Ian evacuees return to mud, rubble as death toll hits 101

SANIBEL ISLAND, Fla. — Hurricane Ian’s death toll has climbed into the triple digits. The number of recorded storm-related deaths rose Thursday to at least 101 in the eight days since the storm made landfall in southwest Florida. Of the total deaths, 92 were in Florida, according to reports from the Florida Medical Examiners Commission. Other storm deaths include five in North Carolina, three in Cuba and one in Virginia. Ian is the second-deadliest storm to hit the mainland United States in the 21st century behind Hurricane Katrina, which left more than 1,800 people dead in 2005. The deadliest hurricane to ever hit the U.S. was the Great Galveston Hurricane in 1900 that killed as many as 8,000 people.

Gun-related suicides and killings continued to rise in 2021: CDC

Homicides and suicides involving guns, which soared in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, continued rising in 2021, reaching the highest rates in three decades, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday. Firearms caused 47,286 homicide and suicide deaths in 2021, up from 43,675 in 2020, according to CDC research, which is based on provisional data. Rates of gun-related homicide and suicide each rose by 8.3% last year. Including unintentional deaths and those related to law enforcement activities, the total number of gun-related deaths in the United States was 48,832 in 2021, according to a separate analysis by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions.

Teens keep vaping despite crackdowns on e-cigarettes

High school students resumed taking the annual National Youth Tobacco Survey in school this year and 14% of them reported using e-cigarettes, underscoring how an upstart industry is dodging regulators’ efforts to spare a generation from nicotine addiction. The number shows a slight change from 11% last year, but researchers cautioned against drawing comparisons to 2021’s survey, which took place during the pandemic. The latest results were released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday. The percentage of high school students who reported vaping in the past 30 days was still far lower than record-high levels reached in 2019 of nearly 28%.

DOJ is said to believe Trump has more documents

A top Justice Department official told former President Donald Trump’s lawyers in recent weeks that the department believed he had not returned all the documents he took when he left the White House, according to two people briefed on the matter. The outreach from Jay Bratt, who leads the department’s counterintelligence operations, is the most concrete indication that investigators remain skeptical that Trump has been fully cooperative in their efforts to recover documents that he was supposed to have turned over to the National Archives at the end of his term. It is not clear what steps the Justice Department might take to retrieve material it thinks Trump holds.

Federal judge blocks parts of New York gun law

A federal judge on Thursday blocked portions of a New York gun law passed three months earlier, underscoring the difficulty that states may face in restricting the public carrying of firearms. Judge Glenn T. Suddaby of the Northern District of New York said he would block the state from enforcing several provisions, writing that New York’s attempts to bar guns in a number of places deemed “sensitive” — including museums, theaters, stadiums, Times Square, libraries, places offering services to children and anywhere alcohol is served — appeared impermissible. He based his decision on the Supreme Court ruling in June that struck down a restrictive century-old law.

Mexico military Is hacked, exposing abuse and efforts to evade oversight

A major hack targeting Mexico’s Defense Ministry has shed light on the country’s most secretive and powerful institution, documenting its expanding influence over the civilian government, attempts to evade cooperation on a landmark human rights investigation and spying on journalists using the spyware known as Pegasus. Detailed in the data breach are the military’s own internal probes and suspicions that powerful government officials are linked to organized crime networks, including drug cartels. The leaks were released by a hacker group known as Guacamaya (Spanish for macaw) and include about 6 terabytes of data of more than 4 million emails.

US to begin screening air passengers From Uganda for Ebola

Worried by an outbreak of Ebola in Uganda, the Biden administration said Thursday that travelers who had been to that country would be redirected to airports where they can be screened for the virus and warned physicians to be alert for potential cases in the United States. No cases of Ebola have yet been reported outside Uganda, but the virus is highly contagious. The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordered the airport screenings, and the State Department issued an alert saying the measures would apply to all passengers, including U.S. citizens.

US forces kill senior Islamic State group leaders in Syria

U.S. Special Operations forces carried out two major strikes against the Islamic State group in northern Syria on Thursday, killing three senior figures responsible for arming and recruiting fighters and plotting attacks, according to U.S. and Syrian Kurdish officials. Taken together, the nighttime assaults dealt the Islamic State group its most punishing blow since a predawn raid in northwest Syria in February by U.S. commandos resulted in the death of the terrorist group’s overall leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi. Counterterrorism specialists said the attacks hurt an effort by the Islamic State group to regain momentum in the region.

By wire sources