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Historic winter storm leaves nearly 50 dead across US

Photo: KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI / AFP

| By AFP | Maggy Donaldson |

US emergency crews counted the grim costs of a colossal winter storm that brought Christmas chaos to millions, especially in hard-hit western New York, where the death toll reached 25 Monday in what authorities described as a “war with mother nature.”

Blizzard conditions continue to prevail in parts of the US Northeast, the stubborn remnants of a massive sprawl of extreme weather including severe cold that gripped the country over several days, causing widespread power outages, travel delays and at least 47 deaths nationwide.

The extreme weather forced the cancellation of more than 15,000 flights in recent days including more than 1,700 on Monday, according to tracking site Flightaware.com.

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Buffalo — a US city that is no stranger to foul winter weather — has been buried under staggering amounts of snow, with the National Weather Service forecasting up to 14 inches (0.35 meters) Monday in addition to the several feet that have already left the city marooned, with a virtual collapse of emergency services.

The blizzard has stubbornly refused to release its grip on western New York’s Erie County, where Buffalo is located and which has become the epicenter of the crisis. 

“In addition to the 13 confirmed deaths yesterday, the Erie County Department of Health medical examiner’s office has confirmed an additional 12 deaths, bringing the total for the blizzard to 25 deaths county-wide,” Erie County executive Mark Poloncarz said in a press briefing.

The ferocious weather makes this “the worst storm probably in our lifetime, and the history of the city,” Poloncarz said, noting the death toll in Erie will likely surpass that of Buffalo’s infamous blizzard of 1977, when nearly 30 people died.

With more snow in the forecast and most of Buffalo “impassable,” he warned residents to bunker down and stay in place.

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“This is not the end yet, we are not there,” he said.

National Guard members and other teams have rescued hundreds of people from snow-covered cars and homes without electricity, but authorities have said more people remain trapped.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a native of Buffalo, said she was stunned by what she saw during a Sunday reconnaissance tour of the city.

“It is (like) going to a war zone, and the vehicles along the sides of the roads are shocking,” Hochul said, describing eight-foot (2.4-meter) snow drifts against homes and how power outages made for life-threatening conditions.

“This is a war with mother nature,” she said.

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The extreme weather sent wind chill temperatures in all 48 contiguous US states below freezing over the weekend.

Sweeping power outages

At one point on Saturday, nearly 1.7 million customers were without electricity in the biting cold, according to tracker poweroutage.us.

That number has dropped substantially, although there were still some 50,000 without electricity Monday morning on the US east coast.

Due to frozen electric substations, some Erie County residents were not expected to regain power until Tuesday, with one substation reportedly buried under 18 feet of snow, a senior county official said.

Officials described historically dangerous conditions in the snow-prone Buffalo region, with hours-long whiteouts and bodies discovered in vehicles and under snow banks. Emergency workers continued the difficult search for those in need of rescue.

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The city’s international airport remains closed until Tuesday and a driving ban remained in effect for Buffalo and much of Erie County.

Road ice and white-out conditions also led to the temporary closure of some of the nation’s busiest transport routes, including part of the cross-country Interstate 70 highway.

Drivers were being warned not to take to the roads — even as the nation reached what is usually its busiest time of year for travel.

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International

Bolsonaro is transferred to São Paulo to continue the treatment for an erysypela

Former President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro moved this Monday from the Amazon city of Manaus, where he was hospitalized with an erysipelas, to a hospital in São Paulo, where the treatment against that skin infection will continue.

The lawyer of the leader of the far right, Fabio Wajngarten, said on his social networks that Bolsonaro will also be examined for a possible intestinal obstruction, although he did not give more details on the matter.

Bolsonaro, 69, arrived last Friday in Manaus for some political commitments and on Saturday he was hospitalized once it was found that he suffered from erysipelas, a bacterial infection that affects the skin and subcutaneous tissue.

The Santa Julia hospital, where he was treated, reported that the former president, from 2019 to 2022, had a “table of dehydration and infectious skin process.”

The doctors did not mention the possible intestinal obstruction cited by Wajngarten, but it is a problem that Bolsonaro suffers repeatedly since, in the campaign for the 2018 elections, he was stabbed in the abdomen in the middle of a rally.

Since then, they underwent four surgeries to correct stomach problems resulting from that attack.

The former president faces serious difficulties in Justice, which investigates him in various cases, one of them linked to alleged plans to prevent the inauguration of the current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who defeated him in the 2022 elections.

