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Tag: Climate and environment

  • FACT FOCUS: Biden cancer remark causes confusion

    FACT FOCUS: Biden cancer remark causes confusion

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    President Joe Biden’s speech at a former coal-fired power plant in Massachusetts led to widespread claims on social media that he made a significant announcement not about climate change, but about his health.

    Conservative politicians and political commentators focused on a clip from Biden’s Wednesday speech, in which he told a story about growing up near Delaware oil refineries, to assert that the president announced that he has cancer.

    In response, a White House spokesperson confirmed reports that Biden was referring to previously disclosed skin cancer that was removed before he became president — not announcing a new diagnosis.

    Here are the facts.

    CLAIM: Biden announced that he has cancer.

    THE FACTS: Biden appeared at the Somerset, Massachusetts, power station to announce new steps to combat climate change, calling it “an emergency” and promising more robust action.

    At one point during his speech, he discussed the impact of environmental pollution from oil refineries near his hometown, sharing an anecdote about his childhood.

    “And guess what? The first frost, you knew what was happening. You had to put on your windshield wipers to get, literally, the oil slick off the window,” Biden said, according to a White House transcript of his remarks. “That’s why I and so damn many other people I grew up (with) have cancer and why can — for the longest time, Delaware had the highest cancer rate in the nation.”

    Right-wing accounts quickly began sharing a clip of this remark with the claim that Biden was revealing that he had cancer.

    “BREAKING: JOE BIDEN ANNOUNCES HE HAS CANCER!!,” a Republican running for Congress in Florida wrote.

    “President Biden just said he has cancer. Is it true? Or is the Commander in Chief confused? Who knows!!,” another widespread tweet stated.

    But Andrew Bates, a White House spokesperson, confirmed on Twitter that Biden was referring to the publicly disclosed fact that he had skin cancer removed before he became president.

    In a November 2021 memo summarizing Biden’s health, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, Biden’s physician for more than a decade, acknowledged that Biden had “several localized, non-melanoma skin cancers removed with Mohs surgery before he started his presidency.”

    “These lesions were completely excised, with clear margins,” the report continued.

    Though Biden suggested emissions from oil refineries were responsible for his cancer, his doctor previously linked it to sun exposure.

    While discussing the cancer in his memo, O’Connor wrote that it is “well-established that President Biden did spend a good deal of time in the sun in his youth.”

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    This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.

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  • AP FACT CHECK: Lake distorts Hobbs’ education votes in Ariz.

    AP FACT CHECK: Lake distorts Hobbs’ education votes in Ariz.

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    Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is misrepresenting the voting record of her opponent, Democrat Katie Hobbs, charging in a video released this week that her work in government shows Hobbs is “Anti-American and Un-Arizonan.”

    In a 3-minute social media video, set to dramatic music and featuring patriotic visuals, Lake claims that if Hobbs is elected governor “your kindergartner wouldn’t learn the Pledge of Allegiance, but your precious 5-year-old would be taught about sex.”

    But her suggestion is built on misrepresentations of Hobbs’ votes and the content of various Arizona education bills.

    Lake’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Sarah Robinson, a spokesperson for Hobbs, said in a statement that “Kari Lake’s latest political theater is just another distraction from her own extreme positions.”

    Here’s a look at the facts.

    LAKE: “As a legislator, Hobbs actually voted to block the Pledge of Allegiance, our national anthem, our Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and even the Mayflower Compact from being taught to the next generation of Americans right here in Arizona.”

    THE FACTS: Lake is distorting Hobbs’ voting record. When Hobbs was a state senator, she voted against Senate Bill 1289, which amended an existing law listing materials that teachers and school administrators are allowed to read or post in school facilities. That list includes the Pledge of Allegiance and the national anthem, among other documents. The bill added the Arizona state motto, “Ditat Deus,” which means God enriches, to the list. It also spelled out the wording of the national motto, adding “In God we trust,” to the list. No other changes were made.

    The bill, which was approved by lawmakers and signed into law, did not affect the portion of the law that permits school staff to read or post the Pledge of Allegiance, the national anthem, or the other documents Lake identified, experts say.

    “It’s an incorrect claim. It’s a charge that’s untrue,” said Paul Bender, a law professor at Arizona State University. “She voted simply not to add to those things, ‘In God we trust’ and ‘God enriches’.”

    “The state statute already set forth the items that may be read or posted in school buildings, including the national anthem,” said Paul Bentz, Republican pollster in Phoenix. “None of those items were in question.”

    If the bill had failed to pass, the original law allowing school staff to read or post materials such as the Declaration of Independence in schools would not have changed, Barrett Marson, a Phoenix-based Republican political consultant wrote in a text message to The Associated Press.

    In a tweet on Wednesday appearing to double down on her previous accusations, Lake added another claim: that Hobbs opposed displaying American flags. As evidence, she cited Senate Bill 1289, Senate Bill 1020, and Senate Bill 1152. An AP review of these bills found no instance in which Hobbs voted against displaying the flag in schools.

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    LAKE, on what would happen in Hobbs’ Arizona: “Your precious 5-year-old would be taught about sex.”

    THE FACTS: As a state senator, Hobbs did sponsor a bill to require school districts to teach sex education in grades K-12. The bill, which didn’t pass, would have resulted in parents being required to proactively remove their child from being taught the curriculum, rather than opting in to participate.

    However, to claim that it would have led to 5-year-olds being taught about sex leaves out important context.

    The bill, introduced in the 2016 legislative session, would have mandated that the sex education program for kindergarten through 12th grade be “medically accurate, developmentally accurate and age-appropriate.” It defined age-appropriate as “topics, messages and teaching methods that are suitable to particular age and developmental levels, based on cognitive, emotional, social and experience levels of most students at that age level.”

    At the developmental stage of a 5-year-old, age-appropriate sex education largely involves learning about the concept of “good touch, bad touch” — not learning about sex as a physical act, experts say.

    “At the kindergarten level, age-appropriate sex education means things like learning the correct names of body parts, which has been found to be a protective factor against sexual abuse,” said Nora Gelperin, director of sexuality education and training at Advocates for Youth, an organization that supports comprehensive sex education. “It can also mean teaching kids that they need permission to touch someone else — the beginning of learning about personal boundaries. At this age, kids may also be taught to identify a safe person to talk to if they’re in trouble. All the lessons are in service of ensuring safety and respect.”

    Arizona is one of just five states that require parents to “opt-in” to sex ed classes, rather than having an opt-out system. State law bans sex education before 5th grade, and schools are not required to offer the courses at all. Students younger than 5th grade can only be offered instruction on HIV and sexual abuse prevention.

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    EDITOR’S NOTE — A look at the veracity of claims by political figures.

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    Find AP Fact Checks at http://apnews.com/APFactCheck

    Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck

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  • NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

    NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

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    A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

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    Ukrainian family killed in Russian attack, despite denials

    CLAIM: Grave markers for a Ukrainian family that say they died on March 9 in Izium prove they were not killed by Russian forces, because Russian troops did not enter the Ukrainian city until weeks later.

    THE FACTS: The Ukrainian city of Izium was being heavily bombarded by Russian forces on March 9 and the family was killed in the attack, according to people with direct knowledge of the attack on the high-rise building where the family lived, as well as reports from humanitarian groups and Ukrainian officials who documented the destruction. After Ukrainian authorities discovered a mass grave in Izium this month, social media accounts for the Russian embassy in South Africa openly questioned whether one of the families buried at the site had been truly killed in a Russian offensive on the northeastern city. On its social media accounts, the embassy shared a screenshot of a tweet by Andrii Yermak, head of the office of the president of Ukraine, featuring a photo of the Stolpakov family’s grave site. The simple wooden crosses, found in a wooded area among scores of others, mark the date of their deaths as March 9, 2022. “The Russians are killing entire Ukrainian families,” Yermak had tweeted. “Izyum. Olesya, 6 years old. Murdered by the Russian uniformed terrorists. Her parents are buried nearby.” The Russian embassy in its posts falsely claimed that the family could not have been killed by Russian troops, because they were not in the area at the time. But Russian forces did carry out several strikes on Izium on March 9, including one that destroyed a high rise on the east bank of the Severodonetsk River, according to a dozen people with direct knowledge that AP journalists have spoken to in recent days. A woman who previously lived in the building and whose mother died in the blast told the AP the Stolpakovs lived in the high rise and were among those killed. Tetiana Pryvalikhina, a 40-year-old who now lives in Kladno in the Czech Republic with her daughter, said in messages on Instagram written in Ukrainian that many of the bodies couldn’t be removed until about a month after the attack, making identification difficult. Izium’s deputy mayor Volodymyr Matsokin told the AP that about 50 people died in the attack, including the Stolpakov family. Matsokin was among those who posted numerous photos and videos of the destroyed city on social media during those weeks. Ukrainian news outlets also reported that the family died in the March 9 attack, and the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense said in a Sept. 17 tweet that they died in an aerial attack on their home that day. Denis Krivosheev, a deputy director at Amnesty International, called the Russian embassy’s comment “totally disingenuous.” While it’s true that Russian forces did not establish full control of Izium until much later, they were clearly heavily shelling the city at the time the family was killed, he said. “The timing totally fits: our respondents were telling us about events at the time including on and close to 9 March,” he said in an email. George Barros, a Russia expert at the Institute for the Study of War, a D.C.-based group that’s been tracking major developments in the war, agreed. “There is ample documentation of Russian indirect fire against civilian infrastructure in Izyum since at least March 3, several days before Russian forces occupied Izyum,” he wrote in an email Monday. During a media briefing on Thursday, Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow, repeated claims that Russian forces weren’t responsible for the March 9 deaths.

