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Jumat, 30 Agustus 2019

Hurricane Dorian path map: Latest euro model, NOAA charts and spaghetti models - Express.co.uk

Hurricane Dorian has already battered the US Virgin Islands and is now churning through the Atlantic Ocean towards the US state of Florida. The horrifying weather system is whipping out maximum sustained winds of 105mph, making it a Category 2 hurricane on the Saffir Simpson hurricane wind scale. Dorian is forecast to further strengthen and develop into a major Category 3 hurricane later on Friday. Hurricane warnings could be issued today.

Hurricane Dorian is expected to be on Florida’s doorstop on Monday morning, but weather models are showing very different tracks for the hurricane.

According to the National Hurricane Center (NHC) Dorian continues northwestward, and while the forecast for the next 24 hours is fairly high, it turns uncertain.

NOAA said: "As you can imagine, with so many complex variables in play, it is no wonder the models have been having a difficult time nailing down the path of the hurricane.

"There's been a notable trend on this model cycle toward a slower, more westward track beyond 36 hours, which can be seen most strongly in the GFS-based guidance."

However, the GFS model keeps Dorian off the Floridian coast, perhaps making landfall further north in Jacksonville.

The model even suggests that Dorian could ride up the coastline, not making landfall in Florida at all.

Accuweather reports: “At this point, there is the likelihood of stormy conditions with heavy rain and gusty winds that push northwestward across part of the Florida Peninsula beginning Saturday night and continuing into Sunday night.

The weather service added: “Flooding downpours and power outages are possible.”

Another tracker, the Euro model, sees the hurricane making landfall in southeastern Florida, perhaps close to Fort Lauderdale.

Following this, Dorian will head west, affecting areas from the coast of Sarasota.

“Should Dorian remain over land for the duration after reaching Florida, the system will slowly weaken and rain itself out over the southeastern corner of the US during Labor Day and beyond”, AccuWeather said.

The key message from NHC is the risk of dangerous storm surge and hurricane-force winds later this week and this weekend.

This risk continues to increase in the central and northwestern Bahamas and along Florida’s east coast, although it is too soon to determine exactly where these hazards will occur.

NHC warned: “Residents in these areas should ensure they have their hurricane plan in place and not focus on the exact forecast track of Dorian’s centre.”

With lower shear and very warm waters, all of the intensity models forecast Dorian to begin strengthening again soon, and rapid intensification could occur.

Dorian is likely to reach major hurricane strength in the next day or two and is forecast to maintain that status until it reaches land.

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https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1171434/hurricane-dorian-path-map-latest-euro-model-gfs-noaa-chart-spaghetti-model-nhc

2019-08-30 07:05:17Z
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Hong Kong Police Holds Briefing After Three Protest Activists Arrested - Bloomberg

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Hong Kong Police Holds Briefing After Three Protest Activists Arrested Bloomberg
3 Hong Kong Protest Leaders Arrested Bloomberg Politics
Joshua Wong arrested: Hong Kong pro-democracy activist BBC News
Joshua Wong and other Hong Kong pro-democracy leaders arrested ahead of rallies CNN
Friday briefing: Hong Kong democracy leader snatched off street The Guardian
View full coverage on Google News

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/live-blog/2019-08-30/hong-kong-police-holds-briefing-after-three-protest-activists-arrested

2019-08-30 06:58:00Z
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What’s Next for Brexit? Six Possible Outcomes - The New York Times

LONDON — Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend Parliament next month has brought a fresh wave of consternation and confusion to Britain’s already chaotic efforts to leave the European Union, while still leaving wide open the question of where Britain will end up on Oct. 31., the day the country is scheduled to leave the bloc.

Mr. Johnson says he would rather Britain leave with a reworked Brexit deal but, failing that, it would be out the door anyway. His opponents have sworn to remove any possibility of leaving without a deal, which they say would be economically calamitous.

