Florida is gearing up for what could be its biggest evacuation in seven years as Hurricane Milton strengthens over warm waters and heads toward major population centers including Tampa and Orlando. About 7 million people were urged to evacuate Florida in 2017 as Hurricane Irma bore down on the state. The exodus jammed freeways, led to hourslong lines at gas stations that still had fuel and left evacuees frustrated and, in some cases, vowing never to evacuate again. Hurricane Milton was “moving erratically eastward through the southern Gulf of Mexico” early Monday morning and likely to become a major hurricane later in the day, the National Hurricane Center reported. The storm was centered about 220 miles (354 kilometers) west-northwest of Progreso, Mexico, and 770 miles (1,239 kilometers) west-southwest of Tampa with maximum sustained winds of 90 mph (144 kph) while moving east at 6 mph (9.6 kph), the hurricane center said. While forecast models vary widely, the most likely path suggests Milton could make landfall Wednesday in the Tampa Bay area and remain a hurricane as it moves across central Florida into the Atlantic Ocean. That would largely spare other southeastern states ravaged by Hurricane Helene, which caused catastrophic damage from Florida into the Appalachian Mountains and a death toll that rose Sunday to at least 230 people. Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, the Florida Peninsula, the Florida Keys and the northwestern Bahamas should monitor the system’s progress, the hurricane center said. Heavy rainfall was expected Sunday ahead of the hurricane and likely will then combine with Milton’s rainfall to flood waterways and streets in Florida, where forecasters said up to a foot (30 centimeters) of rain could fall in places through Wednesday night. Building on lessons learned during Irma and other previous storms, Florida is staging emergency fuel for gas vehicles and charging stations for electric vehicles along evacuation routes, Kevin Guthrie, executive director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said at a Sunday briefing. “We are looking at every potential, possible location that can potentially house someone, as what we refer to in emergency management, as a refuge of last resort,” Guthrie added. Hurricane Milton is intensifying rapidly and will likely be a major hurricane before slamming into the storm-ravaged Gulf Coast midweek. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Sunday that while it remains to be seen where Milton will strike, it’s clear the state is going to be hit hard. “I don’t think there’s any scenario where we don’t have major impacts at this point," he said. “You have time to prepare — all day today, all day Monday, probably all day Tuesday to be sure your hurricane preparedness plan is in place,” DeSantis said. “If you’re on that west coast of Florida, barrier islands, just assume you’ll be asked to leave.” With Milton achieving hurricane status, this is the first time the Atlantic has had three simultaneous hurricanes after September, according to Colorado State University hurricane scientist Phil Klotzbach. There have been four simultaneous hurricanes in August and September. The St. Petersburg-Tampa Bay area is still cleaning up extensive damage from Helene and its powerful storm surge. Twelve people perished as Helene swamped the coast, with the worst damage along the narrow, 20-mile (32-kilometer) string of barrier islands that stretch from St. Petersburg to Clearwater. DeSantis expanded his state of emergency declaration Sunday to 51 counties and said Floridians should prepare for more power outages and disruption, making sure they have a week’s worth of food and water and are ready to hit the road. “We are preparing ... for the largest evacuation that we have seen, most likely since 2017, Hurricane Irma," Guthrie said. People who live in homes built after Florida strengthened codes in 2004, who don’t depend on constant electricity and who aren’t in evacuation zones should probably avoid the roads, Guthrie said. All classes and school activities in St. Petersburg’s Pinellas County preemptively closed Monday through Wednesday as Milton approached. Officials in Tampa opened all city garages free of charge to residents hoping to protect their cars from floodwaters, including electric vehicles. The vehicles must be left on the third floor or higher in each garage. As many as 4,000 National Guard troops are helping state crews to remove debris, DeSantis said, and he directed Florida crews dispatched to North Carolina in Helene’s aftermath to return in preparation for Milton. “All available state assets ... are being marshaled to help remove debris,” DeSantis said. “We’re going 24-7 ... it’s all hands on deck.” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell defended her agency’s response to Hurricane’s destruction after Republicans’ false claims, amplified by former President Donald Trump, created a frenzy of misinformation across devastated communities. “This kind of rhetoric is not helpful to people and it’s really a shame we’re putting politics ahead of helping people,” Criswell told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. It has created fear and mistrust among residents against the thousands of FEMA employees and volunteers on the ground across the southeast, she said. Despite this, Criswell said the agency is already preparing for Milton, well before it’s clear exactly where the storm will move across the Florida peninsula this week. “We’re working with the state there to understand what their requirements are going to be, so we can have those in place before it makes landfall,” she said. Federal disaster assistance has surpassed $137 million since Helene struck more than a week ago, one of the largest mobilizations of personnel and resources in recent history, FEMA said Sunday. Some 1,500 active-duty troops, more than 6,100 National Guardsmen and nearly 7,000 federal workers have been deployed, shipping more than 14.9 million meals, 13.9 million liters (3.6 million gallons) of water, 157 generators and 505,000 tarps, along with approving more than $30 million in housing and other types of assistance for over 27,000 households, according to FEMA, the White House and the Department of Defense. More than 800 people unable to return home are staying in lodging provided through FEMA and 22 shelters are still housing nearly 1,000 people as mobile feeding operations continue to help survivors. The response to Helene won’t let up during Milton and its aftermath, because FEMA has the capacity to address multiple disasters simultaneously, the agency said. “My Administration is sparing no resource to support families as they begin their road to rebuilding,” Biden said. “We will continue working hand-in-hand with local and state leaders — regardless of political party and no matter how long it takes.”