    — Associated Press writers Philip Marcelo and Beatrice DuPuy in New York, Lori Hinnant in Ukraine and Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.

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    Biden’s 2021 comments on hurricane preparedness misrepresented

    CLAIM: President Joe Biden called for people in Florida to prepare for Hurricane Ian by getting vaccinated against COVID-19.

    THE FACTS: Social media users are misrepresenting an August 2021 video in which Biden urged people in hurricane-prone states to get vaccinated in case they needed to evacuate or stay in a shelter. As Hurricane Ian on Tuesday approached the southwest coast of Florida, where 2.5 million people had been ordered to evacuate, the out-of-context clip of Biden spread widely on social media. “If you’re in a state where hurricanes often strike, like Florida or the Gulf Coast or into Texas, a vital part of preparing for hurricane season is to get vaccinated now,” Biden says in the video clip. “Everything is more complicated if you’re not vaccinated and a hurricane or a natural disaster hits.” Some social media users who shared the clip suggested that Biden’s comments were in reference to Hurricane Ian’s expected landfall in Florida. “Protect yourself from incoming hurricanes by getting vaccinated… right now!” wrote a Twitter user who shared the video on Tuesday. But the video is from Aug. 10, 2021. Biden made the comments prior to a White House briefing from FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell and other officials about how the COVID-19 pandemic was impacting hurricane preparedness. But he didn’t say getting vaccinated would protect against hurricanes. In the full video, Biden discussed what he described as the upcoming “peak” hurricane season in the Atlantic region coinciding with the pandemic. “If you wind up having to evacuate, if you wind up having to stay in a shelter, you don’t want to add COVID-19 to the list of dangers that you’re going to be confronting,” Biden said in the video, later adding: “We can’t prevent hurricanes making landfall, but we can prevent people from getting seriously sick and dying from COVID-19.” Hurricane Ian made landfall in southwest Florida on Wednesday as a Category 4 storm, leaving destruction in its wake.

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    Analysts: China flight cancellations follow normal pattern

    CLAIM: There was no flight movement over China as more than 9,000 flights were canceled across the country in a single day last week.

    THE FACTS: While flight tracking estimates show that thousands of flights were canceled on several days last week, this remains consistent with the high cancellation rates the country has experienced amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and multiple experts told the AP that last week’s air patterns weren’t unusual. As baseless claims of a military coup in China spread online recently, social media users asserted that air traffic data showing more than 9,000 flights canceled across the country on a single day was proof that planes were being grounded amid turmoil in the country. “Absolutely no flight movement over China,” wrote one Twitter user on Sept. 24 while posting an image of the global flight tracking service FlightRadar24 that showed a handful of planes crossing the country. Others claimed that about 9,500 flights were canceled across China on Sept. 21, accounting for nearly 60% of flights that day. But experts say these numbers, as well as some images from flight tracking services, are being presented out of context. Ian Petchenik, director of communications for FlightRadar24, said the images appearing to capture the service’s dashboard over the weekend were likely taken during overnight hours of low flight traffic in China. He added that they also may reflect the fact that FlightRadar24’s display can only show so many flights on screen at a time, meaning if a user zooms out far enough, the number of flights in an area will seemingly disappear. Further, China’s population is not evenly distributed across the country. Because flight density varies greatly depending on the region, some areas are left looking sparse while other areas are more heavily trafficked. “If you’re not understanding what you’re looking at or you’re purposefully misrepresenting what you’re seeing, that becomes an unfortunate byproduct,” Petchenik said. FlightRadar24 data shows that just over 6,000 out of nearly 15,000 flights were canceled on Sept. 21, which Petchenik said falls in line with the high level of daily cancellations that China has recorded for more than two years. While airlines in the U.S., Europe and Australia, among others, reduced the number of scheduled flights in their flight programs amid the pandemic, many Chinese airlines opted not to remove any scheduled flights, instead canceling a large number of flights on a daily basis, Petchenik told the AP. “In no way is this surprising, concerning, suspenseful or anything,” he said. FlightRadar24 data also shows that the three Wednesdays preceding Sept. 21 all also logged more than 5,000 canceled flights. FlightAware, another major flight tracking data company, confirmed to the AP in a statement that its data listed more than 8,000 scheduled flights across China on Sept. 21, nearly 2,000 of which were canceled. Spokesperson Kathleen Bangs confirmed that the cancellations reflected normal air traffic patterns in China. “It’s not uncommon, in fact, it’s pretty much business as usual that we see very high cancellations out of China out of a number of major airports every day,” Bangs added. Cirium, an aviation analytics firm, also told the AP in a statement that Cirium found that the rate of flight cancellations in China on Sept. 21 was “very similar to other recent days.” Social media users spread the false claims of a military coup weeks before China’s ruling Communist Party is set to hold a key congress at which leader Xi Jinping is expected to be granted a third five-year term. But Xi reappeared on state television Tuesday after a several-day absence from public view. He was shown visiting a display at the Beijing Exhibition Hall, his first appearance since he returned from a regional summit in Uzbekistan last weekend. Under Chinese pandemic regulations, he would need to stay in quarantine for a week after returning.

    — Associated Press writer Sophia Tulp in New York contributed this report.

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    Video of EU flag removal in Italy is from 2013, not 2022

    CLAIM: Video shows Italians taking down the European Union flag and replacing it with Italy’s flag after a right-wing group, Brothers of Italy, won its national election.

    THE FACTS: The video, filmed on Dec. 14, 2013, in Rome, shows a member of a neo-fascist group tearing down the E.U. flag, not Italians demonstrating after the election this week. Following the victory of a party with neo-fascist roots in the country’s national election on Monday, social media users are sharing a nearly 10-year-old video to falsely claim it shows a crowd’s reaction to what is set to be Italy’s first far-right-led government since World War II. The video shows a man climbing up a ladder to a balcony to remove the E.U. flag, displayed outside the E.U. Commission office in Rome. A crowd of people chant and wave Italian flags before police break up the group. “EU Flag Ripped Down as Right-Wing Party sweeps Italian elections,” an Instagram post, which features a screenshot of the video states. But the video was filmed and uploaded to YouTube on Dec. 14, 2013. It shows a member of CasaPound, a neo-fascist group, removing the flag. CasaPound said in a statement on its website on Dec. 14, 2013, that its then-vice president, Simone Di Stefano, had been arrested for taking the E.U. flag. The group stated that Di Stefano wanted to replace the E.U. flag with the tricolor flag to protest Italian involvement in the international organization. While it’s not immediately clear who first filmed the video, dozens of local news outlets picked up the footage and reposted it that year. CasaPound also used a still frame from the same footage in its statement about the event, showing a man in a red, white and green mask and black jacket holding the blue E.U. flag from a balcony of the commission office. The group shared the video on its YouTube page, with the caption in Italian: “CasaPound blitz at European Union headquarters – flag stolen, police charges – December 14, 2013.” On Monday, Brothers of Italy won the most votes in Italy’s national election, making Giorgia Meloni the country’s first woman premier, the AP reported. Italy’s move to the far right places a eurosceptic party in a position to lead a founding member of the European Union and its third-largest economy.

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    Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck

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    Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck

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  • By boat and jet ski, volunteers assist in Ian rescue efforts

    By boat and jet ski, volunteers assist in Ian rescue efforts

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    SANIBEL ISLAND, Fla. (AP) — There was no time to waste. As Hurricane Ian lashed southwest Florida, Bryan Stern, a veteran of the U.S. military, and others began gathering crews, boats and even crowbars for the urgent task that would soon be at hand: rescuing hundreds of people who might get trapped by floodwaters.

    “As soon as the sun came up, we started rolling,” said Stern, who last year put together a search-and-rescue team called Project Dynamo, which has undertaken operations in Afghanistan, Ukraine and, now, Florida.

    Project Dynamo has rescued more than 20 people, many of them elderly residents who became cut off when the Category 4 storm washed away a bridge connecting the Florida mainland with Sanibel Island, a crescent-shaped sliver of shell-strewn sand popular with tourists that is home to about 7,000 residents.

    On a stretch of beach, etched into the sand, there were calls for immediate assistance: “Help,” “SOS.”

    As local authorities continue reaching people isolated on barrier islands or trapped by floodwaters, others unwilling to be bystanders have sprung into action, sometimes risking their own safety or setting aside their own losses and travails to aid official rescue operations. It isn’t a new phenomenon: Grassroots rescue groups have responded to past disasters, including after Hurricane Ida pounded Louisiana last year.

    Although some officials frown on people running their own rescue operations — especially in the early going if it’s not safe enough yet or if the rescuers lack training — others welcome every bit of help.

    “It sort of restores your view of humanity. You see people chipping in and they aren’t getting paid for it,” said Tim Barrett, the training division chief for the Sanibel Fire Department. “There’s even people whose homes are destroyed, but they’re helping them. They’re still helping other people.”

    It can be dangerous work. Hundreds of buildings were destroyed by the ferocious storm, which lashed some areas with winds of 155 mph (249 kph) or more and pummeled the coast with ocean surge.

    “We’re still working on rescuing people. I mean, this is just horrible that people have lost their lives. It’s horrible that people are still possibly stuck in rubble,” Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

    “But I’ve been talking to the sheriffs and first responders and they’re trying to get to these people as quickly as they can.,” he said. “They’ve been working to evacuate people that stayed on, places like Sanibel and Pine Island and Fort Myers Beach.”

    The storm has killed dozens of people in Florida and more bodies might still be recovered.

    Matt Mengel and his friends said they had made seven rescues so far, most of them elderly residents of Sanibel Island whom they reached on jet skis.

