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Florida braces for Hurricane Irma as storm rips through Cuba

Hurricane Irma downgraded as it tears into Cuba's northern coast

By Sarah Marsh

REMEDIOS, Cuba (Reuters) – Hurricane Irma pounded Cuba’s northern coast on Saturday and barreled toward Florida as authorities scrambled to complete an unprecedented evacuation of millions of residents hours before the storm would engulf the state.

The outer band of Irma, which has killed at least 22 people in the Caribbean, was already lashing South Florida with tropical storm-force winds and left nearly 25,000 people without power, Governor Rick Scott said.

The brunt of the hurricane, one of the fiercest Atlantic storms in a century, is due to arrive in Florida early Sunday.

Irma could inflict major damage on the fourth-largest U.S. state by population, which is braced for winds well in excess of 100 miles per hour and a huge storm surge that could trigger coastal flooding.

“This is a deadly storm and our state has never seen anything like it,” Scott said at a Saturday morning news conference.

Irma, located about 225 miles (365 km) south of Miami on Saturday morning, still ranked as a Category 5 storm when it crashed into Cuba in the early hours of Saturday. It weakened to a Category 3 as it tore along the island’s northern coastline, downing power lines, bending palm trees and sending huge waves crashing over sea walls.

Maximum sustained winds dipped to around 130 miles per hour (215 km per hour) by 8 a.m. (1200 GMT) on Saturday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.

But Irma will regain strength as it moves over the warm open water as it approaches Florida, according to the NHS, which expects the storm to arrive in the Keys, an archipelago off the peninsula’s southern tip, on Sunday morning.

On Florida’s West Coast, a long line of people in Estero, north of Naples, lined up to enter an arena that officials converted into an evacuation shelter, one of hundreds that have opened up across the state.

“We got the house all buttoned up,” said Montgomery Campbell, 82, as he stood in line.

Luise Campana Read was one of those who chose to ignore warnings and stay in her home. She said by phone she planned to ride out the storm in her beachfront condo in Fort Lauderdale, with her elderly mother and other family members.

“With a 97-year-old, there was no way I was going to have her sleep on a cot or a blow-up mattress” in a shelter, she said.

The destruction along Cuba’s north central coast was similar to that seen on other Caribbean islands over the last week as Irma plowed into Ciego de Avila province around midnight.

State media said it was the first time the eye of a Category 5 storm had made landfall since 1932. In the days before Irma struck, the island’s Communist government evacuated tens of thousands of foreign tourists from resorts on the northern coast.

In Ciego de Avila province, Irma was forecast to generate waves of up to 7 meters (23 feet), with flooding expected as far west as the capital Havana, authorities said on Saturday.

Antonia Navarro, 56, a resident of the northern Cuban port town of Nuevitas in Camaguey, said a local ice cream factory was destroyed and glass windows at a hospital were blown out.

“We are praying to God and the Virgin of Charity that nothing grave happens to the people of Florida, and in particular Miami,” said Navarro, an officer worker. “We have to pray a lot for our relatives who live there.”

“RUNNING OUT OF TIME”

With the storm barreling toward the United States, officials in Florida raced to overcome clogged highways, gasoline shortages and move elderly residents to safety.

A total of 5.6 million people, or 25 percent of the state’s population, were ordered to evacuate Florida, according to the Florida Division of Emergency Management.

The United States has been hit by only three Category 5 storms since 1851, and Irma is far larger than the last one in 1992, Hurricane Andrew, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

On Wall Street, the S&P 500 ended slightly lower as investors braced for potential damage and massive insurance claims from Irma. Many economists are predicting that third-quarter gross domestic product will take a hit due to the hurricanes.

President Donald Trump said in a videotaped statement that Irma was “a storm of absolutely historic destructive potential” and called on people to heed recommendations from government officials and law enforcement. In Palm Beach, Trump’s waterfront Mar-a-Lago estate was ordered evacuated.

Trees sway in the wind at the main square as Hurricane Irma passes by Remedios, Cuba September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghini

MANDATORY EVACUATIONS, GASOLINE SHORTAGES

Irma was set to hit the United States two weeks after Hurricane Harvey, a Category 4 storm, struck Texas, killing about 60 people and causing property damage estimated at up to $180 billion in Texas and Louisiana. Officials were preparing a massive response, the head of FEMA said.

