Although “inspired by true events,” “The Woman King” clearly isn’t tethered to them, using the underlying story of 19th-century female warriors in an African kingdom as the jumping-off point for a rousing
CNN
—
If you’re a parent, heading out the door before a car ride with the kids probably goes a little like this:
Parent: “Did you go to the bathroom?”
Child: “No, I don’t have to go.”
Parent: “Go now, you may not get the chance later.”
At least for one New Hampshire woman, that was pretty much the ongoing conversation she had with her four kids … so much that she made it her vanity license plate for 15 years.
Wendy Auger is proud of her “PB4WEGO” plate and told CNN she’s never had any issues with it. Until now.
New Hampshire asked Auger, in a letter she received August 16, to surrender her plate because it includes a phrase relating to “sexual or excretory acts or functions,” said Auger.
I’m not a political activist,” she said. “But this is a non-offensive thing that I’ve had and it’s part of who we are as a family and who I am and there was zero reason for them to take it away.”
The recall letter said Auger had 10 days to surrender her plate with the option to choose another vanity plate at no extra cost or have one assigned to her.
If Auger chose to get a regular plate, a portion of her vanity plate fee would be refunded to her, according to the letter.
After hearing about Auger’s situation from a mutual friend, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu got involved.
“Upon this being brought to my attention, I reached out to the Division of Motor Vehicles and strongly urged them to allow Wendy to keep the license plate she has had for the last 15 years,” Sununu told CNN in a statement.
“I recently left a message on her phone to share the good news that her plate will not be recalled.”
Auger said she was happy she got to keep a piece of who her family is with her.
“I wasn’t going to go down without a fight,” she said.
For New Hampshire residents, the cost of a vanity license plate includes the price of your town/city and state registration fees, plus $40 for the Vanity Plate fee, plus a one time $8 fee, according to the New Hampshire Division of Motor Vehicles.
CNN reached out to the New Hampshire DMV for comment but has not heard back.
Don't Miss
Last week, there were an estimated 238,000 first-time claims filed for unemployment benefits, an increase of 4,000 from the week before, according to Department of Labor data released Wednesday. The latest uptick brought the four-week average of initial claims to its highest level since August 2023.
Also, Americans are staying unemployed for longer: Continuing claims, which are filed by people who have received benefits for at least a week or more, rose to their highest level since November 2021.
Luke Tilley, Wilmington Trust’s chief economist, told CNN he is closely watching an underlying datapoint of the monthly jobs report: Unemployed persons by reason for unemployment.
“On a three-month average basis, it’s up about 200,000 people from last year,” Tilley said. “And that metric of permanent job losers, year-over-year, is almost never positive in an expansion. It was never positive between 2010 and 2019; it was not positive in between the tech crash recession of 2001 and then 2008.”
He added: “So when you sort of peel back the onion from what looks like very strong job growth in a raw number count and look at it a little closer … that paints a labor market that has normalized and is at risk of slipping.”
Still, other measures of layoff activity haven’t shown a worrisome spike.
US-based employers announced fewer job cuts last month than they did in May; however, those layoff reports are trending well above last year’s, according to data released Wednesday by Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
The outplacement and workplace research firm counted 48,786 cuts announced in June. That’s down nearly 24% from the 63,618 cuts announced in May, but 19.8% higher than the 40,709 cuts announced in June last year.
Don't Miss
Israel’s military has ordered the evacuation of more neighborhoods in Rafah ahead of a potential major ground operation in the southern Gaza city, where over 1 million Palestinians are estimated to be displaced. Follow live updates.
Don't Miss
Robert Hur explicitly said he “did not exonerate” President Joe Biden at the end of his yearlong special counsel investigation.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington state, elicited the comments while tussling with Hur over his conclusions. She claimed Hur “exonerated” Biden, but the special counsel immediately took issue with the term during a tense exchange.
“This lengthy, expensive and independent investigation resulted in a complete exoneration of President Joe Biden for every document you discussed in your report. You found insufficient evidence that the president violated any laws about possession or retention of classified materials,” Jayapal said.