The death toll from Hurricane Helene inched up to 227 on Saturday as the grim task of recovering bodies continued more than a week after the monster storm ravaged the Southeast and killed people in six states. Helene came ashore Sept. 26 as a Category 4 hurricane and carved a wide swath of destruction as it moved northward from Florida, washing away homes, destroying roads and knocking out electricity and cellphone service for millions. The number of deaths stood at 225 on Friday; two more were recorded in South Carolina the following day. It was still unclear how many people were unaccounted for or missing, and the toll could rise even higher. Helene is the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. since Katrina in 2005. About half the victims were in North Carolina, while dozens more were killed in Georgia and South Carolina. The city of Asheville, in the western mountains of North Carolina, was particularly battered. A week later workers used brooms and heavy machinery to clean mud and dirt outside of New Belgium Brewing Company, which lies next to the French Broad River and is among thousands of city businesses and households affected. So far North Carolinians have received more than $27 million in individual assistance approved by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said MaryAnn Tierney, a regional administrator for the agency. More than 83,000 people have registered for individual assistance, according to the office of Gov. Roy Cooper. In Buncombe County, where Asheville is located, FEMA-approved assistance has surpassed $12 million for survivors, Tierney said Saturday during a news briefing. “This is critical assistance that will help people with their immediate needs, as well as displacement assistance that helps them if they can’t stay in their home,” she said. She encouraged residents impacted by the storm to register for disaster assistance. Read:  At least 64 dead and millions without power after Helene's deadly march across the Southeast “It is the first step in the recovery process,” she said. “We can provide immediate relief in terms of serious needs assistance to replace food, water, medicines, other life safety, critical items, as well as displacement assistance if you cannot stay in your home.” Helene’s raging floodwaters shocked mountain towns hundreds of miles inland and far from where the storm made landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast, including in the Tennessee mountains that Dolly Parton calls home. The country music star has announced a $1 million donation to the Mountain Ways Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to providing immediate assistance to Hurricane Helene flood victims. In addition, her East Tennessee businesses as well as the Dollywood Foundation are combining efforts, pledging to match her donation to Mountain Ways with a $1 million contribution. Parton said she feels a close connection to the storm victims because so many of them “grew up in the mountains just like I did.” “I can’t stand to see anyone hurting, so I wanted to do what I could to help after these terrible floods,” she said. “I hope we can all be a little bit of light in the world for our friends, our neighbors — even strangers — during this dark time they are experiencing.” Walmart U.S. President and CEO John Furner said the company, including Sam’s Club and the Walmart Foundation, would increase its commitment and donate a total of $10 million to hurricane relief efforts. In Newport, an eastern Tennessee town of about 7,000, residents continued cleaning up Saturday from the destruction caused by Helene's floodwaters. Mud still clung to the basement walls of one Main Street funeral home. The ground-floor chapel of another nearby was being dried out, a painting of Jesus still hanging on the wall in an otherwise barren room. Newport City Hall and its police department also took on water from the swollen Pigeon River. Some of the modest, one-story homes along its banks were destroyed, their walls crumbled and rooms exposed. Read more: Tropical Storm Helene moves toward western coast of Africa Farther east in unincorporated Del Rio, along a bend in the French Broad River, residents and volunteers toiled to clean up. The smell of wood hung in the air as people used chainsaws to cut through downed trees, and Bobcats beeped as they moved mangled sheet metal and other debris. Many homes sustained damage, including one that slid off its foundation.