About 9 million people in Florida may lose power, some for weeks, said Florida Power & Light Co, which serves almost half of the state’s 20.6 million residents.

Amid the exodus, nearly one-third of all gas stations in Florida’s metropolitan areas were out of gasoline, with scattered outages in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina, according to Gasbuddy.com, a retail fuel price tracking service.

Mandatory evacuations on Georgia’s Atlantic coast and some of South Carolina’s barrier islands were due to begin on Saturday. Virginia and Alabama were under states of emergency.

The governors of North and South Carolina warned residents to remain on guard even as the storm took a more westward track, saying their states still could experience severe weather, including heavy rain and flash flooding, early next week.

As it roared in from the east, Irma ravaged small islands in the northeastern Caribbean, including Barbuda, St. Martin and the British and U.S. Virgin Islands, flattening homes and hospitals and ripping down trees.

Irma is seen costing at least 1.2 billion euros ($1.4 billion) in Saint Martin and Saint Barthelemy, a French public reinsurance body said on Saturday.

But even as they came to grips with the destruction, residents of the islands faced the threat of another major storm, Hurricane Jose.

Jose, expected to reach the northeastern Caribbean on Saturday, is an extremely dangerous storm nearing Category 5 status, with winds of up to 150 mph (240 kph), the NHC said.

(For a graphic on how Irma compares to other major hurricanes, click http://tmsnrt.rs/2gTxfqJ)

(Additional reporting by Marc Frank in Havana, Makini Brice in Cap-Haitien, Haiti,; Delana Isles in Providenciales, Turks and Caicos, Bernie Woodall, Robin Respaut and Brian Thevenot in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, Ben Gruber and Andy Sullivan in Miami, Bate Felix, Richard Lough and Dominique Vidalon in Paris, Toby Sterling in Amsterdam and Neil Hartnell in Nassau, Bahamas; Writing by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Helen Popper, Dale Hudson and Diane Craft)

Hurricane Irma downgraded as it tears into Cuba’s northern coast

Hurricane Irma downgraded as it tears into Cuba's northern coast

By Marc Frank

HAVANA (Reuters) – Hurricane Irma weakened slightly on Saturday as it battered Cuba’s northern coast while millions of Florida residents were told to evacuate after the storm killed 21 people in the eastern Caribbean and left devastation in its wake.

Downgraded as a Category 4 storm, Irma moved along the Camaguey Archipelago with 155 mph (250 kph) winds early on Saturday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said. It has shifted between the Category 4 and Category 5 classification, which is used for the most powerful storms.

Irma, one of the fiercest Atlantic storms in a century, was expected to hit Florida early on Sunday, causing major damage due to high winds and flooding to the fourth-largest U.S. state by population.

The scenes of destruction along Cuba’s north central coast were similar to those seen in other Caribbean islands over the last week as Irma barreled in for a direct hit at Ciego de Avila province around midnight.

Choppy seas, gray skies, sheets of rain, bending palm trees, huge waves crashing over sea walls and downed power lines filled state-run television’s evening news bulletin.

Irma was forecast to bring dangerous storm surges of up to 6 feet (two meters) to parts of the island’s northern coast and the central and northwestern Bahamas.

Meteorologists warned that by early Saturday far greater devastation was sure to be caused as Irma moved westward through Sancti Spiritus and Villa Clara provinces where it is forecast to turn north toward Florida.

Irma was about 245 miles (395 km) south-southeast of Miami, the NHC said in its latest advisory.

Shoppers encounter empty bread shelves ahead of the arrival of Hurricane Irma at a supermarket in Kissimmee, Florida, U.S. September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Gregg Newton

Shoppers encounter empty bread shelves ahead of the arrival of Hurricane Irma at a supermarket in Kissimmee, Florida, U.S. September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Gregg Newton

“RUNNING OUT OF TIME”

With the storm barreling toward the United States, officials in Florida ordered an unprecedented evacuation, racing to overcome clogged highways, gasoline shortages and move elderly residents to safety.

“We are running out of time. If you are in an evacuation zone, you need to go now. This is a catastrophic storm like our state has never seen,” Governor Rick Scott told reporters.

