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Storm Daniel was Greece’s worst storm in recorded history but for Libya it would trigger a disaster of unimaginable scale.

Sky’s Data and Forensics team looks at the warning signs that were missed and how human error exacerbated a natural disaster.

The storm began forming over the Ionian Sea on 4 September and after battering Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece it made its way south across the Mediterranean towards Africa.

Some warnings in Libya were issued but critics say more action could have been taken before the flash floods hit.

Weather warnings

The country’s National Meteorological Centre started issuing warnings of heavy rain last Friday and urged all governmental authorities to take caution.

Storm Daniel hit Libya on 10 September. Pic: Ventusky
Image:
Storm Daniel hit Libya on 10 September. Pic: Ventusky


Based on these warnings, a state of emergency was announced in the eastern regions.

But no mitigations were put in place and no evacuations were carried out, as the storm made landfall in the eastern city of Derna.

Footage verified by Sky News shows a torrent of water swelling the Wadi river, which runs from the mountains and through the city, in the early hours of Monday morning.

Residents were seen filming the water from the riverbank by the city’s al Sahaba Mosque. The flash floods and the collapse of the dams would later sweep away entire neighbourhoods and kill more than 11,000 people.

Old dams from 1970s

But it wasn’t just the weather that impacted the outcome of this disaster.

The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said Libya’s National Meteorological Centre “didn’t address the risk posed by the ageing dams” which burst.

The two dams located upstream around 5km apart were built in the 1970s.

A hydrological report published just last year warned that maintenance of the two structures was required to prevent catastrophic flooding.

But the deputy mayor of Derna has said neither dam had been maintained since 2002.

The first dam
The second dam

The report, in the Sebha University Journal of Pure and Applied Sciences, said the area has a “high potential for flood risk”, adding that dams of Wadi Derna basin needed “periodic maintenance” and that large floods could cause one of the dams to collapse making those in Derna vulnerable.

Before and after satellite images of one of the dams shows the extent of the damage after flash floods ripped through the structure.

Both the infrastructure and the politics at play have impacted this disaster.

Professor in Climate Risks & Resilience, University of Reading, Liz Stephens said: “There’s no such thing as a natural disaster.

“So there might be an extreme weather event, but it’s that interplay with the community, the governance and the people on the ground that leads to that risk.

“In this case, if the dams were not there, then we wouldn’t have seen large loss of life as a result of their collapse.”

Sky News will air a special programme – Libya floods: The city swept away – at midday on Saturday.

A curfew and no evacuation

Authorities have also been blamed for their initial response and handling of the disaster.

While critics say evacuations should have taken place to move residents of Derna to safer areas, the authorities instead told the population to hunker down.

On 10 September the mayor met with the security directorate of Derna, images posted on Facebook show.

The pair discussed a curfew and urged residents to stay in their homes.

They say the measure was put in place for citizens’ safety, but that announcement was met with anger and complaints at the time and afterwards in comments on the Facebook page.

The head of the WMO, secretary-general Petteri Taalas, added that evacuations should have been ordered and Libya’s government was “not functional”.

Had there been a weather service which could have issued warnings, emergency management authorities would have been able to carry out evacuations, he added.

For Libya, rescue operations are complicated by political fractures in a country which has been at war on-and-off with no strong central government since a NATO-backed uprising toppled Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

But the deadly combination of a powerful storm, inadequate infrastructure and an unstable political environment has left the people of Libya victim to a disaster which might largely have been avoided.

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Two dead after plane crashes into vehicles on busy road in Sao Paulo

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Two dead after plane crashes into vehicles on busy road in Sao Paulo

Two people have died after a plane crashed into vehicles on a busy road in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo.

A fire department spokesperson confirmed the deaths to local media.

The plane crashed on Marques de Sao Vicente Avenue in Barra Funda at around 7.20am local time.

Images and video footage showing a bus on fire in the aftermath.

Two people – a motorcyclist and a woman who was on the bus – were injured after they were struck by debris from the explosion, CNN Brasil reported.

The aircraft – a small twin-engine King Air – had left Campo de Marte Airport, the Brazilian television news channel reported. The control tower lost contact with the plane minutes later.

The cause of the crash is being investigated.

This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.

Please refresh the page for the fullest version.

You can receive breaking news alerts on a smartphone or tablet via the Sky News app. You can also follow us on WhatsApp and subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up with the latest news.

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Australian politician changes his name to ‘Aussie Trump’

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Australian politician changes his name to 'Aussie Trump'

An Australian politician has legally changed his name to Austin Trump in a move inspired by Donald Trump – in what he said was a protest against the country’s ruling centre-left Labor Party.

Ben Dawkins – who is an independent MP in Western Australia’s upper house of parliament where Labor holds a majority – is now listed as “Aussie Trump” on the WA parliamentary website.

He has also changed his username to “Hon. Aussie Trump MLC” on his X account.

“I’ve launched a political protest against the tyranny and systematic corruption of the Labor government in WA,” he wrote, in a post on the social media platform, signing off as “Aussie”.