    “We had gasoline. We had jet skis. We had water. We had food and snacks. And our mission was just to go find them, dead or alive,” he said.

    He called the destruction of the area, where he has lived for seven years, heartbreaking. “It was sad to see our home get destroyed and our favorite spots get destroyed.”

    The group’s rescue missions began Friday when they hadn’t heard from a friend who lives and works on Sanibel Island. That friend was found safe and sound, but they quickly found others who needed help.

    Just as they were leaving, Mengel’s girlfriend heard a woman calling out for help. They responded and found a couple who desperately wanted to leave the island.

    A Coast Guard helicopter was patrolling nearby, and Mengel — with the help of the Project Dynamo crew — began frantically waving for attention. The helicopter spotted him and touched down on the beach to whisk the couple away.

    “All I wanted to do was help,” Mengel said.

    A local television station recounted how three siblings — Leah, Evan and Jayden Wickert — helped save about 30 people from rising floodwaters in a Naples neighborhood.

    Water had deepened to about 6 feet (nearly 2 meters) in their neighborhood, and folks were standing on whatever they could to keep their necks above water. The siblings used kayaks and boats to save people.

    “There were a lot of people standing on their couches getting out of the water,” Leah Wickert told WBBH-TV.

    Betty Reynolds, 73, expressed appreciation for the men who came to her rescue after she spent days in her damaged Sanibel Island home.

    “You hate to leave a home you’ve lived in for 47 years,” she said, but said it filled with “lots and lots of mud.”

    She said she didn’t evacuate before the storm because she and her home survived previous storms unscathed. But she said this one took her by surprise: “I just didn’t believe there was going to be so much storm surge.”

    Reynolds was taken off the island Saturday while Stern and his Project Dynamo team were on another mission, having received a text from a man who was concerned about his mother.

    Stern, whose cohorts are also military veterans, speaks quickly and is full of bravado. On a recent trip to Sanibel Island, he landed a boat directly on the beach, jumped into the water as it hit the sand and ran ashore.

    “It’s like D-Day,” he said afterward.

    When there was no answer at the home of the woman whose son had texted, his team used a crowbar to enter, with the son’s permission.

    Stern said he couldn’t stand by. His rescue project was borne out of his frustrations watching Americans and their allies struggle last year to get out of Afghanistan.

    He has since turned his attention to helping people flee the war in Ukraine, where Stern and his team plan to return soon after what he called a brief “vacation” in Florida.

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    Find more AP coverage of Hurricane Ian: https://apnews.com/hub/hurricanes

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  • ‘We’re with you,’ Biden tells Puerto Rico ahead of visit

    ‘We’re with you,’ Biden tells Puerto Rico ahead of visit

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    PONCE, Puerto Rico (AP) — President Joe Biden arrived in Puerto Rico on Monday to survey damage from Hurricane Fiona, as tens of thousands of people remain without power two weeks after the storm hit.

    The Category 1 hurricane knocked out electrical power to the U.S. territory of 3.2 million people, 44% of whom live below the poverty line.

    Power has been restored to about 90% of the island’s 1.47 million customers, but more than 137,000 others, mostly in the hardest hit areas of Puerto Rico’s southern and western regions, continue to struggle in the dark. Another 66,000 customers are without water.

    Biden has pledged that the U.S. government will not abandon Puerto Rico as it starts to rebuild again, five years after the more powerful Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017.

    While leaving the White House on Monday morning, the president said he was going in part because people there “haven’t been taken very good care of,” and they were “trying like hell to catch up from the last hurricane.”

    During his visit, Biden planned to announce the administration will provide $60 million through last year’s bipartisan infrastructure law to help Puerto Rico shore up levees, strengthen flood walls and create a new flood warning system so the island will be better prepared for future storms, the White House said.

    “We see what you’re going through, and we’re with you,” Biden told Puerto Ricans and Floridians in a message Sunday on his official Twitter account.

    Florida is cleaning up after Hurricane Ian churned across that state last week, killing more than 60 people, decimating some coastal communities and flooding others. Biden plans to visit Florida on Wednesday to survey damage.

    The president was accompanied by first lady Jill Biden and Deanne Criswell, the Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator. They touched down in Ponce, a city on the southern coast, where most of the storm damage is.

    “He’s going to the hardest hit area of Puerto Rico, and it’s an area where presidents have not gone to before,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One.

    Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi planned to update Biden on recovery efforts.

    “We will make sure to keep working together to ensure the continuity of a reconstruction already underway,” the governor tweeted on Sunday.

    Fiona caused catastrophic flooding, tore apart roads and bridges, and unleashed more than 100 landslides when it hit Puerto Rico on Sept. 18. At least two people died after being swept away by floods, and several others were killed in accidents related to the use of candles or generator during the island-wide power outage.

    Government officials have estimated some $3 billion in damages, but warn that costs could rise significantly as evaluations continue.

    Some people in Puerto Rico wondered whether Biden’s visit would change anything as they recalled how President Donald Trump visited after Hurricane Maria hit as a more powerful Category 4 storm in 2017, and tossed rolls of paper towels into a crowd in a display that riled many.

    “We know that there may have been some issues in the previous administration,” Criswell said Monday. “We are laser-focused on giving them the support they need.”

    Criswell, who said that FEMA personnel were sent to the island before the storm and will remain there to help with recovery, visited Puerto Rico shortly after Fiona struck.

    “They finally feel like this administration cares for them, and that they’re going to be there for them to support them through this response and recovery effort,” she said.

    There’s entrenched skepticism in some areas of the island that anything will change.

    Manuel Veguilla, a 63-year-old retired mechanic who lives in a remote community in the hard-hit northern mountain town of Caguas, said he didn’t expect his life to improve in the aftermath of Fiona, which cut off his neighborhood from any help for a week.

    “They always offer the lollipop to the kids,” he said, referring to Biden’s visit. “But in the end, the outcome is always the same. The aid goes to those who have the most.”

    Biden recently told Pierluisi that he authorized 100% federal funding for a month for debris removal, search and rescue efforts, power and water restoration, shelter and food.

    The lack of electrical power on the island led to the temporary closure of businesses, including gas stations and grocery stores, as fuel supplies dwindled amid heavy generator use. As a result, many cheered the Biden administration’s decision to temporarily waive a federal law so that a British Petroleum ship could deliver 300,000 barrels of diesel.

    Many also have begun demanding that Puerto Rico be fully exempted from the law, known as the Jones Act, that requires that all goods transported to Puerto Rico be aboard a ship built in the U.S., owned and crewed by U.S. citizens and flying the U.S. flag. This drives up costs for an island that already imports 85% of its food.

    Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., also said Puerto Ricans would not be forgotten.

    Rubio said the island appeared to be “in better position to respond this time around” due to the prepositioning of personnel and supplies before the storm hit and because part of Puerto Rico’s electrical grid had been rebuilt after Hurricane Maria.

    “We will do everything we can, we always have, to support Puerto Rico now in the recovery after this, yet another devastating storm,” Rubio said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

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    Superville reported from Washington. Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico.

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  • In Hurricane Ian’s wake, dangers persist, worsen in parts

    In Hurricane Ian’s wake, dangers persist, worsen in parts

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    FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) — People kayaking down streets that were passable just a day or two earlier. Hundreds of thousands without power. National Guard helicopters flying rescue missions to residents still stranded on Florida’s barrier islands.

    Days after Hurricane Ian carved a path of destruction from Florida to the Carolinas, the dangers persisted, and even worsened in some places. It was clear the road to recovery from this monster storm will be long and painful.

    And Ian was still not done. The storm doused Virginia with rain Sunday, and officials warned of the potential for severe flooding along its coast, with a coastal flood warning in effect Monday.

    Ian’s remnants moved offshore and formed a nor’easter that is expected to pile even more water into an already inundated Chesapeake Bay and threatened to cause the most significant tidal flooding event in Virginia’s Hampton Roads region in the last 10 to 15 years, said Cody Poche, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

    The island town of Chincoteague declared a state of emergency Sunday and strongly recommended that residents in certain areas evacuate. The Eastern Shore and northern portion of North Carolina’s Outer Banks were also likely to be impacted.

    At least 68 people have been confirmed dead: 61 in Florida, four in North Carolina and three in Cuba.

    Fort Myers Beach Mayor Ray Murphy told NBC’s “Today Show” on Monday that the search and rescue mission remained underway, and would be taking place for the next couple of days. Murphy said that’s why residents who evacuated are largely being kept away from their homes.

    With the death toll rising, Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said the federal government was ready to help in a huge way, focusing first on victims in Florida, which took the brunt of one of the strongest storms to make landfall in the United States. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden plan to visit the state on Wednesday.

    Flooded roadways and washed-out bridges to barrier islands left many people isolated amid limited cellphone service and a lack of basic amenities such as water, electricity and the internet. Officials warned that the situation in many areas isn’t expected to improve for several days because the rain that fell has nowhere to go because waterways are overflowing.

    Fewer than 620,000 homes and businesses in Florida were still without electricity by early Monday, down from a peak of 2.6 million.

    Criswell told “Fox News Sunday” that the federal government, including the Coast Guard and Department of Defense, had moved into position “the largest amount of search and rescue assets that I think we’ve ever put in place before.”

    Still, recovery will take time, said Criswell, who visited the state Friday and Saturday to assess the damage and talk to survivors. She cautioned that dangers remain with downed power lines in standing water.

    More than 1,600 people have been rescued statewide, according to Florida’s emergency management agency.

    Rescue missions were ongoing, especially to Florida’s barrier islands, which were cut off from the mainland when storm surges destroyed causeways and bridges.

