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Hurricane Irma slammed ashore at Key West, Florida early Sunday with whirling winds and pounding rain, leaving behind a trail of destruction across fragile Caribbean islands.
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Hurricane Irma slammed ashore at Key West, Florida early Sunday with whirling winds and pounding rain, leaving behind a trail of destruction across fragile Caribbean islands.

Irma, now a Category 4 storm, strengthened as it moved across the warm waters of the Straits of Florida, with the National Hurricane Center saying it was packing sustained 215-kilometer-an-hour winds with higher gusts as it reached the United States.

In Pictures: Hurricane Irma Slams into Florida

The vast storm, headed north toward more populated cities along Florida’s west coast, could bring devastation to parts of the peninsula state that have not seen a major hurricane in a century. Hurricane force winds extended outward 130 kilometers from the eye of the storm and tropical storm gales up to 350 kilometers.

Forecasters are predicting dangerous storm surges of three and four meters along Florida’s Gulf of Mexico shoreline as the storm reaches Naples and Fort Myers and heads north toward the major city of Tampa. More than one million homes and businesses have already been left without power.

The storm’s track has shifted more to the west, now bringing the west coast city of St. Petersburg into its sights, despite earlier predictions that the state’s second biggest city, popular tourist destination Miami, on Florida’s east coast along the Atlantic Ocean, would bear the brunt of the storm.

Florida Governor Rick Scott said, “I am very concerned about the west coast. This storm surge is just deadly.”

Scott said that with the storm’s unpredictability, people who did not evacuate need to continue to be cautious.

“I want everybody to survive this storm,” he said, “I want everybody to be safe. During the storm, as you know, we can’t send out first responders to save you.”

The hurricane center forecasters predicted, “The combination of a dangerous storm surge and the tide will cause normally dry areas near the coast to be flooded by rising waters moving inland from the shoreline.”

Scott asked President Donald Trump to declare the state a major disaster area, which would ease federal funding for recovery efforts once the storm passes.

Scott also repeated his call for nurses and emergency workers to volunteer their help in the aftermath of the storm.

More than 75,000 people have heeded the governor’s advice and checked into some 400 emergency shelters in the state. Some 76,000 households are already reported to be without power. Since the storm changed course and headed west, residents of the mid-sized city of Tampa have been the latest wave of people to surge into shelters after days of thinking they would only see the edges of the storm.

Tampa has not been directly hit by a hurricane in nearly a century.

Trump gets storm update

President Donald Trump, at the presidential retreat in Camp David, Maryland Sunday,  received a “comprehensive update” on the status of the storm, its forecasted path and preparations for “response and recovery,” according to the White House.   

“The U.S. Coast Guard, FEMA and all Federal and State brave people are ready. Here comes Irma. God bless everyone!” Trump said in a Twitter message on Saturday.

Citing the expected impact of Hurricane Irma, which comes on the heels of Hurricane Harvey’s destruction in Texas just two weeks ago, Trump said he would ask the Republican-controlled Congress to speed up efforts to overhaul the U.S. tax code.

Irma was a Category 5 when it first hit the island of Cuba late Friday and battered it overnight. Cuba suffered damage similar to that of other Caribbean islands, with trees uprooted and roofs torn off homes. Power and cellphone service were spotty in many regions.

The Florida Keys are the first bit of U.S. soil to feel the effects of the storm. The slender barrier islands — with their population of retirees, vacationers and refugees from mainland culture — are under mandatory evacuation orders.

Destruction in the Caribbean

At least 25 people have died since the storm began raking over land, starting with the Caribbean island of Barbuda.

The resort island with a population of less than 2,000 is devastated. Prime Minister Gaston Browne has estimated about 95 percent of Barbuda’s buildings are damaged or destroyed.

Until late Saturday, the island nation was braced for another direct impact, this one from Category 4 Hurricane Jose. By Saturday evening, Jose had skirted the island without a direct hit.

It could be up to six months before all power is restored on cash-strapped Puerto Rico, a U.S. commonwealth, where Irma knocked out power to more than one million people.

The U.S. Defense Department has deployed three Navy ships, about two dozen aircraft and hundreds of Marines to help with recovery efforts in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
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Nancy Hatch Dupree, a prolific American expert on the history, art, and archaeology of Afghanistan, died Sunday at the age of 90 after battling an illness in a Kabul hospital, officials announced.

Dupree arrived in the country in 1962 as a diplomat’s wife and dedicated the rest of her life to collecting and preserving the war-shattered country’s cultural heritage.

In 2013, she founded and opened the Afghanistan Center at Kabul University (ACKU), the first facility of its kind in the country dedicated to the study of Afghanistan’s history, culture and society. The late historian was the director of the center until recently.