Adding to the confusion, what happens next depends not just on the battle between the prime minister and his opponents in Parliament, but also on the flexibility of the so-far unyielding European Union leadership and, down the line, quite possibly on a British court.

Following are six of the most likely outcomes leading up to Oct. 31.

1: Lawmakers Take Charge

Members of Parliament don’t agree about much on Brexit, but a majority oppose what they consider a destructive “no-deal” departure and would like to rule it out of bounds. By suspending Parliament for several crucial weeks, Mr. Johnson has made this hard. But he has also galvanized his opponents into action, and Jo Swinson, leader of the Liberal Democrats, hinted in a BBC interview that they may copy Mr. Johnson in using an arcane procedure — she did not specify what — to stop a “no-deal” Brexit. So don’t count them out quite yet.

2: Parliament’s Nuclear Option

If they fail to legislate against a no-deal Brexit, lawmakers can resort to the ultimate weapon: a motion of no confidence, ousting Mr. Johnson from office. Currently, they do not appear to have the votes to pull this off. But even if they did, it might not solve their problem.

The law calls for the formation of a new government within two weeks or a general election. One option might be a caretaker administration that would presumably request another Brexit delay to afford time to hold an election. The problem is opposition leaders cannot agree on a caretaker prime minister. Jeremy Corbyn, the natural choice as leader of the Labour Party, is too left-wing, and as a lifelong critic of the European Union, is distrusted by determined opponents of Brexit.

Many would prefer a more centrist figure — perhaps the former Conservative cabinet minister Kenneth Clarke — as the caretaker. That would require Mr. Corbyn agreeing to stand aside, because a no-confidence motion could not succeed without his support.

And even if it did, Mr. Johnson has another trick up his sleeve, one that his supporters have repeatedly telegraphed: He could refuse to resign and then schedule a general election for November, in effect forcing through a no-deal Brexit. Dirty pool, perhaps, it would leave deep scars in the body politic. But there is nothing in the relevant law, the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, requiring the prime minister to step down immediately.

3: A Snap Election

If lawmakers should succeed in quickly passing legislation outlawing a no-deal Brexit before Parliament is suspended, Mr. Johnson could try to outflank them again by calling a general election. This would be risky, but he needs to hold one soon anyway because he has a working majority in Parliament of just one seat, a margin far too small for comfort for any government. If there is an election soon, Mr. Johnson is likely to run as a champion of the people against a Parliament intent on obstructing the pro-Brexit outcome of the 2016 referendum. One theory is that the election could take place on Oct. 17, allowing Mr. Johnson — if he wins — to go to the European Union summit the following day with a fresh mandate.

But there could be a significant roadblock. To call an election, Mr. Johnson would need the support of two-thirds of the House of Commons, so he would need opposition votes. The Labour Party wants an election, but might demur if it thinks that, instead of a quick vote, Mr. Johnson wants to delay it until after the Brexit deadline.

Image

CreditTolga Akmen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

4: Leaving the E.U. With a Deal

No one seems to think this option has much chance. After all, Parliament voted three times against a Brexit agreement negotiated by Mr. Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, and the European Union is stubbornly refusing to reopen negotiations. But don’t rule it out.

The critical date is Oct. 17-18, when the bloc’s leaders meet, providing an opportunity for last-minute negotiations (which is practically the only way things get done there). If a potentially disastrous no-deal Brexit is still a possibility, Mr. Johnson can put a gun to the heads of European leaders to get a revised deal, then put the gun to the heads of his lawmakers to get the measure passed. “Either accept my new, revised, Brexit agreement,” he will say, or we are headed for the dreaded no-deal exit.

5: A No-Deal Brexit

While it is widely thought that Mr. Johnson is using the threat of an unruly exit as a negotiating tactic, it is also possible that he actually means what he says. If European leaders offer too few concessions for his liking, he might plow ahead with a no-deal exit and, given the limited parliamentary time to stop it, he might succeed. It is, after all, the default option. That would allow Mr. Johnson to unite Brexit supporters behind him in a general election either late in 2019 or in 2020. The risk, however, is that the predictions of economic chaos after a no-deal Brexit are borne out, making an election unwinnable for him (and, if things are bad enough, possibly for the Conservative Party for years to come).

