United News of Bangladesh

A revived Hurricane Ian pounded coastal South Carolina on Friday, ripping apart piers and flooding streets after the ferocious storm caused catastrophic damage in Florida, trapping thousands in their homes and leaving at least 27 people dead. The powerful storm, estimated to be one of the costliest hurricanes ever to hit the U.S., has terrorized people for much of the week — pummeling western Cuba and raking across Florida before gathering strength in the warm waters of the Atlantic Ocean to curve back and strike South Carolina. While Ian’s center came ashore near Georgetown, South Carolina, on Friday with much weaker winds than when it crossed Florida’s Gulf Coast earlier in the week, the storm left many areas of Charleston’s downtown peninsula under water. It also washed away parts of four piers along the coast, including two at Myrtle Beach. Online cameras showed seawater filling neighborhoods in Garden City to calf level. As Ian moved across South Carolina on its way to North Carolina Friday evening, it dropped from a hurricane to a post-tropical cyclone. Ian left a broad swath of destruction in Florida, flooding areas on both of its coasts, tearing homes from their slabs, demolishing beachfront businesses and leaving more than 2 million people without power. Many of the deaths were drownings, including that of a 68-year-old woman swept away into the ocean by a wave. A 67-year-old man who was waiting to be rescued died after falling into rising water inside his home, authorities said. Other storm-related fatalities included a 22-year-old woman who died after an ATV rollover from a road washout and a 71-year-old man who fell off a roof while putting up rain shutters. An 80-year-old woman and a 94-year-old man who relied on oxygen machines also died after the equipment stopped working during power outages. Another three people died in Cuba earlier in the week as the storm churned northward. The death toll was expected to increase substantially once emergency officials have an opportunity to search many of the hardest-hit areas. Rescue crews piloted boats and waded through riverine streets in Florida after the storm to save thousands of people trapped amid flooded homes and shattered buildings . Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday that crews had gone door-to-door to over 3,000 homes in the hardest-hit areas. “There’s really been a Herculean effort,” he said during a news conference in Tallahassee. Also read: Ian floods southwest Florida, engulfing residents in houses Hurricane Ian has likely caused “well over $100 billion” in damage, including $63 billion in privately insured losses, according to the disaster modeling firm Karen Clark & Company, which regularly issues flash catastrophe estimates. If those numbers are borne out, that would make Ian at least the fourth costliest hurricane in U.S. history. Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie said first responders have focused so far on “hasty” searches, aimed at emergency rescues and initial assessments, which will be followed by two additional waves of searches. Initial responders who come across possible remains are leaving them without confirming, he said Friday, describing as an example the case of a submerged home. “The water was up over the rooftop, right, but we had a Coast Guard rescue swimmer swim down into it and he could identify that it appeared to be human remains. We do not know exactly how many,” Guthrie said. Desperate to locate and rescue their loved ones, social media users shared phone numbers, addresses and photos of their family members and friends online for anyone who can check on them. Orlando residents returned to flooded homes Friday, rolling up their pants to wade through muddy, knee-high water in their streets. Friends of Ramon Rodriguez dropped off ice, bottled water and hot coffee at the entrance to his subdivision, where 10 of the 50 homes were flooded and the road looked like a lake. He had no power or food at his house, and his car was trapped by the water. “There’s water everywhere,” Rodriguez said. “The situation here is pretty bad.” The devastating storm surge destroyed many older homes on the barrier island of Sanibel, Florida, and gouged crevices into its sand dunes. Taller condominium buildings were intact but with the bottom floor blown out. Trees and utility poles were strewn everywhere. Municipal rescuers, private teams and the Coast Guard used boats and helicopters Friday to evacuate residents who stayed for the storm and then were cut off from the mainland when a causeway collapsed. Volunteers who went to the island on personal watercraft helped escort an elderly couple to an area where Coast Guard rescuers took them aboard a helicopter. Hours after weakening to a tropical storm while crossing the Florida peninsula, Ian regained strength Thursday evening over the Atlantic. Ian made landfall in South Carolina with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph (140 kph). When it hit Florida’s Gulf Coast on Wednesday, it was a powerful Category 4 hurricane with 150 mph (240 kph). After the heaviest of the rainfall blew through Charleston, Will Shalosky examined a large elm tree in front of his house that had fallen across his downtown street. He noted the damage could have been much worse. “If this tree has fallen a different way, it would be in our house,” Shalosky said. “It’s pretty scary, pretty jarring.” Ian’s heavy rains and winds crossed into North Carolina on Friday evening. Gov. Roy Cooper warned residents to be vigilant, given that up to 8 inches (20.3 centimeters) of rain could fall in some areas. “Hurricane Ian is at our door. Expect drenching rain and sustained heavy winds over most of our state,” Cooper said. “Our message today is simple: Be smart and be safe.” In Washington, President Joe Biden said he was directing “every possible action be taken to save lives and get help to survivors.” “It’s going to take months, years to rebuild,” Biden said. “I just want the people of Florida to know, we see what you’re going through and we’re with you.”  

