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Hurricane Ida has made landfall in Louisiana as an “extremely dangerous” category four storm.

It hit on the same date Hurricane Katrina ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi 16 years earlier, about 40 miles west of where category three Katrina first struck land.

Arriving with a barometric pressure of 930 millibars, Ida preliminarily goes down as tied for the fifth strongest hurricane to make landfall in the US based on wind speed.

Based on central pressure it is tied for ninth strongest US landfall.

Hurricane Ida makes landfall – follow live updates

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Inside the eye of Hurricane Ida

Ida rapidly intensified overnight as it moved through some of the warmest ocean water in the world in the northern Gulf of Mexico, its top winds grew by 45mph to 150mph in five hours.

Hurricane force winds started to strike Grand Isle on Sunday morning.

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Before power was lost on the Louisiana barrier island, a beachfront web camera showed the ocean steadily rising as growing waves churned and palm trees whipped.

More than 100,000 customers had lost power in Louisiana by noon and were without electricity, according to PowerOutage.US, which tracks outages nationwide.

Officials said Ida’s swift intensification from a few thunderstorms to massive hurricane over three days left no time to organise a mandatory evacuation of its 390,000 residents.

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Bumpy ride as plane flies through the hurricane

Mayor LaToya Cantrell urged residents to leave voluntarily.

Those who stayed were warned to prepare for long power outages amid sweltering heat.

In Port Fourchon, boats and helicopters gathered to take workers and supplies to oil platforms in the ocean and the oil extracted starts it journey toward refineries.

The port handles about a fifth of the nation’s domestic oil and gas, officials said.

Along with the oil industry, Ida threatened a region already reeling from a resurgence of COVID-19 infections, due to low vaccination rates and the highly contagious delta variant.

More than two million people live around New Orleans, Baton Rouge and the wetlands to the south.

New Orleans hospitals planned to ride out the storm with their beds nearly full, as similarly stressed hospitals elsewhere had little room for evacuated patients.

And shelters for those fleeing their homes carried an added risk of becoming flashpoints for new infections.

Forecasters warned winds stronger than 115mph were expected soon in Houma, a city of 33,000 that supports oil platforms in the Gulf and Gulfport, Mississippi, to the east of New Orleans was seeing the ocean rise and heavy rains bands.

President Joe Biden approved emergency declarations for Louisiana and Mississippi ahead of Ida’s arrival.

Comparisons to the 29 August 2005, landfall of Katrina weighed heavily on residents bracing for Ida.

“Ida will most definitely be stronger than Katrina, and by a pretty big margin,”‘ said University of Miami hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy.

“And, the worst of the storm will pass over New Orleans and Baton Rouge, which got the weaker side of Katrina.”

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Girl, 13, arrested after teenager shot dead in Los Angeles

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Girl, 13, arrested after teenager shot dead in Los Angeles

A 13-year-old girl has been arrested following the fatal shooting a 16-year-old boy in Los Angeles County, California, police have said.

Officers responded on Sunday about 5pm to a report of a shooting in the city of Pomona.

They found a teenage boy suffering from a gunshot wound.

He was pronounced dead at the scene after firefighters arrived.

A motive for the crime is as yet unknown, police said.

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Pomona Police Department said in a statement: “Due to the nature of the incident, investigators from the Pomona Police Department’s Major Crimes Unit responded to the scene and initiated an extensive investigation.

“During the course of their investigation, they identified a 13-year-old female as the possible perpetrator. She was taken into custody and transported to Juvenile Hall.”

The victim’s and the suspect’s identities have not been revealed.

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Charges against Donald Trump in Georgia election interference case dismissed

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Russia 'making concessions' and Ukraine 'happy' with peace deal talks, says Trump

Charges against Donald Trump and others in an election interference case in the US state of Georgia have been dismissed.

Pete Skandalakis, the prosecutor who recently took over the case, said in court papers on Wednesday that he has decided to take no further action.

It was unlikely the legal action against the US president could have progressed while he was still in office, but the 14 others – including Mr Trump’s personal lawyer, the former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, and ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows – had still faced charges.

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Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani was among those charged. File pic: AP/Ted Shaffrey
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Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani was among those charged. File pic: AP/Ted Shaffrey

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis announced the charges in 2023. Pic: AP
Image:
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis announced the charges in 2023. Pic: AP

The case was dismissed in full by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee after Mr Skandalakis submitted his decision.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis had alleged a wide-ranging conspiracy to illegally overturn Mr Trump’s narrow loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the key swing state in the 2020 presidential election.

Charges against Mr Trump centred around a phone call he made to Georgia’s top election official, secretary of state Brad Raffensperger.

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Mr Trump told his fellow Republican: “I just want to find 11,780 votes”, recordings of the conversation showed.

Mr Trump and 18 co-defendants were initially accused.

Four of the accused made plea deals with prosecutors, while the others, including Mr Trump, Mr Giuliani and Mr Meadows, pleaded not guilty.