A total of 5.6 million people, or 25 percent of the state’s population, were ordered to evacuate Florida, according to the Florida Division of Emergency Management.

The United States has been hit by only three Category 5 storms since 1851, and Irma is far larger than the last one in 1992, Hurricane Andrew, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

President Donald Trump said in a videotaped statement that Irma was “a storm of absolutely historic destructive potential” and called on people to heed recommendations from government officials and law enforcement. In Palm Beach, Trump’s waterfront Mar-a-Lago estate was ordered evacuated.

MANDATORY EVACUATIONS, GAS SHORTAGES

Irma was set to hit the United States two weeks after Hurricane Harvey, a Category 4 storm, struck Texas, killing about 60 people and causing property damage estimated at up to $180 billion in Texas and Louisiana. Officials were preparing a massive response, the head of FEMA said.

About nine million people in Florida may lose power, some for weeks, said Florida Power & Light Co, which serves almost half of the state’s 20.6 million residents.

Amid the exodus, nearly one-third of all gas stations in Florida’s metropolitan areas were out of gasoline, with scattered outages in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina, according to Gasbuddy.com, a retail fuel price tracking service.

Mandatory evacuations on Georgia’s Atlantic coast and some of South Carolina’s barrier islands were due to begin on Saturday. Virginia and Alabama were under states of emergency.

The governors of North and South Carolina warned residents to remain on guard even as the storm took a more westward track, saying their states still could experience severe weather, including heavy rain and flash flooding, early next week.

As it roared in from the east, Irma ravaged small islands in the northeastern Caribbean, including Barbuda, St. Martin and the British and U.S. Virgin Islands, flattening homes and hospitals and ripping down trees.

But even as they came to grips with the destruction, residents of the islands faced the threat of another major storm, Hurricane Jose.

Jose, expected to reach the northeastern Caribbean on Saturday, is an extremely dangerous storm nearing Category 5 status, with winds of up to 150 mph (240 kph), the NHC said.

(For a graphic on how Irma compares to other major hurricanes, click http://tmsnrt.rs/2gTxfqJ)

(Additional reporting by Makini Brice in Cap-Haitien, Haiti,; Delana Isles in Providenciales, Turks and Caicos, Sarah Marsh in Caibarien, Cuba, Bernie Woodall in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, Ben Gruber and Andy Sullivan in Miami, Bate Felix, Richard Lough and Dominique Vidalon in Paris, Toby Sterling in Amsterdam and Neil Hartnell in Nassau, Bahamas; Writing by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Helen Popper)

United States poised to warn U.N. rights forum of possible withdrawal

An empty seat is pictured before a news conference at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, May 15, 2017.

y Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United States is expected to signal on Tuesday that it might withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council unless reforms are ushered in including the removal of what it sees as an “anti-Israel bias”, diplomats and activists said.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley, who holds cabinet rank in President Donald Trump’s administration, said last week Washington would decide on whether to withdraw from the Council after its three-week session in Geneva ends this month.

Under Trump, Washington has broken with decades of U.S. foreign policy by turning away from multilateralism. His decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement last week drew criticism from governments around the world.

The Council’s critical stance of Israel has been a major sticking point for its ally the United States. Washington boycotted the body for three years under President George W. Bush before rejoining under Barack Obama in 2009.

Haley, writing in the Washington Post at the weekend, called for the Council to “end its practice of wrongly singling out Israel for criticism.”

The possibility of a U.S. withdrawal has raised alarm bells among Western allies and activists.

Eight groups, including Freedom House and the Jacob Blaustein Institute, wrote to Haley in May saying a withdrawal would be counterproductive since it could lead to the Council “unfairly targeting Israel to an even greater degree.”

In the letter, seen by Reuters, the groups also said that during the period of the U.S. boycott, the Council’s performance suffered “both with respect to addressing the world’s worst violators and with respect to its anti-Israel bias.”

The Council has no powers other than to rebuke governments it deems as violating human rights and to order investigations but plays an important role in international diplomacy.

Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory are a fixed item on the agenda of the 47-member body set up in 2006. Washington, Israel’s main ally, often casts the only vote against the Arab-led resolutions.