Some 200 environmental and land defense activists were killed around the world in 2021, including some 54 in Mexico, which assumed the position of the deadliest country in the annual report by nongovernmental organization Global Witness. More than three-quarters of the killings took place in Latin America, where Colombia, Brazil and Nicaragua also logged double-digit death tolls. It was the third consecutive year of increases for Mexico and a jump from 30 such activists killed in 2020. “Most of these crimes happen in places that are far away from power and are inflicted on those with, in many ways, the least amount of power,” the report said. Global Witness considers its report a baseline, noting “Our data on killings is likely to be an underestimate, given that many murders go unreported, particularly in rural areas and in particular countries.” The victims died fighting resource exploitation and in land disputes. Conflicts over mining were tied to 27 deaths worldwide, the most for any sector. Fifteen of those mining-related killings were in Mexico. In the western Mexico state of Jalisco, José Santos Isaac Chávez was killed in April 2021. He was running for local office and had made opposition to a long-running mine a central part of his campaign. Days before the election, he was found dead in his car, which had been driven off a cliff and his body showed evidence of torture. Armed men had dragged him out of his home and driven him away in his own vehicle. In April 2021, Sandra Liliana Peña Chocué, an Indigenous governor in southwest Colombia, who had fought for the eradication of coca crops in Caldono, Cauca was killed near her home by armed men. Her murder was condemned by the United Nations, nongovernmental organizations and foreign governments. Overall, killings of environmental activists in Colombia dropped in 2021 to 33 from 65 the year before. The Philippines saw fewer such killings in 2021 too, 19 compared to 30 in 2020. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, all eight recorded victims were killed inside Virunga National Park. In November, conservation park ranger Chief Brigadier Etienne Mutazimiza Kanyaruchinya, 48, was killed when 100 heavily armed men, presumed to be former members of the M23 rebel group, attacked a patrol post near the village of Bukima in Congo’s North Kivu Province. Virunga Park is home to some of the world’s last mountain gorillas, but armed groups such as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, known by its French acronym FDLR, the Mai-Mai and the M23 regularly vie for control of eastern Congo’s natural resources. Global Witness called on governments to enforce laws that protect activists and require informed consent from Indigenous groups, while also requiring companies to be accountable throughout their global operations and have zero tolerance for attacks on land defenders. “Activists and communities play a crucial role as a first line of defense against ecological collapse, as well as being frontrunners in the campaign to prevent it,” Global Witness CEO Mike Davis said in the report.