After 1,080 days as president, Joe Biden on Friday decided to pop in and take questions in the White House briefing room for the first time, striding in with a grin after a strong monthly jobs report and the temporary settlement of a strike by ports workers. The president has been less available than his recent predecessors to questions from White House press corps, making his surprise appearance welcome to the gathered reporters who waited as his press secretary's daily briefing was moved up 15 minutes, then delayed for nearly one hour. The president stepped through the press room's blue door in a dark gray suit and red tie and proceeded to make news in response to questions about comments on the 2024 presidential election, the latest jobs numbers and the escalating conflict in the Middle East. The 81-year old stepped aside from the Democratic nomination this summer, backing Vice President Kamala Harris instead. He acknowledged doubts about whether the November election would be peaceful, given comments by former President Donald Trump that the results could be rigged. “I’m confident it will be free and fair. I don’t know whether it will be peaceful,” Biden said. “The things that Trump has said, and the the things that he said last time when he didn’t like the outcome of the election, were very dangerous.” Biden has tried to rebut a political movement that has at times openly trafficked in conspiracy theories, with the latest revolving around the government reporting Friday that employers added 254,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.1%. “Another fake jobs report out from Biden-Harris government today,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., posted on social media. “But all the fake numbers in the world aren’t going to fool people dealing with the Biden-Harris economic disaster every day." The jobs reports are legitimate and have capped a solid run for the U.S. economy. Growth has stayed solid even as the inflation rate has dropped from a four-decade high in 2022 to an annual rate of 2.5%. Consumer confidence has been weak relative to overall economic growth, a sign that many people still don’t feel the strength seen in the latest jobs and inflation numbers. But Biden stressed that he was operating on valid data despite unfounded claims of falsification by supporters of Trump’s Make America Great Again movement. “If you notice, anything the MAGA Republicans don't like they call ‘fake,’” Biden said. "The job numbers are what the job numbers are. They're real. They're sincere." The president also highlighted the deal reached Thursday to suspend a strike by 45,000 dockworkers on East and Gulf coast ports until Jan. 15, creating time to try to hash out a new contract. Still, challenges remain for Biden as his final months as president involve the risk of a wider war in the Middle East. Since Hamas attacked Israel nearly a year ago, Israel has retaliated by bombarding the Gaza region in ways that have raised human rights concerns, as well as killing Hezbollah leaders and launching airstrikes in Lebanon. On Tuesday, Iran fired at least 180 missiles into Israel and there are concerns about additional retaliation that could cause the conflict to deepen. When asked, Biden clarified his comments from a day earlier about Israel possibly striking Iranian oil facilities, which caused the price of the commodity to jump on the prospect of supplies being squeezed. “Look, the Israelis have not concluded what they’re going to do in terms of a strike," Biden said Friday. "That’s under discussion. I think if I were in their shoes, I’d be thinking about other alternatives than striking oil fields.” The president emphasized that he and Harris are “singing from the same song sheet” on foreign and domestic policy, calling her a “major player in everything we've done.” As Biden began to leave the room, he was asked if he would reconsider his decision to exit the race. Biden cocked his head and smiled. “I’m back in,” he joked.

It was just a month ago that Brooke Hiers left the state-issued emergency trailer where her family had lived since Hurricane Idalia slammed into her Gulf Coast fishing village of Horseshoe Beach in August 2023. Hiers and her husband Clint were still finishing the electrical work in the home they painstakingly rebuilt themselves, wiping out Clint’s savings to do so. They never will finish that wiring job. Hurricane Helene blew their newly renovated home off its four foot-high pilings, sending it floating into the neighbor’s yard next door. “You always think, ‘Oh, there’s no way it can happen again’,” Hiers said. “I don’t know if anybody’s ever experienced this in the history of hurricanes.” For the third time in 13 months, this windswept stretch of Florida’s Big Bend took a direct hit from a hurricane — a one-two-three punch to a 50-mile (80-kilometer) sliver of the state’s more than 8,400 miles (13,500 kilometers) of coastline, first by Idalia, then Category 1 Hurricane Debby in August 2024 and now Helene. Hiers, who sits on Horseshoe Beach’s town council, said words like “unbelievable” are beginning to lose their meaning. “I’ve tried to use them all. Catastrophic. Devastating. Heartbreaking … none of that explains what happened here,” Hiers said. The back-to-back hits to Florida’s Big Bend are forcing residents to reckon with the true costs of living in an area under siege by storms that researchers say are becoming stronger because of climate change. The Hiers, like many others here, can’t afford homeowner’s insurance on their flood-prone houses, even if it was available. Residents who have watched their life savings get washed away multiple times are left with few choices — leave the communities where their families have lived for generations, pay tens of thousands of dollars to rebuild their houses on stilts as building codes require, or move into a recreational vehicle they can drive out of harm’s way. That’s if they can afford any of those things. The storm left many residents bunking with family or friends, sleeping in their cars, or sheltering in what’s left of their collapsing homes. Janalea England wasn't waiting for outside organizations to get aid to her friends and neighbors, turning her commercial fish market in the river town of Steinhatchee into a pop-up donation distribution center, just like she did after Hurricane Idalia. A row of folding tables was stacked with water, canned food, diapers, soap, clothes and shoes, a steady stream of residents coming and going. “I’ve never seen so many people homeless as what I have right now. Not in my community,” England said. “They have nowhere to go.” ‘It’s just gone'The sparsely populated Big Bend is known for