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International

The number of deaths in a passenger bus accident in southern Peru rises to eleven

The number of deaths in Peru when a passenger bus crashed from the southern department of Puno to Cuzco, when it was traveling through the province of Melgar, rose to 11, official sources reported on Monday.

The head of the road police of the Puno department, David Sota Paredes, told the RPP station that the number of deaths from the accident increased to eleven, including a five-month-old baby, who have already been identified, and that in addition, 11 other injured people were transferred to the Ayaviri hospital.

The Universal company bus overturned at kilometer 1,170 of the Longitudinal road, in the district of Santa Rosa, in the province of Melgar in Puneña, in the early hours of Monday morning, confirmed the Superintent of Land Transport of People, Cargo and Goods (Sutran).

This official entity reported that it activated all its immediate attention protocols and initiated coordination with its inspectors in the region, the National Police of Peru (PNP) and the Health Emergency Operations Center of Puno to “help with the investigations that allow the causes of the accident to be determined.”

Likewise, Sutran indicated that the vehicle, with B2R959 plate, had authorization from the General Directorate of Transport Authorizations of the Ministry of Transport and Communications for the regular passenger transport service, with accident insurance and technical review in force.

“The Sutran expresses its condolences to the relatives and relatives of the victims of the unfortunate accident and vows for the speedy recovery of the injured,” he said in a statement shared on his social networks.

Last week, the roads in northern Peru recorded another accident of a passenger bus that left 27 people dead from the fall of the vehicle into a chasm in the department of Cajamarca, while another public transport unit rushed into a river, in the jungle of Amazonas, and caused the death of a policeman and 10 people injured.

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International

Israel says it will continue to negotiate a ceasefire while bombing the east of Rafah

The Israeli War Cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, agreed on Monday to continue “the operation” in Rafah, south of Gaza, but agreed to send a delegation to Cairo to continue negotiating a possible ceasefire.

“Despite the fact that Hamas’ proposal is far from meeting Israel’s fundamental demands, Israel will send a high-ranking delegation to Egypt in an effort to exhaust the possibility of reaching an agreement on acceptable terms,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement.

Benny Gantz, also a member of the War Cabinet, agreed with Netanyahu. “The military operation in Rafah is an inseparable part of our continuous efforts and our commitment to return our kidnapped,” he said tonight in a statement quoted by Israeli media.

Gantz confirmed that Israel will send a delegation to Cairo although, he said, the proposal agreed by Hamas “does not correspond to the dialogue that has taken place so far with the mediators and contains important gaps.”

Both messages come after the announcement of Ismail Haniyeh, head of the political bureau in Hamas, that the Islamist group accepted a proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza, a few hours after the Israeli Army issued an “immediate” evacuation order from the east of Rafah.

In a final statement released tonight, Hamas confirmed that both Haniyeh and the secretary general of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Ziad al Nakhala – a faction also present in the Gaza Strip – discussed on Monday whether or not to approve a ceasefire, and said that the decision was made as a result of “the evolution of the current situation” in Gaza.

“It was also emphasized that the resistance factions will not back down on their demands included in the proposal they agreed, in particular a (comprehensive) ceasefire, an integral withdrawal (from Israeli troops), an honorable exchange (of hostages for prisoners), reconstruction and the end of the (Israeli) siege,” Hamas recalled.

The Israeli Army confirmed that it is currently bombing the southern city of Rafah, where more than one million Gazans take refuge after the start of the ground offensive on October 27, which forced the northern population to leave their homes, many of which are now destroyed.

Despite the heavy bombings and firing of flares, according to EFE on the ground, Israeli troops and tanks have not crossed the fence that separates Israel from southern Gaza.

The Army “is currently carrying out targeted attacks against Hamas terrorist targets in the east of Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip,” a military statement confirmed tonight, announcing that there would be more details shortly.

For its part, the official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, confirmed Israeli attacks in the city of Rafah against “roads, agricultural land, residential houses and farms” in the eastern neighborhoods of Al Salam and Al Jinaina, among others, which coincide with some of the places included this morning in the evacuation letter.

In a press conference in Hebrew tonight, the Army spokesman, Daniel Hagari, recalled that the troops are prepared for a land incursion into Rafah after this morning’s evacuation order, which only affects about 100,000 Gazans among more than a million people who are overcrowded in Rafah.

Hamas warned Israel on Monday that any military takeover of Rafah will not be something simple and that his armed wing, the Qasam Brigades, are ready to defend his people.

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