Politics
Hurricane Melissa’s death toll climbs to 44, storm churns north
- At least 25 confirmed dead in Haiti, 19 in Jamaica.
- Forecaster estimates up to $52 billion in damages.
- Melissa among strongest-ever storms at landfall.
PORT-AU-PRINCE/KINGSTON/HAVANA: Hurricane Melissa’s confirmed death toll climbed to 44 on Thursday, according to official reports, after wreaking destruction across much of the northern Caribbean and picking up speed as it headed toward Bermuda.
Jamaica’s information minister told Reuters at least 19 deaths had been confirmed, but authorities were continuing search and rescue efforts. The storm left hundreds of thousands without power, ripped roofs of buildings and scattered fields with rubble.
Jamaica’s military has called on reserve personnel to report for duty to help with relief and rescue operations.
Melissa made landfall in southwestern Jamaica on Tuesday as a powerful Category 5 hurricane, the Caribbean nation’s strongest-ever storm to directly hit its shores, and the first major hurricane to do so since 1988.
Windspeeds were well above the minimum level for the strongest hurricane classification. Forecasters at AccuWeather said it tied in second place for strongest-ever Atlantic hurricane on record in terms of windspeed when in struck land.
The forecaster estimated $48 billion to $52 billion in damage and economic loss across the western Caribbean.
Authorities in Haiti, which was not directly hit but nevertheless suffered days of torrential rains from the slow-moving storm, reported at least 25 deaths, mostly in the southern town of Petit-Goave when a river burst its banks.
A river also caved in and carried off part of a national highway, local newspaper Le Nouvelliste reported. The road, which had been weakened by last year’s Hurricane Beryl, connected to the nearby city of Jacmel.
Melissa also hit eastern Cuba, where some 735,000 evacuated, but as of Thursday, no deaths were reported there, despite extensive damage to homes and crops.
At 8pm (0000 GMT), Melissa was a Category 1 storm 409 km (254 miles) south-west of the North Atlantic British island territory, where hurricane conditions were expected by nightfall even as Melissa’s eye skirts north-west.
Melissa was packing maximum sustained winds of 105 mph (169 kph).
Residents in Bermuda however remained calm as the storm was expected to give the island a relatively wide berth. Authorities said they would close its causeway Thursday night and shut schools and ferries on Friday “out of an abundance of caution.”
In the Bahamas, which Melissa cut through Wednesday night, authorities lifted storm warnings but did not give the “all clear”. An official said authorities expected to decide by Saturday whether it was safe for the hundreds of people who evacuated off affected islands to return to their homes.
Wading barefoot through mud
The front page of Thursday’s Jamaica Observer newspaper read: “DEVASTATION.”
Densely populated Kingston was spared the worst damage. Its main airport was set to reopen on Thursday, as was the capital’s port. Relief flights and aid had begun to flow into Jamaica’s airports, authorities said.
But across the country, more than 130 roads remained blocked by trees, debris and electric lines, authorities said, forcing the military to clear roadways on foot into isolated areas, with ambulances following close behind.
Satellite imagery showed swaths of trees and homes devastated in the hardest-hit areas of Jamaica, sparse remaining greenery defoliated and most structures destroyed.
In a neighbourhood of the island’s Montego Bay, 77-year-old Alfred Hines waded barefoot through thick mud and debris as he described his narrow escape from the rising floodwaters.
“At one stage, I see the water at my waist and (after) about 10 minutes time, I see it around my neck here and I make my escape,” he told Reuters on Wednesday.
“I just want to forget it and things come back to normal.”
In western parts of the island, people crowded by supermarkets and gas stations to fill up on supplies.
“Montego Bay hasn’t got any petrol. Most of the petrol stations are down,” British tourist Chevelle Fitzgerald told Reuters, adding it took her at least six hours to cross the 174 km (108 miles) to Jamaica’s capital.
“The highway was closed. You had some blockage on the road and trees falling down,” she said.
Over 70% of electrical customers in Jamaica remained without power as of Thursday morning, said Energy Minister Daryl Vaz, with power lines felled across the island’s roadways.
Many schools remained without power or water, officials in the capital Kingston said.
Immediate humanitarian aid
Scientists say hurricanes are intensifying faster with greater frequency as a result of warming ocean waters caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Many Caribbean leaders have called on wealthy, heavy-polluting nations to provide reparations in the form of aid or debt relief.
Despite the U.N. setting up a fund for developing nations to quickly access reliable financing for more extreme weather events in 2023, donations have not met targets.
U.S. forecaster AccuWeather said Melissa was the third most-intense hurricane observed in the Caribbean, as well as its slowest-moving, compounding damages for affected areas.
U.S. search and rescue teams were headed for Jamaica on Thursday to assist in recovery efforts, Jamaican authorities said. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. was prepared to offer “immediate humanitarian aid” to the people of Cuba, a long-time U.S. foe.
Authorities in Cuba – which Melissa struck in the night as a Category 3 storm – said they were “awaiting clarification on how and in what way they are willing to assist.”
At least 241 Cuban communities remained isolated and without communications on Wednesday following the storm’s passage across Santiago province, according to preliminary media reports, affecting as many as 140,000 residents.
Residents of Santiago, Cuba’s second-largest city, began returning to repair their homes. Authorities had evacuated 735,000 people to shelters outside the hurricane’s cone and relocated tourists in northern cays to inland hotels.
- UN nuclear talks begin as global tensions intensify.
