Important Takeaways:
- Israel carried out a series of massive airstrikes overnight, hitting suburbs of Beirut and cutting off the main border crossing between Lebanon and Syria for tens of thousands of people fleeing Israeli bombardment.
- Israel’s military said that Hezbollah had launched about 100 rockets into Israel on Friday, as fighting continued between Israel and the militant group.
- The Israeli military also said Friday that a strike in Beirut the day before killed Mohammed Rashid Skafi, the head of Hezbollah’s communications division. The military said in a statement that Skafi was “a senior Hezbollah terrorist who was responsible for the communications unit since 2000” and was “closely affiliated” with high-up Hezbollah officials.
- Israel said it had targeted the crossing because it was being used by Hezbollah to transport military equipment across the border. It said fighter jets had struck a tunnel used to smuggle weapons from Iran and other proxies into Lebanon.
- Hezbollah is believed to have received much of its weaponry from Iran via Syria.
- Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrived Friday in Beirut for meetings with Lebanese officials. He warned that if Israeli carries out an attack on Iran, Tehran would retaliate in a harsh way.
- Israel’s military said Friday that militants in Gaza fired two rockets into Israeli territory, the first time Israel has seen rocket fire from Gaza in about a month.
- The number of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel has slowed considerably since the start of the war.
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Important Takeaways:
- The Israeli military on Thursday warned people to evacuate a city and other communities in southern Lebanon that are north of a U.N.-declared buffer zone, signaling that it may widen a ground operation launched earlier this week against the Hezbollah militant group.
- Israel has told people to leave Nabatieh, a provincial capital, and other communities north of the Litani River, which formed the northern edge of the border zone established by the U.N. Security Council after the two sides fought a war in 2006.
- Israel has been pounding areas of the country where the militant group has a strong presence since late September, but has rarely struck in the heart of the capital.
- The Israeli military said Thursday that it had struck around 200 Hezbollah targets across Lebanon, including weapons storage facilities and observation posts. It said the strikes killed at least 15 Hezbollah fighters.
- So far, ground clashes between Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants have been confined to a narrow strip along the border.
- President Joe Biden said he did not expect Israel to retaliate against Iran on Thursday and rejected the suggestion that the U.S. would grant permission for such an attack.
- “First of all, we don’t ‘allow’ Israel, we advise Israel,” Biden said. “And nothing’s going to happen today.”
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Important Takeaways:
- A popular tourist island south of mainland China has been hit by the most powerful typhoon in a decade, leaving the area facing potentially catastrophic winds and torrential rain.
- A super typhoon is equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane.
- Super typhoon Yagi slammed into Wenchang city in the north-east of Hainan Island with winds of 138 mph at 16:00 local time on Friday, according to state media.
- Some 400,000 people in Hainan Island were evacuated to safe ground ahead of Yagi’s arrival.
- Chinese authorities believe Yagi will be the strongest typhoon to hit its southern coast in a decade.
- Earlier this week, floods and landslides brought by Yagi killed at least 13 people in northern Philippines, with thousands of people forced to evacuate to safer ground.
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Important Takeaways:
- Canada’s wildfire season re-erupts forcing thousands from homes, prompting air quality alerts
- An evacuation alert was issued for Fort McMurray in Alberta as crews responded to what they described as an “out-of-control wildfire” southwest of town that had burned more than 13,500 acres as of Sunday.
- The combination of warm temperatures and an ongoing drought have helped fuel several fires in western Canada, which has triggered thousands to leave their homes.
- One of the largest fires burning in the province of British Columbia is called the Parker Lake Wildfire. As of Sunday, the blaze had burned more than 6,100 acres, and firefighters said it was continuing to show extreme behavior due to dry brush and winds.
- Conditions in many parts of B.C., and especially in the Prince George Fire Centre (PGFC), are unseasonably dry and more typical of those observed in the late summer. As a result, fuels are more susceptible to ignition and wildfires can spread more quickly,” the British Columbia Wildfire Service said.
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Important Takeaways:
- Powerful storms unloaded flooding rainfall that swept away vehicles and triggered evacuations, delivered hail the size of softballs and spun up at least one damaging tornado in Texas Thursday.
- Dozens of tornadoes have hit from the Panhandle to the Gulf coast and months of rain has fallen in East Texas in intense spurts, causing rivers to rise to levels not seen since the devastating floods of Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
- Mandatory evacuations were ordered Thursday in parts of Harris County
- “We want you out of this area… this is a life-threatening situation,” Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said at a news conference.
- Mandatory evacuations due to flooding were also ordered for parts of San Jacinto County and Polk County, with voluntary evacuations for Montgomery County.
- Several more sites are forecast to experience major flooding by the weekend and could meet or exceed record levels set during Harvey.
- A “large and extremely dangerous” tornado impacted the towns of Hodges and Hawley – about 10 miles north of Abilene – Thursday evening.
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Important Takeaways:
- A Time Of High Anxiety For American Jews: Jewish Institutions Receive 199 Threats In Just 24 Hrs, Causing Evacuations
- Hundreds of synagogues and Jewish institutions across the United States received bomb threats by email this weekend, in a substantial acceleration of a months-long spree of hoax threats.