“When the council passes more than 70 resolutions against Israel, a country with a strong human rights record, and just seven resolutions against Iran, a country with an abysmal human rights record, you know something is seriously wrong,” wrote Haley.

John Fisher, Geneva director of the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, did not appear to fear an immediate withdrawal.

“Our understanding is that it is going to be a message of engagement and reform,” Fisher told reporters.

However, Fisher said Israel’s human rights record did warrant Council scrutiny, but the special focus was “a reasonable concern”.

“It is an anomaly that there is a dedicated agenda item in a way that there isn’t for North Korea or Syria or anything else,” he said.

Haley also challenged the membership of Communist Cuba and Venezuela citing rights violations, proposing “competitive voting to keep the worst human rights abusers from obtaining seats”. She made no mention of Egypt or Saudi Arabia, two U.S. allies elected despite quashing dissent.

The U.S. envoy will host a panel on “Human Rights and Democracy in Venezuela” and address the Graduate Institute in Geneva before heading to Israel.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

Cubans throng Revolution Square in mourning for Fidel Castro

People stand in line to pay tribute to Cuba's late President Fidel Castro in Revolution Square in Havana, Cuba,

By Nelson Acosta and Ana Isabel Martinez

HAVANA (Reuters) – Cubans will begin massing on Havana’s Revolution Square from Monday to commemorate Fidel Castro, the communist guerrilla leader who led a revolution in 1959 and ruled the Caribbean island for half a century.

Castro died on Friday at the age of 90, a decade after stepping down due to poor health and ceding power to his brother Raul Castro.

Castro was cremated on Saturday and a nine-day period of mourning declared. His ashes will be carried in a cortege to a final resting place in Santiago de Cuba, the city in eastern Cuba where he launched the revolution.

The government has invited people to Revolution Square for a two-day ceremony starting at 9 a.m. EST (1400 GMT). The urn holding the late leader’s ashes could be displayed.

Workers rushed to install speakers and light standards in the plaza, where a giant photograph of Castro was draped over the national library, the same space where an enormous poster of Jesus Christ was hung for last year’s visit by Pope Francis.

“Who is not going to be affected by a man who did everything for us?” said Jose Luis Herrera, part of the 12-person crew to hang the giant image. “He is the one who guided me and my children. He is my god.”

If previous public memorials are any guide, Raul Castro and other government, Communist Party and military leaders will lay flowers near the monument to Cuban national hero Jose Marti, followed by a long line of ordinary Cubans.

The ceremony in the capital will end on Tuesday night when foreign leaders are expected to pay their respects to a man who dedicated his life to fighting capitalist and colonial oppression, aligned his country with the Soviet Union and outlasted nine U.S. presidents who had sought to oust or undermine him.

Some world leaders will be notably absent.

The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin would not attend the funeral as he was preparing for a major speech. His close ally and speaker of the Russian State Duma or lower house of parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, would lead the Russian delegation, it said.

North Korea called for three days of mourning and said it would keep flags at half mast to honor Castro, its state news agency said.

And in Japan, Kyodo said that a senior lawmaker would head to Cuba in lieu of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

BIRTHPLACE OF THE REVOLUTION

A cortege will carry Castro’s remains east across the 750-mile-long (1,200-km long), eyebrow-shaped island to Santiago de Cuba. His cremated ashes will be laid to rest in the birthplace of the revolution when the mourning period ends on Dec. 4.

Along the way, admirers will mourn a man that many here saw as a visionary who stood up to U.S. domination of Latin America, brought healthcare and education to the poor, and inspired socialist movements across the world.

But critics, including exiles concentrated largely in Miami, have celebrated Castro’s death, saying he was a tyrant who jailed his opponents, banned opposition parties and wrecked Cuba’s economy with a failed socialist experiment.

Reacting to his death, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump called Castro “a brutal dictator who oppressed his own people for nearly six decades.”

Trump has also has threatened to reverse outgoing President Barack Obama’s rapprochement with Cuba, which included restoring diplomatic relations and easing a half-century economic embargo.

Tourists passed through Revolution Square on Sunday, snapping photos and taking joy rides in classic U.S. cars from the 1950s that are still widely used.