its towering pine forests and pristine salt marshes that disappear into the horizon, a remote stretch of largely undeveloped coastline that’s mostly dodged the crush of condos, golf courses and souvenir strip malls that has carved up so much of the Sunshine State. This is a place where teachers, mill workers and housekeepers could still afford to live within walking distance of the Gulf’s white sand beaches. Or at least they used to, until a third successive hurricane blew their homes apart. Helene was so destructive, many residents don’t have a home left to clean up, escaping the storm with little more than the clothes on their backs, even losing their shoes to the surging tides. “People didn’t even have a Christmas ornament to pick up or a plate from their kitchen,” Hiers said. “It was just gone.” In a place where people are trying to get away from what they see as government interference, England, who organized her own donation site, isn’t putting her faith in government agencies and insurance companies. “FEMA didn’t do much,” she said. “They lost everything with Idalia and they were told, ‘here, you can have a loan.’ I mean, where’s our tax money going then?” England’s sister, Lorraine Davis, got a letter in the mail just days before Helene hit declaring that her insurance company was dropping her, with no explanation other than her home “fails to meet underwriting”. Living on a fixed income, Davis has no idea how she’ll repair the long cracks that opened up in the ceiling of her trailer after the last storm. “We'll all be on our own,” England said. “We're used to it.” ‘This could be the end of your town'In the surreal aftermath of this third hurricane, some residents don’t have the strength to clean up their homes again, not with other storms still brewing in the Gulf. With marinas washed away, restaurants collapsed and vacation homes blown apart, many commercial fishermen, servers and housecleaners lost their homes and their jobs on the same day. Those who worked at the local sawmill and paper mill, two bedrock employers in the area, were laid off in the past year too. Now a convoy of semi-trucks full of hurricane relief supplies have set up camp at the shuttered mill in the city of Perry. Hud Lilliott was a mill worker for 28 years, before losing his job and now his canal-front home in Dekle Beach, just down the street from the house where he grew up. Lilliott and his wife Laurie hope to rebuild their house there, but they don’t know how they’ll pay for it. And they’re worried the school in Steinhatchee where Laurie teaches first grade could become another casualty of the storm, as the county watches its tax base float away. “We've worked our whole lives and we're so close to where they say the ‘golden years’," Laurie said. "It's like you can see the light and it all goes dark.” Dave Beamer rebuilt his home in Steinhatchee after it was “totaled” by Hurricane Idalia, only to see it washed into the marsh a year later. “I don’t think I can do that again,” Beamer said. “Everybody’s changing their mind about how we’re going to live here.” A waterlogged clock in a shed nearby shows the moment when time stopped, marking before Helene and after. Beamer plans to stay in this river town, but put his home on wheels — buying a camper and building a pole barn to park it under. In Horseshoe Beach, Hiers is waiting for a makeshift town hall to be delivered in the coming days, a double-wide trailer where they’ll offer what services they can for as long as they can. She and her husband are staying with their daughter, a 45-minute drive away. “You feel like this could be the end of things as you knew it. Of your town. Of your community,” Hiers said. “We just don't even know how to recover at this point.” Hiers said she and her husband will probably buy an RV and park it where their home once stood. But they won't be moving back to Horseshoe Beach for good until this year's storms are done. They can't bear to do this again.

The Biden administration says there is a significant difference between Israeli actions that have expanded its war against the Iranian-backed militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran’s retaliatory missile attack against Israel, which it condemned as escalatory. In carefully calibrated remarks, officials across the administration are defending the surge in attacks by Israel against Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon, while still pressing for peace and vowing retribution after Iran fired about 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday. President Joe Biden praised the U.S. and Israel militaries for defeating the barrage and warned, “Make no mistake, the United States is fully, fully supportive of Israel.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the Iranian missile attack “totally unacceptable, and the entire world should condemn it.” There was little criticism that Israel may have provoked Iran's assault. "Obviously, this is a significant escalation by Iran,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said. Conflicts in the Mideast and Ukraine will loom over Biden's farewell address at the United Nations Just a week after calling urgently for an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah to avoid the possibility of all-out war in the Middle East, the administration has shifted its message as Israel presses ahead with ground incursions in Lebanon following a massive airstrike Friday in Beirut that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Iranian Revolutionary Guard Gen. Abbas Nilforushan. U.S. officials stress that they have repeatedly come out in support of Israel’s right to defend itself and that any change in their language only reflects evolving conditions on the ground. And, officials say the administration’s goal — a cease-fire — has remained constant. The U.S. has been quick to praise and defend Israel for a series of recent strikes killing Hezbollah leaders. In contrast to its repeated criticism of Israel's war in Gaza that has killed civilians, the U.S. has taken a different tack on strikes that targeted Nasrallah and others but also may have killed innocent people. At the Pentagon, Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder made it clear that while the U.S. is still “laser focused” on preventing a wider conflict in the Middle East, he carved out broad leeway for Israel to keep going after Hezbollah to protect itself. “We understand and support Israel’s right to defend itself against Hezbollah,” Ryder said. “We understand that part of that is dismantling some of the attack infrastructure that Hezbollah has built along the border.” He said the U.S. is going to consult with Israel as it conducts limited operations against Hezbollah positions along the border “that can be used to threaten Israeli citizens.” The goal, he said, is to allow citizens on both sides of the border to return to their homes. Part of the ongoing discussions that the U.S. will have with Israel, Ryder said, will focus on making sure there’s an understanding about potential “mission creep” that could lead to tensions to escalate even further. