Tag Archives: Alabama

Thousands evacuate as Storm Alberto powers toward Florida

Flooding is seen in Ellicott City, Maryland, U.S. May 27, 2018, in this still image from video from social media. Todd Marks/via REUTERS

By Jon Herskovitz and Rich McKay

(Reuters) – Subtropical Storm Alberto is expected to bring drenching rains to the Florida Panhandle when it makes landfall on Monday, the day after a separate storm triggered a flood that tore through a historic Maryland town and swept away a man who was trying to help rescue people, officials said.

Forecasters said Alberto could bring life-threatening high water to southern coastal states when it slams an area from Mississippi to western Georgia with up to 12 inches (30 cm) of rain and possible tornadoes.

Flooding is seen in Ellicott City, Maryland, U.S. May 27, 2018, in this still image from video from social media. Twitter/@ryguyblake/via REUTERS

Flooding is seen in Ellicott City, Maryland, U.S. May 27, 2018, in this still image from video from social media. Twitter/@ryguyblake/via REUTERS

“Alberto has maximum sustained winds of 65 miles per hour (105 km per hour) which is about 10 miles (16 km) shy of being a hurricane. This is definitely a dangerous storm,” said David Roth, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

Authorities in Florida’s Franklin and Taylor counties issued mandatory evacuation orders for thousands of coastal residents. Florida, Alabama and Mississippi are under states of emergency.

The storm was about 110 miles (177 km) southeast of Destin, Florida, on the Gulf of Mexico coast as of 8 a.m. EDT (noon GMT) and was heading north at about 6 mph (10 kph), the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

Alberto, the first named Atlantic storm of 2018, is expected to reach land on the Gulf Coast on Monday afternoon or evening, the center said. The storm spun up days before the formal June 1 start of the hurricane season.

Deadly hurricanes in the United States and the Caribbean last year caused hundreds of billions of dollars in damage, massive power outages and devastation to hundreds of thousands of structures.

After reaching the coast, the storm will bring powerful winds and heavy rains as it moves into the Tennessee Valley on Tuesday and Wednesday, the hurricane center said. The storm, coming on the last day of the Memorial Day weekend, was expected to scramble holiday travel on Monday.

A storm surge warning was in place from the Suwannee River to Navarre, Florida, and a tropical storm warning covered from the Suwannee River to the border of Mississippi and Alabama.

Authorities in Howard County, Maryland, said a 39-year-old man was missing after flash flooding from a separate storm tore through the historic downtown of Ellicott City on Sunday. The man was swept away as he tried to help rescue people from floodwaters.

The area had barely recovered from a devastating flood about two years ago that killed two people and damaged dozens of buildings.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Houston; Additional reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta and Ian Simpson in Washington; Editing by Alison Williams and James Dalgleish)

After Parkland shooting, U.S. states shift education funds to school safety despite critics

Adin Chistian (16), student of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, embraces his mother Denyse, next to the crosses and Stars of David placed in front of the fence of the school to commemorate the victims of a shooting, in Parkland, Florida, U.S., February 19, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

By Hilary Russ and Laila Kearney

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Before the ink could dry on Florida Governor Rick Scott’s signature last month, critics cried foul over the bill he signed into law to spend $400 million boosting security at schools across the state following February’s Parkland mass shooting.

School officials, local sheriffs and Democrats opposed different provisions, including one to provide $67 million to arm teachers. Educators, in particular, voiced concerns that the state will strip money from core education funding to pay for the new school resource officers and beefed up buildings.

“We are a very lean state,” said Florida state Senator Jose Javier Rodriguez, a Democrat who voted against the bill. “If we’re spending money somewhere, we’re taking it from somewhere else.”

In the wake of the high school shooting in Parkland, Florida that killed 17 people, at least 10 U.S. states have introduced measures to increase funding for hardening of school buildings and campuses, add resource officers and increase mental health services, according to Reuters’ tally.

Many of the proposals outlined the need for bulletproof windows, panic buttons and armored shelters to be installed in classrooms. Some legislation called for state police or sheriff’s departments to provide officers to patrol public schools.

Altogether, more than 100 legislative bills to address school safety, not all of which have funding components, have been introduced in 27 states since the Feb. 14 shooting at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, according to data provided by the National Conference of State Legislatures.