6: The Courts Decide

There are already three cases being considered against Mr. Johnson’s decision to suspend Parliament. Experts think these are unlikely to succeed — though Gina Miller, an anti-Brexit campaigner, defied such predictions when she won a case against Mrs. May’s efforts to bypass Parliament when starting exit talks. She is trying again now.

But there may be other opportunities to go to court. If Mr. Johnson refuses to resign after losing a vote of confidence and tries to push a general election beyond the Halloween deadline, a legal challenge would be likely. Then it could be judges, not lawmakers, who have the decisive voice in Britain’s biggest peacetime decision in decades.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/30/world/europe/brexit-scenarios-boris-johnson.html

2019-08-30 06:00:00Z
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Kamis, 29 Agustus 2019

Italy PM Conte vows more united Italy as Salvini leaves power - BBC News

Caretaker Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has accepted a mandate to form a new coalition with a vow to lead a "more united, inclusive" Italy, a week after the collapse of his government dominated by nationalists.

He said Italy should play a leading role in Europe, a marked change from the policies of the right-wing League.

League leader Matteo Salvini triggered the downfall of the previous coalition.

His partner, Five Star, has now reached a deal with the centre left.

Mr Conte, an independent ex-law professor, had already savaged Mr Salvini in parliament last week, accusing him of creating a political crisis for "personal and party interests".

After President Sergio Mattarella gave him a mandate to form a new coalition, he said Italy had to make up for lost time as it was in a "very delicate phase".

"It will be a government for the good of the citizens, to modernise the country, to make our nation even more competitive internationally, but also more just, more supportive and more inclusive."

Mr Conte has also accused the League leader of having an obsession with closing ports to migrants, and in one of his last acts as interior minister, Mr Salvini refused to allow a charity rescue ship into Italy carrying 100 migrants. The interior ministry has since agreed to allow women, children and sick people off the Mare Ionio.

The Eurosceptic Mr Salvini has announced a protest in Rome on 19 October, condemning the nascent coalition as conceived in Paris or Brussels.

Who will be in the coalition?

The anti-establishment Five Star Movement has long been hostile to its new prospective partner, the Democratic Party (PD).

But on Wednesday evening the two parties buried the hatchet. They entered talks last week after Mr Conte resigned ahead of a no-confidence motion tabled against him by Mr Salvini.

One of the stumbling blocks had been Five Star's insistence on Mr Conte remaining as prime minister.

"We consider it worthwhile to try this experience," the PD's Nicola Zingaretti said after meeting the president, with the aim of forming a government to serve until the next scheduled elections in 2023.

"In difficult times like these, shunning our responsibility to have the courage to try this is something we cannot afford," Mr Zingaretti said.

The markets reacted positively to news of the president's mandate, with the Milan Borsa climbing almost 2%. Italy is the eurozone's third biggest economy and bond yields fell to a record low at one stage on Thursday.

The so-called "spread" between Italian and German 10-year bond yields was also at its narrowest for a year as Mr Conte promised to make economic growth a priority.

A major blow for Salvini

This coalition agreement represents a major setback for the League's leader Matteo Salvini.

For 14 months, he was the dominant figure in Italian politics. But a share of power wasn't enough for him - he wanted outright power.

This led him to overreach. Mr Salvini brought down the government last week in the hope of winning a potential snap election.

But it turns out that his gamble had a fatal flaw. The League Party's leader did not count on the possibility of his opponents teaming up to stop him.

A common aim - Stop Salvini - now binds together the Five Star Movement and the Democratic Party in their new coalition. But in order for this administration to last, the two parties may need to find more common ground than their mutual distrust of a single man.

Their coalition will be harried and chased at every step by the man they've sent into sudden opposition.