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Tuesday that Israel’s targeting of senior Hamas and Hezbollah leaders as well as its initiation of ground incursions into Lebanon are justified because they were done in self-defense. “If you look at the actions that they have taken, they were bringing terrorists to justice, terrorists who have launched attacks on Israeli civilians,” Miller said. By contrast, he said that Iran’s response was dangerous and escalatory because it was done in support of Hamas and Hezbollah, both of which are U.S.-designated terrorist organizations that Iran funds and supports. “What you saw (was) Iran launching a state-on-state attack to protect and defend the terrorist groups that it built, nurtured and controlled,” Miller said. “So there is a difference between the actions.” Biden opens busy foreign policy stretch as anxious allies shift gaze to Trump, Harris The full-throated defense of Israel, however, may come with risks. So far, there is little evidence that the Biden administration's push for a cease-fire and warnings of broadening the conflict have had much impact on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In commentary Monday, Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that U.S. influence on Netanyahu seems to be waning and that he “seems to have blown by U.S. cautions about starting a regional war.” The White House must “worry that a sustained inability to make diplomatic progress weakens U.S. influence in the Middle East and around the world,” Alterman said, adding that “Netanyahu’s assurance that the United States will stand by Israel in any circumstance emboldens Israel to take more risks than it otherwise would.”

Vice President Kamala Harris poked at Republican Donald Trump during a fancy fundraiser on Sunday, telling donors that as she campaigns around the country her “crowds are pretty big" — before heading to Nevada for a rally at the same venue where the GOP nominee appeared two weeks ago. During the presidential debate, Harris appeared to get under Trump's skin when she said people were leaving his rallies early because of his rambling speeches. And she's kept it up on the campaign trail. She also has moved into what Trump considers his terrain — immigration — with a Friday visit to the border town of Douglas, Arizona. It was her first trip to the U.S.-Mexico border since taking over for President Joe Biden atop the Democratic presidential ticket. Harris’ four-day West Coast trip has been crafted with dual purposes: She was opening and closing with stops in Sun Belt battlegrounds — Arizona and Nevada — where the vice president is trying to shore up support as Trump pounds her relentlessly over illegal migration. And her mid-stay in California was devoted to hauling in campaign contributions from donors in her blue home state. Harris’ border visit in Arizona seemed to irk Trump. The GOP leader has spent two days railing about the vice president during his rallies, upping his personal attacks against her, claiming she was responsible for a border “invasion,” and stirring up unfounded fears that she’d usher in lawlessness if elected. Harris gave the same response she usually does to his insults, even despite Trump calling her “mentally impaired.” “We just see the same old tired show from the same old tired playbook,” she told a Los Angeles crowd of donors, some who shouted “boring!” in response. Harris has warned the race is as close as it could possibly be, a “margin-of-error” race. But on Sunday in Los Angeles, she added: “The election is here and let me be clear. We are going to win.” The fundraiser was full of celebrities: Stevie Wonder, Kegan-Michael Key, Sterling K. Brown, Demi Lovato, Jessica Alba and Lili Tomlin. Performing for the crowd: Halle Bailey and Alanis Morissette. The Los Angeles fundraiser and one a day earlier in San Francisco raised a combined $55 million for Harris' campaign. The vice president is continuing to notch Republican support. Former Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake became the latest to endorse her. He credited Harris with a “fine character and love of country” and said he wants a president who does not treat political adversaries as enemies or try to subvert the will of voters. Flake, a longtime critic of the former president, joins a list of anti-Trump Republicans who have said they will vote for the Democratic ticket, including Dick Cheney, the deeply conservative former vice president, and his daughter, Liz. But Maryland Senate candidate Larry Hogan, a former Republican governor and a sharp critic of Trump, said Harris has yet to earn his vote, though Trump won't get it. In Nevada, where Harris was holding a rally Sunday night, all voters automatically receive ballots by mail unless they opt out — a pandemic-era change that was set in state law. That means most ballots could start going out in a matter of weeks. Harris will be back in Las Vegas on Oct. 10 for a town hall with Hispanic voters. Both she and Trump have campaigned frequently in the city, highlighting the critical role that Nevada's six electoral votes could play in deciding an election expected to be exceedingly close. Trump held his own Las Vegas rally on Sept. 13 at the Expo World Market Center, where Harris was to speak on Sunday. She's also held events at the same venues that Trump used in Milwaukee, Atlanta and suburban Phoenix. During a campaign stop in Las Vegas in June, Trump promised to eliminate taxes on tips received by waiters, hotel workers and thousands of other service industry employees. Harris used her own Las Vegas rally in August to make the same promise. Fully doing away with federal taxes on tips would probably require an act of Congress. Still, Nevada's Culinary Union, which represents 60,000 hospitality workers in Las Vegas and Reno, has endorsed Harris. Ted Pappageorge, the culinary union's secretary-treasurer, said the difference between the dueling no-taxes-on-tips proposals is that Harris has also pledged to tackle what his union calls “sub-minimum wage," where employers pay service industry workers small salaries and meet minimum wage thresholds by expecting employees to supplement those with tips. “That shows us she's serious,” Pappageorge said.  