“I need to go back and make sure that I take note of a word that you used, ‘exoneration,’” Hur said. “That is not a word that is used in my report and that is not a part of my task as a prosecutor.”
“You exonerated him,” Jayapal retorted.
“I did not exonerate him. That word does not appear in the report,” Hur said.
The result of this back-and-forth is that Jayapal spurred Hur to say something that clearly isn’t helpful for Biden, whom she was aggressively trying to defend.
Jayapal brought this up while arguing Hur didn’t have enough evidence to conclude Biden broke the law, in addition to Hur’s determination that a jury would sympathize with the president because of his age and at-times faltering memory.
Don't Miss
Heavy snow and blizzard conditions will continue to blast portions of the Midwest. Strong winds will also ramp up across the region, reaching their peak once the powerful storm hits its full strength Friday evening.
Thunderstorms will continue to roll across the Southeast, where some may become severe through Friday afternoon and evening. Rain and thunderstorms will arrive in parts of the mid-Atlantic by Friday evening and much of the Northeast will deal with rain and potential flooding by Friday night.
Here’s what a few cities in the path of the storm can expect:
Chicago: A mix of rain and snow Friday afternoon will gradually turn fully back over to snow Friday evening. Winds will remain gusty throughout the day, with gusts of 40 to 60 mph likely once again Friday night. Snow continues through Saturday as much colder conditions arrive.
Atlanta: Thunderstorms will continue to develop and move across the city Friday afternoon. Some may become severe, with the potential for damaging wind gusts, hail and even a tornado. A Level 2 out of 5 risk for severe thunderstorms is in place Friday with the potential for damaging wind gusts, hail and even a tornado. Storms will exit the area Friday evening, but breezy conditions will linger through Saturday.
Washington, DC: Rain and a few thunderstorms will arrive Friday evening and 1 to 2 inches of rain may drench some areas caught under heavy downpours. Winds will be quite strong with gusts of 30 to 50 mph possible. The combination of wind and rain may lead to power outages. Rain will taper off by early Saturday morning, but strong winds will persist.
New York City: Rain, heavy at times, and strong wind gusts of 40 to 60 mph will arrive Friday night. Rainfall amounts of 1 to 2 inches are likely across the city, with higher amounts possible just north. Rain will taper off Saturday morning, but gusty winds will persist through the weekend.
Don't Miss
CNN
—
Here is a look back at the events of 2023.
January 3 – Republican Kevin McCarthy fails to secure enough votes to be elected Speaker of the House in three rounds of voting. On January 7, McCarthy is elected House speaker after multiple days of negotiations and 15 rounds of voting. That same day, the newly elected 118th Congress is officially sworn in.
January 7 – Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, is pulled over for reckless driving. He is hospitalized following the arrest and dies three days later from injuries sustained during the traffic stop. Five officers from the Memphis Police Department are fired. On January 26, a grand jury indicts the five officers. They are each charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression. On September 12, the five officers are indicted by a federal grand jury on several charges including deprivation of rights.
January 9 – The White House counsel’s office confirms that several classified documents from President Joe Biden’s time as vice president were discovered last fall in an office at the Penn Biden Center. On January 12, the White House counsel’s office confirms a small number of additional classified documents were located in President Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home.
January 13 – The Trump Organization is fined $1.6 million – the maximum possible penalty – by a New York judge for running a decade-long tax fraud scheme.
January 21 – Eleven people are killed in a mass shooting at a dance studio in Monterey Park, California, as the city’s Asian American community was celebrating Lunar New Year. The 72-year-old gunman is found dead the following day from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
January 24 – CNN reports that a lawyer for former Vice President Mike Pence discovered about a dozen documents marked as classified at Pence’s Indiana home last week, and he has turned those classified records over to the FBI.
January 25 – Facebook-parent company Meta announces it will restore former President Donald Trump’s accounts on Facebook and Instagram in the coming weeks, just over two years after suspending him in the wake of the January 6 Capitol attack.
February 1 – Tom Brady announces his retirement after 23 seasons in the NFL.