What will Conte have to do now?

The two parties still have a long way to go to agree a platform and appoint ministers.

Five Star will also require its 100,000 members to back the deal via its controversial online "Rousseau" platform. There are plenty of supporters who will have reservations about a deal with a centre-left, mainstream party that they consider part of the problem in Italian politics.

Some centre-left politicians have also rejected a PD-Five Star coalition, with MEP Carlo Calenda resigning from the leadership in protest.

Mr Conte has promised, once the coalition is confirmed, that the government will proceed quickly to agreeing a new budget for 2020.

Italy has the second biggest debt in the eurozone in proportion to its output and the incoming administration is keen to avoid a rise in VAT (sales tax), which will kick in unless the government can tackle the shortfall elsewhere.

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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49510582

2019-08-29 13:18:33Z
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Hurricane Dorian intensifies as it heads toward US - CNN

Parts of Florida could feel tropical-storm-force winds as early as Saturday evening, according to the National Hurricane Center.

The center urged residents to make preparations now ahead of Hurricane Dorian.

Dorian, currently a Category 1 storm, is forecast to grow into a major Category 3 over Labor Day weekend before landing in Florida.

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https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/hurricane-dorian-august-2019/index.html

2019-08-29 12:06:00Z
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How Giuseppe Conte of Italy Went From Irrelevant to Irreplaceable - The New York Times

After 14 months of being ignored, mocked and yanked around by his deputies in Italy’s nationalist-populist government, the departing prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, used his resignation speech last week as a last-ditch audition — filled with previously unseen flashes of gravitas and steel — for the leading role in the government to come.

On Thursday, Mr. Conte got the part.

Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella, gave the little-known lawyer turned political power broker the task of forming a sequel, but drastically different, government known as Conte II. (“Conte Reloaded,” preferred the conservative daily Il Giornale.)

Mr. Conte will now begin meetings with all party leaders and is expected next week to submit to Mr. Mattarella a cabinet that, if approved, will then be brought to parliament for a confidence vote.

[A new government takes shape in Italy, sidelining Matteo Salvini]

In accepting the mandate, Mr. Conte said on Thursday that he wanted to win back lost time “to allow Italy, a founding member of the European Union, to rise again as a protagonist” and “transform this moment of crisis into an opportunity.”

He acknowledged that he had entertained “doubts” about taking on a reconstituted government after the last one collapsed, but said he “overcame this perplexity” out of a responsibility to serve Italy’s interests.

In taking on “this political project,” he said, he did not represent a single party, but the interests of all Italians, something he said Italians had come to appreciate.

A week after the collapse of his last government, a nationalist-populist alliance between the anti-migrant League party and the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, Mr. Conte will preside over a populist/anti-populist coalition between Five Star and the center-left Democratic Party.

The joining of two parties that have called each other every name in the book, including Mafiosi and kidnappers, internet trolls and hatemongers, was remarkable.

But so was the resuscitation of Mr. Conte, who hardly seemed to matter through much of the last government, where he was overshadowed by the hard-right leader of the League, Matteo Salvini, ostensibly his deputy.

Mr. Conte once even called a news conference to remind the country that he was the prime minister.

“I’m not here just to scrape by or drift,” he said at that June conference, adding, “I can and want to do more.”

During a side-by-side news conference at the White House in July 2018, President Trump introduced Mr. Conte as “my new friend.” — CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times

Now he will have an opportunity, as the European establishment is hoping, to help Italy heal its rifts in the European Union, rediscover a modicum of financial responsibility and return to the table of European leaders.

Mr. Conte, fond of pocket kerchiefs and purple ties, is studiously dapper even when discussing legislation with a man in his underwear on a Naples balcony. His florid vocabulary — he has casually dropped words like logomachy — sounds official without actually saying much. In time, he has overcome a delivery and facial expressions that seemed marked by fear and indigestion.