But states do not usually have extra money on hand or room to raise taxes. So to pay for the measures, states are mostly shifting money away from other projects, dipping into reserves or contemplating borrowing.

“I would characterize these proposals and the bills that were passed, for example Florida and Wisconsin, as primarily shifting funding from other priorities,” said Kathryn White, senior policy analyst at the National Association of State Budget Officers.

Calls for more gun control and more safety measures have come during peak budget season for nearly all states, whose legislatures spend the spring in debates that shape the coming year’s budget starting July 1.

STATE BY STATE

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker called a special legislative session last month, when lawmakers agreed to create a $100 million school safety grant program.

The money will come out of the state’s general fund. But the spending, coupled with tax cuts and other pending legislation, will leave that fund with reserves of roughly $185 million – enough to run state government for less than four days in the event of a fiscal emergency, according to Jon Peacock, director of the think tank Wisconsin Budget Project.

“That is far less of a cushion than a fiscally responsible state should set aside,” Peacock said.

Funding the safety measures also means that some economic development programs for rural counties did not get funded and a one-time sales tax holiday was scaled back, he said.

In Maine, lawmakers are considering borrowing $20 million by issuing 10-year general obligation bonds to fund loans to school districts for security enhancements.

New Jersey lawmakers are also looking to borrow. On March 26, state senators tacked an extra $250 million for school security onto an existing bill for $500 million of bonds to expand county vocational colleges. The legislature has not yet voted on the measure.

Maryland, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee and Indiana are also increasing – or trying to increase – funding for school security measures since Parkland.

In Florida, the legislature passed safety spending while approving an increase of only $0.47 per pupil in funding used to cover teacher pay raises, school bus fuel and other operational expenses for education.

“We see $400-plus million in school safety, which we absolutely applaud, but you can’t do that at the expense of your core education program,” Broward County schools Superintendent Robert Runcie said shortly before Scott signed the budget.

Stoneman Douglas is among the schools Runcie, who also heads the Florida Association of District School Superintendents, oversees.

To be sure, some state and local governments have been adding money for school safety measures for years, particularly after 20 children and six adults were killed in a shooting in Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.

Some critics, particularly Democrats, say measures that only beef up infrastructure or do not create recurring funds fall short of the mark.

Dan Rossmiller, government relations director of the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, said in a memo to lawmakers in March that individual districts also need money for prevention and intervention, including education services for expelled students and anti-bullying programs, and other purposes.

“Funding for only ‘hardening’ school facilities, while welcome, is likely not going to be sufficient to address the full range of locally identified needs,” he said.

(Reporting by Hilary Russ and Laila Kearney; Editing by Daniel Bases and Chizu Nomiyama)

Bus carrying students crashes in Alabama, killing at least one

Emergency service vehicles gather on Interstate 10 at the scene of a bus crash in Baldwin County, Alabama, U.S., March 13, 2018 in this still image obtained from social media video. Jesus Tejeda via REUTERS

(Reuters) – A bus carrying dozens of Texas high school students on a trip veered across the median separating two lanes of an interstate highway in Alabama and plunged into a ravine, killing at least one person and injuring several others, authorities said.

The bus was taking about 45 passengers back home to Houston from Florida when it plunged into a 50-foot (15-meter) ravine at about 5:30 a.m. CDT (6.30 a.m ET), Baldwin County, Alabama, Sheriff Hoss Mack told reporters at the scene.

“For whatever reason, the charter bus got into the median and ended up going into a ravine,” Mack said near the scene of the accident on Interstate 10 between Mobile, Alabama, and Pensacola, Florida.

“We have one confirmed fatality,” he said.

The injured passengers, including one listed in critical condition and five in serious condition, were taken by helicopter or ambulance to 10 hospitals in Alabama and Florida, Mack said.

The students were from Channelview High School in the Houston area, local media reported. School officials could not be reached for immediate comment.

Rescue workers attend to the scene of a bus crash in Baldwin County, Alabama, U.S., March 13, 2018 in this still image obtained from social media video. Jesus Tejeda via REUTERS

Rescue workers attend to the scene of a bus crash in Baldwin County, Alabama, U.S., March 13, 2018 in this still image obtained from social media video. Jesus Tejeda via REUTERS

Dozens of people posted messages of grief and sympathy on the school’s Facebook page, saying they were praying for the students.