February 2 – Defense officials announce the United States is tracking a suspected Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloon over the continental United States. On February 4, a US military fighter jet shoots down the balloon over the Atlantic Ocean. On June 29, the Pentagon reveals the balloon did not collect intelligence while flying over the country.
February 3 – A Norfolk Southern freight train carrying hazardous materials derails in East Palestine, Ohio. An evacuation order is issued for the area within a mile radius of the train crash. The order is lifted on February 8. After returning to their homes, some residents report they have developed a rash and nausea.
February 7 – Lebron James breaks the NBA’s all-time scoring record, surpassing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
February 15 – Payton Gendron, 19, who killed 10 people in a racist mass shooting at a grocery store in a predominantly Black area of Buffalo last May, is sentenced to life in prison.
February 18 – In a statement, the Carter Center says that former President Jimmy Carter will begin receiving hospice care at his home in Georgia.
February 20 – President Biden makes a surprise trip to Kyiv for the first time since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost a year ago.
February 23 – Disgraced R&B singer R. Kelly is sentenced to 20 years in prison in a Chicago federal courtroom on charges of child pornography and enticement of a minor. Kelly is already serving a 30-year prison term for his 2021 conviction on racketeering and sex trafficking charges in a New York federal court. Nineteen years of the 20-year prison sentence will be served at the same time as his other sentence. One year will be served after that sentence is complete.
February 23 – Harvey Weinstein, who is already serving a 23-year prison sentence in New York, is sentenced in Los Angeles to an additional 16 years in prison for charges of rape and sexual assault.
March 2 – SpaceX and NASA launch a fresh crew of astronauts on a mission to the International Space Station, kicking off a roughly six-month stay in space. The mission — which is carrying two NASA astronauts, a Russian cosmonaut and an astronaut from the United Arab Emirates — took off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
March 2 – The jury in the double murder trial of Alex Murdaugh finds him guilty of murdering his wife and son. Murdaugh, the 54-year-old scion of a prominent and powerful family of local lawyers and solicitors, is also found guilty of two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime in the killings of Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh and Paul Murdaugh on June 7, 2021.
March 3 – Four US citizens from South Carolina are kidnapped by gunmen in Matamoros, Mexico, in a case of mistaken identity. On March 7, two of the four Americans, Shaeed Woodard and Zindell Brown, are found dead and the other two, Latavia McGee and Eric Williams, are found alive. The cartel believed responsible for the armed kidnapping issues an apology letter and hands over five men to local authorities.
March 10 – The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation announces that Silicon Valley Bank was shut down by California regulators. This is the second largest bank failure in US history, only to Washington Mutual’s collapse in 2008. SVB Financial Group, the former parent company of SVB, files for bankruptcy on March 17.
March 27 – A 28-year-old Nashville resident shoots and kills three children and three adults at the Covenant School in Nashville. The shooter is fatally shot by responding officers.
March 29 – Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich is detained by Russian authorities and accused of spying. On April 7, he is formally charged with espionage.
March 30 – A grand jury in New York votes to indict Trump, the first time in American history that a current or former president has faced criminal charges. On April 4, Trump surrenders and is placed under arrest before pleading not guilty to 34 felony criminal charges of falsifying business records. Prosecutors allege that Trump sought to undermine the integrity of the 2016 election through a hush money scheme with payments made to women who claimed they had extramarital affairs with Trump. He has denied the affairs.
April 6 – Two Democratic members of the Tennessee House of Representatives, Rep. Justin Jones and Rep. Justin Pearson, are expelled while a third member, Rep. Gloria Johnson, is spared in an ousting by Republican lawmakers that was decried by the trio as oppressive, vindictive and racially motivated. This comes after Jones, Pearson and Johnson staged a demonstration on the House floor calling for gun reform following the shooting at the Covenant School. On April 10, Rep. Jones is sworn back in following a unanimous vote by the Nashville Metropolitan Council to reappoint him as an interim representative. On April 12, the Shelby County Board of Commissioners vote to confirm the reappointment of Rep. Pearson.