“He’s a minor figure who managed to carve out a role for himself,” said Donatella Di Cesare, a professor of political philosophy at La Sapienza University in Rome.

“He had no history,” she added, which helped him fit into the part of an institutional administrator who could give the harshly euroskeptic, populist and anti-migrant government a more amenable face. The parties chose him, she said, because he was “someone who played the role.”

Newspaper headlines on Thursday expressed admiration for his transformation. “He went from yes man to the lord of politics,” read La Stampa. “A quasi-leader who put bullies in their place,” read La Repubblica. “A Portrait of a Puppet Who Became Prime Minister,” read il Foglio.

And he has made friends in high places.

During a side-by-side news conference at the White House in July 2018, President Trump introduced Mr. Conte as “my new friend” and on Tuesday came through for him, endorsing him in a tweet, albeit one that spelled Mr. Conte’s name wrong. (Mr. Trump called him Giuseppi.)

That vote of confidence was invoked on Wednesday night by Five Star’s political leader, Luigi Di Maio. “The endorsement from Donald Trump made us understand that we are on the right track,” he said in announcing the agreement with the Democratic Party to bring Mr. Conte back.

At the 2018 news conference, Mr. Trump stressed that he and Mr. Conte had a lot in common. In one sense, he had a point.

“Like the United States, Italy is currently under enormous strain as a result of illegal immigration. And they fought it hard,” Mr. Trump said. “And the prime minister, frankly, is with us today because of illegal immigration.”

It was a backlash to the migrant crisis, and the promised crackdown by the League and the more subtle anti-migrant messaging of the populist Five Star movement, that resulted in their election.

If Mr. Conte never seemed entirely at ease with the harsh anti-migrant policies, at times asking Mr. Salvini to at least let women and children off stranded ships, he never stood up to him and signed off on the toughest anti-migrant legislation.

His greatest concerns seemed to be about the political damage Mr. Salvini wrought on the Five Star Movement, with which he was clearly aligned. In December, an Italian television program caught Mr. Conte appealing in so-so English to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany at the coffee bar of an international meeting for pointers on how Five Star could stop Mr. Salvini’s electoral juggernaut.

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CreditEttore Ferrari/EPA, via Shutterstock

“We have made polls and they are worrying, because Salvini is at 35, 36 percent,” he told Ms. Merkel. She nodded politely.

Before the election in March 2018 that brought Five Star to power, its leaders introduced him as a potential minister in a Five Star government. When they needed the support of another party to govern and turned to the League, the two parties settled on Mr. Conte as a consensus prime minister.

He had a rough start. His rollout was complicated by the discovery that he inflated his résumé. Only last year he seemed unsure of his job security when, while acting as prime minister, he was caught planning to take part in an English proficiency exam for a teaching job at a Rome university.

In his first weeks on the job, he was caught in Parliament asking Mr. Di Maio, technically his deputy, if he was allowed to say something.

But it was Mr. Di Maio he ended up eclipsing.

In Mr. Conte’s resignation speech last week, as he lambasted Mr. Salvini, seated to his right, as a dangerous, authoritarian, disloyal opportunist who cared more about his own political success than the country, Mr. Di Maio, seated on Mr. Conte’s left, brimmed with visible delight.

Mr. Di Maio, his own poll numbers cratering, had sought to elevate Mr. Conte over the past year as a counterbalance to Mr. Salvini. Even Mr. Salvini’s social media gurus admired Mr. Conte’s increased popularity, which they attributed to his institutional bearing.

At first, the Democratic Party insisted on a clean break with the previous government. But the insistence of the Five Star Movement on Mr. Conte, and Mr. Conte’s track record of not mattering much, made it easy for the Democratic Party’s negotiators to accept him as a condition of an alliance that would bring them back to power.

And in negotiations over the past week, the Democratic Party infuriated Mr. Di Maio by making it clear that it now naturally considered Mr. Conte as its chief interlocutor and the Five Star Party leader, despite his lack of official membership.

