Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
High winds and heavy rains buffeted coastal Louisiana and Mississippi on Friday as a disorganized and unpredictable tropical weather system churned through the Gulf of Mexico, forcing cancellation of Juneteenth celebrations in Mississippi and Alabama and threatening Father's Day tourism.
The system, moving north toward Louisiana through the Gulf of Mexico carried tropical storm-force sustained winds of 45 mph (72 kph) but forecasters said it couldn't be classified as a tropical storm because it lacked a single, well-defined center.
"This one is just a sloppy mess. There's multiple circulations within this broad area of circulation," said Benjamin Schott, meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service office in Slidell, Louisiana. Forecasters said the storm was likely to dump anywhere from 4 inches (10 centimetres) to 8 inches (20 centimetres) of rain along parts of the Gulf Coast -- even 12 inches (30 centimetres) in isolated areas.
In Louisiana, the threat came a month after spring storms and flooding that were blamed for five deaths, and as parts of the state continued a slow recovery from a brutal 2020 hurricane season. That included Tropical Storm Cristobal that opened the season last June, hurricanes Laura and Delta that devastated southwest Louisiana, and Hurricane Zeta that downed trees and knocked out power for days in New Orleans in October.
The latest storm was expected to make landfall late Friday or early Saturday, imperiling Father's Day weekend commerce in tourism areas already suffering economic losses caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
"Of course, with weather like this, you know you can't run, but weekends, holidays, that's when tourists are coming down here," said Louisiana swamp tour boat captain Darrin Coulon. He canceled tours Friday and hoped for better weather Saturday and Sunday as he secured his boats in Crown Point.
Worries were similar for Austin Sumrall, the owner and chef at the White Pillars Restaurant and Lounge in Biloxi, Mississippi. He had 170 reservations on his books for Sunday, but was concerned that some patrons would cancel. "We saw, especially last year, the rug can get jerked out from under you pretty quickly," he said.
A tropical storm warning extended from Morgan City, Louisiana, to the Okaloosa-Walton County line in the Florida Panhandle. Coastal surge flooding was possible and flash flood watches extended along the coast from southeast Louisiana into the Florida Panhandle and well inland into Mississippi, Alabama and into parts of central and northern Georgia.
"I hope it just gets in and gets out," said Greg Paddie, manager of Tacky Jack's, a restaurant at Alabama's Orange Beach.
Mayor Jeff Collier of Dauphin Island, off Alabama's coast, said officials there had already contacted debris removal contractors and made sandbags available to residents. "We're pretty well prepared to the extent that we can be," Collier said. "This is not our first rodeo."
Disappointment was evident in the voice of Seneca Hampton, an organizer of the Juneteenth Freedom Festival in Gautier, on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. He spent weeks arranging food trucks, vendors, a bounce house, face painting and free hamburgers and hot dogs for the event, which was highly anticipated because last year's was canceled due to the pandemic and because of Juneteenth's new designation as a federal holiday.
"It's something that means a lot to people, and there were people that were bummed out, like `I already had in my mind I was coming out there to celebrate,"' said Hampton.
The Gautier event was postponed until next month. A Juneteenth event in Selma, Alabama, was postponed until August.
By Friday evening, storm clusters were dumping rain at rates as high as 4 inches (10 centimetres) an hour along parts of the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts, Schott said. Radar showed more heavy rain moving ashore over Alabama and the Florida Panhandle. An evening advisory from the National Hurricane Center said the system was about 100 miles (160 kilometres) south of Morgan City, Louisiana, and was moving north at 16 mph (26 kph).
Health officials ordered oyster harvesting areas closed along much of Louisiana's coast due to possible storm-driven pollution that could make oysters unsafe to eat.
In Orange Beach, Paddie said Tacky Jack's still has sandbags left over from its preparations for last year's Hurricane Sally. That September storm, blamed for two deaths, threw ships onto dry land, knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of people in Alabama and in the Florida Panhandle.
There have already been two named storms during the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season. Meteorologists expect the season to be busy, but not as crazy as the record-breaking 2020 season.
Mexico, while getting rain from the storm in the Gulf, was also threatened by a storm in the Pacific. Tropical Storm Dolores formed Friday morning and was expected to make landfall on Mexico's west-central coast Saturday evening, possibly near hurricane strength, according to the National Hurricane Center.
------
Martin reported from Marietta, Georgia. Associated Press writers Leah Willingham in Jackson, Mississippi; Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Alabama; Chevel Johnson in New Orleans and Stacey Plaisance in Crown Point, Louisiana, contributed to this report.
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.