The former hurricane known as Laura has so far been the most intense and dangerous storm of this year’s Atlantic hurricane season, according to the U.N.’s weather agency, the World Meteorological Organization.Laura is now just a tropical depression, spreading heavy rain and thunderstorms across the east-central United States, forecasters said. But as the storm crossed the Gulf of Mexico earlier this week, it strengthened from a Category 1 hurricane to a Category 4 in less than 24 hours. Forecasters recorded wind speeds as high as 240 kph.As Laura came ashore early Thursday in southern Louisiana, the National Hurricane Service was predicting an “unsurvivable storm surge.” That didn’t materialize, but damaging winds and heavy rains did. The system destroyed property, downed trees and led to power outages throughout the state. The WMO said that since Laura began moving through the Caribbean last week, it had caused more than 20 deaths, most in Haiti.FILE – Benjamin Luna helps recover items from the children’s wing of the First Pentecostal Church that was destroyed by Hurricane Laura, Aug. 27, 2020, in Orange, Texas.Speaking from U.N. headquarters in Geneva, WMO spokeswoman Clare Nullis said Laura had now generated more accumulated cyclone energy, or ACE, the metric used to measure storm intensity and duration, than the four other storms in August combined. Nullis said there was still a long way to go this year. The Atlantic hurricane season began in June and ends in November.Nullis said climatologists predict that strong storms – in the Category 4-to-Category 5 range of hurricane intensity – will become more common, primarily because of global warming.Citing laws of physics, Nullis said, “Storms feed on warm water; higher water temperatures mean higher sea levels, which in turn increase the risk of flooding during high tides, and so the circle goes on.”
 
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A study published this week offers evidence regarding how water originated on Earth, and the clues come from some of the oldest rocks in the solar system. Earth’s abundance of water makes it unique in the solar system, but scientists have never been sure how it got here. Some believed the water – or chemical compounds that make up water – was here all along, embedded in the original rock that formed the Earth about 4.5 billion years ago.  A piece of an enstatite chondrite meteorite, which contains about 0.5 weight percent of water, is seen in this undated handout obtained Aug. 27, 2020, courtesy of Laurette Piani and Christine Fieni from the Museum of Natural History in Paris.But other scientists studying models of where Earth exists in the solar system think it should have formed as a dry planet, suggesting the water came from somewhere else. A study, published Thursday in the journal Science, looks at the composition of samples of enstatite chondrite meteorites — a rare, ancient form of meteorite believed to have been formed very early in the life of the solar system.Scientists had previously dismissed these space rocks as the source of Earth’s water because they were exposed to the heat and radiation of the young sun early in their formation, making them, the scientists thought, too dry to carry water. Instead, astronomers theorize water came to Earth later in its formation, through carbonaceous chondrite meteorites, which came from the outer solar system, where water was more abundant. In the new study, researchers measured the amount of hydrogen, the primary element in water, in 13 samples of enstatite chondrite meteorites. Their analysis revealed these meteorites carry a lot more hydrogen than previously believed. So much hydrogen, that the study’s authors say they believe the ancient meteorites can account for least three times the amount of water in Earth’s present-day oceans. Therefore, they maintain, Earth’s water may have come from the very space rocks that formed the planet. 
 
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In May, facing urgent international demands for action after a string of massive wildfires in the Amazon, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro put the army in charge of protecting the rainforest.
 
Instead, The Associated Press has found, the operation dubbed as “Green Brazil 2” has had the opposite effect. Under military command, Brazil’s once-effective but recently declining investigation and prosecution of rainforest destruction by ranchers, farmers and miners has come to a virtual halt, even as this year’s burning season picks up.
 
The Brazilian army appears to be focusing on dozens of small road-and-bridge-building projects that allow exports to flow faster to ports and ease access to protected areas, opening the rainforest to further exploitation. In the meantime, there have been no major raids against illegal activity since Bolsonaro required military approval for them in May, according to public officials, reporting from the area and interviews with nine current and former members of Brazil’s environmental enforcement agency.  
 The AP also found that:
 
— The number of fines issued for environmental crimes has been cut by almost half since four years ago, especially under Bolsonaro.
 
— Two high-ranking officials from IBAMA, the environmental agency, say they have stopped using satellite maps to locate deforestation sites and fine their owners __ a once-widely used technique. IBAMA officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press.  
 
