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The National Hurricane Center says Irma is “moving through the southeastern Bahamas as an extremely dangerous category 4 hurricane.”

Irma was downgraded from a category 5 hurricane early Friday.  Weather forecasters say, “some fluctuations in intensity are likely during the next day or two, but Irma is forecast to remain a powerful category 4 hurricane during the next couple of days.”

Irma is moving with maximum sustained winds of 250 kilometers per hour.

The Hurricane Center says hurricane conditions are expected in northwestern Bahamas Friday night and Saturday and in portions of southern Florida and the Florida Keys Saturday night or early Sunday.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center has issued hurricane warnings for South Florida and the Florida Keys.

On Thursday, more than half a million people were ordered to leave South Florida as Irma approaches.

WATCH: Officials Urge Evacuations Before Hurricane Hits Southeastern US States

Prepare to evacuate

Florida Governor Rick Scott said the biggest concern right now is gasoline shortages. Police will escort fuel trucks in Florida as they make deliveries to gas stations that have run dry.

Scott said all 7,000 Florida National Guard members are being deployed Friday and thousands of power workers will be standing by, ready to go to work.

Scott said Irma “is wider than our entire state and could cause major and life-threatening impacts from coast to coast.” The governor told Florida residents, “Regardless of which coast you live on, be prepared to evacuate.”

​Storm for the history books

U.S. Air Force Reserve weather officer Major Jeremy DeHart flew through the eye of Irma earlier in the week. He said the storm’s intensity sets it apart from other storms. 

“Pictures don’t do it justice,” DeHart said. “Satellite images can’t do it justice.”

Hurricane Irma is already a storm for the history books. Experts are calling it the most powerful Atlantic storm ever recorded.

The storm tore up the island of Barbuda, leaving it “barely habitable,” according to Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne.

“What I saw was heart-wrenching. I mean, absolutely devastating,” he said Thursday. About 95 percent of all the buildings on the island were either destroyed or damaged.

As if Irma has not brought enough agony to Antigua and Barbuda, the islands are under a hurricane watch for Category 3 Hurricane Jose, which could affect the already devastated region by Saturday.

On the island of St. Martin, shared by France and the Netherlands, “lots of people are just wandering around aimlessly as they have no homes anymore and don’t know what to do,” a newspaper reporter told the local radio station.

It could be up to six months before all power is restored on cash-strapped Puerto Rico. Witnesses say wires are either lying in the streets or dangling from the poles that managed to stay upright.

President Donald Trump has declared a state of emergency on Puerto Rico. The Federal Emergency Management Agency will coordinate the cleanup and relief.

French and Dutch relief flights are on the way to help their territories, and British Prime Minister Teresa May has sent a Royal Navy shipload of soldiers, Marines and emergency supplies to British territories in the Caribbean.

At least 10 deaths have been reported so far in the Caribbean.

Irma lashed Haiti and the Dominican Republic with fierce winds and heavy rain, but spared them a direct hit.

In Photos: Hurricane Irma Hits Haiti
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Florida is bracing for a direct hit by Category 5 Hurricane Irma. The Atlantic storm has swept over the Caribbean islands leaving death and destruction behind. It is expected to hit southern Florida by Sunday morning. The storm is then projected to continue north to Georgia and South Carolina. The governors of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina have ordered mandatory evacuations in areas on Irma’s projected path. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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President Donald Trump is defending his decision to work with Democrats to fund the government into December and increase the nation’s borrowing limit. Trump and Democratic congressional leaders reached agreement during a White House meeting Wednesday, but many Republicans remain unhappy about the president’s outreach to the opposition party. VOA National correspondent Jim Malone has more on Trump’s unpredictable governing style from Washington.
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Washington’s political establishment is reeling a day after President Trump blindsided Republican Congressional leaders, siding with Democrats on a three-month debt ceiling extension that puts his own party in an awkward spot with mid-term elections little more than a year away.

Republican reaction to the deal has veered from bewilderment to anger to cautious endorsement of an agreement they see as playing into Democratic hands.

“It’s just a betrayal of everything we’ve been talking about for years as Republicans,” influential former Senator Jim DeMint said in an interview with Politico.

The chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, Rep. Mark Meadows was more conciliatory. At a Bloomberg News breakfast meeting Thursday with Congressional reporters, Meadows said Trump had told him he had cut the debt ceiling deal so he could focus attention on tax reform.  He is “myopically focused on trying to get tax reform,” Meadows said.

The deal left Republican Congressional leaders, House Majority leader Sen. Mitch McConnell land House Speaker Paul Ryan, in an embarrassing position. Hours before meeting Trump with other Congressional leaders at the White House Wednesday, Ryan had called the idea of a three-month debt extension “ridiculous,” telling reporters it was “disgraceful that they [Democrats] want to play politics with the debt ceiling.”