Officials said the bus was one of two Houston-bound charters traveling together and that no other vehicles were involved in the pre-dawn crash.

They said the accident’s cause would be investigated by the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency.

The National Transportation Safety Board also said it was sending a team of six investigators to look into the crash.

(Reporting by Peter Szekely in New York; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Jonathan Oatis)

Record-shattering cold reaches into Florida

A man walks in falling snow at Times Square as a cold weather front hits the region, in Manhattan, New York, U.S., December 30, 2017.

By Ian Simpson

(Reuters) – Record-shattering arctic cold reached as far south as Florida on Monday with freeze warnings in place from Texas to the Atlantic Coast and the Northeastern United States facing another cold wave at the end of the week, forecasters said.

Temperatures ranged from 20 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit (11 to 17 degrees Celsius) below normal across the United States east of the Rocky Mountains, with only southern Florida untouched by the arctic blast.

“That degree of cold will be with us until tomorrow,” said Brian Hurley, a National Weather Service meteorologist at College Park, Maryland. “Tuesday morning, we’re looking at temperatures with very high probability of record lows.”

Along Alabama’s Gulf Coast, the temperature in the city of Mobile could hit a low of 16 F (minus 9 C) overnight. Stiff breezes were expected to create dangerously cold wind chills across southeastern Georgia and most of northeastern Florida, the weather service said.

Michael Kimberl, co-founder of Sean’s Outpost, an encampment for homeless people in Pensacola, Florida, said he was handing out propane fuel and extra blankets to residents.

“Our community is very unequipped for weather of this type,” he said by phone. Homeless shelters were also making special accommodations, including one site available for women and children, he said.

The mass of frigid air pumped south by a dip in the jet stream sent temperatures plunging across the U.S. heartland. Omaha, Nebraska, posted a low of minus 20 F (minus 29 C), breaking a 130-year-old record, and Aberdeen, South Dakota, shattered a record set in 1919 with a temperature of minus 32 F (minus 36 C).

The cold will be unrelenting across the Middle Atlantic and Northeastern United States, with up to two dozen low-temperature records expected in those regions over the next day or two, Hurley said.

Although the cold should ease across most of the United States after Tuesday, the northeastern quarter of the country will see a repeat of the frigid temperatures from Thursday to Friday as another arctic blast hits the area.

The private AccuWeather forecaster said the cold snap could combine with a storm brewing off the Bahamas to bring snow and high winds to much of the Eastern Seaboard as it heads north on Wednesday and Thursday.

The only part of the United States spared the deep freeze is the Southwest, with above-normal temperatures and dry weather expected to linger there, the weather service said.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Peter Cooney)

Democrat Jones wins U.S. Senate seat in Alabama in blow to Trump

Democrat Jones wins U.S. Senate seat in Alabama in blow to Trump

By Rich McKay

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (Reuters) – Democrat Doug Jones won a bitter fight for a U.S. Senate seat in deeply conservative Alabama on Tuesday, dealing a political blow to President Donald Trump in a race defined by sexual misconduct accusations against Republican candidate Roy Moore.

The stunning upset makes Jones the first Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate from Alabama in a quarter-century and will trim the Republicans’ already narrow Senate majority to 51-49, opening the door for Democrats to possibly retake the chamber in next year’s congressional elections.

Jones, who cast himself on the campaign trail as the candidate who could reach across the aisle and get things done in Washington, is expected to take office early in January, after the results are certified.

His election was not expected to affect pending votes in Congress on funding the government or overhauling the U.S. tax code, as Republican congressional leaders have vowed action on those bills before Christmas.

With 99 percent of the vote counted, Jones led by 1.5 percentage points over Moore, who refused to concede.

Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill said it was “highly unlikely” the outcome would change. “The people of Alabama have spoken,” he told CNN.

The ugly campaign drew national attention and split the Republican Party following accusations by several women that Moore sexually assaulted or pursued them when they were teens and he was in his 30s.

Moore, 70, a Christian conservative twice removed from the state Supreme Court in Alabama for ignoring federal law, denied the allegations and said he did not know any of the women involved.