— IBAMA is no longer penalizing the heads of big networks of illegal logging, mining and farming, according to two other officials. Meat packers who sell beef from deforested areas now operate freely, according to three IBAMA officials.
 
The order putting the military in charge of fighting deforestation was initially due to end in June, but it was recently extended by Bolsonaro until November despite widespread criticism that it is making the problem worse.  
 
At stake is the fate of the forest itself, and hopes of limiting global warming. Experts say blazes and deforestation are pushing the world’s largest rainforest toward a tipping point, after which it will cease to generate enough rainfall to sustain itself. About two-thirds of the forest would then begin an irreversible, decades-long decline into tropical savanna.
 
The Amazon has lost about 17% of its original area and, at the current pace, is expected to reach a tipping point in the next 15 to 30 years. As it decomposes, it will release hundreds of billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
 
“From the occupation of the land to mining and the fires, it is all connected,” said Suely Vaz, who headed IBAMA between 2016 and 2019 and is now a specialist of the Climate Observatory, comprised of 50 non-governmental groups. “IBAMA should fight the whole network of deforestation. But it just doesn’t now.”  
 
Bolsonaro’s office and IBAMA did not respond to requests for comment, but Bolsonaro declared in May that “our effort is great, enormous in fighting fires and deforestation.” He also called reports of the forest on fire “a lie.”
 
Brazil’s Defense Ministry defended its record, saying its deployment was ’’an operation of multiple agencies” involving 2,090 people a day, along with 89 vehicles and 19 ships.
“Those figures are rising by the day, as resources become available and operations are gradually intensified,” the ministry said.  
 
It said the operation had led to the destruction of 253 machines involved in illegal logging as of Aug. 24 but did not specify what type of machines or say anything about other illegal activities like mining.  
 
While the threat under Bolsonaro’s administration is the latest and most severe, efforts to preserve the Amazon have been struggling for years.  
 
In the 2003-2011 administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil developed a multi-agency plan to slow Amazon deforestation that worked well, according to virtually all observers. That ended in 2012 when the government of his successor, Dilma Rousseff, pardoned illegal deforestation prior to 2008, among other measures that emboldened violators. Many believe Bolsonaro will issue new pardons.
 
IBAMA once had more than 1,300 agents. That has dropped to about 600 since 2012, when the agency stopped hiring under Rousseff in an attempt to rein in spending.
 
The weakening of IBAMA accelerated after Rousseff was ousted in 2016 and replaced by right-wing Michel Temer. Observers on all sides say the change has been far more fast-moving and dramatic since Bolsonaro was elected in 2018, after a campaign that dismissed the threat of deforestation and pledged more development of the rainforest.  
 
In the field, IBAMA has hundreds of inspectors who are supposed to conduct investigations, raid illegal sites, issue fines, destroy equipment and request arrests by local and federal police, along with a corps of temporary contract firefighters. But after the last major raid by IBAMA against illegal mining in April, the two inspectors in charge were fired by the environment ministry, allegedly for “political-ideological bias.″
 
A former Bolsonaro minister, Gen. Carlos Alberto dos Santos Cruz, told the AP that the army is best at supporting inspections in the Amazon, not leading them.
 
“In some places you cannot find any other institution, no police or IBAMA. There’s no structure and the military steps up,” he said. “The armed forces can help and they are helping. But inspections need to be done by those that are experts. And you have to work with local authorities, they are the ones who know who the criminals are.”
 
In 2016, the year Temer took office, there were almost 10,000 fines nationwide for environmental crimes, according to IBAMA’s website. In 2019, the first year of the Bolsonaro presidency, that shrank to 7,148. In the first six months of 2020, it stood at 3,721.
 
Defense Ministry numbers confirm that fines under operation Green Brazil 2 have continued at a lower rate, with 1,526 fines so far over about three months’ worth almost $80 million.
 
“There is a reduction in fines because the president doesn’t like them, campaigns against them,” an IBAMA inspector based in the Amazon said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the press by agency heads in the capital, Brasilia.
 
“Appointees to local IBAMA offices know that,” the official said. “If a given unit fines too much, they get a call from Brasilia.”
 
