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Strong winds hit Bermuda as Hurricane Fiona heads for Canada

AFP | by Sarah TITTERTON

Bermuda assessed damage Friday after Hurricane Fiona brushed past the island overnight, causing flooding and leaving most of the population without power as it set course for Canada.

Hurricane conditions were expected to hit Nova Scotia province by evening, with the US National Hurricane Center saying Fiona had again strengthened to a Category 4 storm as “it races toward Atlantic Canada.”

Emergency officials in Bermuda called on residents to remain inside as strong winds raked over the British territory, which was buffeted by gusts of more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) per hour and pounding seas.

But no fatalities or major damage were reported as Fiona passed roughly 100 miles to the west of the island.

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The Belco power company said 29,000 out of 36,000 households were without power.

“We are not in the clear. Stay off the roads,” Premier David Burt tweeted, adding no major incidents were reported.

The Royal Bermuda Regiment and Belco said they were waiting for winds to die down before clearing roads and restoring power.

Residents posted images of downed power lines and some flooding on social media.

“This morning (it is) very windy outside. We had some minor damage to the premises but nothing serious,” Jason Rainer, owner of a souvenir shop in the capital Hamilton told AFP, saying some doors and windows had been blown out.

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Store owners had covered windows with metal and wood sheets.

The island of about 64,000 people is no stranger to hurricanes — but it is also tiny, just 21 square miles (54 square kilometers), and one of the most remote places in the world, 640 miles from its closest neighbor, the United States.

A well-prepared island

“You have to live with it because you live here, you can’t run anywhere because it’s just a little island,” said JoeAnn Scott, a shopworker in Hamilton.

Bermudians try to “enjoy it as it comes,” she said. “And pray and pray. That’s what we do, pray and party,” she added with a laugh.

At Bermuda’s famed Horseshoe Bay Beach, onlookers watched pounding waves on Thursday before the storm hit, while two kitesurfers risked extreme conditions out at sea.

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Because of the island’s isolation, preparations are taken seriously.

Many boats were taken out of the water earlier in the week, public schools were closed, buses and ferries stopped and an emergency shelter opened.

In addition to laying in supplies of candles and food, some Bermudians drew buckets of water and filled bathtubs from the tanks at the side of their homes ahead of the expected power outages.

There is no fresh water source on the island, so all buildings have white, lime-washed roofs that are used to catch rainwater in tanks that is then pumped into homes. 

Bermuda, whose economy is fueled by international finance and tourism, is wealthy compared to most Caribbean countries, and structures must be built to strict planning codes to withstand storms. Some have done so for centuries.

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“The construction is really built to last, and we don’t see the devastation ever that the Caribbean has experienced over the years,” resident Elaine Murray said.

Fiona killed four people in Puerto Rico earlier this week, according to US media, while one death was reported in the French overseas department of Guadeloupe and another in the Dominican Republic. 

President Joe Biden has declared a state of emergency in Puerto Rico, a US territory that is still struggling to recover from Hurricane Maria five years ago.

In the Dominican Republic, President Luis Abinader declared three eastern provinces to be disaster zones.

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International

The new truce plan in Gaza includes “many demands” from Hamas, according to an Egyptian source

The talks held between delegations from Egypt and Israel in Tel Aviv for a truce in Gaza were “largely positive and successful” and included “many of the demands” of the Islamist movement Hamas, an Egyptian security source familiar with the negotiations and another from Hamas reported to EFE on Sunday.

A delegation from Hamas, headed by the member of the political bureau Khalil al-The Hague, is expected to arrive tomorrow in Cairo, mediator in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group, to deliver its response to the mediators, according to the Egyptian source, which asked not to be identified by the sensitivity of this issue.

This new proposal, on whose content it did not provide details, “overcomes the obstacles that hinder” the declaration of a truce, a ceasefire, the exchange of prisoners and hostages, as well as the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip.

The possible announcement of a truce “will contribute to the approval of a first phase and to the efforts of the entire international community to consolidate this ceasefire and seek to move to a permanent truce instead of a temporary one,” according to the informant.

