Aurelia Butler

There has been “life lost” in Tennessee, an emergency official in the state said on Saturday evening, making it the sixth state where people have been killed by Hurricane Helene, which ravaged the Southeast and left more than 50 dead this week.Jimmy Erwin, the director of emergency management in Unicoi County, Tenn., fought back tears at a news conference as he said there had been some deaths in the storm. He declined to say how many people had died, and the police chief in Erwin, Tenn., Regan Tilson, said no bodies had yet been recovered.Mr. Erwin said five or six people remained missing — a list winnowed significantly from more than 30 missing people earlier in the day — and that search and rescue teams would be looking for people along the Nolichucky River until nightfall. They would then pick back up first thing in the morning.A shelter has been set up at Unicoi County High School.David Kasnic for The New York TimesIn Erwin, Tenn., officials said it could be a week before some in the area have electricity again. David Kasnic for The New York Times“We didn’t think we’d be here today,” Mr. Erwin said. Many residents are without water or power, and he said it could be a week before the electricity returns for some. The county also lost its water treatment plant, and he said anyone with water should boil their drinking water. Showers are being set up at a shelter at a local high school for residents to use.Scenes of devastation abounded throughout the hilly, green Appalachian county of 17,000, particularly in and around Erwin, where a baptist church was surrounded by rubble, and a crumpled R.V. sat in a parking lot filled with debris. Downed trees lay on an impassable highway that cuts through the town.Cody Scott, a Unicoi County commissioner, said he had never seen flooding in the county this bad. His brother had checked on the family’s farm on Friday afternoon and been shaken by what he saw.The Nolichucky River in Erwin, Tenn, contained trees that drifted downstream. David Kasnic for The New York Times“He couldn’t believe his eyes,” Mr. Scott said. “It’s devastated the community.”He said he and his family were evaluating how many trucks, tractors, pumps and other farm equipment they had lost, as well as how much of the farmland was flooded, but that he was most worried about his constituents who had lost homes. He said he was holding out hope that those missing would be found.“The longer it goes, in any type of search and rescue situation, that’s not what you want to hear,” he said. More

A day after former President Donald J. Trump met with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, criticized the Ukrainian president Saturday during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania.Speaking in Newtown, Pa., near Philadelphia, Mr. Vance opened his speech by criticizing Mr. Zelensky for having toured an ammunition factory in Scranton with the state’s governor, Josh Shapiro, a Democrat.“He came to campaign with the Democratic leadership of this country,” Mr. Vance said in Newtown. “We spent $200 billion on Ukraine. You know what I wish Zelensky would do when he comes to the United States of America? Say thank you to the people of Pennsylvania and everybody else.”In fact, Mr. Zelensky did use his visit to the plant to thank the United States for its support, as well as to thank the workers in Scranton for manufacturing artillery shells to support Ukraine. Mr. Zelensky told the 400 workers churning out shells to support the war effort that they “have saved millions of Ukrainians.” He added in a message on social media that “it is in places like this where you can truly feel that the democratic world can prevail.”The visit to the munitions factory had scandalized Republican lawmakers, who accused the trip’s organizers of engaging in partisan campaigning ahead of the election. Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House, called for Ukraine to fire its ambassador to Washington over the episode.Mr. Vance has been a vocal opponent of American aid to Ukraine. Mr. Zelensky called Mr. Vance “too radical,” in a recent interview in The New Yorker for making remarks he saw as suggesting that Ukraine give up territory in exchange for a peace deal with Russia. That prompted Mr. Vance to hit back from the campaign trail in Michigan on Wednesday, saying, “I don’t appreciate Zelensky coming to this country and telling the American taxpayer what they ought to do.” More

In addition to the power outages caused by Helene that have crippled the western part of North Carolina, swaths of roadways in the region were largely impassable on Saturday, prompting alerts from transportation officials that warned drivers to stay out of their vehicles.“The damage is so severe, we are telling drivers that unless it is an emergency, all roads in Western North Carolina should be considered closed,” Aaron Moody, a spokesman for the North Carolina Department of Transportation, said in an email.A photo released by the department showed a large section of roadway missing from a mountain pass.The department said that any civilian car on the road would hinder emergency responses. More than 400 roads were affected by the closure alert, including two major arteries for the region: Interstate 40 and Interstate 26, which Mr. Moody said were too damaged for cars to pass.Maria Whitehead, 51, was in Tennessee with her husband when Helene tore through Brevard, N.C., on Friday. Her two younger children were there, staying with Ms. Whitehead’s parents. After learning their children were safe, she and her husband embarked on a circuitous route on Saturday to find any way home.“We’ve studied the maps, we’ve got some local intel about a couple of routes that we can try tonight,” Ms. Whitehead said. “Otherwise, we’ll probably double back and stay with friends in Greenville, South Carolina, and try again tomorrow.”Landslides near Old Fort, N.C., about 20 miles east of Asheville, blocked off Interstate 40. A statement on Friday from the office of Gov. Roy Cooper said that people should shelter in place unless they were seeking higher ground.On Saturday night, the North Carolina Department of Transportation posted on X, with capitalization for emphasis: “We cannot say this enough: DO NOT TRAVEL IN OR TO WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA.” More