“What I have been impressed with is the love that the Cuban people had for him,” said Martha Pons, a Mexican tourist who came to Cuba to attend a Placido Domingo concert on Saturday that was postponed after Castro’s death.

Cuba’s rich variety of music, a soundtrack on the streets of Havana, has been muted since Friday night and the government has also temporarily banned alcohol sales and suspended the professional baseball season.

(Additional reporting by Sarah Marsh in Havana, Maria Tsvetkova in Moscow, Tony Munroe in Seoul and William Mallard in Toyko; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Simon Gardner, Simon Cameron-Moore and Bernadette Baum)

U.S. to abstain from United Nations vote calling for end to Cuba embargo

A vintage car passes by the U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba,

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United States on Wednesday will for the first time abstain from a United Nations General Assembly vote on a resolution calling for an end to a U.S. trade embargo on Cuba, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said.

The United States has consistently voted against such resolutions for the past 24 years. Last year the resolution was adopted by the 193-member General Assembly with 191 votes in favor. Israel joined its ally the United States in voting against. While such resolutions are non-binding, they can carry political weight.

The General Assembly will vote shortly for the 25th time on the annual resolution. U.S. President Barack Obama has taken steps to ease trade and travel restrictions on Cuba, but only the U.S. Congress can lift the full embargo.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by James Dalgleish)

Hurricane Matthew hammers Haiti and Cuba, bears down on U.S.

Damage from Hurricane Matthew

By Makini Brice and Sarah Marsh

LES CAYES, Haiti/GUANTANAMO, Cuba (Reuters) – Hurricane Matthew, the fiercest Caribbean storm in almost a decade, hit Cuba and Haiti with winds of well over 100 miles-per-hour on Tuesday, pummeling towns, farmland and resorts and forcing hundreds of thousands of people to take cover.

Dubbed by the U.N. the worst humanitarian crisis to hit Haiti since a devastating 2010 earthquake, the Category Four hurricane unleashed torrential rain on the island of Hispaniola that Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic.

As it barreled towards the United States, the eye of the storm had moved off the northeastern coast of Cuba by Tuesday night, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.

At least four people were killed in the Dominican Republic by collapsing walls and mudslides, as well as two in Haiti, where communications in the worst-hit areas were down, making it hard for authorities to assess the scale of the damage.

“Haiti is facing the largest humanitarian event witnessed since the earthquake six years ago,” said Mourad Wahba, the U.N. Secretary-General’s Deputy Special Representative for Haiti.

Over 200,000 people were killed in Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, by the January 2010 earthquake.

Matthew was blowing sustained winds of 140 mph (230 kph) or more for much of Tuesday, though as night fell, the windspeed eased to about 130 mph, the NHC said.

Early reports suggested that Cuba had not been hit as hard as Haiti, where the situation was described as “catastrophic” in the port town of Les Cayes.

In the Cuban city of Guantanamo, streets emptied as people moved to shelters or inside their homes.

Matthew is likely to remain a powerful hurricane through at least Thursday night as it sweeps through the Bahamas towards Florida and the Atlantic coast of the southern United States, the NHC said. The storm is expected to be very near the east cost of Florida by Thursday evening, the center added.

The governor of South Carolina ordered the evacuation of more than 1 million people from Wednesday afternoon.

With communications out across most of Haiti and a key bridge impassable because of a swollen river, there was no immediate word on the full extent of potential casualties and damage from the storm in the poorest country in the Americas.

But Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told reporters in Washington the U.S. Navy was considering sending an aircraft carrier and other ships to the region to aid relief efforts.

The United States has already offered Haiti the use of some helicopters, said Haitian Interior Minister Francois Anick Joseph, who added that damage to housing and crops in the country was apparently extensive.

Twice destroyed by hurricanes in the 18th century, Les Cayes was hit hard by Matthew.

“The situation in Les Cayes is catastrophic, the city is flooded, you have trees lying in different places and you can barely move around. The wind has damaged many houses,” said Deputy Mayor Marie Claudette Regis Delerme, who fled a house in the town of about 70,000 when the wind ripped the roof off.

One man died as the storm crashed through his home in the nearby beach town of Port Salut, Haiti’s civil protection service said. He had been too sick to leave for a shelter, officials said. The body of a second man who went missing at sea was also recovered, the government said. Another fisherman was killed in heavy seas over the weekend as the storm approached.