Coolio, the rapper who was among hip-hop’s biggest names of the 1990s with hits including “Gangsta’s Paradise” and “Fantastic Voyage,” died Wednesday at age 59, his manager said. Coolio, whose legal name was Artis Leon Ivey Jr., died at the Los Angeles home of a friend, longtime manager Jarez Posey told The Associated Press. The cause was not immediately clear. Coolio won a Grammy for best solo rap performance for “Gangsta’s Paradise,” the 1995 hit from the soundtrack of the Michelle Pfeiffer film “Dangerous Minds” that sampled Stevie Wonder’s 1976 song “Pastime Paradise.” He was nominated for five other Grammys during a career that began in the late-1980s. Born in Monessen, Pennsylvania south of Pittsburgh, Coolio moved to Compton, California, where he went to community college. He worked as a volunteer firefighter and in airport security before devoting himself full-time to the hip-hop scene. His career took off with the 1994 release of his debut album on Tommy Boy Records, “It Takes a Thief.” It’s opening track, “Fantastic Voyage,” would reach No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. A year later, “Gangsta’s Paradise” would become a No. 1 single, with its dark opening lyrics:  “As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I take a look at my life and realize there’s not much left, ‘cause I’ve been blastin’ and laughin’ so long, that even my mama thinks that my mind is gone.” Social media lit up with reactions to the unexpected death. “This is sad news,” Ice Cube said on Twitter. “I witness first hand this man’s grind to the top of the industry. Rest In Peace, @Coolio.” “Peaceful journey brother,” Questlove tweeted.

Hurricane Ian, one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in the U.S., swamped southwest Florida on Wednesday, turning streets into rivers, knocking out power to 1.8 million people and threatening catastrophic damage further inland. A coastal sheriff’s office reported that it was getting many calls from people trapped in flooded homes. Desperate people posted to Facebook and other social sites, pleading for rescue for themselves or loved ones. Some video showed debris-covered water sloshing toward homes’ eaves. The hurricane’s center made landfall near Cayo Costa, a barrier island just west of heavily populated Fort Myers. As it approached, water drained from Tampa Bay. Mark Pritchett stepped outside his home in Venice around the time the hurricane churned ashore from the Gulf of Mexico, about 35 miles (55 kilometers) to the south. He called it “terrifying.” “I literally couldn’t stand against the wind,” Pritchett wrote in a text message. “Rain shooting like needles. My street is a river. Limbs and trees down. And the worst is yet to come.” The Category 4 storm slammed the coast with 150 mph (241 kph) winds and pushed a wall of storm surge accumulated during its slow march over the Gulf. More than 1.8 million Florida homes and businesses were without electricity, according to PowerOutage.us. Nearly every home and business in three counties was without power. The storm previously tore into Cuba, killing two people and bringing down the country’s electrical grid. About 2.5 million people were ordered to evacuate southwest Florida before Ian hit, but by law no one could be forced to flee. News anchors at Fort Myers television station WINK had to abandon their usual desk and continue storm coverage from another location in their newsroom because water was pushing into their building near the Caloosahatchee River. Though expected to weaken to a tropical storm as it marches inland at about 9 mph (14 kph), Ian’s hurricane force winds were likely to be felt well into central Florida. Hours after landfall, top sustained winds had dropped to 105 mph (170 kph), making it a Category 2 hurricane. Still, storm surges as high as 6 feet (2 meters) were expected on the opposite side of the state, in northeast Florida. Sheriff Bull Prummell of Charlotte County, just north of Fort Myers, announced a curfew between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. “for life-saving purposes,” saying violators may face second-degree misdemeanor charges. “I am enacting this curfew as a means of protecting the people and property of Charlotte County Prummell said. Jackson Boone left his home near the Gulf coast and hunkered down at his law office in Venice with employees and their pets. Boone at one point opened a door to howling wind and rain flying sideways. “We’re seeing tree damage, horizontal rain, very high wind,” Boone said by phone. “We have a 50-plus-year-old oak tree that has toppled over.” In Naples, the first floor of a fire station was inundated with about 3 feet (1 meter) of water and firefighters worked to salvage gear from a firetruck stuck outside the garage in even deeper water, a video posted by the Naples Fire Department showed. Naples is in Collier County, where the sheriff’s department reported on Facebook that it was getting “a significant number of calls of people trapped by water in their homes” and that it would prioritize reaching people “reporting life threatening medical emergencies in deep water.” Ian’s strength at landfall tied it for the fifth-strongest hurricane when measured by wind speed to strike the U.S. Among the other storms was Hurricane Charley, which hit nearly the same spot on Florida’s coast in August 2004, killing 10 people and inflicting $14 billion in damage. Ian made landfall more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Tampa and St. Petersburg, sparing the densely populated Tampa Bay area from its first direct hit by a major hurricane since 1921. Flash floods were possible all across Florida. Hazards include the polluted leftovers of Florida’s phosphate fertilizer mining industry, more than 1 billion tons of slightly radioactive waste contained in enormous ponds that could overflow in heavy rains.  