    The state will build a temporary traffic passageway for the largest one, Pine Island, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Sunday, adding that an allocation had been approved for Deportment of Transportation to build it this week and construction could start as soon as Monday.

    “It’s not going to be a full bridge, you’re going to have to go over it probably at 5 miles an hour or something, but it’ll at least let people get in and off the island with their vehicles,” the governor said at a news conference.

    Coast Guard, municipal and private crews have been using helicopters, boats and even jetskis to evacuate people over the past several days.

    In rural Seminole County, north of Orlando, residents donned waders, boots and bug spray to paddle to their flooded homes Sunday.

    Ben Bertat found 4 inches (10 centimeters) of water in his house by Lake Harney after kayaking there.

    “I think it’s going to get worse because all of this water has to get to the lake” said Bertat, pointing to the water flooding a nearby road. “With ground saturation, all this swamp is full and it just can’t take any more water. It doesn’t look like it’s getting any lower.”

    Elsewhere, power remained knocked out to at least half of South Carolina’s Pawleys Island, a beach community roughly 75 miles (115 kilometers) up the coast from Charleston. In North Carolina, the storm downed trees and power lines.

    ___

    Associated Press reporters Rebecca Santana in Ft. Myers; Brendan Farrington and Anthony Izaguirre in Tallahassee; David Fischer in Miami; Sarah Rankin in Richmond, Va.; and Richard Lardner in Washington contributed to this report.

    ___

    For more AP coverage of Hurricane Ian: apnews.com/hub/hurricanes

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  • In Hurricane Ian’s wake, dangers persist, worsen in parts

    In Hurricane Ian’s wake, dangers persist, worsen in parts

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    FORT MYERS, Fla. — People kayaking down streets that were passable just a day or two earlier. Hundreds of thousands without power. National Guard helicopters flying rescue missions to residents still stranded on Florida’s barrier islands.

    Days after Hurricane Ian carved a path of destruction from Florida to the Carolinas, the dangers persisted, and even worsened in some places. It was clear the road to recovery from this monster storm will be long and painful.

    And Ian was still not done. The storm doused Virginia with rain Sunday, and officials warned of the potential for severe flooding along its coast, beginning overnight Monday.

    Ian’s remnants moved offshore and formed a nor’easter that is expected to pile even more water into an already inundated Chesapeake Bay and threatened to cause the most significant tidal flooding event in Virginia’s Hampton Roads region in the last 10 to 15 years, said Cody Poche, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

    The island town of Chincoteague declared a state of emergency Sunday and strongly recommended that residents in certain areas evacuate. The Eastern Shore and northern portion of North Carolina’s Outer Banks were also likely to be impacted.

    At least 68 people have been confirmed dead: 61 in Florida, four in North Carolina and three in Cuba.

    With the death toll rising, Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said the federal government was ready to help in a huge way, focusing first on victims in Florida, which took the brunt of one of the strongest storms to make landfall in the United States. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden plan to visit the state on Wednesday.

    Flooded roadways and washed-out bridges to barrier islands left many people isolated amid limited cellphone service and a lack of basic amenities such as water, electricity and the internet. Officials warned that the situation in many areas isn’t expected to improve for several days because the rain that fell has nowhere to go because waterways are overflowing.

    Fewer than 700,000 homes and businesses in Florida were still without electricity by late Sunday, down from a peak of 2.6 million.

    Criswell told “Fox News Sunday” that the federal government, including the Coast Guard and Department of Defense, had moved into position “the largest amount of search and rescue assets that I think we’ve ever put in place before.”

    Still, recovery will take time, said Criswell, who visited the state Friday and Saturday to assess the damage and talk to survivors. She cautioned that dangers remain with downed power lines in standing water.

    More than 1,600 people have been rescued statewide, according to Florida’s emergency management agency.

    Rescue missions were ongoing, especially to Florida’s barrier islands, which were cut off from the mainland when storm surges destroyed causeways and bridges.

    The state will build a temporary traffic passageway for the largest one, Pine Island, DeSantis said Sunday, adding that an allocation had been approved for Deportment of Transportation to build it this week and construction could start as soon as Monday.

    “It’s not going to be a full bridge, you’re going to have to go over it probably at 5 miles an hour or something, but it’ll at least let people get in and off the island with their vehicles,” the governor said at a news conference.

    Coast Guard, municipal and private crews have been using helicopters, boats and even jetskis to evacuate people over the past several days.

    In rural Seminole County, north of Orlando, residents donned waders, boots and bug spray to paddle to their flooded homes Sunday.

    Ben Bertat found 4 inches (10 centimeters) of water in his house by Lake Harney after kayaking there.

    “I think it’s going to get worse because all of this water has to get to the lake” said Bertat, pointing to the water flooding a nearby road. “With ground saturation, all this swamp is full and it just can’t take any more water. It doesn’t look like it’s getting any lower.”

    Elsewhere, power remained knocked out to at least half of South Carolina’s Pawleys Island, a beach community roughly 75 miles (115 kilometers) up the coast from Charleston. In North Carolina, the storm downed trees and power lines.

    ———

    Associated Press reporters Rebecca Santana in Ft. Myers; Brendan Farrington and Anthony Izaguirre in Tallahassee; David Fischer in Miami; Sarah Rankin in Richmond, Va.; and Richard Lardner in Washington contributed to this report.

    ———

    For more AP coverage of Hurricane Ian: apnews.com/hub/hurricanes

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  • By boat and jet ski, volunteers assist in Ian rescue efforts

    By boat and jet ski, volunteers assist in Ian rescue efforts

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    SANIBEL ISLAND, Fla. — There was no time to waste. As Hurricane Ian lashed southwest Florida, Bryan Stern, a veteran of the U.S. military, and others began gathering crews, boats and even crowbars for the urgent task that would soon be at hand: rescuing hundreds of people who might get trapped by floodwaters.

    “As soon as the sun came up, we started rolling,” said Stern, who last year put together a search-and-rescue team called Project Dynamo, which has undertaken operations in Afghanistan, Ukraine and, now, Florida.

    Project Dynamo has rescued more than 20 people, many of them elderly residents who became cut off when the Category 4 storm washed away a bridge connecting the Florida mainland with Sanibel Island, a crescent-shaped sliver of shell-strewn sand popular with tourists that is home to about 7,000 residents.

    On a stretch of beach, etched into the sand, there were calls for immediate assistance: “Help,” “SOS.”

    As local authorities continue reaching people isolated on barrier islands or trapped by floodwaters, others unwilling to be bystanders have sprung into action, sometimes risking their own safety or setting aside their own losses and travails to aid official rescue operations. It isn’t a new phenomenon: Grassroots rescue groups have responded to past disasters, including after Hurricane Ida pounded Louisiana last year.

    Although some officials frown on people running their own rescue operations — especially in the early going if it’s not safe enough yet or if the rescuers lack training — others welcome every bit of help.

    “It sort of restores your view of humanity. You see people chipping in and they aren’t getting paid for it,” said Tim Barrett, the training division chief for the Sanibel Fire Department. “There’s even people whose homes are destroyed, but they’re helping them. They’re still helping other people.”

    It can be dangerous work. Hundreds of buildings were destroyed by the ferocious storm, which lashed some areas with winds of 155 mph (249 kph) or more and pummeled the coast with ocean surge.

    “We’re still working on rescuing people. I mean, this is just horrible that people have lost their lives. It’s horrible that people are still possibly stuck in rubble,” Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

    “But I’ve been talking to the sheriffs and first responders and they’re trying to get to these people as quickly as they can.,” he said. “They’ve been working to evacuate people that stayed on, places like Sanibel and Pine Island and Fort Myers Beach.”

    The storm has killed dozens of people in Florida and more bodies might still be recovered.

    Matt Mengel and his friends said they had made seven rescues so far, most of them elderly residents of Sanibel Island whom they reached on jet skis.

    “We had gasoline. We had jet skis. We had water. We had food and snacks. And our mission was just to go find them, dead or alive,” he said.

    He called the destruction of the area, where he has lived for seven years, heartbreaking. “It was sad to see our home get destroyed and our favorite spots get destroyed.”

    The group’s rescue missions began Friday when they hadn’t heard from a friend who lives and works on Sanibel Island. That friend was found safe and sound, but they quickly found others who needed help.

    Just as they were leaving, Mengel’s girlfriend heard a woman calling out for help. They responded and found a couple who desperately wanted to leave the island.

    A Coast Guard helicopter was patrolling nearby, and Mengel — with the help of the Project Dynamo crew — began frantically waving for attention. The helicopter spotted him and touched down on the beach to whisk the couple away.

    “All I wanted to do was help,” Mengel said.

    A local television station recounted how three siblings — Leah, Evan and Jayden Wickert — helped save about 30 people from rising floodwaters in a Naples neighborhood.

    Water had deepened to about 6 feet (nearly 2 meters) in their neighborhood, and folks were standing on whatever they could to keep their necks above water. The siblings used kayaks and boats to save people.

    “There were a lot of people standing on their couches getting out of the water,” Leah Wickert told WBBH-TV.

    Betty Reynolds, 73, expressed appreciation for the men who came to her rescue after she spent days in her damaged Sanibel Island home.

    “You hate to leave a home you’ve lived in for 47 years,” she said, but said it filled with “lots and lots of mud.”

    She said she didn’t evacuate before the storm because she and her home survived previous storms unscathed. But she said this one took her by surprise: “I just didn’t believe there was going to be so much storm surge.”

    Reynolds was taken off the island Saturday while Stern and his Project Dynamo team were on another mission, having received a text from a man who was concerned about his mother.

