Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Hurricane Milton barreling toward Florida, another Israeli stabbing attack, and threats to lawmakers in Mexico.
Record-Breaking Storm
Time is running out for Floridians to evacuate their homes before Hurricane Milton, a Category 4 storm, hits the state’s west coast late Wednesday or early Thursday. With maximum sustained winds expected to reach 160 miles per hour, “Milton has the potential to be one of the most destructive hurricanes on record for west-central Florida,” according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.
Milton has already become the third-fastest intensifying storm on record to hit the Atlantic, growing from a Category 1 to a Category 5—the highest level on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale—in less than 24 hours before dipping back down to a Category 4. More than 12 million people were under a tornado watch on Wednesday, with at least 10 twisters appearing across the state. Residents of a low-lying stretch of coast that includes the major cities of Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Sarasota were told to prepare for a massive potential storm surge, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warning that “absolutely every place on the west coast of Florida could get major storm surge.”
“If you are in a single-story home that is hit by a 15-foot storm surge, which means that water comes in immediately, there’s nowhere to go,” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said. “So, if you’re in it, basically that’s the coffin that you’re in.”
DeSantis has issued states of emergency in 51 out of 67 counties and said that 8,000 National Guard members will be activated. Authorities have ordered people in 11 coastal counties with a combined population of 5.9 million people to evacuate immediately, resulting in clogged highways and nearly 23 percent of Florida’s gas stations running out of fuel. Anyone choosing to ignore the orders and stay put have been told that they will have to fend for themselves.
U.S. President Joe Biden postponed an overseas trip this week in order to address Milton. He was scheduled to visit Germany on Thursday before traveling to Angola, which would have marked the first time that Biden has traveled to Africa since his presidency began and the first U.S. presidential trip to sub-Saharan Africa since 2015, when President Barack Obama was in office. DeSantis said on Wednesday that he has spoken with Biden about Florida’s needs and that “everything that we’ve asked for, the administration has approved.”
Milton’s rare west-to-east trajectory comes less than two weeks after the region was hit by Hurricane Helene, a Category 4 storm with record-high storm surges and a death toll of more than 230 people from Florida to Virginia. “Emotionally for people to just have experienced that [hurricane] two weeks ago, and now here we are again, it’s really hard on everybody,” said Sarasota Mayor Liz Alpert. Prior to Helene’s landfall, residents who did not evacuate were urged to write their names and social security numbers on their bodies for easier postmortem identification.
Today’s Most Read
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What We’re Following
Stabbing attack. At least six people were stabbed across four locations in the central Israeli city of Hadera on Wednesday. Local police said the suspect—a 36-year-old resident of Umm al-Fahm, Israel—has been “neutralized.” Although authorities did not initially label the incident a terrorist attack, they have since designated it as one following evidence that their initial report was incorrect. Hamas celebrated news of the attack, though no group has claimed responsibility for it.
Spree terrorist attacks have rocked Israel this past week surrounding the one-year anniversary on Oct. 7 of Israel’s war against Hamas. On Sunday, a gunman opened fire at a bus station in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, killing one person and wounding 10 others. The alleged shooter was a member of the Bedouin minority group in Israel’s Negev desert. And last Wednesday, Hamas claimed responsibility for a stabbing and shooting attack that killed seven people and injured 16 others in Tel Aviv.
Beheading in Mexico. Four mayors in Mexico asked federal authorities on Monday for protection after another mayor, Alejandro Arcos of Chilpancingo, was killed just six days into office. Arcos, a prominent opposition figure, was beheaded in the state of Guerrero on Sunday, when he had been scheduled to attend a private meeting in the city of Petaquillas. Mexican Security Minister Omar García Harfuch told reporters on Tuesday that Arcos had not requested any security escorts on the day of his killing despite Arcos telling local media that he wanted extra protection.
Newly elected President Claudia Sheinbaum presented on Tuesday her national security plan to help reduce violent crime, but she ruled out launching a new war against drug cartels. “The war on drugs will not return,” she said. Sheinbaum campaigned on her predecessor’s “hugs not bullets” strategy, which focuses on addressing the root causes of crime.
Yet political assassinations by gangs and drug cartels remain a major issue for Mexico. Roughly two dozen electoral candidates were killed in the country ahead of its general election on June 2. At least six people were murdered in Guerrero, where two warring drug gangs—the Ardillos and the Tlacos—dominate the state capital. And just three days before Arcos’s death, Francisco Tapia, Chilpancingo’s new government secretary, was shot to death.
X returns to Brazil. Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court lifted its ban on X on Tuesday after the social media platform complied with several of its orders. These included the removal of certain accounts, which Justice Alexandre de Moraes said had spread hate speech or threatened Brazil’s democracy but which X CEO Elon Musk had called illegal censorship; the paying of fines; and the naming of a new legal representative in the country.
“X is proud to return to Brazil,” the company posted on Tuesday, adding that it will “continue to defend freedom of speech, within the boundaries of the law.” Regulators have 24 hours to let X come back online, though it could take more time for the site to fully return.
Compliance was hard won. Musk fought the top court’s decision for months, going so far as to close X’s headquarters in Brazil; publish the sealed orders online; and liken Moraes to a “dictator” and the villain of the Harry Potter books, Voldemort. Under Moraes’s ruling, Brazil’s court suspended X in August, blocking access for tens of thousands of users, some of whom turned to the company’s competitors.
Quote of the Week
“Too busy.”
—Geoffrey Hinton, a British Canadian computer scientist known as one of the godfathers of artificial intelligence, in response to an interview request from FP’s Rishi Iyengar to discuss Hinton’s shared Nobel Prize win for physics on Tuesday. Fair enough.
Odds and Ends
Three more scientists can add winning the Nobel Prize—this one for chemistry—to their CVs as of Wednesday. David Baker received one half of the award for using amino acids to design a new protein, opening the door for protein creation in other fields, such as pharmaceuticals and vaccines. John Jumper and Demis Hassabis took home the other half for their work using artificial intelligence to predict the structure of almost all known proteins. This was the second Nobel Prize this year to be connected to artificial intelligence.