The federal government sent 300 ambulances with medical teams and was ready to truck in 3.7 million meals and 3.5 million liters of water once the storm passes. “We’ll be there to help you clean up and rebuild, to help Florida get moving again,” President Joe Biden said Wednesday. “And we’ll be there every step of the way. That’s my absolute commitment to the people of the state of Florida.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has requested Biden grant a Major Disaster Declaration for all 67 of the state’s counties, which would open a range of federal assistance for residents and funding for public infrastructure repairs. DeSantis has also asked Biden to allow FEMA to provide a 100% federal cost share for debris removal and emergency protective measures for 60 days. The governors of Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina all preemptively declared states of emergency. Forecasters predicted Ian will turn toward those states as a tropical storm, likely dumping more flooding rains into the weekend, after crossing Florida.

At least eight people were killed and more than 25 others injured in a head-on collision between a bus and a truck in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh Wednesday. The accident occurred in Lakhimpur Kheri district, some 130 kms from state capital Lucknow, this morning. "The Lucknow-bound bus carrying some 40 people crashed into the truck coming from the opposite direction in the Isanagar area while trying to overtake another vehicle," a police officer told the local media. The impact of the crash left eight passengers dead on the spot. "The injured were rushed to a local government hospital. Those critically hurt have been referred to a better medical facility in Lucknow," he said. State Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath took to social media to condole the deaths and ask officials to ensure proper treatment for the injured. "A probe has been ordered into the accident," the police officer said. Road accidents are common in India, with one taking place every four minutes. These accidents are often blamed on poor roads, rash driving and scant regard for traffic laws. The Indian government's implementation of stricter traffic laws in recent years has failed to rein in accidents, which claim over 100,000 lives every year.

The UN's labour agency Monday welcomed the first global agreement on working conditions and rights of professional football players in both the men's and women's game. "Free, independent, strong and representative employers' and workers' organisations, together with trust, commitment and respect by the governments for the autonomy of the social partners are key conditions for effective social dialogue in football," Guy Ryder, head of the International Labour Organization (ILO), said at the signing ceremony at the agency's headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. The agreement creates a new international bargaining framework between the World Leagues Forum (WLF) – representing 44 national professional football leagues comprising some 1,100 clubs – and FIFPRO, the global footballers' union – representing more than 60,000 professional football players as employees in the international football industry, through 66 national player unions in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania. Employer and employee representatives signed the Global Labour Agreement (GLA) for professional footballers (the sport is referred to as soccer in the US), agreeing to take greater responsibility in finding collective solutions to the challenges facing the industry. The pact acknowledges that collectively agreed upon standards, will improve labour relations in the professional game, and improve the multi-billion dollar sport's viability and growth. The agreement will provide a platform for discussing rules for protecting players' health and safety along with a commitment to improving the representation and involvement of domestic leagues, their member clubs and players' unions. Moreover, it recognises the need for greater representation and consideration for women's football – including issues related to domestic competitions, clubs, and players. Negotiations may also include issues such as employment standards, concussion management, measures to tackle discrimination and racism – including on social media - and other forms of abuse. Under the GLA, ILO may be asked to provide expert advice in areas where it has the expertise, including implementation of the agreement. The GLA follows the fundamental principles and rights at work set out by ILO in the 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, which was amended in 2022. It is also in line with the Points of Consensus of the ILO Global Dialogue Forum on Decent Work in the World of Sport (2020).  

