Tracking the Tropics | July 15 morning update

ABC Action News tracks tropical developments in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico.

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  • Former CIA Director John Brennan says the assassination of a top Iranian nuclear scientist was 'criminal' and risked inflaming conflict in the Middle East

    Iran's foreign minister, Javad Zarif, pointed the finger at Israel for the death of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, on Friday.

  • In El Salvador, arrested gang members paraded for the cameras

    Hundreds of handcuffed Salvadoran gang members were displayed before assembled reporters on Saturday, a vivid show of President Nayib Bukele's policy of confronting them and the violent crime they are accused of committing. In April, Bukele provoked the ire of rights groups when he published on social media jarring pictures of hundreds of semi-naked jailed gang members, pressed tightly together in rows, despite the raging pandemic. Security Minister Rogelio Rivas called the majority of the newly-detained "terrorists" in remarks after they were assembled in an open-air plaza by heavily-armed soldiers, nearly all the detainees wearing masks and with their faces, many tattooed, looking down.

  • Black firefighters in NC allege racism amid larger reckoning

    WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) — They threw her new cellphone on the roof of the station house and placed nails under the wheels of her pickup truck. It was too much for Timika Ingram to bear. “It caused me pain, sleepless nights, suffering, anxiety,” said Ingram, whose four years as a firefighter in North Carolina amounted to a collection of indignities.

  • Joe Biden gains votes in recount ordered by Donald Trump

    A recount in Wisconsin's largest county demanded by Republican President Donald Trump's election campaign ended Friday with Democratic President-elect Joe Biden gaining votes. After the recount in Milwaukee County, Mr Biden had a net gain of 132 votes, out of nearly 460,000 cast. Overall, Mr Biden gained 257 votes to Mr Trump's 125. Mr Trump's campaign had demanded recounts in two of Wisconsin's most populous and Democratic-leaning counties, after losing Wisconsin to Mr Biden by over 20,000 votes. The two recounts will cost the Trump campaign $3 million. Dane County is expected to finish its recount on Sunday. Overall, Mr Biden won the November 3 US presidential election with 306 Electoral College votes - many more than the 270 needed for victory - to Mr Trump's 232. Mr Biden also leads by more than six million in the popular vote tally. After the recount ended, Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson said: "The recount demonstrates what we already know: that elections in Milwaukee County are fair, transparent, accurate and secure." The Trump campaign is still expected to mount a legal challenge to the overall result in Wisconsin, but time is running out. The state is due to certify its presidential result on Tuesday.

  • Iran health ministry reports slowing of virus infections

    "I thank our dear people for taking the appropriate precautions and tolerating the restrictions," deputy health minister Alireza Raisi said on state TV, adding that public adherence was 90 percent. A health ministry spokeswoman reported 13,402 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, pushing the national tally to 935,799 in the Middle East’s worst-hit country. Sima Sadat Lari told state TV that the death toll had risen by 391 in the past 24 hours to 7,486.

  • A man fatally shot a Black teenager in a hotel parking lot after confronting him over his loud music, Oregon police say

    Local activists criticized police comments saying that Ellison was killed because of his music and said they believe his death was race-related.

  • The Supreme Court refused to get involved in the case of a Louisiana pastor who ignored the governor's order banning large gatherings

    Louisiana Pastor Tony Spell openly violated the governor's order prohibiting gatherings larger than 10 people, hosting services that totaled 1,000.

  • Alleged police beating of Black man angers French

    French authorities have suspended police officers accused of assaulting and racially abusing a Black man in Paris, after CCTV footage of the incident was released and caused an outcry. The music producer, who has identified himself as Michel, was beaten at the entrance to his studio. French President Emmanuel Macron was quoted by France's BFM TV as being "very shocked" by the CCTV and mobile phone images, which were obtained by the LoopSider news outlet and made headline news on French channels. The officers involved were suspended pending investigation at the interior minister's request. Michel told reporters he'd been walking in the street without a face mask, against French COVID-19 rules. When he saw a police car he went into his studio to avoid getting a fine. But the police followed him inside and arrested him, violently. The video purports to show them kicking and beating him, and he says they hurled racial abuse at him too. They then leave, and throw a tear gas canister into the studio. As anger grew, French soccer stars added to the chorus of condemnation. Kylian Mbappe tweeted that the video was "intolerable" and his fellow Les Bleus striker, Antoine Griezmann wrote: "My France is hurting." The alleged attack on Michel risks inflaming racial tension, and fuelling criticism of a draft law that would limit journalists' ability to show images of French police officers at work. The prime minister's office said on Thursday (November 26) it would set up an independent commission to propose a new draft of the legislation. Some "BlackLivesMatter" protests broke out in Paris in June, a month after the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in the United States. The movement resonates in France, in particular in deprived city suburbs, where rights groups say accusations of police brutality, often against people with immigrant backgrounds, remain largely unaddressed. And Paris police were already under fire this week after social media photos and videos showed officers hitting protesters as they cleared out an illegal migrants campsite in a central Paris square.

  • Kashmir people vote in local polls amid cold and security

    Hundreds of thousands of people in Indian-controlled Kashmir voted Saturday amid tight security and freezing cold temperatures in the first phase of local elections, the first since New Delhi revoked the disputed region’s semiautonomous status. Nearly 6 million people across the region’s 20 districts are eligible to elect 280 members of District Development Councils in a staggered eight-phase process that ends Dec. 19. Authorities deployed thousands of additional soldiers in the already highly militarized region to guard the vote.