Trump endorsed Moore even as other party leaders in Washington walked away. Jones, 63, a former federal prosecutor, portrayed the campaign as a referendum on decency and promised the state’s voters he would not embarrass them in Washington.

“I have always believed that the people of Alabama have more in common than divides us,” Jones told cheering supporters at his Birmingham victory party.

Trump, who congratulated Jones in a tweet late Tuesday night, on Wednesday tried to cast the win in a different light.

The president had joined establishment Republicans in the primary by backing Luther Strange, who filled the seat when Jeff Sessions left to serve as Trump’s attorney general. After Moore won the Republican nomination, Trump wholeheartedly endorsed Moore.

“The reason I originally endorsed Luther Strange (and his numbers went up mightily), is that I said Roy Moore will not be able to win the General Election. I was right! Roy worked hard but the deck was stacked against him!” Trump said on Twitter.

Network exit polls, however, showed Trump was not a factor in the decision for about half of Alabama voters.

“It had zero to do with Donald Trump,” Republican U.S. Representative Bradley Byrne of Alabama told MSNBC on Wednesday. The race was “a purely weird, unique election” not a harbinger of the 2018 midterm elections.

But U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen, who heads the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, called the victory in one of the most conservative states in the nation “a political earthquake.”

“You see voters who are fed up, and they want to send the message that they don’t like Trumpism,” Van Hollen said on MSNBC on Wednesday. “This was a big rejection of the ugly, divisive politics that Donald Trump has brought to the country.”

Former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, recorded robo-calls for Jones to help turn out African-Americans, who, according to network exit polls, constituted about 30 percent of those voting on Tuesday.

As a U.S. attorney Jones helped win the convictions in 2001 and 2002 of members of the Ku Klux Klan for the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham church that killed four little girls.

The sexual misconduct allegations against Moore came at a time when many powerful men, including Trump, have faced similar accusations.

John Laine, 65, a retired book editor from Birmingham who backed Jones, said he thought many Republicans crossed over and voted for a Democrat for the first time in their lives.

“The reason is that people just couldn’t stomach any more of Roy Moore,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Andy Sullivan in Montgomery, Ala.; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Richard Balmforth and Jeffrey Benkoe)

Voters head to polls in Alabama race with high stakes for Trump

Voters head to polls in Alabama race with high stakes for Trump

By Andy Sullivan

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (Reuters) – Voters in Alabama were headed to the polls on Tuesday in a hard-fought U.S. Senate race in which President Donald Trump has endorsed fellow Republican Roy Moore, whose campaign has been clouded by allegations of sexual misconduct toward teenagers.

Moore, 70, a former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice, is battling Democrat Doug Jones, 63, a former U.S. attorney who is hoping to pull off an upset victory in the deeply conservative Southern state.

Polls opened at 7 a.m. (1300 GMT) in the Alabama special election for the seat vacated by Republican Jeff Sessions, who became U.S. attorney general in the Trump administration.

The Alabama contest has divided the Republican Party on whether it is better to support Moore in order to maintain their slim majority in the U.S. Senate or shun him because of the sexual allegations.

Trump has strongly backed Moore but several other Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have distanced themselves from the candidate.

“Roy Moore will always vote with us. VOTE ROY MOORE!” Trump said in a Twitter post in which he criticized Jones as a potential “puppet” of the Democratic congressional leadership.

Moore has been accused by multiple women of pursuing them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s, including one woman who said he tried to initiate sexual contact with her when she was 14. Moore has denied any misconduct. Reuters has not independently verified any of the accusations.

On the eve of Tuesday’s election, Moore was joined on the campaign trail by Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist and an executive at the right-wing Breitbart News site. Bannon framed the Alabama election as a showdown between establishment elites and populist power and excoriated Republicans who declined to support Moore.

“There’s a special place in hell for Republicans who should know better,” he said.

COURTING EVANGELICALS

Moore has made conservative Christian beliefs a centerpiece of his campaign and sought to energize evangelicals in Alabama. He has said homosexual activity should be illegal and has argued against removing segregationist language from the state constitution.

Moore told the rally on Monday: “I want to make America great again with President Trump. I want America great, but I want America good, and she can’t be good until we go back to God.”