‘Shrewd move’

But many Trump supporters cheered the president’s rebuke of the Republican leadership. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, in an interview with Fox News, called the deal a “shrewd move” designed to put pressure on his own party to deliver legislative victories that voters had expected when they elected Republicans to control both houses of Congress.

“They’re [voters] not as unhappy with the president as the American people are unhappy with this Republican Congress,” Huckabee said. “There is outrage for not being able to deliver to a president. I think there’s an extraordinary exasperation on the part of the public.”

Democrats were exultant at the deal. Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer called it a “positive step forward” that would avoid default and get money quickly to hurricane victims in Texas and Louisiana. “The nation can breathe a sigh of relief,” Schumer said Thursday on the Senate floor.

Several Senate Republicans tried to put the best face they could on the deal. “The Senate will soon consider legislation that will keep the government’s lights on until December 8 and increase the nation’s borrowing capacity, said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn. “That’s important, because without lifting the debt limit, we couldn’t actually vote for and send aid to the victims of Harvey.”

Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse mocked the deal in a news release, however, calling on fellow Republicans to reject it. “Yesterday we saw Washington’s swamp continue to rise: Chuck Schumer wrote the art of the steal by taking hurricane relief hostage to guarantee a December showdown that favors Democratic spending priorities,” Sasse said.

Kicking ‘a hornet’s nest’

Speaker Ryan was more reflective at a meeting with reporters Thursday, saying the president had made clear he was looking for a “bipartisan moment,” with the country facing two hurricanes, when he agreed to the three-month debt ceiling extension. Ryan said his objection was based more on the effect the deal would have on financial markets.  

“I was making an economic point,” Ryan said, “which is that with respect to the credit markets, stability and longevity are key.”

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued a statement confirming that Trump held early morning conversations Thursday with senators McConnell and Schumer, as well as Speaker Ryan and Minority Leader Pelosi. “The president is committed to working across the aisle and doing what is needed to best serve the American people.”

Presidential scholar Dan Mahaffee of the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress said Trump’s decision to work with Congressional Democrats had “kicked a hornet’s nest.”

“It reflects the outcome of eight months of frustration for President Trump in working with Congress and the GOP Congressional leadership,” Mahaffee said. “Trump is now feeling out what deals might be made with Democrats, and how that might be able to make up for the GOP’s inability to find consensus on important policy goals.”

Trump’s newly chummy relationship with Democrats appeared to take another twist Thursday when he acceded to another request from the opposition leadership. After a phone conversation with minority leader Pelosi, the president issued a tweet advising those affected by the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that they have nothing to worry about.  Pelosi confirmed to reporters that she had asked Trump to issue the tweet.  

 
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The United States is expressing deep concerns and says it is in close contact with Myanmar’s government on the situation in that country’s northwestern Rakhine State, where tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims have been forced to flee across the border to Bangladesh.

“We have publicly and privately discussed this issue at the highest levels.  We are also in touch with Burma’s neighbors and other international partners,” a spokesperson from the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific affairs told VOA on Wednesday. Myanmar is also known as Burma.

“We remain deeply concerned by sustained reports of significant violence and the impact on civilian populations, including the Rohingya community,” he added.

The State Department, however, said it welcomed indications Myanmar’s government is committed to providing access to humanitarian aid via the Red Cross.

Fleeing violence

The latest round of violence began August 25 when a group of Rohingya insurgents attacked police posts and an army base in what they said was an effort to protect their ethnic minority from persecution.  Rakhine State is home to most of the Rohingya minority group.

Subsequent clashes and a military counter-offensive have killed at least 400 people and triggered the latest exodus of Rohingya villagers to Bangladesh.

U.N. Refugee agency Asia spokeswoman Vivian Tan in Bangladesh told VOA Burmese that aid workers estimate there are now some 164,000 new arrivals in Bangladesh.   

The United Nations says some 146,000 people have crossed the border into Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazaar district since August 25.

Officials say the U.N. World Food Program has provided tens of thousands of people with food, including high-nutrient porridge, to women and children who are arriving in Bangladesh hungry and malnourished. The agency says that it needs $11.3 million to support the influx of people, in addition to those already living in camps.

The United States had strongly condemned the August 25 deadly attacks on security posts by a group called Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) and urged all ethnic groups in Myanmar to “work toward peace and stability.”

Myanmar’s de-facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been criticized over her response to the violence. Many observers say she has played down reports of the Burmese military’s brutal treatment of Rohingya civilians. Aung San Suu Kyi maintains there has been “a huge iceberg of misinformation” about the Rohingya crisis and violence in Rakhine following the August 25 insurgents attacks on security posts.

