Aurelia Butler

ST. PETERSBURG, Florida (Reuters) – Hurricane Milton marched across Florida on Thursday, whipping up tornadoes, destroying homes and knocking out power to millions before blowing out into the Atlantic.However, the Tampa Bay area appeared to have escaped without the catastrophic flooding that had been feared.At least four deaths were reported in St. Lucie County on Florida’s Atlantic Coast when an unconfirmed tornado flattened a retirement community, local media reported, citing county officials. Reuters could not immediately confirm the report. More than 3 million homes and businesses in Florida were without power on Thursday morning, according to PowerOutage.us. At least some of them had been waiting for days for power to be restored after Hurricane Helene hit the area nearly two weeks ago.The hurricane also tore a gaping hole in the fabric that serves as the roof of Tropicana Field, the stadium of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team in St. Petersburg, but there were no reports of injuries. “One of the blessings for us is that we did not see that predicted storm surge. That saved a lot,” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said during an early morning news conference. In the Tampa area, the storm toppled trees and threw debris across roadways and downed powerlines, video footage from local news showed. Some neighborhoods were flooded, but the extent of the damage will not be known until crews can get out and assess the destruction, Castor said. Emergency crews in the area responded overnight to dozens of calls for help, including one in which a tree fell on a house with 15 people, including children, inside, Tampa Police Chief Lee Bercaw said. All 15 people were taken to a shelter, he said. The winds also toppled a large construction crane in St. Petersburg, sending the structure crashing down onto a deserted street. The state was still in danger of river flooding after up to 18 inches of rain. Authorities were still waiting for rivers to crest, but so far water levels were at or below what they received with Hurricane Helene two weeks ago, Castor said on Thursday morning.”INSTANTANEOUSLY”In Fort Myers on the southwest coast, resident Connor Ferin surveyed the wreckage of his home, which had lost its roof and was full of debris and rainwater after a tornado suddenly hit.”All this happened instantaneous, like these windows blew out,” he said. “I grabbed the two dogs and run under my bed and that was it. Probably one minute total.” The storm hit Florida’s west coast on Wednesday night as a Category 3 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, with top sustained winds of 120 mph(205 kph). While still a dangerous storm, this was less violent than the rare Category 5 hurricane that had threatened the state as it trekked over the Gulf of Mexico toward Florida.Milton weakened as it crossed land, dropping to a Category 1 hurricane with top sustained winds of 85 mph (145 kph) as it reached the peninsula’s east coast, the National Hurricane Center said. By Thursday morning, the storm was moving away from the Florida Atlantic coast after lashing communities on the eastern shoreline.The eye of the storm hit land in Siesta Key, a barrier island town of some 5,400 people off Sarasota about 60 miles (100 km) south of Tampa Bay.Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said on Thursday morning that crews across the state spent the night clearing debris. U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration had agreed to all of Florida’s request for emergency assistance, he told CNBC. “Our state is a peninsula in the middle of a tropical environment. I mean, we are just built to be able to respond to hurricanes,” DeSantis said. “We’ll survey the damage and get people on their feet. We’ll get through this.”Milton also spawned at least 19 tornadoes, the governor said, causing damage in numerous counties and destroying around 125 homes, most of them mobile homes.St. Lucie County Sheriff Keith Pearson estimated 100 homes were destroyed in the county where some 17 tornadoes touched down, NBC said.In a state already battered by Hurricane Helene two weeks ago, as many as two million people had been ordered to evacuate ahead of Milton’s arrival, and millions more live in the path of the storm.Much of the southern U.S. experienced the deadly force of Helene as it ripped through Florida and several other states. Both storms are expected to cause billions of dollars in damage.As of Thursday morning, 2,209 U.S. flights had been canceled, according to flight tracking website FlightAware, with the highest number cancellations from Orlando, Tampa and southwest Florida. More