April 6-13 – ProPublica reports that Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, conservative activist Ginni Thomas, have gone on several luxury trips involving travel subsidized by and stays at properties owned by Harlan Crow, a GOP megadonor. The hospitality was not disclosed on Thomas’ public financial filings with the Supreme Court. The following week ProPublica reports Thomas failed to disclose a 2014 real estate deal he made with Crow. On financial disclosure forms released on August 31, Thomas discloses the luxury trips and “inadvertently omitted” information including the real estate deal.
April 7 – A federal judge in Texas issues a ruling on medication abortion drug mifepristone, saying he will suspend the US Food and Drug Administration’s two-decade-old approval of it but paused his ruling for seven days so the federal government can appeal. But in a dramatic turn of events, a federal judge in Washington state says in a new ruling shortly after that the FDA must keep medication abortion drugs available in more than a dozen Democratic-led states.
April 13 – 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard is arrested by the FBI in connection with the leaking of classified documents that have been posted online.
April 18 – Fox News reaches a last-second settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, paying more than $787 million to end a two-year legal battle that publicly shredded the network’s credibility. Fox News’ $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems is the largest publicly known defamation settlement in US history involving a media company.
April 25 – President Biden formally announces his bid for reelection.
May 2 – More than 11,000 members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) go on strike for the first time since 2007. On September 26, the WGA announces its leaders have unanimously voted to authorize its members to return to work following the tentative agreement reached on September 24 between union negotiators and Hollywood’s studios and streaming services, effectively ending the months-long strike.
May 9 – A Manhattan federal jury finds Trump sexually abused former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in the spring of 1996 and awards her $5 million for battery and defamation.
June 8 – Trump is indicted on a total of 37 counts in the special counsel’s classified documents probe. In a superseding indictment filed on July 27, Trump is charged with one additional count of willful retention of national defense information and two additional obstruction counts, bringing the total to 40 counts.
June 16 – Robert Bowers, the gunman who killed 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, is convicted by a federal jury on all 63 charges against him. He is sentenced to death on August 2.
June 18 – A civilian submersible disappears with five people aboard while voyaging to the wreckage of the Titanic. On June 22, following a massive search for the submersible, US authorities announce the vessel suffered a “catastrophic implosion,” killing all five people aboard.
June 20 – ProPublica reports that Justice Samuel Alito did not disclose a luxury 2008 trip he took in which a hedge fund billionaire flew him on a private jet, even though the businessman would later repeatedly ask the Supreme Court to intervene on his behalf. In a highly unusual move, Alito preemptively disputed the nature of the report before it was published, authoring an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in which he acknowledged knowing billionaire Paul Singer but downplaying their relationship.
June 29 – The Supreme Court says colleges and universities can no longer take race into consideration as a specific basis for granting admission, a landmark decision overturning long-standing precedent.
July 13 – The FDA approves Opill to be available over-the-counter, the first nonprescription birth control pill in the United States.
July 14 – SAG-AFTRA, a union representing about 160,000 Hollywood actors, goes on strike after talks with major studios and streaming services fail. It is the first time its members have stopped work on movie and television productions since 1980.
August 1 – Trump is indicted by a federal grand jury in Washington, DC, in the 2020 election probe. Trump is charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.
August 8 – Over 100 people are killed and hundreds of others unaccounted for after wildfires engulf parts of Maui. Nearly 3,000 homes and businesses are destroyed or damaged.
August 14 – Trump and 18 others are indicted by an Atlanta-based grand jury on state charges stemming from their efforts to overturn the former president’s 2020 electoral defeat. Trump now faces a total of 91 charges in four criminal cases, in four different jurisdictions — two federal and two state cases. On August 24, Trump surrenders at the Fulton County jail where he is processed and released on bond.
August 23 – Eight Republican presidential candidates face off in the first primary debate of the 2024 campaign in Milwaukee.
September 12 – House Speaker McCarthy announces he is calling on his committees to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Biden, even as they have yet to prove allegations he directly profited off his son’s foreign business deals.
September 14 – Hunter Biden is indicted by special counsel David Weiss in connection with a gun he purchased in 2018, the first time in US history the Justice Department has charged the child of a sitting president. The three charges include making false statements on a federal firearms form and possession of a firearm as a prohibited person.