Mr. Di Maio, whose previous job experience consisted largely of working as an usher at a soccer stadium, was again forced to search for a job in the government while support for Mr. Conte came from the party’s highest authority.

Beppe Grillo, a founder of the Five Star Movement and one of its power brokers, wrote on his blog Tuesday that God had personally given him a message to send to Mr. Conte. In the post, which Mr. Grillo signed as God, he made it clear that Mr. Conte was the chosen one.

“Am I wrong,” he wrote, “or one of the biggest fears in Italy today is that you get back in the playing field, Mr. Giuseppe?”

Even Mr. Di Maio had to exalt the once-and-future leader.

“A great interpreter of this new humanism, how he himself likes to call it,” Mr. Di Maio said through a gritted smile on Wednesday night. “A man of great courage, who has demonstrated his will to serve the country with a spirit of self-sacrifice and abnegation.”

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/29/world/europe/italy-conte-government-salvini.html

2019-08-29 10:30:00Z
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Many Britons React With Anger Over Suspension Of Parliament - NPR

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Thousands of demonstrators gather outside Houses of Parliament on Wednesday in London to protest against plans to suspend Parliament. NurPhoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images hide caption

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The leader of Britain's House of Commons today called lawmakers opposed to the suspension of Parliament "phony" and questioned if they have the "courage or the gumption" to change the law or bring down the government to avoid a no-deal Brexit.

Speaking to the BBC, Jacob Rees-Mogg made the comments a day after Queen Elizabeth II approved an extraordinary request from Prime Minister Boris Johnson to suspend Parliament, known as prorogation.

Prorogation leaves Parliament little time to take up Rees-Mogg's challenge – either to pass a no-confidence motion against Johnson or to push back the Brexit date.

Lawmakers reconvene Sept. 3 but under prorogation will disband the following week. They return Oct. 14, just 17 days before Britain's Oct. 31 deadline to leave the European Union.

In 2016, Britain voted in a referendum to leave the EU. Former Prime Minister Theresa May negotiated a divorce deal with the EU but Parliament rejected the agreement three times. The impasse ultimately brought down her government.

Meanwhile, Brexiteers have insisted that despite concerns over economic chaos, Britain must leave even without a deal.

"All these people who are wailing and gnashing of teeth know that there are two ways of doing what they want to do," Rees-Mogg, a member of Johnson's Conservative Party and a confirmed euroskeptic, told the broadcaster. "One, is to change the government and the other is to change the law."

"If they don't have either the courage or the gumption to do either of those then we will leave on the 31st of October in accordance with the referendum result," he added.

Johnson's move infuriated opposition politicians and sparked a strong reaction from many ordinary Britons who turned out in the streets.

Thousands of anti-Brexit protesters, some carrying signs that read "Stop the Coup," gathered Wednesday night in Parliament Square. There were smaller demonstrations in Manchester, Cambridge, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Durham, according to the Evening Standard.

Protester Emma Cooper, 28, told The Guardian: "I feel absolutely livid. I haven't been to a protest for a long time," she said, "What's happening in this country and the right wing shift around the world is really worrying. I think Brexit is xenophobia extended to a bigger level."

Well over 1 million people have also signed a petition against suspending Parliament.

Commons Speaker John Bercow, a hard-line "Remainer," called Johnson's move a "constitutional outrage."

"At this early stage in his premiership," he said, "the prime minister should be seeking to establish rather than undermine his democratic credentials and indeed his commitment to parliamentary democracy."

Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the main opposition Labour Party, wrote to the queen to protest Johnson's move "in the strongest possible terms on behalf of my party and I believe all the other opposition parties are going to join in with this."

Johnson, who became prime minister barely a month ago, holds a single-seat majority in Parliament but some of his own party members oppose a no-deal Brexit.

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https://www.npr.org/2019/08/29/755326470/many-britons-react-with-anger-over-suspension-of-parliament

2019-08-29 09:46:00Z
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