Last week, a group of five soldiers and five IBAMA firefighters drove into Nova Fronteira, a remote district of Pará state. Satellite images showed a big fire threatening a part of the forest on the edges of a private property.
 
Upon arrival, they saw a wooden gate closed with a single padlock. In the past, IBAMA staff would enter private properties in emergencies, as allowed by Brazilian law. That policy has changed with the army’s arrival.
 
“We can’t come in if the owner is not here,” said one soldier, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the press.
 
A simple but effective change could be issuing fines to land owners through satellite imagery-aided investigation. An IBAMA specialist on data said 70% of deforestation in many areas can be located on aerial maps by Brazil’s space agency. That alone would allow IBAMA to find who owns the land and hold them accountable — which is not happening under the army, agency veterans said.  
 
“We are not even trying now,” one high-ranking official said.  
 
A former top IBAMA official said the army didn’t know how to lead investigations and could not legally issue fines, seize equipment or block construction. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he has received death threats from people involved in Amazon development.  
 
“The army could use their technology to see where deforestation is growing, map it all and go after who is responsible,” he said. “But they spend their time either stopping IBAMA from doing that or working on construction projects.”  
 
Another IBAMA agent who has organized hundreds of raids nationwide said the agency also is no longer investigating the heads of big networks of illegal logging, mining and farming. That type of high-end investigative work slowed down under Temer, with a few prominent exceptions, and stopped entirely under Bolsonaro, with new regional leaders of IBAMA offices tending to be former or active military or police officials seconded to civilian positions.
 
Those who support development applaud the army’s foray into the Amazon.  
 
Part-time farmer Antonio Silva has noticed the changes in the operations of Brazil’s environmental enforcement agency — and he loves them. Silva struggled for years doing odd jobs in northern Brazil before he moved to the country’s Amazon frontier and bought himself a 4-acre poultry farm outside the city of Novo Progresso, where he also works as a security guard.  
 
As ranching and mining ate into the rainforest, the city grew from a few thousand to 25,000 residents, and the market for Silva’s chicken and turkeys grew. There are now three electronics stores in town, instead of just one.  
 
 
He said IBAMA used to aggressively patrol around his little farm, seeking out those who seized public lands and chopped and burned the rainforest for profit. A few years ago, they came in by helicopter, bringing police with machine guns. They arrested people and destroyed machinery.
 
“It was shocking,” Silva said. “It is better now….they come twice a week to put out some fires, talk and that’s it.”
 
Every morning the city is covered in smoke from the previous days, which dissipates before fires start again in the afternoon. Novo Progresso has a dozen IBAMA inspectors and firefighters.
 
Residents say inspectors have barely left the office since the army arrived and firefighters are being called only in urgent situations or long after the blazes are out.
Last week, a group of IBAMA firefighters drove two hours to a fire started three days earlier. An area equivalent to eight soccer fields had already been burned and some trees were still on fire, endangering a region of dense forest.
 
A man who did not identify himself blamed a neighbor for starting the blaze, but did not name the person or file a complaint. Agents saw a chainsaw on the ground and the man took it away, without answering whether he had a license for it, as required by Brazilian law. Records show no investigation was opened, no fines were issued.
 
The former top IBAMA official said the professional corps of inspectors used to have little fear of fining violators, confiscating their equipment or even destroying the whole operation. After the inspectors had their powers cut back, poorly paid and locally hired firefighters started giving them less information on wrongdoing.  
 