The legislation would have made California the first state in the nation to require intelligent speed assistance technology in vehicles.Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday vetoed California legislation that would have mandated that all new cars in the state have a system that alerts drivers when they exceed the speed limit by more than 10 miles per hour.Speeding is a factor in nearly one-third of traffic fatalities in the United States, and the legislation’s supporters said they wanted to curb rising roadway deaths by making California the first state in the nation to require the technology.The state has a long history of adopting vehicle requirements, particularly on emissions, that have spurred automakers to adopt changes across their national fleet. Backers hoped that the California speed sensor law would have similarly forced changes that would have had an impact beyond the state.Intelligent speed assistance systems have been widely used in Europe for years, and they became mandatory in July in all new cars sold in the European Union. They are similar to other driver assistance technologies that, for example, notify drivers if a car is their blind spot or if their vehicle is drifting into another lane.Research in Europe has found that speed-warning systems reduce average driving speed, speed variability and the proportion of time that a driver exceeds the speed limit, said Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, which has urged the federal government to require the technology in the United States.The California bill would have mandated that, beginning with model year 2030, all new passenger vehicles, trucks and buses in California would have to include technology that emits visual and audio signals that notify drivers when they have exceeded the posted speed limit. Emergency vehicles and motorcycles would have been exempt, as would vehicles without GPS or a front-facing camera.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia, has sustained blow after blow over the past few weeks, as Israeli strikes killed several of the group’s longtime military and political leaders.On Saturday, Israel said it had killed Hassan Nasrallah, the group’s decades-long leader, in a massive airstrike in Beirut that destroyed four residential buildings. Israel has also killed three leaders of Hezbollah’s top military decision-making body, the Jihad Council: Fuad Shukr, Ali Karaki and Ibrahim Aqeel.Above is a look at the organization’s remaining leadership. More

In the immediate days after the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, Israeli intelligence officials feared a pre-emptive strike was imminent from another longtime enemy, Hezbollah. They frantically prepared to stop it with plans to strike and kill Hassan Nasrallah, the powerful Hezbollah leader who the Israelis knew would be in a bunker in Beirut.But when Israel informed the White House of its plans, alarmed administration officials discounted the imminent Hezbollah strike. President Biden called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told him that killing Mr. Nasrallah would set off a regional war and asked him to hold his fire, current and former senior American and Israeli officials said.On Saturday, Israel announced that it had killed Mr. Nasrallah after warplanes dropped more than 80 bombs on four apartment buildings in Lebanon, where the Hezbollah leader of more than three decades had gone to meet his top lieutenants. Mr. Biden was not informed ahead of time, aggravating the White House.Smoke rose over buildings in Beirut after Israeli airstrikes on Saturday.Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York TimesBut the more salient outcome for both Israel and the United States was how successfully Israeli intelligence had pinpointed Mr. Nasrallah’s location and penetrated Hezbollah’s inner circle. In a matter of weeks, Israel has decimated the senior and midlevel ranks of Hezbollah and left the group reeling.That success is a direct result of the country’s decision to devote far more intelligence resources in targeting Hezbollah after its 2006 war with the Iran-backed terrorist group. It was a defining moment for Israeli intelligence. The Israeli army and the intelligence agencies failed to score a decisive victory in that 34-day conflict, which ended with a U.N.-brokered cease-fire and allowed Hezbollah, despite heavy losses, to regroup and prepare for the next war with Israel.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The death, which was reported on Friday, is only the fifth fatal human rabies case in Minnesota since 1975, health officials said.A patient who was exposed to a bat in western Minnesota this year died from rabies this week, becoming the fifth person since 1975 to die from the treatable disease in the state, health officials said on Friday.The Minnesota Department of Health said in a statement that it was still investigating the death, and did not explicitly say that a bat had caused the rabies but confirmed that the patient was exposed to a bat in July.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the patient’s rabies diagnosis earlier this month. The Minnesota Department of Health said there was not a public health risk.Fewer than 10 rabies deaths are reported annually in the United States, according to the C.D.C., and 70 percent of those deaths are attributed to exposure to bats.Previous human cases in Minnesota — all of which were fatal — were recorded in 1917, 1964, 1975, 2000, 2007 and 2021, according to the department.“If left untreated, rabies is almost always fatal,” the department said. “Rabies treatment has proven to be nearly 100 percent effective at preventing the disease after an exposure, but it must be started before symptoms of rabies appear.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

A video published by the Israeli military showed that planes it said were used in the attack that killed Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, on Friday night carried 2,000-pound bombs, according to munitions experts and a New York Times analysis.The video showed eight planes fitted with at least 15 2,000-pound bombs, including the American-manufactured BLU-109 with a JDAM kit, a precision guidance system that attaches to bombs, according to Trevor Ball, a former U.S. Army explosive ordnance disposal technician. These bombs, a type of munition known as bunker busters, can penetrate underground before detonating.Wes Bryant, a former U.S. Air Force targeting specialist who also reviewed the video, agreed with the analysis. In text messages with The Times, he said the bombs were “exactly what I would expect” to be used in what Israel has said was an attack on Mr. Nasrallah in Hezbollah’s underground headquarters.In May, the Biden administration announced it had paused a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel because of concerns over civilian safety in Gaza.The video, published Saturday on the Israeli military’s official Telegram channel with the caption “Israeli Air Force Fighter Jets Involved in the Elimination of Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah’s Central Headquarters in Lebanon,” shows at least eight planes in a row armed with 2,000-pound bombs. Some are too far away to clearly identify the exact model, but the closer planes are seen armed with BLU-109 bombs. That model of bomb is also identifiable when the video shows two planes taking off, with one plane carrying six of those munitions. Then the video shows a plane returning at dusk to the Israeli air base without any bombs.Israel Defense Forces via Telegram More