September 22 – New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob Menendez is charged with corruption-related offenses for the second time in 10 years. Menendez and his wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez, are accused of accepting “hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes” in exchange for the senator’s influence, according to the newly unsealed federal indictment.
September 28 – Dianne Feinstein, the longest-serving female US senator in history, dies at the age of 90. On October 1, California Governor Gavin Newsom announces he will appoint Emily’s List president Laphonza Butler to replace her. Butler will become the first out Black lesbian to join Congress. She will also be the sole Black female senator serving in Congress and only the third in US history.
September 29 – Las Vegas police confirm Duane Keith Davis, aka “Keffe D,” was arrested for the 1996 murder of rapper Tupac Shakur.
October 3 – McCarthy is removed as House speaker following a 216-210 vote, with eight Republicans voting to remove McCarthy from the post.
January 8 – Supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro storm the country’s congressional building, Supreme Court and presidential palace. The breaches come about a week after the inauguration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who defeated Bolsonaro in a runoff election on October 30.
January 15 – At least 68 people are killed when an aircraft goes down near the city of Pokhara in central Nepal. This is the country’s deadliest plane crash in more than 30 years.
January 19 – New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden announces she will not seek reelection in October.
January 24 – President Volodymyr Zelensky fires a slew of senior Ukrainian officials amid a growing corruption scandal linked to the procurement of war-time supplies.
February 6 – More than 15,000 people are killed and tens of thousands injured after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake strikes Turkey and Syria.
February 28 – At least 57 people are killed after two trains collide in Greece.
March 1 – Bola Ahmed Tinubu is declared the winner of Nigeria’s presidential election.
March 10 – Xi Jinping is reappointed as president for another five years by China’s legislature in a ceremonial vote in Beijing, a highly choreographed exercise in political theater meant to demonstrate legitimacy and unity of the ruling elite.
March 16 – The French government forces through controversial plans to raise the country’s retirement age from 62 to 64.
April 4 – Finland becomes the 31st member of NATO.
April 15 – Following months of tensions in Sudan between a paramilitary group and the country’s army, violence erupts.
May 3 – A 13-year-old boy opens fire on his classmates at a school in Belgrade, Serbia, killing at least eight children along with a security guard. On May 4, a second mass shooting takes place when an attacker opens fire in the village of Dubona, about 37 miles southeast of Belgrade, killing eight people.
May 5 – The World Health Organization announces Covid-19 is no longer a global health emergency.
May 6 – King Charles’ coronation takes place at Westminster Abbey in London.
August 4 – Alexey Navalny is sentenced to 19 years in prison on extremism charges, Russian media reports. Navalny is already serving sentences totaling 11-and-a-half years in a maximum-security facility on fraud and other charges that he says were trumped up.
September 8 – Over 2,000 people are dead and thousands are injured after a 6.8-magnitude earthquake hits Morocco.
October 8 – Israel formally declares war on the Palestinian militant group Hamas after it carried out an unprecedented attack by air, sea and land on October 7.
Awards and Winners
January 9 – The College Football Playoff National Championship game takes place at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. The Georgia Bulldogs defeat Texas Christian University’s Horned Frogs 65-7 for their second national title in a row.
January 10 – The 80th Annual Golden Globe Awards are presented live on NBC.
January 16-29 – The 111th Australian Open takes place. Novak Djokovic defeats Stefanos Tsitsipas in straight sets to win a 10th Australian Open title and a record-equaling 22nd grand slam. Belarusian-born Aryna Sabalenka defeats Elena Rybakina in three sets, becoming the first player competing under a neutral flag to secure a grand slam.
February 5 – The 65th Annual Grammy Awards ceremony takes place in Los Angeles at the Crypto.com Arena.
February 12 – Super Bowl LVII takes place at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. The Kansas City Chiefs defeat the Philadelphia Eagles 38-35. This is the first Super Bowl to feature two Black starting quarterbacks.
February 19 – Ricky Stenhouse Jr. wins the 65th Annual Daytona 500 in double overtime. It is the longest Daytona 500 ever with a record of 212 laps raced.