“The firefighters would do it at their own risk,” the former official said. “And what for? After that gig ends six months later they have to live in the same place.”
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President Donald Trump said Thursday the U.S. will have a vaccination for the coronavirus “before the end of the year or maybe even sooner.”The announcement was part of Trump’s speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination, delivered from the South Lawn of the White House as part of the party’s national convention.   Experts say vaccines can sometimes take decades to develop, test, and be proven safe before they are administered to patients. However, hope has been high that a concerted international effort will produce an effective vaccine sometime next year. “In recent months our nation and the entire planet has been struck by a new and powerful invisible enemy,” Trump told the South Lawn audience whose mostly mask-less members were not sitting six feet apart, a measure generally practiced to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The U.S. has 5.8 million COVID-19 cases, roughly one-fifth of the world’s more than 24 million infections, according to Johns Hopkins University. The president has rarely been seen in public wearing a mask, another practice done to stop the spread of the virus. WATCH: How coronavirus vaccines being tested work Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 8 MB480p | 11 MB540p | 15 MB720p | 29 MB1080p | 62 MBOriginal | 410 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioWorld leader in coronavirus cases
The U.S. has more COVID-19 cases than anywhere else.  Brazil follows the U.S. with 3.7 million cases and India comes in third with 3.3 million. India said early Friday that it had recorded 77,266 new COVID-19 cases in the previous 24-hour period, the highest daily total ever recorded in the South Asian nation. Wearing masks in public in Paris became mandatory for everyone on Friday. The new measure follows a French public health report that more than 6,000 new infections were recorded Thursday, while 5,000 were recorded Wednesday. Spain says all school children six years of age and up must wear masks while in school.  The announcement comes just days before the beginning of Spain’s school year. South American vaccine effort
A group of South American leaders has agreed to share information and coordinate access to any vaccine one of them might develop or acquire. “A joint effort would bring benefits, particularly in terms of access, quantities and guaranteed prices,” Chile’s foreign minister, Andres Allamand, said after Thursday’s virtual meeting of presidents and foreign ministers.”We in Chile are following the evolution of at least five projects and we have been in contact with some of those laboratories and countries specifically to be able to get access to those vaccines at reasonable prices and as quickly as possible,” he said.Lockdown blues
London zookeepers say the animals under their care are suffering from what they call the lockdown blues.  The zoo had been closed because of the coronavirus and has just started admitting limited numbers of visitors. “The Pygmy goats were so used to seeing children during the day that during lockdown they would miss them,” Assistant Curator of Mammals Teague Stubbington told Reuters. “They were actually lining up at the gate to meet people and then at 10 o’clock, when no one was there, they were disappointed.”  He says the zoo is badly in need of funds, adding this is the longest period it has been closed since World War II.  
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Water covers 70% of the Earth’s surface and is crucial to life as we know it, but how it got here has been a longstanding scientific debate.The puzzle was a step closer to being solved Thursday after a French team reported in the journal Science they had identified which space rocks were responsible, and suggested our planet has been wet ever since it formed.Cosmochemist Laurette Piani, who led the research, told AFP the findings contradicted the prevalent theory that water was brought to an initially dry Earth by far-reaching comets or asteroids.According to early models for how the Solar System came to be, the large disks of gas and dust that swirled around the Sun and eventually formed the inner planets were too hot to sustain ice.This would explain the barren conditions on Mercury, Venus and Mars — but not our blue planet, with its vast oceans, humid atmosphere and well-hydrated geology.Scientists therefore theorized that the water came along after, and the prime suspects were meteorites known as carbonaceous chondrites that are rich in hydrous minerals.But the problem was that their chemical composition doesn’t closely match our planet’s rocks.The carbonaceous chondrites also formed in the outer Solar System, making it less likely they could have pelted the early Earth.Planetary building blocksAnother group of meteorites, called enstatite chondrites, are a much closer chemical match, containing similar isotopes (types) of oxygen, titanium and calcium.This indicates they were Earth’s and the other inner planets’ building blocks.However, because these rocks formed close to the Sun, they had been assumed to be too dry to account for Earth’s rich reservoirs of water.To test whether this was really true, Piani and her colleagues at Centre de Recherches Petrographiques et Geochimiques (CRPG, CNRS/Universite de Lorraine) used a technique called mass spectrometry to measure the hydrogen content in 13 enstatite chondrites.The rocks are now quite rare, making up only about two percent of known meteorites in collections, and it is hard to find them in pristine, uncontaminated condition.The team found that the rocks contained enough hydrogen in them to provide Earth with at least three times the water mass of its oceans — and possibly much more.They also measured two isotopes of hydrogen, because the relative proportion of these is very different from