 Multiple people died after a single-engine plane crashed Saturday afternoon in a wooded area at Wright Brothers National Memorial’s First Flight Airport, the National Park Service said. The crash occurred at 5 p.m. as, according to eyewitnesses, the airplane was trying to land at the airport, the park service said in a news release. The airplane caught fire after the crash, the park service said. The Kill Devil Hills Fire Department and other local fire departments put out the fire. The airport is closed until further notice, the park service said. The National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the incident. The Federal Aviation Administration has also been notified. The Wright Brothers National Memorial will be closed Sunday, the park service said.

Massive rains from powerful Hurricane Helene left people stranded, without shelter and awaiting rescue Saturday, as the cleanup began from a tempest that killed at least 64 people, caused widespread destruction across the U.S. Southeast and left millions without power. “I’ve never seen so many people homeless as what I have right now,” said Janalea England, of Steinhatchee, Florida, a small river town along the state’s rural Big Bend, as she turned her commercial fish market into a storm donation site for friends and neighbors, many of whom couldn’t get insurance on their homes. Helene blew ashore in Florida’s Big Bend region as a Category 4 hurricane late Thursday with winds of 140 mph (225 kph). From there, it quickly moved through Georgia, where Gov. Brian Kemp said Saturday that it “looks like a bomb went off” after viewing splintered homes and debris-covered highways from the air. Weakened, Helene then soaked the Carolinas and Tennessee with torrential rains, sending creeks and rivers over their banks and straining dams. Western North Carolina was isolated because of landslides and flooding that forced the closure of Interstate 40 and other roads. All those closures delayed the start of the East Tennessee State University football game against The Citadel because the Buccaneers' drive to Charleston, South Carolina, took 16 hours. There have been hundreds of water rescues, none more dramatic than in rural Unicoi County in East Tennessee, where dozens of patients and staff were plucked by helicopter from a hospital rooftop Friday. And the rescues continued into the following day in Buncombe County, North Carolina, where part of Asheville was under water. “To say this caught us off guard would be an understatement,” said Quentin Miller, the county sheriff. Asheville resident Mario Moraga said it’s “heartbreaking” to see the damage in the Biltmore Village neighborhood and neighbors have been going house to house to check on each other and offer support. “There’s no cell service here. There’s no electricity,” he said. While there have been deaths in the county, Emergency Services Director Van Taylor Jones said he wasn’t ready to report specifics, partially because downed cell towers hindered efforts to contact next of kin. Relatives put out desperate pleas for help on Facebook. Among those waiting for news was Francine Cavanaugh, whose sister told her she was going to check on guests at a vacation cabin as the storm began hitting Asheville. Cavanaugh, who lives in Atlanta, hasn't been able to reach her since then. “I think that people are just completely stuck,” she said. The storm, now a post-tropical cyclone, was expected to hover over the Tennessee Valley on Saturday and Sunday, the National Hurricane Center said. ‘Catastrophic’ flooding It unleashed the worst flooding in a century in North Carolina, where Gov. Roy Cooper described it as “catastrophic” as search and rescue teams from 19 states and the federal government came to help. One community, Spruce Pine, was doused with over 2 feet (0.6 meters) of rain from Tuesday through Saturday. And in Atlanta, 11.12 inches (28.24 centimeters) of rain fell over 48 hours, the most the city has seen over two days since record keeping began in 1878. President Joe Biden said Saturday that Helene's devastation has been “overwhelming” and pledged to send help. Helene is the deadliest tropical cyclone for South Carolina since Hurricane Hugo killed 35 people when it came ashore just north of Charleston in 1989. Deaths also have been reported in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia. Moody’s Analytics said it expects $15 billion to $26 billion in property damage. AccuWeather’s preliminary estimate of the total damage and economic loss from Helene in the U.S. is between $95 billion and $110 billion. Climate change has exacerbated conditions that allow such storms to thrive, rapidly intensifying in warming waters and turning into powerful cyclones sometimes in a matter of hours. Evacuations and overtopped dams Evacuations began before the storm hit and continued as lakes overtopped dams, including one in North Carolina that forms a lake featured in the movie “Dirty Dancing.” Helicopters were used to rescue some people from flooded homes. And in Newport, Tennessee, Jonah Wark waited so long to evacuate that a boat had to come to the rescue. “Definitely a scary moment,” Wark said. After touring the damage by helicopter, a stunned U.S. Rep. Diana Harshbarger said, “Who would have thought a hurricane would do this much damage in East Tennessee?” Among the 11 confirmed deaths in Florida were nine people who drowned in their homes in a mandatory evacuation area on the Gulf Coast in Pinellas County, where St. Petersburg is located, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said. None of the victims were from Taylor County, which is where the storm made landfall. It came ashore near the mouth of the Aucilla River, about 20 miles (30 kilometers) northwest of where Hurricane Idalia hit last year at nearly the same ferocity. “If you had told me there was