On the other hand, a source of the Palestinian Islamist movement, which also asked for anonymity, confirmed to EFE that tomorrow a delegation from Hamas will arrive in the Egyptian capital to present its response to the new Israeli proposal.

The informant added that the proposal includes “reducing the minimum number of kidnapped that Hamas will commit to freeing and eliminating divisions in sections of the Gaza Strip.”

Last Friday, an Egyptian mediating delegation traveled to Tel Aviv to discuss this truce with Israel, while the Jewish State has warned that it will not allow the Palestinian group to delay and has once again threatened to invade Rafah, at the southern end of the strip and where more than a million refugees are overcrowded.

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International

Hamas warns the United Kingdom that if it sends soldiers to Gaza they will be a “legitimate” military target

The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas warned the United Kingdom on Sunday that if it deploys military personnel in the Gaza Strip, after information that they could help in the distribution of humanitarian aid, they will be “legitimate targets” of its armed wing.

“We alert Britain, or any other country, against the deployment of forces on land or on the coast of the Gaza Strip and affirm that they will be legitimate targets for our people and their resistance,” Hamas said in a statement.

The armed group charged against any initiative in the Palestinian enclave that does not have its approval.

The Islamist group responded to the information released on Saturday by the British network BBC, according to which the British Armed Forces could deploy troops to deliver humanitarian aid on the ground arriving in Gaza through the new floating dock that is being built by Israel and the United States.

The public broadcaster indicated that the United Kingdom could be the intermediary to which the United States referred when it said that it would not be the American soldiers, but others, who would distribute the food packages sent by ship from Cyprus and then transferred to Gaza.

Yesterday, the Israeli Army assured at a press conference with international media that international organizations would be in charge of the distribution of humanitarian aid, but did not indicate which ones would have agreed to collaborate.

Although the British Government has not confirmed the news, the BBC affirms, according to anonymous sources, that the Ministry of Defense is considering getting involved with ‘wet boots’ on the ground.

The possible role of the British forces would involve driving the trucks with the help from the landing boats on the floating runway, hundreds of meters long, and delivering it to a safe distribution area on dry land, the station explained.

The London Ministry of Defense reported on Friday, in turn, that the British Navy auxiliary ship RFA Cardigan Bay set sail from Cyprus to provide support for the construction of the temporary dock, which is led by the United States.

This ship will provide accommodation for hundreds of American sailors and soldiers, about whom Washington has made it clear that they will not set foot in Gaza territory.

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International

Nancy Pelosi says that Netanyahu “could not have made things worse” in Gaza

Former President of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi said that the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, “could not have made things worse” in the conflict in Gaza, in an interview broadcast this Sunday by the BBC.

Pelosi, who on Thursday participated in an event at the English university of Oxford, told the ‘Laura Kuenssberg Program’ that Netanyahu “was never a peace agent” and admitted that she “is not a great fan of his.”

The congresswoman said that what is happening in the Strip “challenges the conscience of the world” and maintained that the impact of famine on children “is almost unforgivable”, while calling the Hamas attack on Israeli territory on October 7 “barbaric”.

“Israel has the right to defend itself, but the way it is doing it is a challenge because Netanyahu has never been a peace agent,” he said.

“I’m not a great admirer of yours; I couldn’t have done things worse than those tens of thousands, or whatever number it is, of dead people, malnourished children and the uncertainty that exists… and that’s what people are talking about,” he said.

Asked if she understood why young people in the United States used controversial tactics when protesting against the conflict, Pelosi opined that “when they go beyond the campuses and block the Golden Gate Bridge, or something else, for a long time, and people can’t go to the doctor or the hospital or anything urgent in their lives, they don’t get support.”

But he added: “How can demonstrations on (university) campuses be criticized? That’s a way of life in the United States.”

On Thursday, the British police evicted two pro-Palestinian protesters who protested during their speech on populism to students from the University of Oxford, while abroad another group criticized her for her defense of Israel and her position on the movement to support Palestine.

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