A police mugshot taken of Donald Trump after he was booked on 13 election fraud charges in Georgia. Pic: Reuters
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A police mugshot taken of Donald Trump after he was booked on 13 election fraud charges in Georgia. Pic: Reuters

An angry-looking Mr Trump was pictured as he was booked on the charges at the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, and copies of the mugshot generated sales of more than $7m (£5.3m) in a matter of days, his campaign said.

In a 22-page memo explaining his decision, Mr Skandalakis noted the entire case is “without precedent,” and pointed in part to the challenges of trying a case against a sitting president.

Mr Skandalakis wrote: “In my professional opinion, the citizens of Georgia are not served by pursuing this case in full for another five to ten years”.

He said he was ending the case “to serve the interests of justice and promote judicial finality” and his decision is “not guided by a desire to advance an agenda but is based on my beliefs and understanding of the law”.

Mr Trump’s lawyer in the case, Steve Sadow, welcomed the end of what he called a “political persecution” of the US president.

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“This case should never have been brought. A fair and impartial prosecutor has put an end to this lawfare,” he said.

Ms Willis, who brought the case in August 2023, was disqualified from prosecuting it last December.

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Trump pardons turkeys ahead of Thanksgiving

An appeals court in the state capital, Atlanta, ruled that a romantic relationship she had with Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she chose to lead the case, created “a significant appearance of impropriety.”

Defence lawyers claimed the district attorney profited from the case when Wade used his earnings to pay for holidays the pair took.

She appealed the verdict, but lost her case in September, despite Mr Wade having quit his role.

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Russia ‘making concessions’ and Ukraine ‘happy’ with peace deal talks, says Trump

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Russia 'making concessions' and Ukraine 'happy' with peace deal talks, says Trump

Donald Trump has claimed Russia is “making concessions” in talks to end the Ukraine war – and that Kyiv is “happy” with how talks are progressing.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One as he flew out to his Florida estate for Thanksgiving, Mr Trump said “we’re making progress” on a deal and said he would be willing to meet with both Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy once they are close to an agreement.

He also said his previously announced deadline of Thursday, which is Thanksgiving, was no longer in place – and that the White House’s initial 28-point peace plan, which sparked such concern in Kyiv, “was just a map”.

Asked if Ukraine had been asked to hand over too much territory, Mr Trump suggested that “over the next couple of months [that] might be gotten by Russia anyway”.

Moscow’s concessions are a promise to stop fighting, “and they don’t take any more land”, he said.

“The deadline for me is when it’s over,” he added. “And I think everybody’s tired of fighting at this moment.”

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‘Ukraine still needs defence support,’ says Zelenskyy

Before boarding the plane, Mr Trump had claimed only a few “points of disagreement” remain between the two sides.

Mr Trump’s negotiator Steve Witkoff will be meeting with Mr Putin in Moscow next week, the president said, while American army secretary Daniel Driscoll is due to travel to Kyiv for talks this week.

The chief of Ukraine’s presidential staff, Andriy Yermak, wrote: “Ukraine has never been and will never be an obstacle to peace. We are grateful to the US for all its support.

“The meeting between the presidents will be thoroughly and promptly prepared on our part.”

Zelenskyy warns against ‘behind our back’ deal

Yesterday, a virtual “coalition of the willing” meeting that featured Ukraine’s allies took place, which was attended by US secretary of state Marco Rubio.

In a speech, Mr Zelenskyy told attendees: “We firmly believe security decisions about Ukraine must include Ukraine, security decisions about Europe must include Europe.

“Because when something is decided behind the back of a country or its people, there is always a high risk it simply won’t work.”

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What is Russia saying about the latest peace talks?

A joint statement from coalition leaders Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, and Friedrich Merz said they had agreed with Mr Rubio “to accelerate joint work” with the US on the planning of security guarantees for Ukraine.

But a Ukrainian diplomat has warned major sticking points remain in the peace deal being thrashed out – primarily the prospect of territorial concessions.

A warning from the Kremlin

Meanwhile, Moscow has stressed that it will not allow any agreement to stray too far from its own objectives.

Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov warned any amended peace plan must reflect the understanding reached between Mr Trump and Mr Putin over the summer.

“If the spirit and letter of Anchorage is erased in terms of the key understandings we have established then, of course, it will be a fundamentally different situation,” he said, referring to the two leaders’ meeting in Alaska.

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Standing ovation for Zelenskyy

As negotiations continue, so have Russian attacks, with Kyiv hit by a barrage of missiles and hundreds of drones early yesterday morning.

Seven people were killed with power and heating systems disrupted, as residents sheltered underground.

Meanwhile, three people died and homes were damaged after Ukraine launched an attack on southern Russia.

‘A critical juncture’

French President Emmanuel Macron has said peace efforts are gathering momentum, but “are clearly at a critical juncture”.

And during the annual White House turkey pardon ahead of Thanksgiving, Mr Trump told reporters: “I think we’re getting close to a deal. We’ll find out.

“I thought that would have been an easier one, but I think we’re making progress.”

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