The European Union (EU) created more than 1.37 million jobs in sports, 0.7 percent of its total employment, in 2021. The number of people working in sports in the EU recovered after falling during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns (1.37 million in 2019; 1.31 million in 2020), according to the EU's statistical office Eurostat. Employment in sports includes sports-related occupations (professional athletes, professional coaches in fitness centres), non-sports occupations (receptionists in fitness centres), and sports-related jobs outside the sports sector (school sports instructors). In recent years, several European plans and programmes gave sports a significant profile. The EU countries with the highest share of people working in sports were Sweden (1.4 percent of total employment), Finland (1.3 percent), Spain and France (1.1 percent).

Russia made its case to the world Saturday for its war in Ukraine, repeating a series of grievances about its neighbor and the West to tell the U.N. General Assembly meeting of leaders that Moscow had “no choice” but to take military action. After days of denunciations of Russia at the prominent diplomatic gathering, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov sought to shift the focus to Washington. His speech centered on a claim that the United States and its allies — not Russia, as the West maintains — are aggressively undermining the international system that the U.N. represents. Invoking history ranging from the U.S. war in Iraq in the early 2000s to the 20th-century Cold War to a 19th-century U.S. policy that essentially proclaimed American influence over the Western Hemisphere, Lavrov portrayed the U.S. as a bully that tries to afford itself “the sacred right to act with impunity wherever and wherever they want” and can't accept a world where others also advance their national interests. “The United States and allies want to stop the march of history,” he maintained. The U.S. and Ukraine didn't retort at the assembly on Saturday but can still offer formal responses later in the meeting. Both countries' presidents have already given their own speeches describing Russia as a dangerous aggressor that must be stopped. Lavrov, for his part, accused the West of aiming to “destroy and fracture Russia" in order to “remove from the global map a geopolitical entity that has become all too independent.” The Ukraine war has largely dominated the discussion at the assembly's big annual meeting, and many countries have laid into Russia for its Feb. 24 invasion — denouncing its nuclear threats, alleging it has committed atrocities and war crimes, and lambasting its decision to mobilize call up some of its reserves even as the assembly met. “Neither partial mobilization, nuclear saber-rattling, nor any other escalation will deter us from supporting Ukraine,” Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde declared Saturday. Russia does have some friends in the sprawling chamber, and one — Belarus — offered a full-throated defense Saturday of its big neighbor. Echoing Russia's talking points, Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei said “it was precisely the West that made this conflict inevitable” in Ukraine. The speeches came amid voting in Russian-occupied parts of eastern and southern Ukraine on whether to join Russia. Moscow characterizes the referendums as self-determination, but Kyiv and its Western allies view them as Kremlin-orchestrated shams with a foregone conclusion. Some observers think the expected outcome could serve as a pretext for Russian President Vladimir Putin eventually to escalate the war further. “We can expect President Putin will claim any Ukrainian effort to liberate this land as an attack on so-called ‘Russian territory,’" U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned the U.N. Security Council on Thursday. Lavrov dismissed the complaints as the West “throwing a fit” about people making a choice on where they feel they belong. Russia has offered a number of explanations for what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine. Lavrov recapped a couple: risks to Russia from what it considers a hostile government in Kyiv and a NATO alliance that has expanded eastward over the years and relieving Russians living in Ukraine — especially its eastern region of the Donbas — of what Moscow views as the Ukrainian government’s oppression. “The incapacity of Western countries to negotiate and the continued war by the Kyiv regime against their own people left us with no choice” but to recognize the two regions that make up the Donbas as independent and then to send troops in, Lavrov said. The aim was “to remove the threats against our security, which NATO has been consistently creating in Ukraine,” he explained. While Ukraine has recently driven Russian troops from some areas in the northeast, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier this week warned the assembly that he believes Moscow wants to spend the winter getting ready for a new offensive, or at least preparing fortifications while mobilizing more troops. Regardless, he declared that his forces will ultimately oust Russian troops from all of Ukraine. “We can do it with the force of arms. But we need time,” said Zelenskyy, the only leader who was allowed to address the assembly by video this year. The war has disrupted the trade of Ukrainian and Russian grain and Russian fertilizer, touching off a global food crisis. A deal recently brokered by the U.N. and Turkey has helped get Ukrainian grain moving, but fertilizer shipments have proved more difficult. At a news conference after his speech, Lavrov said he discussed problems with the deal at a meeting this week with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Although international sanctions against Russia did not target food and fertilizer exports, shipping and insurance companies and banks have been loath to deal with Moscow — and the Kremlin has frequently pointed to that in alleging that Western sanctions have exacerbated the crisis. Lavrov told reporters Saturday that Russia wants fertilizer stuck in European ports to be given to needy countries quickly. At the Security Council on Thursday, Ukraine and Russia faced off, in a rare moment when Lavrov and his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, were in the same room — though they kept their distance. The General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in March to deplore Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, call for immediate withdrawal of all Russian forces, and urge protection for millions of civilians. The next month, members agreed by a smaller margin to suspend Russia from the U.N. Human Rights Council.