going to be 15 feet to 18 feet of storm surge, even with the best efforts, I would have assumed we would have had multiple fatalities,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Saturday. Taylor County is in Florida’s Big Bend, went years without taking a direct hit from a hurricane. But after Idalia and two other storms in a little over a year, the area is beginning to feel like a hurricane superhighway. “It’s bringing everybody to reality about what this is now with disasters,” said John Berg, 76, a resident of Steinhatchee, a small fishing town and weekend getaway. Timmy Futch of Horseshoe Beach stayed put for the hurricane before driving to high ground when the water reached his house. many homes in the town, which his grandfather helped found, were reduced to piles of lumber. “We watched our town get tore to pieces,” Futch said. The aftermath About 60 miles (100 kilometers) to the north, cars lined up before sunrise Saturday at a free food distribution site in Perry, Florida, amid widespread power outages. “We’re making it one day at a time,” said Sierra Land, who lost everything in her fridge, as she arrived at the site with her 5- and 10-year-old sons and her grandmother. Thousands of utility crew workers descended upon Florida in advance of the hurricane, and by Saturday power was restored to more than 1.9 million homes and businesses. But hundreds of thousands remain without electricity there and in Georgia. Chris Stallings, director of the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency, said crews were focused on opening routes to hospitals and making sure supplies can be delivered to damaged communities. Helene was the eighth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which began June 1. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted an above-average season this year because of record-warm ocean temperatures.

The head of the United Nations warned gathered leaders Tuesday that impunity, inequality and uncertainty are driving modern civilization toward “a powder keg that risks engulfing the world" — the latest clarion call from Antonio Guterres that the global situation is becoming intolerable and unsustainable. “We can’t go on like this,” the secretary-general said in an alarming state-of-the-world address as he opened the annual high-level gathering of the U.N.’s 193 member nations. He said the world is in “an era of epic transformation” and facing challenges never seen before, with geopolitical divisions deepening, the planet heating and wars raging in the Middle East, Ukraine, Sudan and elsewhere with no clue how they will end. “We are edging towards the unimaginable — a powder keg that risks engulfing the world,” Guterres told presidents, prime ministers and ministers in the vast General Assembly hall. But he stopped short of saying hope was gone. “The challenges we face,” he said, “are solvable.” It's not an easy time in the world Guterres wasn't the only one worried about the state of the world. “I cannot recall a time of greater peril than this,” said King Abdullah II of Jordan. Guterres called the situation in Gaza “a nonstop nightmare that threatens to take the entire region with it.” He said escalating air attacks across the Israel-Lebanon border have put Lebanon “at the brink.” In Ukraine, he said, there is no sign of an end to the war that followed Russia’s February 2022 invasion. In Sudan, he said, “a brutal power struggle has unleashed horrific violence," including widespread rape, and a “humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding as famine spreads.” The U.N. chief also pointed to “appalling levels of violence and human suffering” from Myanmar and Congo to Haiti, Yemen and beyond, and the expanding terrorist threat in Africa’s Sahel region. He said the Summit of the Future that preceded Tuesday's start of the assembly's nearly weeklong “General Debate,” was a first step. "But we have a long way to go.” At the two-day summit, the world’s nations adopted a “Pact for the Future." It's a blueprint for starting to address challenges from tackling climate change and poverty to putting guardrails on artificial intelligence. It also speaks to reforming the United Nations, and other global institutions established after World War II, to suit the needs and threats in the 21st-century world. The UN leader blames ‘impunity’ Guterres said meeting the challenges of a world “in a whirlwind” requires confronting the three drivers of “unsustainability” — the uncertainty of unmanaged risks, the inequality that underlies injustices and grievances and the impunity that undermines international law and the U.N.‘s founding principles. “A growing number of governments and others feel entitled to a 'get out of jail free’ card,” he said — a reference to the classic board game Monopoly. In his final speech before fellow leaders, President Joe Biden said he recognized the challenges of Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and other global hotspots, but he remains hopeful. “There will always be forces that pull our countries apart ... a desire to retreat from the world and go it alone,” he said. “Our task is to make sure that the forces holding us together are stronger than the forces pulling us apart.” Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whose country speaks first in a tradition dating to the early years of the U.N., criticized Israel's attacks in Gaza and Lebanon. “The right to self-defense became a right for vengeance, which prevents a deal for the release of hostages and delays a cease-fire," he said. Lula decried the growth in global military spending for a ninth consecutive year to more than $2.4 trillion. “Those resources could have been used to fight hunger and deal with climate changes,” he said. Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian — who had accused Israel on Monday of seeking a wider war in the Middle East — laid into Israel in his speech to the assembly Tuesday. He said its attacks in Lebanon in recent days “cannot go unanswered." Leaders embroiled in conflicts will speak At last year’s U.N. global gathering, Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, took center stage. But as the first anniversary of Hamas’ deadly attack in southern Israel approaches on Oct. 7, the spotlight is certain to be on the ensuing war in Gaza and escalating violence across the Israeli-Lebanon border, which is now threatening to spread to the wider Middle East. Zelenskky was in the spotlight Tuesday afternoon at a Security Council meeting on Ukraine on the sidelines of the gathering, and he will be center stage again when he addresses world leaders in the assembly hall on Wednesday morning. At the high-level council meeting, the Ukrainian leader dismissed the notion of peace talks with Moscow, calling instead for unspecified global “action” to force Russia into peace for invading his country and to comply with the U.N. Charter’s requirement that every country respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all other nations. Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia accused Slovenia, which holds the council's rotating presidency this month, of giving Zelenskyy a platform “to malign the Russian Federation.” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is scheduled to speak Thursday morning and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday. On another hot spot, the Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting late Wednesday on the escalating violence in Lebanon at the request of France.

Death row inmates in five states are scheduled to be put to death in the span of one week, an unusually high number of executions that defies a yearslong trend of decline in both the use and support of the death penalty in the U.S. If carried out as planned, the executions in Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas will mark the first time in more than 20 years — since July 2003 — that five were held in seven days, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, which takes no position on capital punishment but has criticized the way states carry out executions. The first execution was carried out on Friday in South Carolina, and if the other four scheduled this week proceed, the United States will have reached 1,600 executions since the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976, said Robin Maher, the center's executive director. “Two on a single day is unusual, and four on two days in the same week is also very unusual,” Maher said. Here are some things to know about executions set this week across the country. How did 5 executions get set for a 1-week span?Experts say five executions being scheduled within one week is simply an anomaly that resulted from courts or elected officials in individual states setting dates around the same time after inmates exhausted their appeals. “I'm not aware of any reason other than coincidence,” said Eric Berger, a law professor at the University of Nebraska with expertise in the death penalty and lethal injection. Berger said some factors can result in a backlog of executions, such as a state's inability to obtain the lethal drugs necessary to carry them out, which happened in South Carolina, or a moratorium that resulted from botched executions, like what happened in Oklahoma. South CarolinaThe first of the five executions took place on Friday when South Carolina put inmate Freddie Owens to death for the 1997 killing of a convenience store clerk during a robbery. It was South Carolina's first execution in 13 years, an unintended delay caused by the inability of state prison officials to obtain the drugs needed for lethal injections. To carry out executions, the state switched from a three-drug method to a new protocol of using a single sedative, pentobarbital. AlabamaAlabama on Thursday is preparing to carry out the nation’s second execution ever using nitrogen gas after becoming the first state to use the new procedure in January. Alan Miller is set to die by the process in which a mask is placed over the inmate’s head that forces the inmate to inhale pure nitrogen. Miller, who was given a reprieve in 2022 after his execution was called off when officials were unable to connect an intravenous line, was sentenced to die after being convicted of killing three men during back-to-back workplace shootings in 1999. Missouri, Oklahoma and TexasOn Tuesday, Texas is scheduled to execute Travis Mullis, a man with a long history of mental illness who has repeatedly sought to waive his right to appeal his death sentence. Mullis was sentenced to death for killing his 3-month-old son in January 2008. Mullis' attorneys did not plan to file any appeals to try and stay his lethal injection. Also on Tuesday in Missouri, Marcellus Williams is set to receive a lethal injection for the 1998 stabbing death of a woman in the St. Louis suburb of University City. Williams' attorneys argued on Monday that the state Supreme Court should halt his execution over alleged procedural errors in jury selection and the prosecution's alleged mishandling of the murder weapon. But the state's high court rejected those arguments, and Gov. Mike Parson denied Williams’ clemency request, paving the way for his execution to proceed. In Oklahoma, Emmanuel Littlejohn is set to receive a lethal injection on Thursday after being sentenced to die for his role in the 1992 shooting death of a convenience store owner during a robbery. Littlejohn has admitted to his role in the robbery, but claims he did not fire the fatal shot. The state's Pardon and Parole Board voted 3-2 last month to recommend Gov. Kevin Stitt spare Littlejohn's life, but the governor has yet to make a clemency decision