Without mentioning Moore by name, Republican former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, an African-American who grew up in Alabama, issued a statement on Monday calling the special election “one of the most significant in Alabama’s history.”

She urged Alabama voters to “reject bigotry, sexism, and intolerance.”

A Fox News Poll conducted on Thursday and released on Monday put Jones ahead of Moore, with Jones potentially taking 50 percent of the vote and Moore 40 percent. Fox said 8 percent of voters were undecided and 2 percent supported another candidate.

An average of recent polls by the RealClearPolitics website showed Moore ahead by a slight margin of 2.2 percentage points.

No Democrat has held a U.S. Senate seat from Alabama in more than 20 years. In 2016, Trump won the state by 28 percentage points over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Jones has touted a record that includes prosecuting former Ku Klux Klan members responsible for the 1963 bombing of a black church in Birmingham, Alabama, in which four girls were killed.

He spent the past week rallying African-Americans, the most reliably Democratic voters in the state, and hammering Moore in television ads. He has told supporters that his campaign is a chance to be on the “right side of history for the state of Alabama.”

If Jones wins on Tuesday, Republicans would control the Senate by a slim 51-49 margin, giving Democrats momentum ahead of the November 2018 congressional elections, when control of both chambers of Congress will be at stake.

Moore’s campaign has cast Jones as a liberal out of step with Alabama voters, seizing on the Democrat’s support of abortion rights.

Moore, who was twice removed from the state Supreme Court for refusing to abide by federal law, may find a chilly reception in Washington if he wins. Republican leaders have said

Moore could face an ethics investigation if Alabama voters send him to the U.S. Senate.

Democrats have signaled they may use Moore’s election to tar Republicans as insensitive to women’s concerns at a time when allegations of sexual harassment have caused many prominent men working in politics, entertainment, media and business to lose their jobs.

(Additional reporting by Julia Harte and Susan Heavey in Washington; Writing by Caren Bohan; Editing by Peter Cooney and Bill Trott)

Federal judge strikes down two abortion restrictions in Alabama

By Chris Kenning

(Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Thursday struck down two abortion restrictions in Alabama that limited how close clinics can be to public schools and banned a procedure used to terminate pregnancies in the second trimester.

The decision is a blow to abortion opponents in Alabama, who have joined conservatives in other states in enacting new laws that critics said were chipping away at the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion.

U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson in the Middle District of Alabama found the laws unconstitutional and permanently enjoined the state from enforcing the measures, which were signed into law in May 2016 by former Alabama Governor Robert Bentley, a Republican.

The same court last year temporarily blocked both measures in a preliminary injunction, which was under appeal to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The school-proximity law banned clinics within 2,000 feet of a K-8 public school and was the only law of its kind in the United States. Thompson said it would likely have forced the closing of clinics in Huntsville and Tuscaloosa, where 72 percent of the state’s abortions are performed.

The “fetal-demise law,” which effectively banned the most common method of second-trimester abortion, known as dilation and evacuation, would have prohibited abortions after 15 weeks, Thompson wrote.

“Because these laws clearly impose an impermissible undue burden on a woman’s ability to choose an abortion, they cannot stand,” he wrote.

The ACLU of Alabama had challenged the laws on behalf of two women’s health clinics in a state where abortion providers have faced what Thompson’s ruling called a “climate of hostility.”

“Both would have had a devastating impact on the ability of women to access abortion in Alabama,” said Randall Marshall, executive director of the ACLU of Alabama.

Alabama’s Attorney General and Republican Governor Kay Ivey’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

U.S. state legislatures enacted 41 new abortion restrictions in the first half of 2017, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health think tank that supports abortion rights.

Those laws have led to a spate of legal challenges in Alabama and elsewhere. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down parts of a Texas law that required clinics to meet hospital-like standards and for clinic doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.

(Reporting by Chris Kenning; editing by Patrick Enright and Grant McCool)

Weakening Nate brings rain, tornado warnings to U.S. South

A man sits on a bench overlooking a beach covered in debris scattered by Hurricane Nate, in Biloxi, Mississippi, U.S.,

By Rod Nickel and Jessica Resnick-Ault

BILOXI/PASCAGOULA, Miss. (Reuters) – Hurricane Nate weakened to a tropical depression on Sunday after coming ashore in Mississippi, flooding roads and buildings but sparing the state from catastrophic damages.