  • Uzbekistan to repatriate more citizens from crowded Syrian camps, source says

    Uzbekistan plans to repatriate another group of its citizens, mostly women and children, from Syria where they are staying at crowded camps with other families of Islamic State fighters, an Uzbek government source told Reuters on Friday. A government delegation from Tashkent has visited the Al-Hol and Roj camps in the Kurdish-controlled part of Syria and met over 100 Uzbeks staying there to discuss their return home, the source said. Most of those people are women and children under three years of age who "live in deplorable conditions and have difficulties with access to drinking water, food and medical care", according to the source.

  • Swans are spinning in circles, bleeding from their nostrils, and collapsing dead amid an outbreak of avian flu in Europe

    The disease is not believed to pose a threat to humans, and there is currently no suggestion it could impact poultry supply chains.

  • Armenians rally for soldiers missing in Karabakh fighting

    A thousand people took to the streets of the Armenian capital Yerevan on Sunday demanding the authorities take action to find soldiers missing in recent fighting with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.

  • Supreme Court won't get involved in Louisiana pastor's case

    The Supreme Court is for now staying out of a dispute involving the state of Louisiana and a Baton Rouge-area pastor charged with violating state coronavirus restrictions by repeatedly holding large church services. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on Friday evening turned away a request from Life Tabernacle Church pastor Tony Spell to get involved in the dispute. Alito denied the request himself, without asking Louisiana officials to respond and without referring the matter to the full court as often happens when a case is particularly significant or contentious.

  • Russia lodges official protest with U.S. over naval incident

    Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday that it had lodged an official protest with the United States over a naval incident in the Sea of Japan, which it said was a provocation designed to disturb the peace. Russia had said on Tuesday that one of its warships had caught and chased off a U.S. destroyer operating illegally in its territorial waters in the Sea of Japan. The U.S. Navy denied wrongdoing and accused Moscow of making excessive maritime claims.

  • A Few of Our Favorite Small Businesses Running Sales This Weekend

    It's #smallbusinesssaturday, and you know what that meansOriginally Appeared on Architectural Digest

  • Britain urged to probe wealth of Russian family whose son had 'world’s most expensive wedding'

    It was perhaps the world’s most expensive wedding; an extravaganza costing tens of millions of pounds with performances by Jennifer Lopez, Sting and Enrique Iglesias, a fleet of Rolls Royces to ferry the guests and a 20-year-old bride wearing a $1m dress and a $5m crown. The groom, Said Gutseriev, had grown up in London and been educated at Harrow School and at Oxford, and his father - one of Russia’s wealthiest oligarchs - could not have been prouder.

  • MBS reportedly backed out of Saudi-Israel agreement because he wants to wait for Biden

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly flew to Saudi Arabia last week for a secret meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Saudi Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman in the hopes of striking a deal that would normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. But he came home empty handed after Prince Mohammed backed out, The Wall Street Journal reports.His reasoning, Saudi advisers and U.S. officials told the Journal, was President-elect Joe Biden's victory over President Trump in the U.S. general election. Although the Trump administration was a factor in the recent so-called Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and both the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, Prince Mohammed reportedly wants to build ties with Biden and was reluctant about following suit while Trump is still in office, although the chances of that happening reportedly aren't impossible.Negotiating normalization agreements between Israel and other Arab nations is one Trump policy Biden seems likely to keep pursuing, but the president-elect has taken a tougher stance on Saudi Arabia than Trump, especially after the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the Journal notes, so reviving talks with the new administration may be Prince Mohammed's best chance "to repair its image in Washington," a U.S. official said. Read more at The Wall Street Journal.More stories from theweek.com 5 witheringly funny cartoons about Trump's sort-of concession Is Mnuchin trying to sabotage the economy? Vanderbilt's Fuller becomes 1st woman to play in Power 5 football game after 2nd half kickoff

  • The fire that led to the death of former Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh occurred over a week before he succumbed to injuries

    The former Zappos CEO died late Friday as a result of injuries he sustained from a November 18 fire in New London, Connecticut.

  • Turkey's new virus figures confirm experts' worst fears

    When Turkey changed the way it reports daily COVID-19 infections, it confirmed what medical groups and opposition parties have long suspected — that the country is faced with an alarming surge of cases that is fast exhausting the Turkish health system. In an about-face, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government this week resumed reporting all positive coronavirus tests — not just the number of patients being treated for symptoms — pushing the number of daily cases to above 30,000. No country can report exact numbers on the spread of the disease since many asymptomatic cases go undetected, but the previous way of counting made Turkey look relatively well-off in international comparisons, with daily new cases far below those reported in European countries including Italy, Britain and France.

  • South Korea bans year-end parties, some music lessons, as virus spikes again

    South Korean authorities announced a ban on year-end parties and some music lessons on Sunday and said public saunas and some cafes must also close after coronavirus infections surged at their fastest pace since the early days of the pandemic. Authorities reported 450 new infections on Sunday after more than 500 cases were recorded for three days in a row, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said. Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said restrictions would be tightened on gatherings and activities seen as prone to virus transmission, especially in the capital Seoul and surrounding urban areas.