International
Hurricane Fiona heads toward Bermuda, US advises citizens to defer travel
AFP
Hurricane Fiona churned toward Bermuda as a powerful Category 4 storm on Wednesday as Puerto Rico struggled to restore power and water after receving a crushing blow.
The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said Fiona was expected to approach Bermuda, a British territory of some 64,000 people, late on Thursday.
In Washington, the State Department advised Americans to reconsider travel to Bermuda and authorized family members of US government personnel to leave.
“US citizens in Bermuda wishing to depart the island should depart now, ahead of Hurricane Fiona’s arrival,” it said in a travel advisory.
Fiona was upgraded overnight to a Category 4 hurricane, the second highest level on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
The NHC said the storm was packing maximum winds of 130 miles per hour (210 kilometers per hour) as it headed north toward Bermuda at around eight miles per hour.
“On the forecast track, the center of Fiona will continue to move away from the Turks and Caicos today, approach Bermuda late on Thursday and approach Atlantic Canada late Friday,” the NHC said.
“A storm surge will cause elevated water levels along the coast of Bermuda,” it said. “Near the coast, the surge will be accompanied by large and destructive waves.”
Fiona has left a trail of destruction across the Caribbean and killed four people in Puerto Rico, according to a US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) official quoted by The Washington Post.
One death was reported in the French overseas department of Guadeloupe and another in the Dominican Republic.
FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell is in Puerto Rico and toured flood damaged areas with the governor of the US territory, Pedro Pierluisi.
Will not stop
FEMA said it was sending hundreds of additional personnel to Puerto Rico to help with relief efforts on the island, which suffered widespread power outages.
Pierluisi said the storm had caused catastrophic damage on the island of three million people, with some areas receiving more than 30 inches (76 centimeters) of rain.
US President Joe Biden has declared a state of emergency in Puerto Rico, which is still struggling to recover from Hurricane Maria five years ago.
LUMA, the Puerto Rico power company, said more than 2,000 utility workers were assessing damage and working to restore electricity to hundreds of thousands of customers.
“LUMA and all our partners will not stop until every customer is restored and the entire grid is reenergized,” its public safety manager Abner Gomez said in a statement.
The storm also left around hundreds of thousands of people in Puerto Rico without drinking water as a result of power outages and flooded rivers, officials said.
In the Dominican Republic, President Luis Abinader declared three eastern provinces to be disaster zones: La Altagracia — home to the popular resort of Punta Cana — El Seibo and Hato Mayor.
After years of financial woes and recession, Puerto Rico in 2017 declared the largest bankruptcy ever by a local US administration.
Later that year, the double hit from hurricanes Irma and Maria added to the misery, devastating the electrical grid on the island — which has suffered from major infrastructure problems for years.
The grid was privatized in June 2021 in an effort to resolve the problem of blackouts, but the issue has persisted, and the entire island lost power earlier this year.
International
Israel says 136 food aid boxes airdropped into Gaza by six nations
The Israeli military announced on Sunday that 136 boxes of food aid were airdropped into Gaza by the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, Germany, and Belgium.
“In recent hours, six countries conducted air drops of 136 aid packages containing food for residents in the southern and northern Gaza Strip,” read the statement, which added that the operation was coordinated by COGAT, the Israeli defense body overseeing civil affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The Israeli military emphasized that they will “continue working to improve the humanitarian response alongside the international community” and reiterated their stance to “refute false allegations of deliberate famine in Gaza.”
The announcement comes as UN agencies warn Gaza faces an imminent risk of famine. More than one in three residents go days without eating, and other nutrition indicators have dropped to their worst levels since the conflict began.
The agencies also noted the difficulty of “collecting reliable data in current conditions, as Gaza’s health systems —already devastated by nearly three years of conflict— are collapsing.”
Meanwhile, Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry reported on Sunday that hospitals in the enclave recorded six deaths from hunger and malnutrition on Saturday, all of them adults.
International
Seven inmates dead, 11 injured after violent riot in Veracruz prison
Seven inmates were killed and eleven others injured in a violent riot and clash inside a penitentiary in the Mexican state of Veracruz, local authorities reported on Sunday.
The disturbance began on Saturday afternoon at the Social Reintegration Center in the port city of Tuxpan, in northern Veracruz, when inmates staged a protest over extortion and assaults allegedly carried out by members of the criminal group known as Grupo Sombra.
The protesting prisoners clashed with another group of inmates and set fires inside and outside the facility, seizing control of the prison for more than 12 hours.
During the takeover, the rioters released several videos, including one showing four prisoners —believed to be members of Grupo Sombra— accusing them of being behind the violence and extortion inside the prison.
It wasn’t until Sunday morning that elements of the Mexican Army, the National Guard, and local police forces managed to enter the prison and regain control. The state’s Public Security Secretariat confirmed that around 9:00 a.m. local time a coordinated operation restored full order and reestablished control of the facility.
Authorities also reported that the fires set by inmates were fully extinguished.
Official figures confirmed the “tragic” deaths of seven inmates and injuries to eleven people, who are now receiving medical treatment in various regional hospitals.
This is the second deadliest riot in Veracruz in the past eight years. In 2018, a violent uprising at the La Toma medium-security prison left seven people dead (six police officers and one unidentified man) and at least 22 injured (15 officers and seven inmates).
The riot follows the kidnapping and killing of retired teacher and taxi driver Irma Hernández, a case that shocked the entire country and was attributed to Grupo Sombra. Images of Hernández kneeling, surrounded by armed men in the municipality of Álamo, sparked nationwide outrage. She was murdered after refusing to pay extortion demands from the criminal organization.
Despite these incidents, Veracruz has not seen a spike in the daily homicide average. In fact, there has been a 1.6% decrease in homicides in the first half of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, according to the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System.
In 2023, the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) reported 3,094 incidents in Mexican prisons —an 18.5% increase from the previous year— resulting in 100 deaths and 892 injuries.
International
Study finds COVID-19 vaccines prevented 2.5 million deaths worldwide
COVID-19 vaccines prevented an estimated 2,533,000 deaths worldwide between 2020 and 2024, according to an international study led by Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Italy and Stanford University in the United States, published in the journal JAMA Health Forum. Researchers calculated that one death was prevented for every 5,400 doses administered.
The analysis also found that the vaccines saved 14.8 million years of life, equivalent to one year of life gained for every 900 doses given.
The study, coordinated by Professor Stefania Boccia, revealed that 82% of the lives saved were people vaccinated before becoming infected with the virus, and 57% of deaths avoided occurred during the Omicron wave. In addition, 90% of the beneficiaries were adults over 60 years old.
“This is the most comprehensive analysis to date, based on global data and fewer assumptions about the evolution of the pandemic,” explained Boccia and researcher Angelo Maria Pezzullo.
Israel says 136 food aid boxes airdropped into Gaza by six nations
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