Domestic
Hurricane Idalia plowed into Florida’s Gulf Coast on Wednesday with howling winds, torrential rains and pounding surf, then weakened as it turned its fury on southeastern Georgia, where floodwaters trapped some residents in their homes. At a late afternoon news conference, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said no hurricane fatalities had been confirmed and that it seemed most residents in vulnerable, low-lying areas had heeded evacuation orders and warnings to move to higher ground. More about tracking Hurricane Idalia can be found here.
A University of North Carolina graduate student walked into a classroom building on Tues. Aug. 30, shot his faculty adviser and quickly left, authorities said a day after the attack paralyzed campus as police searched for the gunman. The shooting has galvanized gun safety advocates and local Democrats, who rallied the grieving campus community Wed. Aug. 31, to fight for stricter state gun laws.
International
According to the Associated Press, Russian officials this past week said that they had thwarted new Ukrainian attacks a day after Ukrainian drones struck targets in at least six regions deep within Russia in one of the broadest volleys yet of Kyiv’s campaign to turn the tables on Moscow. One of the drone strikes targeted an airfield far from Ukraine’s borders, destroying military transport planes. There was no immediate comment from Ukrainian officials, who usually don’t claim attacks inside Russia. The Kremlin’s forces, meanwhile, hit Kyiv with drones and missiles during the night in what Ukrainian officials called a “massive, combined attack” that killed two people.
Military officers in oil-producing Gabon said they had seized power on Wed., placing President Ali Bongo under house arrest. These officers named a new leader after the Central African state’s election body announced Bongo had won a third term. Saying they represented the armed forces, the officers declared on television that the election results were canceled, borders closed and state institutions dissolved after a tense vote that was set to extend the Bongo family’s more than half century in power. Hundreds of people celebrated the military’s intervention in the streets of the Gabonese capital Libreville, while the United Nations, African Union and France, Gabon’s former colonial ruler which has troops stationed there, condemned the coup.
A 42-year-old lawyer who was stolen at birth during the rule of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and raised in the United States traveled thousands of miles to South America to meet his biological mother for the first time. Walking down a street in mother’s hometown of Valdivia, with a bouquet of flowers in hand, Lippert Thyden tearfully hugged Maria Angelica Gonzalez, his biological mother, and told her he loved her.