one celestial object to another.”We found the hydrogen isotopic composition of enstatite chondrites to be similar to the one of the water stored in the terrestrial mantle,” said Piani, comparing it to a DNA match.The isotopic composition of the oceans was found to be consistent with a mixture containing 95% of water from the enstatite chondrites — more proof these were responsible for the bulk of Earth’s water.The authors further found that the nitrogen isotopes from the enstatite chondrites are similar to Earth’s — and proposed these rocks could also be the source of the most abundant component of our atmosphere.Piani added that research doesn’t exclude later addition of water by other sources like comets, but indicates that enstatite chondrites contributed significantly to Earth’s water budget at the time it formed.The work “brings a crucial and elegant element to this puzzle” wrote Anne Peslier, a planetary scientist for NASA, in an accompanying editorial.
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Former directors of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the world-renowned American agency that has long taken the lead in fighting communicable diseases, are voicing unusual criticism of the U.S. handling of the novel coronavirus pandemic and the CDC’s limited role in that effort.COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, has killed more than 180,000 people in the U.S., and those are only the confirmed cases. The CDC says the actual number of COVID-19 deaths is much higher and that the virus will be a leading cause of deaths in the U.S. in 2020.Five former CDC directors, appointed by both Republican and Democratic administrations, say the agency should be doing more to lead the effort to contain the pandemic.FILE – Dr. Richard Besser, May 8, 2013, in New York.Among them is Dr. Richard Besser, who as acting director of the CDC held daily televised news conferences during the H1N1 flu pandemic of 2008-09, which infected more than 60 million people in the U.S. and killed 12,469 people. Globally, the World Health Organization estimated that a half-million people died.During the current pandemic, however, the White House Coronavirus Task Force is being led not by the CDC, but by Vice President Mike Pence, prompting questions about the extent to which the task force’s advice may be seen as politically motivated.“It really concerns me that we’re not hearing from CDC every day. We’re not hearing from them about what they consider to be the best practices in terms of isolation and quarantine, what needs to be done,” Besser said in a recent interview with STAT, a health publication run by the publishers of the Boston Globe newspaper.“We’re seeing so much that’s being presented to us by political leaders, and when that’s the case, half the country says, ‘Great, I’m on board,’ and the rest rejects things out of hand because of the messenger. …  The more you can depoliticize the response, the more successful you’re going to be.”FILE – Dr. David Satcher, May 31, 2012, in Atlanta.That concern is shared by Dr. David Satcher, who was appointed to lead the CDC by Democratic President Bill Clinton. “I think it was obvious during the time that we were having daily reports about the pandemic that CDC was being sidelined,” Satcher said in an interview, regarding the task force’s late afternoon briefings earlier this year.He contrasted that with the prestigious role the agency held when he was director. “What I remember is that whenever there was a major issue in the world, people called the CDC before they called the World Health Organization, even though there was a very good working relationship between the CDC and WHO.”The former directors acknowledge shortcomings in the performance of the agency itself, which in the early days of the pandemic rolled out a defective test and advised the public against wearing face masks – advice that was later reversed when the extent of asymptomatic transmission became understood.But medical professionals have learned a lot about the coronavirus since then, according to Dr. Julie Gerberding, who became director of the CDC under Republican President George W. Bush. She is now an executive vice president at the pharmaceutical giant Merck.FILE – Merck Executive Vice President and Chief Patient Officer Julie Gerberding is seen on a screen as she gives a statement during a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing, June 23, 2020, on Capitol Hill in Washington.Gerberding recently told ABC News that she would love to turn back the clock because so much has been learned about the virus since it first appeared. “We know it is incredibly transmissible,” she said, “and we know that most people are still susceptible.”When Dr. Tom Frieden headed the CDC, after his appointment by President Barack Obama, a Democrat, the CDC was highly involved in the Ebola crisis in West Africa, from 2014 to 2016. Frieden now heads a global public health initiative called Resolve to Save Lives.He has been among the most outspoken of the former directors in accusing the Trump administration of dictating health policy to the CDC.FILE – Dr. Tom Frieden, Director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), speaks at the New America think tank in Washington, D.C., July 13, 2016.