“Her vision for ACKU was that it would contribute to the reconstruction of Afghanistan by gathering in one place scholarship on the country’s culture, history and politics,” the center said in a statement.

In several VOA interviews over the years, Dupree said the ACKU was inspired by the work and vision of Louis Dupree, a renowned archaeologist and scholar of Afghan culture and history, for whom she left her diplomat husband.

The couple took refuge in neighboring Pakistan after they were pushed out of the country in 1978 by the then Soviet-backed Afghan government, which suspected Louis of being an American spy.

After the death of her husband in 1989, Dupree continued her mission of preserving Afghan history for years using her residence in the Pakistani border city of Peshawar as a base and storage facility.

The Afghan civil war of the 1990s and subsequent emergence of the Islamist Taliban government did not deter Dupree from visiting Kabul regularly and bringing back books, maps, photographs and rare Afghan folk music.

The material also included government and non-government documents, as well as surveys, reports, and newspapers from the Afghan factional fighting and the Taliban regime.

In several interviews to VOA over the years, Dupree said her team often found torn copies and pages of looted priceless history books on the streets of Kabul being used by shopkeepers to wrap food material for customers, or to use as fuel.

Speaking to VOA at her residence in the University Town of Peshawar in early 2008, Dupree explained difficulties she faced while collecting the material during the Afghan civil war.

“We discovered that a lot of house have been looted and the books were on the sidewalk being used by people who were selling [food items] and all these things, they would tear a page out of a book and give it you. These were books by some of the noted scholars and we knew that probably nobody else would be able to find these books. So we had a concerted campaign to go around the city and buy up all the books, the looted books, that we could find.”

In 2005, Dupree packed the preserved documents in nearly 300 plastic bags, used for filling wheat or fertilizer, and then loaded them on trucks to smuggle them back to Kabul from Peshawar.

They are now safely stored in ACKU and are in the process of being digitalized to make them available for students cross the globe studying Afghan history. Nancy Dupree traveled across Afghanistan and wrote several guidebooks on the country.

Afghans viewed her as one of their own and even the Taliban did not hamper her work when the Islamist group was in power in Kabul from 1996 to 2001.

Afghanistan’s mainstream media paid tributes to Dupree’s work and dedication while social media was flooded with condolence messages.

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul described Dupree as “a pillar of the American community in Afghanistan for many decades, saying she worked tirelessly for the preservation of Afghan history and culture.

“Future generations will remember Ms. Dupree as a wonderful example of the strength of U.S.-Afghanistan relations and friendship… May we honor her example in decades to come by working for a common goal of building lasting fraternal ties between our nations,” said an embassy statement.
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Governor Rick Scott told Floridians Saturday evening, “We are under a state of emergency,” as the state braced for the onset of Hurricane Irma, a Category 3 storm crossing over open water north of Cuba.

“This is your last chance to make a good decision,” Scott said in urging people to leave evacuation zones.

WATCH: Florida Governor: ‘The Storm Is Here’

Scott also repeated his call for nurses and emergency workers to volunteer their help in the aftermath of the storm.

More than 75,000 people have heeded the governor’s advice and checked into the 400 emergency shelters in the state. Since the storm changed course and headed west, residents of the midsized city of Tampa have been the latest wave to surge into shelters after days of thinking they would see only the edges of the storm.

Tampa has not been directly hit by a hurricane in nearly a century.

Trump on Irma, taxes

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump and his Cabinet were meeting Saturday at the presidential retreat in Camp David, Maryland, to discuss the hurricane.

Citing the expected impact of Hurricane Irma, which came on the heels of Hurricane Harvey’s destruction in Texas just two weeks ago, Trump said he would ask the Republican-controlled Congress to speed up efforts to overhaul the U.S. tax code.

“I think now with what’s happened with the hurricane, I’m going to ask for a speed-up. I wanted a speed-up anyway, but now we need it even more so,” he told Cabinet members. The White House released a video of his remarks.

He also called Irma a “storm of enormous destructive power” and asked “everyone in the storm path to heed all instructions, get out of its way.”

Irma was a Category 5 when it hit Cuba late Friday and battered it overnight. Its time over land reduced the storm’s strength, but Irma could regain power as it crosses over open water on the way to the United States.

That would be bad news for the Florida Keys, the first bit of U.S. soil the storm will hit. The slender barrier islands — with their population of retirees, vacationers and refugees from mainland culture — were under mandatory evacuation orders.

WATCH: Florida Official: Be Prepared, Be Patient, Get to Shelters

For those who resisted the order and planned to ride out the storm on the Keys, “you’re on your own,” Federal Emergency Management Agency head Brock Long said Saturday.

“There is no safe area within the Keys,” Long said. “You put your life in your own hands by not evacuating.”

He added, “We are not going to be there right after the storm passes. We need to make sure roadways are clear, we need to get trucks in to get stuff there.”

