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Hurricane Helene on path for Florida with significant strengthening expected before landfall
Helene strengthened into a hurricane Wednesday as it was leaving the Caribbean Sea on a path for Florida’s Gulf Coast. The hurricane was expected to become more powerful as it moves through the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
The storm had maximum sustained winds of 80 mph Wednesday morning, making it a Category 1 storm, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. The hurricane center uses five categories for hurricanes and considers storms that are at least a Category 3, with sustained winds over 110 mph, to be a major hurricane.
“We think that significant strengthening is going to occur here over the eastern Gulf of Mexico, potentially taking this to a Category 3 or major hurricane,” Jamie Rhome, a deputy director at the hurricane center, told CBS News on Wednesday.
Watches and warnings were issued throughout Florida ahead of the storm. President Biden and Gov. Ron DeSantis declared emergencies for the state earlier in the week, and evacuation orders were issued in several counties. At the University of Tampa, officials were trying to evacuate all residential students by Wednesday afternoon.
Helene is expected to make landfall on Thursday, and it won’t just affect Florida, Rhome said.
“I’m really concerned that southern Georgia is going to have a big impact well beyond where the center makes landfall,” Rhome told CBS News.
Record-warm water in the Gulf would act like jet fuel in intensifying the storm. Brian McNoldy, senior research associate at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, recently noted that ocean heat content in the Gulf of Mexico is the highest on record. Warm water is a necessary ingredient to strengthen tropical systems.
Sea surface temperatures in the path of Helene are as warm as 89 degrees Fahrenheit — 2 to 4 degrees F above normal. These record water temperatures have been made significantly more likely by human-caused climate change, according to Climate Central. The North Atlantic Ocean as a whole has seen record warm temperatures in 2024, storing 90% of the excess heat from climate change produced by greenhouse gas pollution.
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Former intelligence chief convicted of “aggravated torture” of Colombian journalist sentenced to 12 years in prison
A Bogota judge has sentenced a former intelligence chief to 12 years in prison for crimes including “aggravated torture” of a journalist, the Colombian public prosecutor’s office said.
Enrique Ariza, former head of Colombia’s defunct DAS intelligence service, was convicted of “persecution, harassment” and other crimes against journalist Claudia Julieta Duque, the prosecutor’s office said Thursday.
Ariza was found guilty of “the crime of aggravated torture,” it said on social media.
With the latest conviction, “eight former officials of this agency have now been sentenced for the persecution to which my family and I were subjected,” Duque said on social media.
On Monday, the former DAS deputy director, Jose Narvaez, was also sentenced to 12 years in prison in the same case. Former intelligence director Giancarlo Auque, also linked to the case, is yet to be tried, Duque said.
The journalist, who had to be protected by bodyguards until she sought refuge in Spain, has accused the DAS of spying on her between 2001 and 2004, and threatening to murder her and rape her daughter when she was 10.
The origin of the harassment was Duque’s investigation of the murder of journalist Jaime Garzon in 1999, in which she denounced DAS involvement in crime.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, two gunmen killed Garzón, host of a daily morning show in Bogota, as he was driving his Jeep Cherokee to the studio. Garzón, who was 38 when he died, was a beloved figure in Colombia whose life story inspired a television mini-series, CJR reported.
In November, another former Colombian state security agent, Ronal Harbey Rivera Rodríguez, was also convicted of aggravated torture against Duque, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported.
In 2017, the Latin American and the Colombian Federations of Journalists granted Duque with a “special recognition for her bravery in the fight for justice,” according to the International Media Women’s Foundation.
“JUSTICE!!” Duque tweeted on Thursday after Ariza was sentenced to prison.