March 12 – The 95th Annual Academy Awards takes place, with Jimmy Kimmel hosting for the third time.
March 14 – Ryan Redington wins his first Iditarod.
April 2 – The Louisiana State University Tigers defeat the University of Iowa Hawkeyes 102-85 in Dallas, to win the program’s first NCAA women’s basketball national championship.
April 3 – The University of Connecticut Huskies win its fifth men’s basketball national title with a 76-59 victory over the San Diego State University Aztecs in Houston.
April 6-9 – The 87th Masters tournament takes place. Jon Rahm wins, claiming his first green jacket and second career major at Augusta National.
April 17 – The 127th Boston Marathon takes place. The winners are Evans Chebet of Kenya in the men’s division and Hellen Obiri of Kenya in the women’s division.
May 6 – Mage, a 3-year-old chestnut colt, wins the 149th Kentucky Derby.
May 8-9 – The 147th Annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show takes place at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, New York. Buddy Holly, a petit basset griffon Vendéen, wins Best in Show.
May 20 – National Treasure wins the 148th running of the Preakness Stakes.
May 21 – Brooks Koepka wins the 105th PGA Championship at Oak Hill County Club in Rochester, New York. This is his third PGA Championship and fifth major title of his career.
May 22-June 11 – The French Open takes place at Roland Garros Stadium in Paris. Novak Djokovic wins a record-breaking 23rd Grand Slam title, defeating Casper Ruud 7-6 (7-1) 6-3 7-5 in the men’s final. Iga Świątek wins her third French Open in four years with a 6-2 5-7 6-4 victory against the unseeded Karolína Muchová in the women’s final.
May 28 – Josef Newgarden wins the 107th running of the Indianapolis 500.
June 10 – Arcangelo wins the 155th running of the Belmont Stakes.
June 11 – The 76th Tony Awards takes place.
June 12 – The Denver Nuggets defeat the Miami Heat 94-89 in Game 5, to win the series 4-1 and claim their first NBA title in franchise history.
June 13 – The Vegas Golden Knights defeat the Florida Panthers in Game 5 to win the franchise’s first Stanley Cup.
June 18 – American golfer Wyndham Clark wins the 123rd US Open at The Los Angeles Country Club.
July 1-23 – The 110th Tour de France takes place. Danish cyclist Jonas Vingegaard wins his second consecutive Tour de France title.
July 3-16 – Wimbledon takes place in London. Carlos Alcaraz defeats Novak Djokovic 1-6 7-6 (8-6) 6-1 3-6 6-4 in the men’s final, to win his first Wimbledon title. Markéta Vondroušová defeats Ons Jabeur 6-4 6-4 in the women’s final, to win her first Wimbledon title and become the first unseeded woman in the Open Era to win the tournament.
July 16-23 – Brian Harman wins the 151st Open Championship at Royal Liverpool in Hoylake, Wirral, England, for his first major title.
July 20-August 20 – The Women’s World Cup takes place in Australia and New Zealand. Spain defeats England 1-0 to win its first Women’s World Cup.
August 28-September 10 – The US Open Tennis Tournament takes place. Coco Gauff defeats Aryna Sabalenka, and Novak Djokovic defeats Daniil Medvedev.
October 2-9 – The Nobel Prizes are announced. The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to jailed Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi for “her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all,” according to the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
Don't Miss
CNN
—
It started with a bang at 3 a.m. Monday as the residents of Derna were sleeping. One dam burst, then a second, sending a huge wave of water gushing down through the mountains towards the coastal Libyan city, killing thousands as entire neighborhoods were swept into the sea.
At least 8,000 people in Libya have been killed by this week’s floods, Doctors Without Borders (Médecins sans frontières) said in a statement Thursday, in the deadliest flooding disaster in Africa since records began more than a century ago.
The eastern Libyan city of Derna, the epicenter of the disaster, had a population of around 100,000 before the tragedy. Authorities say that at least 10,000 remain missing. CNN could not independently verify the figures.