The United Nations General Assembly returns to its full, in-person, i.e. pre-pandemic format restored for the first time in three years this week. That doesn’t mean the frictions and even the fault lines in the international community that the dreaded Coronavirus exposed, or some might say exploited, have gone away of course. In fact, they are providing the flavour to the exchanges taking place, whether in the cavernous General Assembly Hall where leaders take the lectern to address upto 200 country delegations, or any of the countless sideline events that have sprung up to form an important, vibrant ecosystem for the ideas that seek a better world, there has been an edge to this year’s early exchanges that no seasoned observer will have missed. Take the traditional state-of-the-world address that the secretary-general delivers each year, formally commencing the session. Usually this can come off as a dose of milktoast, and most years they tend to be forgotten even before they’re finished. Now it is true that the current secretary general, who used to be the elected head of government of a UN member state in his past life, has seemed prepared to challenge such conventions, since taking up the position in 2017. Yet it was the no-nonsense language, the gloomy tone and the focus not only on the breadth of challenges confronting what he called “the splintering world,” but also the stark and often controversial solutions he offered that made this year’s secretary-general’s address a landmark, a marker in the sand. Read: What PM said on Russia-Ukraine war, Rohingya issue, climate action, terrorism at 77th UNGA Admonishing “the international community” – of which he could be asserted as first citizen – as “unready or unwilling” to tackle the big, global challenges of our times, he would go on to depict this as an abdication of responsibility, for which any castigation would be well-deserved. Drawing the attention of the world leaders, Gutierres listed the war in Ukraine, the spreading of conflicts that can be contained, climate change of course, ending extreme poverty and achieving quality education for all children as the most pressing issues of our time, for which solutions are still available, as long as the leadership is ready to steer us there. David Scheffer, a former U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues who is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, has already called it “the most consequential speech by a secretary-general in the history of the United Nations.” Although that may sound a bit hyperbolic, you could see how the spirit of the secretary-general’s speech could come across as a real clarion call, at a time when the world is hungering for some real leadership. Read: PM Hasina in New York to attend UNGA Meanwhile over at the Security Council, the UN’s highest decision-making body, you had some real fireworks as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken came face-to-face with Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, for the first time since the start of the war. A phone call in July was the only other contact they had in this period – this is where the potential of UNGA week makes your eyes light up. The meeting was called to discuss allegations of war crimes and human rights abuses by Russian forces. But Lavrov turned up 90 minutes late, was in a foul mood while he was there – which was understandable given that almost everyone else was rounding on Moscow – and walked out when the Ukrainian ambassador was called on to make a statement. “Insults, accusations and talk of war crimes and nuclear holocaust dominated the world’s premier diplomatic stage,” wrote the New York Times in its recap of the meeting. It seems the forum, no matter how hallowed, can only take you so far, when even leaders fail to see eye-to-eye. Read: UNGA lauds Bangladesh’s leadership in promoting culture of peace