Maximum sustained winds from Nate, the fourth major storm to hit the United States in less than two months, dropped to 35 miles per hour (55 km per hour) as it moved through Alabama and into Tennessee.

The remnants of the storm spawned tornado warnings in those states and the western portions of North Carolina and South Carolina. It is forecast to bring gusty winds and up to 4 inches (10 cm) of rain to parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York on Monday.

The storm made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane, the weakest designation by the U.S. National Hurricane Center. Only a few hours earlier, its winds had been blowing at 70 mph (113 kph) but appeared to lack the devastating punch of its recent predecessors.

Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant told reporters there had been no deaths or reports of catastrophic damage. “We are very fortunate this morning and have been blessed,” he said.

Nate killed at least 30 people in Central America before entering the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and bearing down on the U.S. South. It has also shut down most oil and gas production in the Gulf.

Nate follows hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, which have devastated areas of the Caribbean and southern United States.

The tropical depression’s center will move up through Alabama into Tennessee and Kentucky through Monday, the hurricane center said. Heavy rainfall and storm-surge flooding remained a danger across the region, and the hurricane center said Florida’s Panhandle and parts of Alabama and Georgia might feel tropical storm-force wind gusts.

The storm was expected to bring three to six inches of rain to parts of western North Carolina through midday Monday, with up to 10 inches possible in isolated spots. Power outages, damaged homes and roads closed by debris were all reported in the region.

Nate made its first U.S. landfall on Saturday evening near the mouth of the Mississippi River and then made a second one early on Sunday near Biloxi, Mississippi.

In Biloxi, water surged over roads during the storm and quickly receded on Sunday, leaving a boat that broke loose marooned on the beach. At a Waffle House restaurant, the storm surge deposited a dumpster in its parking lot.

Jeff Pickich, a 46-year-old wine salesman from D’Iberville, Mississippi, was counting his blessings. Heavy winds left only minor damage, blowing down part of a fence on his rental property in Biloxi.

“I’m just glad,” he said, digging fresh holes for fence posts. “I was afraid of the water. The water is Mother Nature. You can’t stop it.”

Water flowed through Ursula Staten’s yard in Biloxi, pushing over part of her fence and scattering debris, but did not breach her house.

“I have a mess,” the retired massage therapist said. “If we had got Irma, I would have lost everything.”

At the Golden Nugget Casino, one of eight Biloxi gaming establishments, workers rushed to clean up mud, debris and minor damage from 3 feet (1 m) of water sloshing into an entrance and the parkade. The gaming room stayed dry.

Three hundred guests remained in the hotel, some eager to try their luck after surviving Nate.

But dangers from the storm remain, with Florida Governor Rick Scott warning of tornadoes springing up in the Panhandle region and Alabama Governor Kay Ivey urging residents to prepare for strong winds and storm surges.

U.S. President Donald Trump declared federal emergencies in Alabama and Florida on Sunday, which provides additional funding for disaster relief.

Mississippi Power had restored electricity to 10,000 customers, but 4,800 were still without it. More than 1,000 people had arrived at shelters, the state Emergency Management Agency said.

Alabama Power said it had restored electricity to 58,000 of 146,000 customers who lost it.

Rainfall of 3 to 6 inches (8 to 15 cm), with a maximum of 10 inches (25 cm), was expected east of the Mississippi River in Alabama and Tennessee, the hurricane center said.

Residents walk down a street covered in debris scattered by Hurricane Nate, in Biloxi, Mississippi, U.S., October 8, 2017.

Residents walk down a street covered in debris scattered by Hurricane Nate, in Biloxi, Mississippi, U.S., October 8, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman

NEW ORLEANS THREAT DOWNGRADED

Forecast at one point to make landfall in Louisiana, Nate headed farther east and spared many New Orleans parishes that were devastated by Hurricane Katrina 12 years ago.

“I had prayed for this – that we would be spared,” said Amos Cormier, president of Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana’s equivalent to a county.

Bernice Barthelemy, a 70-year-old Louisiana resident, died from cardiac arrest overnight after telling Reuters on Saturday that she did not mind having to evacuate, Cormier said on Sunday. He attributed her death to the stress of the move.

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said he expected that evacuated residents could return home soon.