Curfews for Florida

Further inland, some areas were under curfew late Saturday and early Sunday as residents awaited Irma’s onset.

In Homestead, Florida, south of Miami, people have been threatened with arrest if they are out after hours without a “valid, emergency purpose,” Zachary Good, spokesman for the city, said.

In Miami-Dade County, officials said more people had checked into hurricane shelters than at any other time in the county’s history. About 29,000 people were reported to have checked into county-run shelters, along with about 1,000 pets.

But space remained for last-minute decision-makers: As of Saturday afternoon local time, only 16 of 42 shelters were reported full.

Scott asked residents who planned to stay home to have three days’ worth of supplies on hand to sustain themselves until emergency help arrived.

In all, Florida asked 5.6 million people — more than one-quarter of the state’s population — to evacuate their homes ahead of the storm. Scott told all Floridians to be prepared in case they needed to leave.

Destruction in the Caribbean

At least 25 people have died since the storm began raking its arms over land, starting with the Caribbean island of Barbuda.

The resort island with a population of fewer than 2,000 was devastated. Prime Minister Gaston Browne estimated that 95 percent of Barbuda’s buildings had been damaged or destroyed.

Until late Saturday, the island nation was braced for another direct impact, this one from Category 4 Hurricane Jose. By Saturday evening, Jose had skirted the island without imposing a direct hit.

It could be up to six months before all power is restored on cash-strapped Puerto Rico, a U.S. commonwealth, where Irma knocked out power to more than 1 million people.

The U.S. Defense Department deployed three Navy ships, about two dozen aircraft and hundreds of Marines to help with recovery efforts in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

VOA Turkish service’s Mehmet Sumer contributed to this report.
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On the surface, Savannah, Georgia, and Syracuse, New York, don’t have much in common beyond their size. Both are smaller cities, with populations hovering around 145,000 people. Yet their streets share a grim reality: Teenagers are being killed or wounded by firearms at rates far higher than in most U.S. cities, according to an Associated Press and USA Today Network analysis of shootings compiled by the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive.

From 2014 through this past June, 57 youths aged 12 to 17 in Savannah and 48 in Syracuse were killed or injured in gun violence. The cities’ rates of teen shootings per capita are more than double those seen in the vast majority of U.S. cities with populations of 50,000 or more.

“It’s getting worse,” said Barbara O’Neal, who started the group Mothers of Murdered Sons in Savannah. “They’re still shooting. And they still don’t care.”

Her son, Alan O’Neal Jr., survived his teenage years, only to be shot dead during a robbery attempt six years ago at age 20.

The unrelenting gun violence in both cities is tearing at the adults who struggle to find answers and the kids who try, often in vain, to avoid mayhem.

Sheryl Sams speaks with a mix of weariness and disbelief about teen shootings in Savannah. She directs a program called Youth Intercept, which dispatches volunteers to the hospital emergency room to offer assistance to young people being treated for gunshot wounds.

Some successes

Sams says Youth Intercept has its share of successes; roughly 75 young people have graduated from the program since 2010. But she estimates only about 1 in 3 victims accepts the program’s help.

“We have a kid who’s been shot three times and his mom finally tried to enroll him, but she hasn’t done all the follow-through,” Sams said, adding the mother and son stopped answering phone calls and knocks at their door. “He’s 14 now and he’s been shot three times. To them it’s a way of life.”

Founded in 1733, Savannah is Georgia’s oldest city, and its downtown area forms the largest National Historic Landmark district in the U.S. An estimated 13 million visitors pumped $2.8 billion into the local economy last year. But beyond the Greek Revival mansions and manicured public squares, nearby neighborhoods struggle with poverty and violence.

In a case that typifies Savannah’s shootings, 17-year-old Wayne Edwards was on his way to a party in August 2014 when he got into an argument with another teen standing outside his car. That teen raised a gun and fired five shots, with one bullet killing Edwards. He wasn’t shot over money or drugs; the evidence pointed to violence sparked by tough talk and bluster.

The 18-year-old shooter was sentenced to life in prison, but the crime still makes no sense to Edwards’ father.

“It’s still hard after three years,” Wayne Blige said of his son’s slaying. “You know what happened, but you still don’t know why.”

Worse in smaller, midsize cities

The Gun Violence Archive compiles information on shootings nationwide from media and police reports. The AP-USA Today Network analysis of those cases found that smaller and midsize cities have higher rates of teenage gun violence than major American cities. Chicago, plagued for years by teen violence, is the exception.

Wilmington, Delaware, a city of 72,000, had by far the highest rate of teenage gun violence, nearly twice that of Chicago.

Syracuse sits just beyond the vineyard-rich hillsides of the Finger Lakes region of central New York, a tourist destination of spectacular waterfalls, deep gorges and rolling hills. The city has a grittier past, built not by pressing Riesling grapes but by stamping out parts for automobiles and air conditioners.