“I don’t think there’s ever been a time before when people from the White House or HHS are dictating what goes on technical documents on the CDC website,” he said Thursday during a webinar sponsored by Vital Strategies, a global health organization. “This is dangerous. This is a big problem. It’s a big problem for a lot of reasons, as some of you know the CDC.”Satcher and the others are critical of President Donald Trump’s push to open schools and businesses when, they say, the virus is not yet under control. They say rushing to get things back to normal will only spread the virus.A number of universities have had to close after the virus spread when students returned to campus for the fall semester. A judge in Florida ruled that public schools don’t have to abide by the state’s requirement for in-person instruction because it “arbitrarily disregards safety” and denies local school boards the ability to decide when students can safely return.Besser, now president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the largest health philanthropy in the U.S., says CDC guidance needs to be followed for the public good and that it should not be seen as “a barrier to getting children back into school instead of a road map for doing it safely.”Satcher, who founded the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine, told VOA that “the priority in any pandemic ought to be prevention.” He also said fighting a pandemic requires leadership from the president.The former directors have been critical of what they called misleading information coming from the White House. Trump has touted the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, which the health specialists say does not cure COVID-19 and may be harmful.Although Trump later said he was being sarcastic, a remark he made about injecting disinfectants as a means to treat the virus prompted companies that produce them to run televised advisories warning people that their products could be deadly if injected or ingested.FILE – Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, August 29, 1999.Dr. Jeffrey Koplan spent 26 years at the CDC. He was the director from 1998 to 2002, and later established the Atlanta-based Emory Global Health Institute.”We need to feed truth back to the American public and to use those truths with our scientific evidence to control this disease,” he said.All agree that pulling together and following the science is the best course. They also recommend following standard disease prevention methods like avoiding crowds, practicing good hand hygiene, staying at least two meters from others, and wearing masks when in public.Trump has been seen wearing a mask in public only twice. An audience at the White House Rose Garden did not wear masks during first lady Melania Trump’s speech during the Republican National Convention.When VOA asked for a response from the White House, Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere told VOA, “The White House and CDC have been working together in partnership since the very beginning of this pandemic to carry out the president’s highest priority: the health and safety of the American public.”The CDC is the nation’s trusted health protection agency and its infectious disease and public health experts have helped deliver critical solutions throughout this pandemic to save lives,” Deere said. “We encourage all Americans to continue to follow the CDC’s guidelines as we responsibly continue to open up America.”The CDC has reversed its recommendations on testing for COVID-19. The agency had been recommending that those who have been exposed to the virus get tested, even if they did not have symptoms. On August 25, the CDC said people who don’t have symptoms “do not necessarily need a test,” even though it’s known that people without symptoms can pass the virus to others.Several U.S. news organizations claim the CDC was pressured to revise its testing guidelines by Trump administration officials.The American Medical Association issued a statement saying “COVID-19 is spread by asymptomatic people. Suggesting that people without symptoms, who have known exposure to COVID-positive individuals, do not need testing is a recipe for community spread and more spikes in coronavirus.”The leading U.S. doctors group also asked the CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services to provide the scientific justification for this change in testing guidelines.In an email to VOA, CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said the agency is placing emphasis “on testing individuals with symptomatic illness”; those “with a significant exposure,” such as people in nursing homes, health care workers and first responders; or people “who may be asymptomatic when prioritized by medical and public health officials.”Redfield said, “Testing may be considered for all close contacts of confirmed or probable COVID-19 patients.”Redfield’s statement said the new guidelines were “coordinated in conjunction with the White House Coronavirus Task Force.”
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Hurricane Laura, which slammed the Louisiana coast as a powerful Category 4, has weakened to a tropical storm but is still a dangerous and potentially deadly system.As of Thursday afternoon, Laura was inland, centered east of Shreveport, Louisiana, with top sustained winds of 100 kilometers per hour. It is expected to drop up to 46 centimeters of rain in parts of Louisiana and Arkansas.A chemical fire burns at a facility during the aftermath of Hurricane Laura, Aug. 27, 2020, near Lake Charles, La.Tornadoes are also possible.At least four storm-related deaths have been reported. More than 700,000 people in Texas and Louisiana are without power, and there is widespread damage to homes and businesses.But Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Peter Gaynor says the overall damage is less than what was expected after forecasters were calling Laura a potentially catastrophic storm with an “unsurvivable” storm surge.President Donald Trump speaks during a Hurricane Laura briefing at FEMA headquarters, Aug. 27, 2020, in Washington. Vice President Mike Pence listens at right.Gaynor and others briefed President Donald Trump at FEMA headquarters Thursday in in Washington.Trump had already declared states of emergency in Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas, and he says he plans to visit the area this weekend.Forecasters say Laura will continue to weaken to a tropical depression late Thursday as it moves further inland and away from the warm Gulf waters that made it such a powerful storm.
Heavy rains are forecast for the mid-Mississippi Valley on Friday and the mid-Atlantic on Saturday.
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