    Stern, whose cohorts are also military veterans, speaks quickly and is full of bravado. On a recent trip to Sanibel Island, he landed a boat directly on the beach, jumped into the water as it hit the sand and ran ashore.

    “It’s like D-Day,” he said afterward.

    When there was no answer at the home of the woman whose son had texted, his team used a crowbar to enter, with the son’s permission.

    Stern said he couldn’t stand by. His rescue project was borne out of his frustrations watching Americans and their allies struggle last year to get out of Afghanistan.

    He has since turned his attention to helping people flee the war in Ukraine, where Stern and his team plan to return soon after what he called a brief “vacation” in Florida.

    ———

    Find more AP coverage of Hurricane Ian: https://apnews.com/hub/hurricanes

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  • In Hurricane Ian’s wake, dangers persist, worsen in parts

    In Hurricane Ian’s wake, dangers persist, worsen in parts

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    FORT MYERS, Fla. — People kayaking down streets that were passable just a day or two earlier. Hundreds of thousands without power. National Guard helicopters flying rescue missions to residents still stranded on Florida’s barrier islands.

    Days after Hurricane Ian carved a path of destruction from Florida to the Carolinas, the dangers persisted, and even worsened in some places. It was clear the road to recovery from this monster storm will be long and painful.

    And Ian was still not done. The storm doused Virginia with rain Sunday, and officials warned of the potential for severe flooding along its coast, beginning overnight Monday.

    Ian’s remnants moved offshore and formed a nor’easter that is expected to pile even more water into an already inundated Chesapeake Bay and threatened to cause the most significant tidal flooding event in Virginia’s Hampton Roads region in the last 10 to 15 years, said Cody Poche, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

    The island town of Chincoteague declared a state of emergency Sunday and strongly recommended that residents in certain areas evacuate. The Eastern Shore and northern portion of North Carolina’s Outer Banks were also likely to be impacted.

    At least 68 people have been confirmed dead: 61 in Florida, four in North Carolina and three in Cuba.

    With the death toll rising, Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said the federal government was ready to help in a huge way, focusing first on victims in Florida, which took the brunt of one of the strongest storms to make landfall in the United States. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden plan to visit the state on Wednesday.

    Flooded roadways and washed-out bridges to barrier islands left many people isolated amid limited cellphone service and a lack of basic amenities such as water, electricity and the internet. Officials warned that the situation in many areas isn’t expected to improve for several days because the rain that fell has nowhere to go because waterways are overflowing.

    Fewer than 700,000 homes and businesses in Florida were still without electricity by late Sunday, down from a peak of 2.6 million.

    Criswell told “Fox News Sunday” that the federal government, including the Coast Guard and Department of Defense, had moved into position “the largest amount of search and rescue assets that I think we’ve ever put in place before.”

    Still, recovery will take time, said Criswell, who visited the state Friday and Saturday to assess the damage and talk to survivors. She cautioned that dangers remain with downed power lines in standing water.

    More than 1,600 people have been rescued statewide, according to Florida’s emergency management agency.

    Rescue missions were ongoing, especially to Florida’s barrier islands, which were cut off from the mainland when storm surges destroyed causeways and bridges.

    The state will build a temporary traffic passageway for the largest one, Pine Island, DeSantis said Sunday, adding that an allocation had been approved for Deportment of Transportation to build it this week and construction could start as soon as Monday.

    “It’s not going to be a full bridge, you’re going to have to go over it probably at 5 miles an hour or something, but it’ll at least let people get in and off the island with their vehicles,” the governor said at a news conference.

    Coast Guard, municipal and private crews have been using helicopters, boats and even jetskis to evacuate people over the past several days.

    In rural Seminole County, north of Orlando, residents donned waders, boots and bug spray to paddle to their flooded homes Sunday.

    Ben Bertat found 4 inches (10 centimeters) of water in his house by Lake Harney after kayaking there.

    “I think it’s going to get worse because all of this water has to get to the lake” said Bertat, pointing to the water flooding a nearby road. “With ground saturation, all this swamp is full and it just can’t take any more water. It doesn’t look like it’s getting any lower.”

    Elsewhere, power remained knocked out to at least half of South Carolina’s Pawleys Island, a beach community roughly 75 miles (115 kilometers) up the coast from Charleston. In North Carolina, the storm downed trees and power lines.

    ———

    Associated Press reporters Rebecca Santana in Ft. Myers; Brendan Farrington and Anthony Izaguirre in Tallahassee; David Fischer in Miami; Sarah Rankin in Richmond, Va.; and Richard Lardner in Washington contributed to this report.

    ———

    For more AP coverage of Hurricane Ian: apnews.com/hub/hurricanes

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  • Cat. 3 Hurricane Orlene heads for Mexico’s Pacific coast

    Cat. 3 Hurricane Orlene heads for Mexico’s Pacific coast

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    MEXICO CITY — Hurricane Orlene lost some punch, but remained a dangerous Category 3 storm on Sunday as it headed toward Mexico’s northwest Pacific coast between the tourist towns of Mazatlan and San Blas.

    After growing into a hurricane Saturday, Orlene quickly added power, peaking as a Category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 130 mph (215 kph) early Sunday, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. But winds slipped back to 115 mph (185 kph) by late Sunday.

    The storm was moving over or near the Islas Marias, a former prison colony being developed as a tourist draw. The island is sparsely populated by government employees and buildings there are made of brick or concrete.

    Orlene was forecast to hit Mexico’s Pacific coast sometime Monday along a sparsely populated, lagoon-dotted stretch of mainland south of Mazatlan by late Monday.

    By late Sunday, Orlene was centered about 80 miles (125 kilometers) west-northwest of Cabo Corrientes — a point of land that juts into the Pacific just south of Puerto Vallarta — and was headed north at 8 mph (13 kph) early Sunday.

    A hurricane warning was in effect from San Blas to Mazatlan.

    The government of Jalisco state, where Puerto Vallarta is located, suspended classes Monday in towns and cities along the coast.

    The state civil defense office posted video of large waves crashing on a dock at Cabo Corrientes.

    In Sinaloa, where Mazatlan is located, some emergency shelters were opened.

    The center said the storm would likely begin weakening as its moved closer to land. But it was still projected to hit as a hurricane.

    It could bring flood-inducing rainfall of up to 10 inches (25 centimeters) in some places, as well as coastal flooding and dangerous surf.

    The ports of Manzanillo and Puerto Vallarta were closed to ships and Mexico’s navy announced that ports including Mazatlan, San Blas and Nuevo Vallarta were closed to small craft.

    Mexico’s National Water Commission said Orlene could cause “mudslides, rising river and stream levels, and flooding in low-lying areas.”

    The hurricane center said hurricane-force winds extended out about 15 miles (30 kilometers) from the center and tropical storm-force winds out to 70 miles (110 kilometers).

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  • King Charles III decides not to attend climate summit

    King Charles III decides not to attend climate summit

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    LONDON — King Charles III has decided not to attend the international climate change summit in Egypt next month, fueling speculation that the new monarch will have to rein in his environmental activism now that he has ascended the throne.

    The Sunday Times newspaper reported that the decision came after Conservative Prime Minister Liz Truss objected to Charles attending the conference, known as COP27, when she met with the king last month at Buckingham Palace.

    While there was no official rebuttal, other British media quoted unidentified palace and government sources as saying that Charles made his decision after consultation with the prime minister and that any suggestion of disagreement was untrue.

    Under the rules that govern Britain’s constitutional monarchy, the king is barred from interfering in politics. By convention, all official overseas visits by members of the royal family are undertaken in accordance with advice from the government and a decision like this would have resulted from consultation and agreement.

    Before becoming king when Queen Elizabeth II died on Sept. 8, there had been speculation Charles would travel to the summit in the role he then held as Prince of Wales.

    Charles attended the previous climate summit, COP26, last year in Glasgow, Scotland, but his attendance at this year’s conference was never confirmed. COP27 is taking place Nov. 16-18 in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

    When he was Prince of Wales, Charles was accused of meddling in government affairs, including allegations that he inappropriately lobbied government ministers.

    But Charles is now king, and he has acknowledged that he will have less freedom to speak out on public issues as monarch than he did as the heir to the throne. At the same time, his advisers would be looking for the right time and place for Charles’ first overseas trip as sovereign.

    “My life will, of course, change as I take up my new responsibilities,’’ Charles said in a televised address after his mother’s death.

    “It will no longer be possible for me to give so much of my time and energies to the charities and issues for which I care so deeply. But I know this important work will go on in the trusted hands of others.”

    ———

    Follow all AP stories on climate change issues at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment.

    ———

    Follow all AP stories on the British monarchy at https://apnews.com/hub/queen-elizabeth-ii.

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  • Authorities say 47 storm fatalities now confirmed in Florida, raising global death toll from Hurricane Ian to 54

    Authorities say 47 storm fatalities now confirmed in Florida, raising global death toll from Hurricane Ian to 54

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    Authorities say 47 storm fatalities now confirmed in Florida, raising global death toll from Hurricane Ian to 54

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  • Pine Island residents recount horror, fear as Ian bore down

    Pine Island residents recount horror, fear as Ian bore down

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    PINE ISLAND, Fla. — Paramedics and volunteers with a group that rescues people after natural disasters went door to door Saturday on Florida’s devastated Pine Island, offering to evacuate residents who spoke of the terror of riding out Hurricane Ian in flooded homes and howling winds.

    The largest barrier island off Florida’s Gulf Coast, Pine Island has been largely cut off from the outside world. Ian heavily damaged the only bridge to the island, leaving it only reachable by boat or air. For many, the volunteers from the non-profit Medic Corps were the first people they have seen from outside the island in days.