STARTING FROM SCRATCH

As much as 3 feet (1 meter) of rain was forecast to fall over hills in Haiti that are largely deforested and prone to flash floods and mudslides, threatening villages as well as shantytowns in the capital Port-au-Prince.

The hurricane has hit Haiti at a time when tens of thousands of people are still living in flimsy tents and makeshift dwellings because of the 2010 earthquake.

“Farms have been hit really hard. Things like plantains, beans, rice – they’re all gone,” said Hervil Cherubin, country director in Haiti for Heifer International, a nonprofit organization that is working with 30,000 farming families across Haiti. “Most of the people are going to have to start all over again. Whatever they accumulated the last few years has been all washed out.”

Matthew was churning around 20 miles (32 km) northwest of the eastern tip of Cuba at 11 p.m. EDT (0300 GMT). It was moving north at about 8 miles per hour (13 kph), the NHC said.

Cuba’s Communist government traditionally puts extensive efforts into saving lives and property in the face of storms, and authorities have spent days organizing teams of volunteers to move residents to safety and secure property.

The storm thrashed the tourist town of Baracoa in the province of Guantanamo, passing close to the disputed U.S. Naval base and military prison.

The U.S. Navy ordered the evacuation of 700 spouses and children along with 65 pets of service personnel as the storm approached. U.S. President Barack Obama had earlier canceled a trip to Florida scheduled for Wednesday because of the potential impact of the storm, the White House said.

A hurricane watch was in effect for Florida from an area just north of Miami Beach to the Volusia-Brevard county line, near Cape Canaveral, which the storm could reach on Thursday, the hurricane center said.

Tropical storm or hurricane conditions could affect parts of Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina later this week, even if the center of Matthew remained offshore, the NHC said.

Governor Rick Scott declared a state of emergency for Florida on Monday, designating resources for evacuations and shelters and putting the National Guard on standby.

(Reporting by Joseph Guyler Delva in Port-au-Prince and Makini Brice in Les Cayes; Additional reporting by Marc Frank in Cuba and Jorge Pineda in Dominican Republic; Writing by Frank Jack Daniel and Dave Graham; Editing by Simon Gardner, Sandra Maler and Nick Macfie)

Hurricane Matthew’s threat to Haiti grows, some resist shelters

Families aboard a plane to evacuate them

By Makini Brice and Joseph Guyler Delva

LES CAYES/PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) – Hurricane Matthew edged closer to Haiti on Monday, bringing 130- mile-per-hour (215 kph) winds and torrential rain that could wreak havoc in the Caribbean nation, although some 2,000 people in one coastal town refused to evacuate.

Matthew’s center is expected to near southwestern Haiti and Jamaica on Monday night, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

Crawling towards Haiti’s Les Cayes, Jamaica and Cuba at five miles per hour (seven kph), the storm could be just as slow leaving, giving its winds and rain more time to cause damage.

“We are worried about the slow pace of Hurricane Matthew, which will expose Haiti to much more rain, and the country is particularly vulnerable to flooding,” said Ronald Semelfort, director of Haiti’s national meteorology center.

The storm comes at a bad time for Haiti. The poorest country in the Americas is set to hold a long-delayed election next Sunday.

A combination of weak government and precarious living conditions make the country particularly vulnerable to natural disasters. More than 200,000 people were killed when a magnitude 7 earthquake struck in 2010.

“Even in normal times, when we have rain we have flooding that sometimes kills people,” said Semelfort, comparing Matthew to 1963’s Hurricane Flora, which swept away entire villages and killed thousands in Haiti.

RESISTANCE

In Jamaica too, officials were scrambling to protect the vulnerable, as residents boarded up windows and flocked to supermarkets to stock up on food, water, flashlights and beer.

In Cuba, which Matthew is due to reach on Tuesday, evacuation operations were well underway, with people voluntarily moving their belongings into neighbors’ houses or heading to shelters. Some even found cliff-side caves they said were the safest places to ride out storms.

Matthew was about 245 miles (3955 km) south-southeast of Jamaica’s Kingston early on Monday and moving north toward Haiti. The hurricane center ranked it at Category 4 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity.