- The Secure Community Network, which coordinates security for Jewish institutions nationwide, said early Sunday that it had tracked 199 threats over the past 24 hours, with nearly 100 in California and 62 in Arizona. Synagogues in at least 17 states plus Washington, D.C., were affected, according to local media reports.
- None of the threats were deemed credible after local investigations. But some of them caused significant disruption: A Boulder, Colorado, synagogue evacuated its Shabbat morning services on Saturday, for example, while a congregation in western Massachusetts canceled its Sunday religious school.
- In Alabama, the state’s only Jewish lawmaker, Philip Ensler, posted a video to social media showing the moment that the Torah reading at his synagogue was interrupted and everyone in attendance was ushered outside.
- “This is exhausting,” he tweeted. “I pray for the day that we can worship and live in peace.”
- The surge in threats comes at a time of high anxiety for American Jews amid a spike in reports of anti-Semitic incidents amid the Israel-Hamas war. It also follows multiple arrests of people who have been charged with sending bomb threats targeting Jewish and other institutions, including a minor in California last week and a man in Peru in September.
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Important Takeaways:
- 7.6 magnitude earthquake off Philippines prompts evacuations more than 1,000 miles away
- The earthquake near the southern Philippines island of Mindanao was strong enough and close to land to shake nearby communities, the U.S. Geologic Survey said in a post on X, formally known as Twitter. It occurred just after 10:30 p.m. Saturday local time
- The Tsunami Warning Center initially said that based on the magnitude and location, it expected tsunami waves to hit the southern Philippines and parts of Indonesia, Palau and Malaysia. But the center later dropped its tsunami warning.
- In Japan, authorities issued evacuation orders in various parts of Okinawa Prefecture affecting thousands of people. Okinawa is more than 1,200 miles from Mindanao.
- More than three hours after the quake hit, there was no report of a tsunami hitting the coast, Teresito Bacolcol, the head of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, told The Associated Press. Based on the quake’s magnitude, Bacolcol said a 3.2-foot tsunami could hit, but the wave could be higher in enclosed coves, bays and straits.
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Important Takeaways:
- U.S. readies plans for mass evacuations if Gaza war escalates
- The Biden administration is preparing for the possibility that hundreds of thousands of American citizens will require evacuation from the Middle East if the bloodshed in Gaza cannot be contained, according to four officials familiar with the U.S. government’s contingency planning
- The specter of such an operation comes as Israeli forces, aided by U.S. weapons and military advisers, prepare for what is widely expected to be a perilous ground offensive against Hamas militants responsible for the stunning cross-border attack that has reignited hostilities. The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to detail internal deliberations, said Americans living in Israel and neighboring Lebanon are of particular concern, though they stressed that an evacuation of that magnitude is considered a worst-case scenario and that other outcomes are seen as more likely.
- Still, one official said, it “would be irresponsible not to have a plan for everything.”
- There were about 600,000 U.S. citizens in Israel and another 86,000 believed to be in Lebanon when Hamas attacked, according to State Department estimates.
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Important Takeaways:
- Thousands more evacuated as Tenerife fire rages on Spain’s Canary Islands
- Canary Islands (AP) — Thousands more residents of Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands have fled their homes as a wildfire that authorities deemed “out of control” raged on for a fourth day.
- The regional government for the Canary Islands said that 4,000 more people were ordered to evacuate on Saturday. Those were in addition to the 4,500 people who on Friday were forced to move out of harm’s way on the Atlantic island that is home to around a million people and is also a popular tourist destination.
- That figure of more than 8,000 evacuees is expected to rise, and perhaps sharply.
- The Canary Islands have been in drought for most of the past few years, just like most of mainland Spain. The islands have recorded below-average rainfall in recent years because of changing weather patterns impacted by climate change.
- The Tenerife fire comes as Spain’s mainland is bracing for another heat wave. Spain’s state weather service issued a warning Saturday that temperatures would be on the rise in the coming days, hitting 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in parts of the mainland.
- Spain had a record-hot 2022 and is setting new heat records this year amid a prolonged drought that has authorities on alert for wildfires.
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Important Takeaways:
- Explosive wildfire crossed US-Canada border, forcing evacuations
- An out-of-control blaze burning in northern Washington State exploded in size, crossed the Canadian border and set off a cascade of evacuations over the weekend.
- The so-called Eagle Bluff Fire has burned thousands of acres on both sides of the border and forced hundreds to evacuate their homes since it ignited Saturday in Washington’s Okanogan County.
- Evacuations were ordered on Saturday for more than 700 properties in the Canadian town of Osoyoos, British Columbia, after the fire crossed the border. By Monday, that number fell to 192 properties after firefighters made progress fighting the fire, with an additional 2,635 properties in the area under an evacuation alert to be ready to evacuate should conditions change.
- There are no active evacuation orders for the Eagle Pass Fire in the US, but at least three structures had burned in Okanogan County, Washington, and portions of the county were under a Level 2 evacuation notice – “Be Ready to Evacuate” – according to fire officials.
- The fire exploded in size due to dry, warm and breezy conditions and has burned through more than 10,000 acres. At least 3,500 acres have burned in Canada alone. The fire remains completely uncontained in both countries, according to Washington and Canadian fire officials.
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