    Residents described the horror of being trapped in their homes as water kept rising. Joe Conforti became emotional as he recounted what happened, saying the water rose at least 8 to 10 feet (2.4-3 meters), and there were 4-foot (1.2-meter) waves in the streets.

    “The water just kept pounding the house and we watched, boats, houses — we watched everything just go flying by,” he said, as he fought back tears. “We’ve lost so much at this point.”

    Conforti said if it wasn’t for his wife, Dawn Conforti, he wouldn’t have made it. He said: “I started to lose sensibility, because when the water’s at your door and it’s splashing on the door and you’re seeing how fast it’s moving, there’s no way you’re going to survive that.”

    He said his wife had them get on top of a table to keep from getting swept away by the water. The next day, he said, they brought food to an older gentleman who lived on the next block, and they made sure to get him off the island on the first available boat.

    “He lost everything,” Joe Conforti said of the man. “He said that if we didn’t bring him the food, he was going to take his life that night because it was so bad.”

    Some residents shed tears as Medic Corps volunteers came to their doors and asked if they wanted to be evacuated on Saturday. Some declined the offer for now and asked for another day to pack their belongings. But others were anxious to get away immediately.

    Helen Koch blew her husband a kiss and mouthed the words “I love you” as she sat inside the Medic Corps helicopter that lifted her and seven of the couple’s 17 dogs to safety from the decimated island. The dogs were in cages, strapped to the outside of the helicopter as it took off.

    Her husband, Paul Koch, stayed behind with the other dogs, and planned to leave the isolated island on a second trip. He told The Associated Press that days earlier, he didn’t think they would make it, as the major hurricane raged and the house began taking on water.

    Pine Island has long been known for its quiet, small-town atmosphere and mangrove trees. It’s a popular destination for fishing, kayaking and canoeing. Now, bleak scenes of destruction are everywhere in this shattered paradise.

    Houses have been reduced to splinters and boats have been tossed onto roadways. The island has no power, and no running water – save for a few hours on Friday when one resident said they were able to take a shower. A community of mobile homes was destroyed.

    The Medic Corps volunteers went to one house to search for a woman who was known to have stayed behind during the storm and has had no contact with her friends since. Inside the woman’s house, heavy furniture had been toppled over and her belongings were tossed about. There was no sign of the woman, raising fears she had been sucked out of her home by the storm surge.

    Linda Hanshaw said the tight-knit island community is amazing and “everyone I know who hasn’t left is trying to leave.”

    But that wasn’t true for everyone. Kathleen Russell was trying to persuade her elderly husband to leave, but he didn’t want to budge just yet. The couple kept declining offers to evacuate. The couple said they were not ready, but might be willing to leave on Sunday.

    Claire St. Leger said she had nine people in her house, including neighbors, as the storm came in.

    “I thought for sure we were all dying,” she said. “I just sat in an inside room with pillows, I crossed myself so many times, I thought for sure we were dying. Water kept rising.”

    Medic Corps is a nonprofit group of pilots, paramedics, doctors, a Navy SEAL and other volunteers that responds to natural disasters and gets people to safety. According to the organization’s website, it began in 2013 in response to Super Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines and in 2017 it began deploying aircraft and responders to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

    ———

    Forliti reported from Minneapolis.

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  • Governor’s office reports at least 4 N.C. storm fatalities

    Governor’s office reports at least 4 N.C. storm fatalities

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    RALEIGH, N.C. — The remnants of Hurricane Ian downed trees and power lines across North Carolina, and authorities reported at least four fatalities Saturday connected to the severe weather.

    In Johnston County, outside of Raleigh, a woman found her husband dead early Saturday morning after he went to check on a generator running in their garage overnight, sheriff’s office Capt. Jeff Caldwell said.

    Carbon monoxide levels also were high inside the home, and the woman was checked out at a hospital, according to Caldwell.

    Also in Johnston County, two young adults died in traffic collisions during stormy and wet conditions Friday, Gov. Roy Cooper’s office said in a news release. In eastern North Carolina’s Martin County, a 22-year-old man drowned when his truck left the roadway and submerged in a flooded swamp, the news release said.

    “We mourn with the families of those who have died and urge everyone to be cautious while cleaning up to avoid more deaths or injuries,” Cooper said in a statement.

    The highway patrol responded to over 1,400 calls for service and 784 collisions between midnight Friday and early Saturday morning, a spokesman said. Not all were necessarily weather-related.

    There were no initial reports of major structural damage, though nearly 73,000 people across the state were without power Saturday evening, according to a state outage map. That was down from over 330,000 earlier in the day.

    The National Weather Service warned that hazardous conditions remained along the coast, including the possibility of flooding and rip currents.

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  • Ian shows the risks and costs of living on barrier islands

    Ian shows the risks and costs of living on barrier islands

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    SANIBEL ISLAND, Fla. — When Hurricane Ian struck Florida’s Gulf Coast, it washed out the bottom level of David Muench’s home on the barrier island of Sanibel along with several cars, a Harley-Davidson and a boat.

    His parents’ house was among those destroyed by the storm that killed at least two people there, and the lone bridge to the crescent-shaped island collapsed, cutting off access by car to the mainland for its 6,300 residents.

    Hurricane Ian underscores the vulnerability of the nation’s barrier islands and the increasing costs of people living on the thin strips of land that parallel the coast. As hurricanes become more destructive, experts question whether such exposed communities can keep rebuilding in the face of climate change.

    “This is a Hurricane Katrina-scale event, where you’re having to rebuild everything, including the infrastructure,” said Jesse M. Keenan, a real estate professor at Tulane University’s School of Architecture. “We can’t build back everything to what it was — we can’t afford that.”

    Ian slammed into southwest Florida as a Category 4 hurricane Wednesday with among the highest windspeeds in U.S. history — in nearly the same spot where Hurricane Charley, also a Category 4, caused major damage in 2004.

    The latest storm has initiated a new cycle of damage and repair on Sanibel that’s played out on many other barrier islands, from the New Jersey shore and North Carolina’s Outer Banks to a ribbon of land along the Louisiana coast.

    Barrier islands were never an ideal place for development, experts say. They typically form as waves deposit sediment off the mainland. And they move based on weather patterns and other ocean forces. Some even disappear.

    Building on the islands and holding them in place with beach replenishment programs just makes them more vulnerable to destruction because they can no longer move, according to experts.

    “They move at the whims of the storms,” said Anna Linhoss, a professor of biosystems engineering at Auburn University. “And if you build on them, you’re just waiting for a storm to take them away.”

    After devastating parts Florida, Ian made landfall again in South Carolina, where Pawleys Island was among the hardest hit places. Friday’s winds and rains broke apart the barrier island’s main pier, one of several in the state to crumble and wash away.

    On Saturday, homeowners in the beach community about 73 miles (120 kilometers) up the coast from Charleston struggled to assess damage from storm. The causeways connecting the island to the mainland were strewn with palm fronds, pine needles and even a kayak retrieved from a nearby shoreline. The intercoastal waterway was littered with the remnants of several boat houses torn apart and knocked off their pilings in the storm.

    Like Pawleys Island, many barrier island communities anchor long-entrenched tourist economies, which are often the source of crucial tax dollars. At the same time, the cost of rebuilding them is often high because they’re home to many expensive properties, such as vacation homes.

    “When there’s a disaster like this, we will pour tens of billions of public dollars into these communities to help them rebuild,” said Robert S. Young, director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines, which is a joint venture between Duke University and Western Carolina University.

    “And we will ask very little for that money in return in terms of taking a step back from places that are incredibly exposed to hazards and making sure that we never have this kind of a disaster again,” Young said.

    But any big changes to the standard disaster response will be complicated, said Dawn Shirreffs, Florida director of the Environmental Defense Fund.

    Challenges could include decisions on who participates in programs that elevate flood-prone homes or programs that buy those homes and tear them down. Planting mangroves to prevent erosion could end up blocking someone’s view.

    Many homeowners bought their properties before people were fully aware of climate change and the risks of sea-level rise, Shirreffs said.

    But Keenan, the Tulane professor, said Sanibel will undoubtedly be changed by Hurricane Ian based on the research he’s done. There will be fewer government resources to help people rebuild. Those with fewer means and who are underinsured will likely move. People with financial means will stay.

    “Sanibel will just be an enclave for the ultrawealthy,” Keenan said.

    But Muench, the Sanibel resident, said homeowners and business owners are sure to rebuild their properties.

    His family has owned and operated a campground on the island for three generations. The island, he said, is “paradise — we live in the most beautiful place on Earth.”

    “We are going to continue to exist on Sanibel,” Muench, 52, said from Fort Myers on Friday after evacuating Sanibel. “Give us five years, and you might not even notice if you didn’t know.”

    ———

    Finley reported from Norfolk, Virginia. Associated Press reporters Curt Anderson in St. Petersburg, Florida, and Meg Kinnard in Pawleys Island, South Carolina, contributed to this story.

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  • Despite Ian’s punch, wedding day saved on wet Pawleys Island

    Despite Ian’s punch, wedding day saved on wet Pawleys Island

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    PAWLEYS ISLAND, S.C. — Saturday turned out to be a sparklingly beautiful fall day in Pawleys Island, an idyllic spot for an early fall wedding in South Carolina, sandwiched between the Atlantic oceanfront and expansive marshland that typify the state’s coastal beauty.

    But the perfect wedding day almost didn’t come together for two families who traveled to the island for nuptial festivities that almost got derailed by Hurricane Ian’s landfall and aftermath.

    Mary Lord and her family traveled to Pawleys Island from Fort Worth, Texas, for the Saturday wedding of her son, Eric.