Most of those factories have closed. The city is now known mostly for Syracuse University and its basketball team.

The university’s stately halls sit atop a hill that looms over the city’s South Side, a sprawling mix of neighborhoods that are often blemished by boarded-up clapboard homes sitting in overgrown lots. Many of the shootings cataloged by the Gun Violence Archive occurred here.

On one South Side street corner, mourners piled teddy bears where 15-year-old Akil Williams was shot and killed this summer during an argument. The corner is blocks away from where another 15-year-old was killed in a drive-by shooting in 2015. A year ago, 18-year-old Tyshawn Lemon was killed as he talked to a girl on her porch nearby.

‘It can happen to anyone’

“When I was growing up … if you were a regular kid and going to school and working, it didn’t happen to you,” said Lateefah Rhines, Tyshawn’s mother. “But now it’s touching everybody’s lives. And I feel like if it can happen to Tyshawn, it can happen to anyone.”

Researchers have linked high poverty rates to gun violence, and some South Side neighborhoods are plagued by both. They are among the poorest areas in a city with a poverty rate of 35 percent, well above the national average.

Despite the reasons for despair, some residents are not ready to give in to the violence.

Over the slap of boxing gloves at the Faith Hope Community Center, Arthur “Bobby” Harrison said some teens who get mixed up with guns are good kids, but confused. His gym offers a place where neighborhood youths can shoot hoops, lift weights or spar in a ring next to a wall plastered with pictures of local boxers and role models such as Muhammad Ali and former President Barack Obama.

Harrison, who was serving a sentence in Attica state prison during the infamously deadly uprising in 1971, provides a firm hand for the teens who train here. But the gym also is a sanctuary for teens such as Quishawn Richardson.

“It doesn’t remind you of all the violence that’s going on outside,” said Quishawn, a lanky 15-year-old who dreams of playing basketball up the hill at the university. “It shows you that Syracuse has got some places you can go to without getting hurt.”
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An extensive poaching ring is responsible for slaughtering more than 100 black bears, cougars, bobcats, deer and elk in southwestern Washington state and northwestern Oregon, with many of the animals hunted with dogs and then left to rot, authorities say.

“There was an absolute wanton disregard for our conservation laws,” Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Captain Jeff Wickersham said Friday.

Seven people — six adults, some of whom have previously been targeted in poaching investigations, and one juvenile — have been charged so far, but investigators plan to recommend charges against more people, he said. Some face upward of 60 counts related to illegal hunting and wasting animals.

The investigation was reported this week by The Chronicle newspaper of Centralia, Washington, which said it had obtained hundreds of pages of case reports from the department through a public records request.

According to the documents, the hunters often used dogs, sometimes as many as 11. The 50-plus poaching expeditions date to 2015. The vast majority took place within the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, often in remote areas either closed to hunting or in areas where special permits are required.

The Associated Press could not immediately locate contact information for the defendants, and it was not immediately clear whether any had obtained lawyers. Several were scheduled to make initial court appearances later this month.

The investigation began with Oregon State Police troopers who were looking into poaching in The Dalles, charging papers filed in Skamania County Superior Court say. Last December, the troopers contacted and interviewed two Longview, Washington, men, William Haynes and Erik Martin, who, the troopers said, confessed to illegally killing deer in Oregon and bringing their heads and antlers back to Washington.

The troopers contacted authorities in Washington, who recovered 27 deer heads and a bull elk unlawfully possessed by Haynes and a co-defendant, the charging papers say.

In executing search warrants for the suspects’ cellphones, the documents say, investigators found pictures, text messages and videos linking several other people to the poaching.

In several cases, Fish and Wildlife Sergeant Brad Rhoden said, agents were able to use the location services on the phone to travel to where photos had been taken of the defendants posing with their kills. When they got there, they discovered the animals’ remains, with intact skeletons.

“The bears really suffered the brunt of this,” Rhoden said Friday. “They were just killed and left.”
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Emergency officials in the U.S. are dealing with one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricane seasons in recorded history. As Hurricane Irma moves toward Florida, VOA’s Bill Gallo got an inside look at the operations center at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
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Two back-to-back storms will have a significant impact on U.S. growth and productivity, according to economists tracking the impact of Hurricanes Harvey in Texas, and Irma — expected to make landfall in Florida this weekend. Despite the potential catastrophic loss in lives and capital, economists who spoke with VOA say the damage to the U.S. economy is likely to be short-lived. Mil Arcega has more.
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The United States is expressing deep concern and says it is in close contact with Myanmar’s government on the situation in that country’s northwestern Rakhine State. The United Nations refugee agency now says 270,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled across the border to Bangladesh to escape violence. VOA s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from the State Department.
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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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