In Haiti, some streets were already flooded in Les Cayes, a town of about 70,000 people that was previously ravaged by hurricanes in 1781 and 1788.

But Haitian officials said about 2,000 residents of the La Savane neighborhood of Les Cayes refused to heed government calls to move out of their seaside homes, even though they were just a few miles from where the center of the hurricane is forecast to make landfall.

As the wind died down at night, people remained outside in La Savane, hanging out on porches, playing checkers and dominoes outside, and listening to music.

“The police and local authorities and our evacuation teams have been instructed to do all they can to move those people,” Interior Minister Francois Anick Joseph said.

“They have also been instructed to move them by force if necessary. We have an obligation to protect those peoples lives, even against their will.”

However, the chief of police for the southern region, Luc Pierre, said it was almost impossible to force such a large number of people to leave their homes.

“I would have to arrest all those people and take them to a safe place. This is very difficult,” he said, adding that the power had already gone off in the town.

Poor Haitians are at times reluctant to leave their homes in the face of impending storms, fearing their belongings will be stolen after they leave.

Only a few families had opted to move to a high school in La Savane, designated as a shelter for up to 600 people. It was without electricity and lit only by candlelight.

“There are babies crying here; there is nothing at all,” said Nadja, 32, who was pregnant with her fourth child.

(Additional reporting by Sarah Marsh and Gabriel Stargardter; Writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore, Larry King)

Cuba government filtering mobile text messages, dissidents say

A Cuban flag flies at the Palace of the Revolution in Havana, Cuba

By Marc Frank

HAVANA (Reuters) – Cuba’s Communist government is filtering mobile phone text messages for key words such as “democracy” and “human rights” and then blocking them, dissidents said on Monday.

An investigative report by blogger Yoani Sanchez and journalist Reinaldo Escobar concluded that text messages failed to reach their destinations if they contained Spanish words for democracy, human rights or hunger strike, among others, as well as the names of some dissidents.

Eliecer Avila, head of opposition youth group Somos Mas, which participated in the investigation, said 30 key words that triggered the blocking had been identified but there could be more.

“We always thought texts were vanishing because the provider is so incompetent, then we decided to check using words that bothered the government,” he said.

“We discovered not just us but the entire country is being censored,” he said. “It just shows how insecure and paranoid the government is.”

It was not clear for how long the filter had been in place.

The full report was published by Sanchez’s online newspaper, 14YMedio.com.

State telecommunications monopoly ETECSA could not be reached for comment.

Cuba has repeatedly charged that the United States wants to use telecommunications to subvert the government and brands Sanchez and other opponents as mercenaries working with Washington.

Reuters on Monday unsuccessfully tried to send messages containing the words “democracy,” “human rights,” “Somos Mas” and Yoani Sanchez. Other messages containing the Spanish word for “protest” went through. The messages that did not reach their destinations appeared as “sent” on the users’ telephone.

Cuba arrived late to modern telecommunications, authorizing mobile phones in 2008 and Wi-Fi internet access only last year. Online, it blocks dissident websites and media it believes to be funded by the United States, but permits the websites of critical newspapers such as El Nuevo Herald and El Pais.

There currently are about 3 million mobile telephone accounts with local provider CubaCell, which is part of ETECSA.

Despite efforts by the Obama administration to link U.S. internet providers with the country as part of a detente begun in December 2014, Cuban authorities appear more interested in working with Russia on cyber-security, while China provides most of the Caribbean island’s communications technology.

Experts estimate that between 25 percent and 30 percent of Cuba’s 11.2 million residents has some Internet access, mainly through Wi-Fi, though it is sparsely used because of high rates.

Some 5 percent of the population enjoys home-based Internet, which requires special government permission.

(Editing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Bill Trott)

Cuba deploys army in effort to avoid Zika virus

HAVANA (Reuters) – Cuban President Raul Castro called on the entire Cuban population to help eradicate the mosquitoes that carry the Zika virus on Monday and ordered 9,000 army troops to help stave off the disease.

Cuba has yet to detect a case of Zika but the outbreak is affecting large parts of Latin America and the Caribbean and is likely to spread to all countries in the Americas except for Canada and Chile, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.