    AJ McCullough’s family came from Sunset Beach, North Carolina, to see her daughter, Monroe, walk down the aisle as the bride.

    The families had been staying in rental houses across the street from one another on Pawleys Island, about 72 miles (116 kilometers) up South Carolina’s coast from Charleston.

    And then the storm hit.

    Ian was a Category 1 storm when it came ashore near Georgetown, about 13 miles from Pawleys. Hours of wind and rain battered the beach town, whipping surf reportedly as high as 25 feet (7.6 meters) that washed over the town’s iconic pier, strewing its pylons along the shoreline and pushing them up to beachfront properties. Feet of soggy sand piled up under the elevated homes, stranding and waterlogging some vehicles.

    In the mad rush to get to the Friday night rehearsal dinner — which went off without a hitch, relatively speaking, the nearby country club venue not even losing power during the storm — the participants left behind the gear they’d need for Saturday’s wedding, like attire and decor. Feeling more secure hunkering down further inland, Lord said the families settled into other rental properties, figuring they would deal with Saturday’s details after the storm passed.

    “We got off, when the storm was coming, but some of the bridesmaids dresses, tuxedos, decorations, we left there, thinking we could get back on this morning,” Lord told The Associated Press on Friday morning, standing on the northern causeway that connects Pawleys to the mainland. “But they said no, we cannot, not yet.”

    As crews assessed safety on the island, Lord and McCullough were told to wait, with barricades shutting down access to the strip of homes.

    “If anyone is on the island who wants to bring us our things, we’d sure appreciate it,” McCullough said, with a smile.

    For the next hour, Lord and McCullough methodically asked everyone they came across, on the inland side of one of the two causeway bridges, asking each person if he or she had a contact who could retrieve their wedding gear.

    One man, Eddie Wilder, said he’d be happy to help out the women. As a property owner, he would be allowed access across the causeway, so Lord and McCullough gave him the rental property access code and, via FaceTime, walked him through the property and encouraged him to “grab you a bottle or two” of celebratory beverages including champagne they had stockpiled for the weekend.

    Lord and McCullough were ecstatic with the news that the necessities were on their way.

    “We just had a wedding, so I understand,” said Renee Wilder, Eddie’s wife, hugging McCullough as she handed over bags of gowns and tuxes.

    “Everybody has been very optimistic, and look at this beautiful day,” McCullough said, with a smile.

    ———

    Meg Kinnard an be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP

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  • After Ian, river flooding menaces Florida inland towns

    After Ian, river flooding menaces Florida inland towns

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    NORTH PORT, Fla. — As Hurricane Ian ravaged coastal towns in southwest Florida, residents in this quiet suburb thought they would be safe, having no beach and living outside areas under evacuation orders. But then the water kept flowing in.

    Since Ian’s passage, water levels have gone up significantly, turning roads into canals, reaching mailboxes, flooding SUVs and trucks, blocking the main access to a an interstate highway and leaving families trapped in their waterlogged homes. Now, as days go by, residents here in the Sarasota suburb of North Point are beginning to run out of food and water.

    “Water just keeps going up. Who knows when it is going to stop,” said Samuel Almanzar, 42. He was rescued by crews Friday along with his father, wife and two children, 11 and 6.

    As rescue efforts wrapped up Friday, local officials recommended people whose neighborhoods are flooding to evacuate. They said waters in some areas will continue to rise over the next two days.

    The floods in North Port show the impact of Ian has not been confined to the beaches and tourist towns. The heavy rains from the storm have ended up flowing into suburban and inland towns not part of hurricane warnings.

    It’s the rising rivers that do it because of the hurricane’s deluge, which continues to cause havoc long after the winds have passed. And it’s leading to rescue efforts not that different from those on the coasts.

    Floods were reported all across the center of the state: around Orlando and its theme parks, south to Kissimmee, east to Daytona Beach, Arcadia cattle country. People near rivers were deeply affected.

    Near North Port, the Florida Department of Transportation closed a stretch of Interstate 75 in both directions late Friday because of the flooded Myakka River.

    Dozens of National Guardsmen arrived earlier Friday in North Port— about 85 miles (140 kilometers) south of Tampa — to speed up efforts started Wednesday by firefighters from other states and counties. And city officials were scrambling to open an evacuation center at a high school.

    A mother of two cried on the phone, trying to connect with her parents so they could pick them up after coming out of her flooded neighborhood. A woman showed a map to rescuers to reach families with children in the area upon learning water had started to rise inside their homes. A man waded through waist-deep waters with his 8-year-old daughter, trying to venture out to get supplies.

    Megan Blevins, who works at a restaurant in nearby Venice, was trying to help the families of coworkers get out but said some were not accessible due to structures collapsing and leaving certain streets without access.

    “We can’t get people. We can’t get people to them. There are some older folks we are trying to get to because they can’t move,” she said.

    Aimee Bowden, 47, said a tree fell on her house, opening a hole in her kitchen and dining room and letting water pour in. Firefighters going back and forth to pick up families with children evacuated her, with her husband and 13-year-old son in a rescue boat.

    “I was terrified. You have your whole life uprooted,” Bowden said. “You try to just keep thinking about what you need to do.”

    Just west of North Port, the Myakka River was forecast by the National Weather Service to reach record flood stage Friday at 12.55 feet (3.8 meters) and then crest a bit higher before receding.

    The nearby Peace River was set to hit an even higher mark: almost 24 feet (7.3 meters), which is about twice the previous record. It runs through mainly rural areas, especially the cattle town of Arcadia which is home to a well-known Florida rodeo.

    There was plenty of concern Friday about the steadily rising river.

    “The unpredictability of the river is real, and people are in real danger,” said DeSoto County Fire Chief Chad Jorgensen in a county post. “If you are in these areas, you need to get out now.”

    After crossing Florida, Ian moved over the Atlantic Ocean where it curved back into South Carolina on Friday. More than two dozen deaths have been blamed on the storm.

    Elvis Padron, 40, a construction worker now applying for political asylum, fled Venezuela with his wife and 8-year-old daughter and crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in February, only to face more hardship.

    “My wife refuses to leave. She wants to stay,” said Padron, who waded through the waters to find more supplies and tried to convince his wife on the phone they should leave. “I feel like we don’t have much time left.”

    ———

    Anderson reported from St. Petersburg, Florida.

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  • US defense chief in Hawaii amid distrust after fuel spill

    US defense chief in Hawaii amid distrust after fuel spill

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    HONOLULU — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited Hawaii this week amid lingering community frustration and distrust after jet fuel from a military storage facility last year spilled into Pearl Harbor’s drinking water, poisoned thousands of military families and threatened the purity of Honolulu’s water supply.

    Austin traveled to the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility in the hills above Pearl Harbor on Friday and met the commander of the joint task force in charge of draining its tanks so it can be shut down.

    He also met with several families affected by the fuel spill and Hawaii state officials, the military said in a news release. The meetings were closed to the media, and Austin didn’t hold a news conference afterward.

    Outside Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam, several dozen protesters held signs saying “Navy Lies” and “Shut Down Red Hill.” People driving by — including many exiting the base — honked in support.

    Samantha McCoy, whose husband is in the Air Force, said her family suffered migraines, rashes, skin sores and gastrointestinal problems that only subsided when they moved out of military housing last month.

    She called on Austin to make more medical care available to families.

    “It took four months of daily migraines to even get a referral to a neurologist. And that’s really unacceptable,” she said at the protest.

    Cheri Burness, who lives in Navy housing, won’t drink the tap water in the house she shares with her sailor husband and their two teenage children because she doesn’t believe that it’s safe 10 months after the spill.

    Her family has spent $3,000 of their own money to install filters on all the faucets in the house so they can bathe, brush their teeth and wash their dishes. She spends $70 to $100 a month to have water delivered to their home for drinking. They also use bottled water.

    She recalled how Navy leaders initially told Pearl Harbor water users their water was safe to drink after the November spill. The Navy only told people to stop drinking their tap water after the state Department of Health stepped in.

    The Navy later flushed clean water through its pipes to cleanse them. In March, the state Department of Health said the tap water in all residential areas served by the Navy’s water system was safe to drink.

    But Burness said she never got to see the reports for her house after it was tested. She was only told her water was good.

    “I don’t trust them because cause they did nothing to show me that it ever was fine,” Burness said in a telephone interview.

    A Navy investigation released in July showed a cascading series of errors, complacency and a lack of professionalism led to the fuel spill, which contaminated tap water used by 93,000 people on the Navy’s water system.

    Nearly 6,000 sought medical attention for nausea, headaches and rashes. Some continue to complain of health problems.

    The military put families up in hotels for several months, but stopped paying once the health department cleared people to resume drinking their tap water.

    Kristina Baehr, an attorney with Texas-based Just Well Law, sued the federal government last month on behalf of four families but said she will be adding more individuals from among the 700 clients she represents. Burness and McCoy are among her clients.

    “They didn’t warn them to stop drinking it, and 6,000 people went to the emergency room,” she said. “Then, many of these people have only gotten sicker over time.”

    Baehr said her clients were not among those chosen to speak to Austin. If they had such an opportunity, she said they would tell him to have officials stop saying no one is medically affected by the spill and that there are no long-term effects.

    They would also encourage him to provide appropriate medical care to families, safe housing because families claim the homes were not properly remediated, and compassionate reassignment to other bases to all those who ask.

    “A lot of people are still stuck in the houses that made them sick,” she said. “So it’s very simple, let people out of the houses that made them sick and fix the houses so that they’re safe for the next people.”