Strong rains and winds lashed the Atlantic Canada region as Fiona closed in early Saturday as a big, powerful post-tropical cyclone, and Canadian forecasters warned it could be one of the most severe storms in the country’s history. Fiona transformed from a hurricane into a post-tropical storm late Friday, but meteorologists cautioned that it still could have hurricane-strength winds and would bring drenching rains and huge waves. More than 207,000 Nova Scotia Power customers were affected by outages by around midnight, officials said. The fast-moving Fiona was forecast to make landfall in Nova Scotia before dawn Saturday, with its power down from the Category 4 strength it had early Friday when passing by Bermuda, though officials there reported no serious damage. The Canadian Hurricane Centre issued a hurricane watch for coastal expanses of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Fiona should reach the area as a “large and powerful post-tropical cyclone with hurricane-force winds.” “It’s going to a bad one,” said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who decided to delay his trip to Japan for the funeral for assassinated Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.  “We of course hope there won’t be much needed, but we feel there probably will be ...,” Trudeau said. “Listen to the instructions of local authorities and hang in there for the next 24 hours.” The U.S. hurricane center said Fiona was at Category 2 strength late Friday, with maximum sustained winds of 105 mph (165 kph). It was centered about 140 miles (220 kilometers) southeast of Halifax, Nova Scotia, heading northeast at 46 mph (74 kph). Hurricane-force winds extended outward up to 185 miles (295 kilometers) from the center and tropical storm-force winds extended outward up to 345 miles (555 kilometers). “This is is definitely going to be one of, if not the most powerful tropical cyclones to affect our part of the country,” said Ian Hubbard, meteorologist for the Canadian Hurricane Centre in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. “It’s going to be definitely as severe and as bad as any I’ve seen.” Hubbard said the storm was weakening as it moved over cooler water, and he felt it highly unlikely it would reach land with hurricane strength. Hurricanes in Canada are somewhat rare, in part because once the storms reach colder waters, they lose their main source of energy. But post-tropical cyclones still can have hurricane-strength winds, although they have a cold core and no visible eye. They also often lose their symmetric form and more resemble a comma. People in the area rushed to stock up essentials and worked to storm-proof their properties Friday. At Samsons Enterprises boatyard in the small Acadian community of Petit-de-Grat on Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton Island, Jordan David helped his friend Kyle Boudreau tie down Boudreau’s lobster boat “Bad Influence.” “All we can do is hope for the best and prepare as best we can. There’s something coming, and just how bad is yet to be determined,” said David, wearing his outdoor waterproof gear. Bob Robichaud, Warning Preparedness Meteorologist for the Canadian Hurricane Centre, said Fiona was shaping up to be a bigger storm system than Hurricane Juan, which caused extensive damage to the Halifax area in 2003. He added that Fiona is about the same size as post-tropical storm Dorian in 2019. “But it is stronger than Dorian was,” he said. “It’s certainly going to be an historic, extreme event for eastern Canada.” Christina Lamey, a spokeswoman for the Cape Breton Regional Municipality, said the Centre 200 sports arena in Sydney was being opened Friday night to take in residents who wanted to evacuate from their homes during the storm. Halifax said it would open four evacuation centers. Officials on Prince Edward Island sent out an emergency alert to phones warning of the potential for severe flooding on the northern shore of the province. “Immediate efforts should be taken to protect belongings. Avoid shorelines, waves are extremely dangerous. Residents in those regions should be prepared to move out if needed,” the alert read. Authorities in Nova Scotia also sent an emergency alert to phones warning of Fiona’s arrival and urging people to say inside, avoid the shore, charge devices and have enough supplies for at least 72 hours. Officials warned of prolonged power outages, wind damage to trees and structures and coastal flooding and possible road washouts. Fiona so far has been blamed for at least five deaths — two in Puerto Rico, two in the Dominican Republic and one in the French island of Guadeloupe. Meanwhile, the National Hurricane Center said newly formed Tropical Storm Ian in the Caribbean was expected to keep strengthening and hit Cuba early Tuesday as a hurricane and then hit southern Florida early Wednesday. It was centered about 385 miles (625 kilometers) southeast of Kingston, Jamaica. It had maximum sustained winds of 40 mph (65 kph) and was moving west-northwest at 12 mph (19 kph). A hurricane watch was issued for the Cayman Islands.