“It’s necessary for every single Cuban to take up this battle as a personal matter,” Castro wrote in a national message sounding the alarm over Zika, which is carried by mosquitoes that transmit the virus to humans and which is suspected of causing birth defects after infecting pregnant women.

Cubans should clean up potential environments for the Aedes genus of mosquitoes, said Castro, who also is general of the armed forces.

“The Revolutionary Armed Forces will assign more than 9,000 troops, among them active duty officers and reserve officers … to the anti-vector and cleanup efforts, with the additional support of 200 officers of the National Revolutionary Police,” Castro said.

The ruling Communist Party and the government have adopted an action plan under the direction of the Health Ministry to deal with the Zika that will also help combat the mosquito-borne diseases dengue and chikungunya, Castro said.

One Health Ministry employee, who asked not to be identified as she was not authorized to talk with journalists, said the country’s vast network of neighborhood doctors and clinics were watching for Zika symptoms and suspected cases would be quarantined in hospital wards prepared for an eventual outbreak.

“There are no confirmed cases yet but there will be. To date there have been two suspected cases that turned out negative,” said the employee, who has real-time access to epidemiological data.

The government, which has fumigated neighborhoods and homes for decades to contain dengue, put doctors on alert for the virus weeks ago and ramped up mosquito eradication efforts.

Military officers could be seen over the weekend, clip boards instead of rifles in hand, directing fumigation in Havana.

The WHO declared the outbreak an international health emergency on Feb. 1, citing a “strongly suspected” relationship between Zika infection in pregnancy and microcephaly, a condition marked by abnormally small head size.

However, much remains unknown about Zika, including whether the virus actually causes microcephaly.

(Reporting by Marc Frank and Daniel Trotta; Editing by Bill Trott)

After 1,000-year split, pope and Russian patriarch embrace in Cuba

HAVANA (Reuters) – Pope Francis and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill embraced and kissed on Friday in a historic meeting, uniting to issue a global appeal for the protection of Christians under assault in the Middle East.

Nearly 1,000 years after the Eastern and Western branches of Christianity split apart, the meeting at an airport terminal in Cuba was the first ever between a Roman Catholic pope and a Russian Orthodox patriarch.

“In many countries of the Middle East and North Africa whole families, villages and cities of our brothers and sisters in Christ are being completely exterminated,” they said in a joint declaration in apparent reference to violence by militant groups like Islamic State.

“Their churches are being barbarously ravaged and looted, their sacred objects profaned, their monuments destroyed.”

Cuban President Raul Castro stood to the side during the ceremony, enjoying another moment in the international limelight after receiving Francis last year and restoring diplomatic relations with the United States recently, meeting President Barack Obama in Panama in April.

The two religious leaders, guests of a Communist government, came together only a week after the encounter was announced. Such a meeting had eluded their predecessor, but Francis had issued a standing invitation to meet anytime, anywhere.

The moment came while Kirill was visiting the Caribbean island and Francis added a brief stop on his way from Rome to a long-scheduled visit to Mexico.

“Finally,” Francis said as he and Kirill entered through doors on opposite sides of a room at Havana airport to begin private talks. “We are brothers.”

Francis, dressed in white with a skullcap, and Kirill, wearing a tall, domed hat that dangled a white stole over black robes, joined arms and kissed on both cheeks.

“It is very clear that this is the will of God,” Francis said.

“Yes, things are much easier now,” Kirill said. Both men spoke through interpreters.

Their meeting carried political overtones, coming at a time of Russian disagreements with the West over Syria and Ukraine.

The Russian Orthodox Church is closely aligned with the Kremlin, which is in turn an ally of Cuba.

The Argentine pontiff helped the rapprochement between the United States and Cuba after more than five decades of estrangement.

The pope, leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, is seeking to repair a much longer rupture. Eastern Orthodoxy split with Rome in 1054.

Modern popes have met in the past with the Istanbul-based ecumenical patriarchs, the spiritual leaders of Eastern Orthodoxy.

Those patriarchs play a largely symbolic role, while the rich Russian church wields real influence because it counts some 165 million of the world’s 250 million Orthodox Christians.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta and Philip Pullella; Editing by Andrew Hay and Alistair Bell)