    The spill upset a broad cross-spectrum of Hawaii, from liberals to conservatives and veterans to environmentalists. Many Native Hawaiians have been angered given the centrality of water in Hawaii’s Indigenous traditions. It has also increased deep-seated distrust of the U.S. military among many Native Hawaiians that dates to the U.S. military-backed overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893.

    Dani Espiritu, who was also at Friday’s protest, said the military was taking risks with Native Hawaiian lives, land and culture.

    “All of our cultural practices are tied to aina,” she said, using the Hawaiian word for land. “And so as you poison aina and jeopardize the health and well-being of communities, you are also jeopardizing every traditional practice that are tied to those places.”

    The military plans to drain fuel from the tanks by July 2024 to comply with a Hawaii Department of Health order to shut down the facility.

    Honolulu’s water utility and the Sierra Club of Hawaii have expressed concerns about the threat Red Hill poses to Oahu’s water supply ever since 2014, when fuel leaked from one of the storage tanks. But the Navy reassured the public that their water was safe and that it was operating the storage facility properly.

    ——

    Associated Press writer Mark Thiessen in Anchorage, Alaska, contributed to this report.

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  • Dolphins’ Tagovailoa has concussion, no timetable for return

    Dolphins’ Tagovailoa has concussion, no timetable for return

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    MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Miami Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel said Friday there is no timetable for the return of quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, who suffered a concussion when he hit his head against the turf a day earlier against the Cincinnati Bengals.

    McDaniel also defended the team’s handling of Tagovailoa’s injury last Sunday in a win over the Buffalo Bills, when the QB took a hit from linebacker Matt Milano late in the first half and appeared to hit his head on the turf. Tagovailoa stumbled when he got up and was taken to the locker room to be evaluated for a concussion, then returned to the game at the start of the third quarter.

    McDaniel reiterated Friday that Tagovailoa was cleared by several layers of medical professionals during last Sunday’s game and said the QB did not have a head injury.

    “My job as a coach is here for the players. I take that very serious,” the first-year coach said. “And no one else in the building strays from that.”

    Many observers questioned why Tagovailoa was allowed to return to the field against the Bills. He was not in the concussion protocol leading up to Thursday’s game.

    “There was no medical indication from all resources that there was anything regarding the head,” McDaniel said Friday. “If there would have been, of course, I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I prematurely put someone out there.”

    Tagovailoa had an MRI on Friday in addition to the X-rays and CT scans that were taken the night before at a hospital in Cincinnati. He had a headache Thursday night and Friday morning, McDaniel said.

    “I’m not even really thinking about timetables or anything regarding him as a player right now,” McDaniel said. “It’s all about Tua the person.”

    Tagovailoa was sacked by Bengals defensive tackle Josh Topou late in the first half of Thursday night’s loss to the Bengals. On the play, he spun awkwardly and was thrown to the turf. While on the ground, Tagovailoa appeared to display the fencing response, with his fingers frozen in front of his face.

    He remained down for more than seven minutes before being loaded onto a backboard and stretchered off the field.

    The Dolphins later said he was conscious and had movement in all of his extremities. He was discharged from the hospital Thursday night and flew back to Miami with the team.

    McDaniel said Tagovailoa was interacting with teammates on the flight home. He sat next to McDaniel and talked to him about the game.

    “His personality was normal Tua,” McDaniel said.

    Before the injury, Tagovailoa was having a breakout season, highlighted by throwing a career-high six touchdown passes in a Week 2 win over Baltimore.

    Now the former Alabama star faces another obstacle in what has been an up-and-down career.

    The Dolphins, amid a rebuild in 2020, drafted Tagovailoa No. 1 overall to be a franchise-altering player following a college career that included a 2018 national championship.

    But when that didn’t happen as quickly as Miami anticipated, questions arose about whether to stick with the young quarterback or go in another direction.

    Tagovailoa seemed to be answering those questions through the first three weeks of the season, efficiently utilizing the weapons that Miami surrounded him with during the offseason, including star receiver Tyreek Hill, to lead the Dolphins to a 3-0 record heading into Thursday’s game.

    Including his 110 passing yards before leaving Thursday’s game, Tagovailoa is second in the league in passing yards (1,035) and he has thrown 10 touchdowns with three interceptions.

    Tagovailoa has dealt with several injuries, including a dislocated right hip in 2019 at Alabama.

    ———

    More AP NFL coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl and https://twitter.com/AP—NFL

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  • Live Updates: Florida officials fear death toll will rise

    Live Updates: Florida officials fear death toll will rise

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    The Latest on Hurricane Ian:

    Officials in Florida fear the death toll from Hurricane Ian could rise substantially, given the wide swath of the state swamped by the storm.

    After making landfall with some of the highest windspeeds for a hurricane over U.S. territory, the storm flooded areas on both of Florida’s coasts, tore homes from their slabs, demolished beachfront businesses and left more than 2 million people without power. At least nine people have been confirmed dead in the U.S.

    Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie said responders have focused so far on “hasty” searches, aimed at emergency rescues and initial assessments, which will be followed by two additional waves of searches.

    He said Friday that the initial responders might detect deaths without confirming them.

    ———

    KEY DEVELOPMENTS:

    — Hurricane Ian heads for Carolinas after pounding Florida

    — In Ian’s wake, worried families crowdsource rescue efforts

    — Woman braves Hurricane Ian flood to check on stranger’s mom

    — After Ian, the effects in southwest Florida are everywhere

    — At a Florida trailer park, survivors speak of Ian’s wrath

    — Find more AP coverage here: https://apnews.com/hub/hurricanes

    ———

    OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:

    CHARLESTON S.C. — Charleston County emergency services were suspended Friday as officials prepared for Hurricane Ian to make landfall on South Carolina’s coast.

    In a tweet, officials said they were pausing response efforts “due to current wind conditions” and would resume service “as soon as it is safe to do so.”

    Charleston police were also restricting access to the city’s Battery area, a spot at the tip of the peninsula that is home to many multi million-dollar, historic homes.

    ———

    TAMPA, Fla. — The Tampa Bay Lightning and team owner Jeff Vinik are donating $2 million toward Hurricane Ian relief efforts.

    The NHL team announced Friday that $1 million each will be donated by the Tampa Bay Lightning Foundation and the Vinik Family Foundation.

    “This is a tragic situation for many families and communities across the state of Florida, but especially so in the southwest region of the state,” Vinik said in a statement released by the team. “In times like these the most important thing we can do is support one another, and we hope this donation will help families recover and rebuild in the months to come.”

    Ian made landfall Wednesday on Florida’s Gulf Coast, south of the Tampa Bay area. The Lightning postponed two home preseason games and moved the club’s training camp to Nashville, Tennessee during the storm.

    ———

    CHARLESTON S.C. — Many areas on Charleston’s downtown peninsula were underwater midday Friday and officials reported widespread power outages across the historic city as Hurricane Ian approached.

    Officials said power had been knocked out across the city as high winds and sheets of rain whipped trees and power lines pending Ian’s expected landfall just up the South Carolina coast.

    The storm’s expected landfall coincided with high tide, a circumstance that was forecast to lead to widespread roadway blockages.

    City officials were out early Friday, clearing storm drains and pumping water away from the historic Battery area along the city’s southern tip, into Charleston Harbor.

    ———

    FORT MYERS, Fla. — Thousands of residents of long-term care facilities in Florida remained displaced by Hurricane Ian.

    Kristen Knapp of the Florida Health Care Association says about 47 nursing homes and 115 assisted living facilities have been evacuated as of Friday, with around 8,000 residents among them.

    While structural damage and flooding were reported at facilities across the storm’s path, Knapp said there have been no reports yet of serious injuries or deaths among those homes’ residents.

    Steve Bahmer of Leading Age Florida, which represents non-profit long-term care facilities, offered a similar assessment, with reports of minor damage, broken windows, downed trees and flooding. He said one facility was hit by a tornado but residents have been able to remain there.

    At least seven people were confirmed dead in Florida — a number that’s likely to increase as officials confirm more deaths and continue searching for people.

    ———

    CHARLESTON, S.C. — The main airport in Charleston, South Carolina, has closed ahead of the expected arrival of Hurricane Ian.

    Officials with the Charleston International Airport said Friday they had shuttered the airport, where airlines had already canceled dozens of fights, and winds reached 40 mph.

    The airport will remained closed until 6 a.m. Saturday.

    South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster planned a briefing at 12:30 p.m. Friday. Under a federal disaster declaration approved by President Joe Biden, federal emergency aid has been made available to supplement South Carolina’s state, tribal and local response efforts pertaining to the storm, which was expected to make landfall in the state later Friday.

    ———

    CHARLESTON, S.C. — Strong winds were blowing early Friday morning in Charleston, South Carolina, with powerful gusts bending tree branches and sending sprays of the steadily falling rain sideways as Hurricane Ian approached.

    Streets were largely empty, an ordinarily packed morning commute silenced by the advancing storm. Flash flood warnings were posted, with up to 8 inches (20 centimeters) of rain forecast for the Charleston area, and high tide expected just before noon, a circumstance that often floods the downtown peninsula on its own with even moderate rainfall.

    ———

    ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — The Florida Highway Patrol says a 37-year-old man and a 30-year-old woman died Thursday afternoon when their car hydroplaned and overturned in a water-filled ditch in north Florida amid Hurricane Ian’s impact on the state.

    An incident report says the driver apparently lost control of the vehicle, which went onto the grassy shoulder before submerging in a water-filled ditch along Cracker Swamp Road in Putnam County, which is southwest of St. Augustine. The area was inundated with rain as Hurricane Ian passed through the state Thursday.

    At least six people were confirmed dead in Florida.

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