- Guterres says treaty commitments remain unfulfilled.
- US President Trump signals potential nuclear tests.
Signatories of the landmark nuclear non-proliferation treaty began a meeting Monday at the United Nations as fears of a renewed arms race escalate, with atomic powers again at loggerheads over safeguards.
In 2022, during the last review of the treaty considered the cornerstone of non-proliferation, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned humanity was “one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation.”
On Monday, he warned “the drivers” of nuclear weapons proliferation were accelerating.
“For too long, the treaty has been eroding. Commitments remain unfulfilled. Trust and credibility are wearing thin. The drivers of proliferation are accelerating. We need to breathe life into the treaty once more,” Guterres said in opening remarks.
With global geopolitical friction only heightened since the last meeting, it was unclear what the gathering at UN headquarters could achieve.
France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told signatories that “never has the risk of nuclear proliferation been so high, and the threat posed by Iran’s and North Korea’s programmes is intolerable for each and every state party to this treaty.”
Tempering expectations, Do Hung Viet, Vietnam’s UN ambassador and president of the conference, said: “We should not expect this conference to resolve the underlying strategic tensions of our time.”
“But a balanced outcome that reaffirms core commitments and set out practical steps forward would strengthen the integrity of the NPT,” he said.
“The success or failure of this conference will have implications way beyond these halls,” Viet added. “The prospects of a new nuclear arms race are looming over us.”
The nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), signed by almost all countries on the planet — with notable exceptions including Israel, India and Pakistan — aims to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, promote complete disarmament, and encourage cooperation on civilian nuclear projects.
The nine nuclear-armed states — Russia, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea — possessed 12,241 nuclear warheads in January 2025, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) reported.
The US and Russia hold nearly 90% of nuclear weapons globally and have carried out major programs to modernise them in recent years, according to Sipri.
China has also rapidly increased its nuclear stockpile, Sipri said, with the G7 raising the alarm Friday over Moscow and Beijing boosting their nuclear capabilities.
US President Donald Trump has indicated his intention to conduct new nuclear tests, accusing others of doing so clandestinely.
In March, French President Emmanuel Macron announced a dramatic shift in nuclear deterrence, notably an increase in the atomic arsenal, currently numbering 290 warheads.
‘Affront’ to NPT
“It is obvious that trust is eroding, both inside and outside the NPT,” Seth Shelden of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, told AFP.
He questioned the likely outcome of the four-week summit.
Decisions on the NPT require agreement by consensus, with the previous two conferences failing to adopt final political declarations.
In 2015, the deadlock was largely due to opposition by Israel’s arch-ally Washington to creation of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East.
A 2022 impasse was due mainly to Russian opposition to references to Ukraine’s nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhia, occupied by Moscow.
This year’s summit could hit any number of stumbling blocks.
The ongoing war in Ukraine, Iran’s nuclear programme and the war there, proliferation fears and Pyongyang’s developing arsenal could all be deal-breakers.
The United States along with its allies Britain, the UAE and Australia spoke out at Iran’s appointment as a conference vice president.
Washington’s meeting envoy said conferring a leadership role on Tehran was an “affront” to countries that take the NPT “seriously.”
Artificial intelligence could be a prominent issue as some countries call for all sides to keep human control over nuclear weapons.
- Putin says he received message from Iran’s Supreme Leader.
- Moscow “will do everything” to achieve regional peace: Putin.
- Russia building two new nuclear units in Iran’s Bushehr.
Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in St. Petersburg on Monday and told him he hoped the Iranian people would weather what he described as a “difficult period” and that peace would soon prevail.
Russia has offered to mediate to try to help restore calm to the Middle East following US and Israeli strikes on Iran, which Moscow has condemned. It has also repeatedly offered to store Iran’s enriched uranium as a way of defusing tensions, an offer the United States has not taken up.
“For our part, we will do everything that serves your interests and the interests of all the peoples of the region to ensure that peace is achieved as quickly as possible,” Putin told Araghchi, according to Russian state media.
“Last week I received a message from Iran’s Supreme Leader. I would like to ask you to convey my most sincere thanks for this and to confirm that Russia, like Iran, intends to continue our strategic relationship,” Putin added.
Iran last year sealed a 20-year strategic partnership agreement with Moscow, Russia is building two new nuclear units at Bushehr, the site of Iran’s only nuclear power plant, and Iran supplied Russia with Shahed drones for use against Ukraine.
Araghchi said relations between Russia and Iran would continue to strengthen and thanked Putin for Moscow’s support, the state RIA news agency reported.
A French teenager has been charged with mischief and public nuisance in Singapore for licking a straw and putting it back in an orange juice vending machine, court documents showed Monday.
Didier Gaspard Owen Maximilien, 18, allegedly filmed himself “licking a straw and placing it back at the vending machine”, uploaded the video on Instagram knowing that it “would or would probably cause annoyance to the public”, according to the documents.
The teenager is studying in Singapore, according to court records.
The public nuisance offence carries a jail term of up to three months and a fine.
A second charge of committing mischief said Maximilien knew that he was “likely to cause wrongful loss or damage” to iJooz, the company operating the vending machine which had to replace all 500 straws in the dispenser.
The mischief offence carries a punishment of up to two years in jail on conviction and a fine, according to the charge sheet.
Both offences were allegedly committed on March 12.
The charges were lodged before a district court last Friday, and the next hearing will be on May 22.
The Straits Times newspaper said the video “quickly went viral, sparking shock and concern among netizens”.
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