still in some critically dry conditions, and are still expecting difficult days ahead,” said Jerrad Schroeder, deputy fire centre manager at the Kamloops Fire Centre.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau convened a meeting of key ministers and senior officials on Saturday to discuss wildfires. The Incident Response Group, which met for the second time this week, agreed to make “additional resources available” to both British Columbia and the Northwest Territories (NWT).
MAIN EAST-WEST ROAD UNDER THREAT
The McDougall Creek wildfire burns next to houses in the Okanagan community of West Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada, August 19, 2023. REUTERS/Chris Helgren
A wildfire burning out of control in Yellowknife, the capital city of NWT, had triggered evacuations of almost all of its 20,000 residents this week. One patient died when he was being transferred out of Yellowknife, an NWT minister said on Saturday.
Currently, the fire is not expected to reach city limits by the end of the weekend, officials said, with some rain and cooler temperatures helping to slow its progress.
The TransCanada highway was closed near Chase, around 400 km northeast of Vancouver, and between Hope, 150 km east of Vancouver, and the village of Lytton.
The highway is the main east-west artery used by thousands of motorists and truckers heading to Vancouver, the country’s busiest port.
Kip Lumquist, who works at a gift shop in Craigellachie, British Columbia, a tourist spot on the highway, said she saw a lot of devastation over the past week.
“It was crazy, we couldn’t see the hills, the mountains, the trees, anything, probably (for) two and a half days,” said Lumquist. “I drive a white vehicle, and when I walked out to get in my car… it’s just black… It’s devastating to the community.”