Buildings, homes and infrastructure were “wiped out” when a 7-meter (23-foot) wave hit the city, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which said Thursday that dead bodies were now washing back up on shore.
But with thousands killed and many more still missing, there are questions as to why the storm that also hit Greece and other countries caused so much more devastation in Libya.
Experts say that apart from the strong storm itself, Libya’s catastrophe was greatly exacerbated by a lethal confluence of factors including aging, crumbling infrastructure, inadequate warnings and the impacts of the accelerating climate crisis.
The extreme rainfall that hit Libya on Sunday was brought by a system called Storm Daniel.
After sweeping Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria, with severe flooding that killed more than 20 people, it formed into a “medicane” over the Mediterranean – a relatively rare type of storm with similar characteristics to hurricanes and typhoons.
The medicane strengthened as it crossed the unusually warm waters of the Mediterranean before dumping torrential rain on Libya on Sunday.
It brought more than 16 inches (414 mm) of rainfall in 24 hours to Al-Bayda, a city west of Derna, a new record.
While it’s too early to definitively attribute the storm to the climate crisis, scientists are confident that climate change is increasing the intensity of extreme weather events like storms. Warmer oceans provide fuel for storms to grow, and a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, meaning more extreme rainfall.
Storms “are becoming more ferocious because of climate change,” said Hannah Cloke, professor of hydrology at the University of Reading in the UK.
Derna is prone to flooding, and its dam reservoirs have caused at least five deadly floods since 1942, the latest of which was in 2011, according to a research paper published by Libya’s Sebha University last year.
The two dams that burst on Monday were built around half a century ago, between 1973 and 1977, by a Yugoslav construction company. The Derna dam is 75 meters (246 feet) high with a storage capacity of 18 million cubic meters (4.76 billion gallons). The second dam, Mansour, is 45 meters (148 feet) high with a capacity of 1.5 million cubic meters (396 million gallons).
Those dams haven’t undergone maintenance since 2002, the city’s deputy mayor Ahmed Madroud told Al Jazeera.
But the problems with the dams were known. The Sebha University paper warned that the dams in Derna had a “high potential for flood risk” and that periodic maintenance is needed to avoid “catastrophic” flooding.
“The current situation in the Wadi Derna reservoir requires officials to take immediate measures to carry out periodic maintenance of existing dams,” the paper recommended last year. “Because in the event of a huge flood, the result will be catastrophic on the residents of the valley and the city.” It also found that the surrounding area lacked adequate vegetation that could prevent soil erosion. Residents of the area should be made aware of the dangers of flooding, it added.
Liz Stephens, Professor in Climate Risks and Resilience at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, told CNN that there were serious questions to be asked about the design standard of the dam and whether the risk of very extreme rainfall events had been adequately taken into account.
“It’s very clear that without this dam break, we wouldn’t have seen the tragic number of fatalities that that have happened as a result,” she said.
“The dams would have held back the water initially, with their failure potentially releasing all the water in one go,” Stephens also told Science Media Center, adding that “the debris caught up in the floodwaters would have added to the destructive power.”
Derna has been battered in the past, its infrastructure upended by years of fighting.
From battling ISIS and then later, eastern commander Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army (LNA), the city’s infrastructure has crumbled and is woefully inadequate in the face of floods like the one brought by on by Storm Daniel.
Better warnings could have avoided most of the casualties in Derna, the head of the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization, Petteri Taalas, said.
“If there would have been a normally operating meteorological service, they would have issued the warnings and also the emergency management of this would have been able to carry out evacuations of the people and we would have avoided most of the human casualties,” Taalas told reporters at a news conference Thursday.
Talaas added that the political instability in the country has impeded WMO efforts to work with the Libyan government to improve these systems.
Yet, even robust early warning systems are not a guarantee that all lives can be saved, said Cloke.
Dam failures can be very hard to forecast, and are fast and ferocious, she told CNN. “You have this monstrous volume of water just taking out the city entirely,” Cloke said. “It’s one of the worst types of floods that ever happens.”
While dams are usually designed to withstand relatively extreme events, it’s often not enough, said Cloke. “We should be preparing for unexpected events, and then you put climate change on top, and that ramps up these unexpected events.”