Vessel traffic and port operations at New Orleans resumed on Sunday afternoon, while the Port of Mobile in Alabama remained closed. Oil ports, producers and refiners in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama were planning reopenings as the storm moved inland on Sunday.

Heavy rain is seen at Orange Beach, Alabama, U.S. as Hurricane Nate approaches, on October 7, 2017 in this still image taken from a video obtained via social media. Jacob Kiper, Owensboro, KY/Social Media via REUTERS

Heavy rain is seen at Orange Beach, Alabama, U.S. as Hurricane Nate approaches, on October 7, 2017 in this still image taken from a video obtained via social media. Jacob Kiper, Owensboro, KY/Social Media via REUTERS

The storm curtailed 92 percent of daily oil production and 77 percent of daily natural gas output in the Gulf of Mexico, more than three times the amount affected by Harvey.

The storm doused Central America with heavy rains on Thursday, killing at least 16 people in Nicaragua, 10 in Costa Rica, two in Honduras and two in El Salvador.

 

(Reporting by Rod Nickel in Biloxi, Miss. and Jessica Resnick-Ault in Pascagoula, Miss.; Additional reporting by Marianna Parraga, Erwin Seba and Gary McWilliams in Houston; Jonathan Allen in New York; Writing by Lisa Shumaker; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Peter Cooney)

 

Alabama finds atypical mad cow case, no human threat seen

(Reuters) – An 11-year-old cow in Alabama tested positive for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as mad cow disease, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Tuesday.

The cow tested positive for the atypical L-type of BSE after exhibiting clinical signs at an Alabama livestock market, the USDA said in a press release. Atypical BSE can arise spontaneously in cattle herds, usually in animals 8 years old or older.

“This animal never entered slaughter channels and at no time presented a risk to the food supply, or to human health in the United States,” the USDA said. “Following delivery to the livestock market the cow later died at that location.”

The Alabama cow is the fifth detection of BSE in the United States, four of which were atypical.

“This finding of an atypical case will not change the negligible risk status of the United States, and should not lead to any trade issues,” the USDA added.

The only classical BSE case was an animal found in 2003 at a Washington farm that was imported from Canada and born before a 1997 ban on the use of cattle feed containing brain or spinal tissue, which can result in transmission of the disease.

China last month resumed imports of U.S. beef for the first time since banning them following the 2003 scare.

First detected in Britain in the 1980s, classical mad cow ravaged herds in parts of Europe until the early 2000s and was linked to the brain-wasting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.

(Reporting by Michael Hirtzer; editing by Grant McCool)

Lockdown lifted at Alabama base after false reports of shooter

(Reuters) – A lockdown at a U.S. Army base in northern Alabama on Tuesday was lifted after two telephone calls reporting an active shooter at the sprawling facility near Huntsville turned out to be false.

No threat was found and an investigation is under way to determine who made the calls from within a building where the shooter was reported to have been, Colonel Thomas Holliday, commander of the Redstone Arsenal, said at a press conference.

“We have no evidence of shots actually (being) fired,” Holliday said.

One of the calls to 911 emergency dispatchers said gun shots had been heard, and another said a gun had been seen. Neither of those were credible, Holliday said.

There were no casualties, and no one was arrested, Holliday said. There were no visitors on that part of the base on Tuesday, he added.

The base is home to military units including the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command and elements of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Missile Defense Agency. It also hosts the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Marshall Space Flight Center, where rocket research and testing is conducted.

A total of about 43,000 military, NASA and civilian personnel work at Redstone Arsenal.

Holliday said the response of base personnel was appropriate, given that every U.S. military base has to be on high alert for potential active shooters and other acts of violence.

It took hours to ensure that everyone was safe in the 1.5-million-square-foot (457,200-square-meter) Sparkman Center complex where the shooter was reported.

A full base lockdown lasted for about two-and-a-half hours, and some buildings were shut for four-and-a-half hours, Holliday said.

A drill to handle a situation similar to the one reported on Tuesday was to occur later this week, but was canceled after this incident, Holliday said.

(Reporting by Bernie Woodall in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. and Gina Cherelus in New York; Additional reporting by Timothy Mclaughlin in Chicago; Editing by Tom Brown and Dan Grebler)