A series of Twitter photos that allegedly showed dead Rohingya people were later proved to be unrelated to the current violence, according to a statement posted on Facebook by Aung San Suu Kyi’s office.

The Nobel Peace laureate said “fake information” was used to promote the interests of “terrorists,” a word she used to describe ARSA insurgents.

International pressure

But human rights advocates are urging the Burmese government to stop the violence.  

“The governments of the world have to press very hard on Aung San Suu Kyi and also the Burma military to stop the violence,” Human Rights Watch’s Deputy Asia Director Phil Robertson told VOA, adding independent monitors should be granted access to assess allegations of serious human rights violations committed by ethnic Rohingya refugees who have fled into Bangladesh.

Robertson urged the United States and the international community to provide more humanitarian relief and medical assistance to the refugees.

“So far we have seen very little comments from the Trump administration about the situation which is quite shocking,” said Robertson, “There is a massive humanitarian crisis in a country which, until recently, the United States spent a great deal of time trying to understand them and work with the government on various developments and trade,” Robertson said.

Abuses against and restrictions on members of the Rohingya population were cited as one of the leading human rights problems in Myanmar, according to State Department’s 2016 Human Rights Report.

The Rohingya are one of Myanmar’s many ethnic minorities in the Buddhist-majority nation. The Myanmar government considers the Rohingya to be economic migrants from Bangladesh, and has never granted them citizenship, even though most can show their families have been in the country for generations.

VOA’s Burmese Service contributed to this report.
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Twitter Inc should provide an analysis of recent Russian activity on its social media platform, similar to the one Facebook Inc provided, the top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee told reporters on Thursday.

Speaking one day after Facebook said it had uncovered an operation likely based in Russia that bought thousands of U.S. ads with divisive messages, Senator Mark Warner said that finding was likely just the beginning, and that Twitter should

also examine the issue.

 
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Fifteen states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit on Wednesday challenging President Donald Trump’s decision to end protections and benefits for young people who were brought into the United States illegally as children.

The multistate lawsuit filed by a group of Democratic attorneys general to protect beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program argues their state economies will be hurt if residents lose their status.

The lawsuit seeks to block Trump’s decision and maintain DACA.

The lawsuit claims Trump’s decision was “motivated, at least in part, by a discriminatory motive” against Mexicans, who are the largest beneficiary of the program. It points to his statements from the 2016 presidential campaign.

The attorneys general also argue the government has not guaranteed DACA recipients that their application information will not be used “for purposes of immigration enforcement, including identifying, apprehending, detaining or deporting noncitizens.”

New York’s Attorney General Eric Schneiderman took the lead, filing the case in the Eastern District of New York. He said that 42,000 New Yorkers participate in DACA, and that the end of the program would be “devastating” for them and would cause “huge economic harm” to the state.

Ready to defend

In commenting on the suit, the U.S. Department of Justice noted that DACA was an administrative program begun during the Obama administration and was not done through congressional action.

“While the plaintiffs in today’s lawsuits may believe that an arbitrary circumvention of Congress is lawful, the Department of Justice looks forward to defending this administration’s position,” spokesman Devin M. O’Malley said.

Trump’s decision Tuesday to end the five-year-old program resulted in uncertainty for almost 800,000 young people known as “Dreamers,” based on never-passed proposals in Congress called the DREAM Act that would have provided similar protections for young immigrants. The president’s move drew criticism from business and religious leaders, mayors, governors, Democratic lawmakers, unions and civil liberties advocates.

Trump, who delayed the end of the program until March 5, shifted responsibility to a Congress controlled by his fellow Republicans, saying it was now up to lawmakers to pass immigration legislation that could address the fate of those protected by DACA.

But the governor of Washington, whose state joined the lawsuit, criticized Trump for distancing himself from a final decision on the program.

Trump said Tuesday that he still had “great heart” for the Dreamers.

“The president has tried to shirk responsibility for this, but let’s be clear: It is his hand on the knife in these people’s backs,” said Washington Governor Jay Inslee at a news conference announcing the suit. “He can’t just put it on Congress. It is his responsibility to fix this.”

Other claims in the lawsuit are based on the Administrative Procedure Act, arguing the White House did not follow the correct process in changing the policy.

Legal experts have said that court challenges to Trump’s actions could face an uphill battle, since the president typically has wide authority when it comes to implementing immigration policy.
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An Iraqi student jet fighter pilot was killed when an F-16 jet crashed during a training mission in southeastern Arizona, authorities said Wednesday.

The Iraqi air force identified the pilot as Capt. Noor Faleh Rassan Al-Khazali, but it didn’t list an age or hometown.