The risk climate-fueled extreme weather poses to infrastructure – not just dams, but everything from buildings to water supplies – is a global one. “We’re not ready for the extreme events coming towards us,” Cloke said.
Don't Miss
CNN
—
More than 5 million people in Southern Connecticut and Southeastern New York, including most of New York City, are under a flash flood warning until 4 p.m. ET.
The warning comes as severe rainfall caused dangerous flooding in other parts of the Northeast, including Pennsylvania, where four people were killed.
“There are more than 5 million under a flash flood warning, including much of Manhattan. It might be one of the largest population numbers under a single warning I’ve seen,” said CNN meteorologist Brandon Miller.
The National Weather Service cautioned most flood deaths occur in vehicles and urged people not to attempt to drive down flooded roads.
“Excessive runoff from heavy rainfall will cause flooding of urban areas, highways, streets and underpasses as well as other drainage areas and low lying spots,” the weather service said.
Major airports were experiencing significant weather-related flight delays Sunday. All flights serving the major airports around New York City and Boston were facing ground stops around 1 p.m., including Boston Logan International Airport, LaGuardia Airport, Newark Liberty International Airport, and John F. Kennedy International Airport, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
The National Weather Service also issued a tornado watch for large portions of the Northeast, including parts of the New York City metro Sunday. Much of the recently flooded New England region could face torrential rainfall. The weather service issued a Level 3 of 4 threat for excessive rainfall for areas including New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington DC.
Four people have been found dead due to flooding in Pennsylvania, officials say, as they search for three who remain missing, including a two-year-old girl and her nine-month-old brother.
Officials in Bucks County, where the children are missing, are also searching for an adult woman, Upper Makefield Fire Chief Tim Brewer told reporters Sunday.
Intense rainfall flooded roadways, catching many on the roads by surprise Saturday and leaving some trapped, the Upper Makefield Township Police Department said in a statement.
Search and rescue efforts are ongoing, Brewer noted.
“We are treating this as a rescue but we are fairly certain we are in a recovery mode at this time,” Brewer said earlier Sunday.
Several area agencies were assisting with rescue missions overnight.
“Our department is assisting Upper Makefield Township Police Department with a search and rescue operation on Taylorsville Road in the area of Washington Crossing Road (Route 532) for missing persons lost in the flood,” said Newtown Township Police Department.
The state’s emergency management agency is monitoring the flooding and coordinating with water rescue teams in Bucks County, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said on Twitter. The emergency management agency is urging residents to check road conditions before traveling.
“Never drive into standing water. Mere inches of flood water can carry you away in your vehicle,” the agency said on Twitter. “Mere inches of flood water can carry you away in your vehicle.”
The agency also warned some homes may lose power.
Over the last month, parts of interior New England and the Northeast have seen 200% to 300% of their average monthly rainfall, leading to last week’s disastrous flooding event in parts of Vermont, New York and western Massachusetts.
“Given some parts of the Northeast contain saturated and sensitive soils from recent heavy rainfall over the past 10 days, this is a setup primed to produce flash flooding that could be significant in affected areas,” the weather service said.
A 35-year-old woman died last week when she was swept away by floodwaters as she tried to evacuate her Orange County home in New York. Officials say the flooding there caused tens of millions of dollars in damage.
Vermont faced flooding of the likes not seen since Hurricane Irene devastated the state in 2011. The intense rainfall gushed through streets and homes, prompting hundreds of evacuations and more than 200 rescues.
President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration for Vermont, authorizing FEMA to move in needed equipment and resources.
Even with the help, “this is going to be a years – if not a decade – long recovery for the state of Vermont,” said Jennifer Morrison, the state’s public safety commissioner.
Steady warming and atmospheric changes are “supercharging” regular weather events, making them longer and more intense, Michael E. Mann, a climate scientist and distinguished professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told CNN.
Climate experts say it is part of a “perfect storm” this summer, leading to deadly flooding in places like the Northeast while other parts of the world – including the Southwestern US – are scorched by record-breaking heat.
Don't Miss
