World
Hurricane Idalia strengthens en route to Florida, forcing mass evacuations

Hurricane Idalia gained fury on Tuesday as it crawled toward Florida’s Gulf Coast, forcing mass evacuations in low-lying areas expected to be swamped when the powerful storm, forecast to reach Category 4 intensity, strikes on Wednesday morning.
Idalia was generating maximum sustained winds of 177 kph by late Tuesday night – at the upper end of Category 2 – and its force will ratchet higher before it slams ashore, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC) projected.
By that time the storm was forecast to reach “an extremely dangerous Category 4 intensity” – with maximum sustained winds of at least 209 kph – on the five-step Saffir-Simpson wind scale, the NHC reported.
The hurricane was upgraded on Tuesday evening to a Category 2 after its top wind speeds surpassed 153 kph, feeding on the warm, open waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Any storm designated Category 3 or higher is classified as a major hurricane.
Idalia’s most dangerous feature, however, appeared to be the powerful surge of wind-driven seawater it is expected to deliver to barrier islands and other low-lying areas along the coast.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination next year, urged residents in vulnerable communities to heed orders to move to higher ground, warning that the storm surge could cause life-threatening floods.
“They’re expecting some fatalities, so I don’t want to be one of them,” said Rene Hoffman, 62, of Steinhatchee, Florida, a coastal town in the area where Idalia is expected to make landfall. She owns a food stand that she lashed to her husband’s pickup truck to keep it from washing or blowing away.
“This is scary, you know, to think that water could come this high,” she said as she gathered her prescription medications and prepared to leave her home. “We’ve never had water up here before.”
The NHC said Idalia’s center would likely hit Florida’s coastline somewhere in the Big Bend region, where the state’s northern panhandle curves into the Gulf side of the Florida Peninsula, roughly bounded by the inland cities of Gainesville and Tallahassee, the state capital.
Sparsely populated compared with the Tampa-St. Petersburg area to the south, the Big Bend features a marshy coast, threaded with freshwater springs and rivers, and a cluster of small offshore islands forming Cedar Key, a historic fishing village devastated in 1896 by a hurricane’s storm surge.
Most of Florida’s 21 million residents, along with many in Georgia and South Carolina, were under hurricane, tropical storm and storm surge warnings and advisories. State emergency declarations were issued in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.
At the White House, U.S. President Biden said he and DeSantis were “in constant contact,” adding that he had assured the governor federal disaster assistance would remain in place for as “long as it takes, and we’ll make sure they have everything they need.”
Gulf energy producers were taking precautions as well. U.S. oil company Chevron evacuated staff from three oil production platforms, while Kinder Morgan planned to shut a petroleum pipeline, Reuters reported.
Idalia-related disruptions extended to Florida’s Atlantic coast at Cape Canaveral, where the Tuesday launch of a rocket carrying a U.S. Space Force intelligence satellite was delayed indefinitely due to the hurricane.
Idalia grew from a tropical storm into a hurricane early on Tuesday, a day after passing west of Cuba, where it damaged homes and flooded villages.
World
Gunmen kill 14, kidnap 60 in attacks in northern Nigeria

Gunmen in Nigeria killed eight people on Sunday and abducted at least 60 others in two communities of northwest Zamfara state, residents and a local traditional leader said, two days after armed men kidnapped dozens from a university in the state.
Elsewhere, in the northeast of the country suspected Islamist insurgents ambushed a convoy of vehicles under military escort, killing two soldiers and four civilians, said a police source and a motorist who witnessed the attack, Reuters reported.
The attackers set fire to five vehicles and drove off with one truck, the witness said.
President Bola Tinubu is yet to spell out how he will tackle widespread insecurity. His economic reforms, including the removal of a costly fuel subsidy and freeing the naira currency, have increased the cost of leaving, angering citizens.
Residents said gunmen early on Sunday tried to attack a forward army base in a rural Magami community of Zamfara, but were repelled. Zamfara is one of the states worst affected by kidnappings for ransom by armed gangs known locally as bandits.
The gunmen in three groups attacked the army base and the communities of Magami and Kabasa, said a traditional leader who declined to be named for security reasons, read the report.
He said 60 people, mostly women and children, were kidnapped.
“The bandits rode many motorcycles with guns and other weapons (and) were shooting sporadically,” Shuaibu Haruna, a resident of Magami, told Reuters by telephone.
Four people were killed during the attack, said Haruna, who attended their burial.
Isa Mohd from Kabasa community said four people were also killed and dozens of others kidnapped.
Police and army did not respond to requests for comment, Reuters reported.
Attacks in the northwest are part of widespread insecurity in Nigeria. Islamist fighters still carry out deadly attacks in the northeast, gangs and separatists attack security forces and government buildings in the southeast, and clashes involving farmers and herders continue to claim lives.
World
Fire in shop kills 35 people in southeastern Benin

At least 35 people were killed in southeastern Benin on Saturday after a fire broke out at a shop where witnesses said gasoline was being unloaded, a justice ministry representative said.
The fire broke out at 0930 local time in Seme-Podji municipality, near the border with Nigeria, Reuters reported.
“The fire burned down the store and according to an initial assessment resulted in 35 deaths including one child,” said Prosecutor Abdoubaki Adam-Bongle in a ministry statement, adding that an investigation had been opened to determine the cause.
“According to the witnesses interviewed, the fire was probably started during the unloading of bags of gasoline.”
More than a dozen others were seriously injured and are being treated in hospital, he said.
A video shared widely on social media, purportedly of the fire, shows a tower of black smoke and flames spewing into the air above what appears to be a market place as shocked people watch from a safe distance.
Reuters was not immediately able to verify the video.
World
Polish PM tells Ukraine’s Zelenskiy ‘never to insult Poles again’

Poland’s prime minister told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday not to “insult” Poles, maintaining harsh rhetoric towards Kyiv after the Polish president had sought to defuse a simmering row over grain imports.
Poland decided last week to extend a ban on Ukrainian grain imports, shaking Kyiv’s relationship with a neighbour that has been seen as one of its staunchest allies since Russia invaded Ukraine in February last year, Reuters reported.
Zelenskiy angered his neighbours when he told the United Nations General Assembly in New York that Kyiv was working to preserve land routes for grain exports, but that the “political theatre” around grain imports was only helping Moscow.
“I… want to tell President Zelenskiy never to insult Poles again, as he did recently during his speech at the U.N.,” Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told an election rally.
Poland holds a parliamentary election on Oct. 15, and Morawiecki’s ruling nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party has come in for criticism from the far right for what it says is the government’s subservient attitude to Ukraine.
Analysts say this has forced PiS, which looks set to remain the biggest party but may not secure a majority, to adopt a more confrontational approach to Kyiv in the closely fought campaign.
Earlier on Friday, President Andrzej Duda, a PiS ally, had said the dispute between Poland and Ukraine over grain imports would not significantly affect good bilateral relations, in an apparent move to ease tensions.
“I have no doubt that the dispute over the supply of grain from Ukraine to the Polish market is an absolute fragment of the entire Polish-Ukrainian relations,” Duda told a business conference.
“I don’t believe that it can have a significant impact on them, so we need to solve this matter between us.”
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