“Vote Labor Out! & Drill Baby Drill!,” he wrote in a second post, appearing to echo the US president’s plan to increase the extraction of oil and gas in the United States.

He also posted a photo showing legal confirmation of the name change from Western Australia’s Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages.

“I want to be like Trump in the sense of calling out woke leftist nonsense,” he told 9News.

“I would love you to reach out Donald, just ring the office here.”

Read more from Sky News:
Trump sanctions International Criminal Court
Make the Moon Great Again – or lose it to China?

“This is simply attention-seeking stuff,” said Western Australia’s Premier Roger Cook, the state’s Labor leader, at a news conference on Thursday.

“I’m not sure how much lower he can go.”

Western Australia state elections are due to take place in March, before the country goes to the polls in a nationwide vote that must be held before 17 May.

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USAID crisis leaves South Africans living with HIV in turmoil

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USAID crisis leaves South Africans living with HIV in turmoil

A woman walks up to the security guards outside a shuttered USAID-funded sexual health clinic in Johannesburg’s inner-city district.

She looks around with confusion as they let her know the clinic is closed.

She tells us it has only been two months since she came here to receive her usual care.

Now, she must scramble to find another safe place for her sexual health screenings and Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) – her regular defence against rampant HIV.

On the day he was sworn in as US president for a second time, Donald Trump signed an executive order freezing foreign aid for a 90-day period.

That is being challenged by federal employee unions in court over what it says are “unconstitutional and illegal actions” that have created a “global humanitarian crisis”.

However the order is already having an immediate impact on South Africa’s most vulnerable.

More on South Africa

Her eyes tear up as she processes the news. Like many sex workers in town, free sexual health clinics are her lifeline.

An HIV-positive sex worker shared her patient transfer letter from the same closed clinic with Sky News and told us with panic that she is still waiting to be registered at an alternative facility.

South Africa is home to one of the world’s worst HIV/AIDS epidemics. At least 8.5 million people here are living with HIV – a quarter of all cases worldwide.

Widespread, free access to antiretroviral treatment in southern Africa was propelled by the introduction of George W. Bush’s US President Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in 2003.

PEPFAR is considered one of the most successful foreign aid programmes in history, and South Africa is the largest recipient of its funds.

A sign for USAID on the clinic's window
Image:
A sign for USAID on the clinic’s window

A shuttered USAID-funded sexual health clinic in Johannesburg
Image:
A shuttered USAID-funded sexual health clinic in Johannesburg

The programme has now been halted by President Trump’s foreign aid funding freeze – plunging those who survived South Africa’s HIV epidemic and AIDS denialism in the early 2000s back to a time of scarcity and fear.

“That time, there was no medication. The government would tell us to take beetroot and garlic. It was very difficult for the government to give us treatment but we fought very hard to win this battle. Now, the challenge is that we are going back to the struggle,” says Nelly Zulu, an activist and mother living with HIV in Soweto.

Nelly says access to free treatment has saved her and her 21-year-old son, who tested positive for HIV at four years old.

“It helped me so much because if I didn’t get the treatment, I don’t think I would be alive – even my son.

“My concern is for pregnant women. I don’t want them to go through what I went through – the life I was facing before. I’m scared we will go back to that crisis.”

Nelly Zulu, an activist and mother living with HIV
Image:
Nelly Zulu, an activist and mother living with HIV

South African civil society organisations have written a joint open letter calling for their government to provide a coordinated response to address the healthcare emergency created by the US foreign aid freeze.

The letter states that close to a million patients living with HIV have been directly impacted by stop-work orders and that a recent waiver by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio continuing life-saving assistance explicitly excludes “activities that involve abortions, family planning, gender or diversity, equality and inclusion ideology programmes, transgender surgeries or other non-life saving assistance”.

The shuttered clinic we saw in Johannesburg’s central business district (CBD) comes under these categories – built by Witwatersrand University to research reproductive health and cater to vulnerable and marginalised communities.

An activist and healthcare worker at a transgender clinic tells us everyone she knows is utterly afraid.

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USAID in turmoil: What you need to know

“Corner to corner, you hear people talking about this. There are people living with chronic diseases who don’t have faith anymore because they don’t know where they are ending up,” says Ambrose, a healthcare worker and activist.

“People keep asking corner to corner – ‘why don’t you go here, why don’t you go there?’ People are crying – they want to be assisted.”

South Africa’s ministry of health insists that only 17% of all HIV/AIDs funding comes from PEPFAR but that statistic is offset by the palpable disruption.

On Monday, minister of health Dr Aaron Motsoaledi met to discuss bilateral health cooperation and new US policy for assistance with US charge d’affaires for South Africa, Dana Brown.

A statement following the meeting says: “Communication channels are open between the Ministry and the Embassy, and we continue to discuss our life-saving health partnership moving forward.

“Until details are available the minister called on all persons on antiretrovirals (ARVs) to under no circumstances stop this life-saving treatment.”

A demand much harder to execute than declare.

“There is already a shortage of the medication – even if you ask for three months’ treatment, they will give you one or two months worth then you have to go back,” says Nelly.

“Now, it is worse because you can see the funding has been cut off.”

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