Al-Khazali was killed Tuesday when his Fighting Falcon jet went down in the southern Arizona desert during what an Arizona Air National Guard official called a routine training mission. The U.S. Air Force has activated a team to investigate the crash about 80 miles (129 kilometers) northwest of Tucson, the Air Guard’s 1st Lt. Lacey Roberts of the 162nd Wing said.

The Iraqi defense ministry said it will join in the investigation.

Roberts could not immediately say what type of training was being conducted. The F-16 is used in both air-to-air and air-to-ground combat missions.  

Al-Khazali’s death was the second involving an Iraqi pilot flying an F-16 in Arizona in recent years.

Roberts said the plane belonged to the Iraqi air force and that the training mission was being conducted in conjunction with the 162nd Wing, which is based at Tucson International Airport.

The jet crashed in desert terrain, leaving a crater and scattered debris, Graham County Undersheriff Carl “Jeff” McCormies said.

The U.S. military is training Iraqi pilots to fly F-16s at the request of Iraq’s government, Roberts said.

In July 2015, an Iraqi brigadier general flying from the 162nd died when his F-16, a newer model recently delivered to the Iraqi air force, crashed during night training near Douglas.

In January 2016, a Taiwanese pilot on a training flight from Luke Air Force Base near Phoenix was killed when his F-16 went down in Yavapai County.

The 162nd Wing is the Air Guard’s biggest F-16 training operation and conducts training missions across southern and central Arizona military ranges.

The wing, which has hosted training since 1990, has trained pilots from Iraq, Singapore, Poland, Norway, Denmark, Oman, Belgium and the Netherlands.
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The outgoing U.S. ambassador to Russia, John Tefft, has defended the expulsion of Russian diplomats from seized consular property in the United States amid an increasing strain in diplomatic ties.

In a joint interview Wednesday in Moscow with the Russian services of VOA News and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Tefft rejected statements in Russian media that the seizing of diplomatic property in San Francisco, New York and Washington was done in what Russian President Vladimir Putin called a “boorish and unprecedented” fashion.

Putin accused U.S. authorities of threatening to “break down the entrance door” of the Russian Consulate in San Francisco after Washington set a September 2 deadline for the premises to be evacuated.

“Nobody broke down doors. Nobody put undue pressure on people. It was all done very, very carefully — and, in compliance with the Vienna Conventions,” Tefft said.

Court battle

Speaking in China on Tuesday, Putin said, “Let’s see how well the much-praised American legal system works in practice.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told his U.S. counterpart, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in a telephone call on Wednesday that Russia had initiated legal proceedings for what was a “violation of international law.”

U.S. President Donald Trump reduced Russia’s consular facilities this month after the Kremlin demanded the U.S. cut its diplomatic staff in Russia to 455 people.

Russia said it was imposing the demand as a countermeasure to new U.S. sanctions over alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election and to achieve “parity” with the level of the Russian diplomatic presence in the U.S. Trump’s closing of the Russian consulate and two annexes brought the number of Russian diplomatic facilities in the U.S. even with the number of U.S. facilities in Russia.

“But when we used parity to withdraw our consent for the Russian government to have a consulate in San Francisco, then everyone got all excited. And, you know, parity is parity,” Tefft noted.

Tefft: Reduction not voluntary

Russia’s Foreign Ministry gave conflicting statements, implying that the U.S. had voluntarily reduced its staff, a notion also rejected outright by Tefft.

However, Tefft said in the interview that it was false to suggest that Washington “negotiated or somehow signed on to the idea of reducing our staff.”

“We were told to do that. That was not something that was negotiated,” he said.

Russian officials say they are considering how to respond to the reduction of their U.S. consular facilities.

Despite the downward spiraling diplomatic relations, Tefft has urged Russia to join U.S. allies in Asia and Western governments in pressuring North Korea to end its nuclear weapons program.

“While the focus, at this point, is on the United States, I noted one of the earlier missiles a few weeks ago, you know, landed 60 kilometers off of Vladivostok in the water,” Tefft said. “This is a regional and now becoming a global threat. It’s not just against the United States, it’s against all of us.

“One of the things that Secretary Tillerson and Foreign Minister Lavrov agreed, when they saw each other here in March, was that the United States and Russia both believed the Korean Peninsula should be non-nuclear.That’s a fundamental which we can work on,” Tefft added.

Regular talks seen continuing

The U.S. ambassador said there had been regular consultations between U.S. and Russian experts on North Korea and that he expected more in the next few weeks.

“Now, getting forward, we’ve got to try to find the best tactics to do this. But we need strong efforts by Russia and China if we’re all going to be successful,” he said.

Tefft is expected to leave Russia this year and be succeeded by Trump appointee Jon Huntsman, a former U.S. ambassador to China.

VOA’s Danila Galperovich contributed to this report.
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