Global trade recovered this year from a 2023 slump driven by high inflation and rising interest rates, the WTO report said. In April, the global trade watchdog forecast a 2.6% increase in volumes, which it revised up on Thursday to 2.7%.”We are expecting a gradual recovery in global trade for 2024, but we remain vigilant of potential setbacks, particularly the potential escalation of regional conflicts like those in the Middle East,” said WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala in a statement. “The impact could be most severe for the countries directly involved, but they may also indirectly affect global energy costs and shipping routes.” Israel’s blitz against Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement in recent weeks, following a year-long war against Hamas in Gaza, has stoked fears of an inexorable slide towards a pan-Middle Eastern war.The WTO also cited diverging monetary policies among major economies as another downside risk for the forecasts. This “could lead to financial volatility and shifts in capital flows as central banks bring down interest rates,” the report said, adding that this would make debt servicing more challenging for poorer countries.”There is also some limited upside potential to the forecast if interest rate cuts in advanced economies stimulate stronger than expected growth without reigniting inflation,” the WTO said. More

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Bank of Israel policymakers will be watching inflation data and whether the 2025 budget plans to continue a “very expansionary” fiscal policy to help determine if rate hikes are needed to curb rising price pressures, the deputy governor said on Thursday.With inflation rising rapidly in recent months, the central bank on Wednesday held its benchmark interest rate at 4.5% for a sixth straight meeting after a 25 basis point reduction on Jan. 1. This is in contrast with easing inflation and interest rates in the United States and in Europe.Israeli inflation accelerated to 3.6% in August from 3.2% in July – mainly as a result of supply disruptions stemming from Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza – to move farther beyond the government’s annual 1%-3% target range.”We’ll have until the next interest rate meeting two CPI readings, which we’ll be looking at carefully,” Bank of Israel Deputy Governor Andrew Abir said in an interview with Reuters.The next rates decision is on Nov. 25. Abir noted the cabinet on Oct. 31 is slated to vote on the 2025 state budget draft. “So there’s plenty of important data points coming up, plus how the war is developing,” Abir said. “Monetary policy is restrictive, and the question is whether it’s restrictive enough in order to get the inflation back into the target and to maintain the stability of the market. “It’s not something that we decided upon, but it’s certainly something that has to be debated,” he added. “The facts have changed since we last spoke about it (after the prior rates decision in late August), and the inflationary environment is much more challenging.”‘WE WILL BE VERY CAREFUL’ While much of the inflation spike is due to supply disruptions in tourism, construction and agriculture, Abir said demand is holding up and consumer spending has grown during the war, which began Oct. 7, 2023.He said conducting monetary policy is complicated since it is not just a case of both supply and demand contracting. “But we have supply being constrained at the same time that the demand is pretty strong,” Abir said.”We clearly don’t want to create a situation where demand collapses, so we will be very careful about what we do, but we still need to balance the supply and demand,” he said.A lot depends on fiscal policy, which he said was “very expansionary” – and inflationary – due to a sharp rise in state spending to fund the war. He added that a very expansionary fiscal policy had implications for monetary policy.Despite scant growth of just 0.5% expected in 2024, Abir doubts Israel is headed for stagflation – when growth is slow and inflation high – since unemployment is low and wages are growing well and fuelling demand.”We don’t want to over-react,” he said. “But on the other hand, we need to see that inflation … is in the process of coming back into the target” which is not expected until the latter part of 2025.”Whether we need further monetary constraints to achieve that still remains to be seen,” Abir said. “I don’t think any central bank wants to raise interest rates, but in the end, our job is to keep inflation under control, because of the implications of losing control of inflation on sustainable growth over the medium term.”      More

The report showed the consumer price index rose 2.4% in September from a year earlier, more than the 2.3% economists had expected but down from the prior month reading of 2.5%. After the report, traders moved to exit bets that the Fed could pause at next month’s meeting, and now see quarter-point rate cuts at each of the next several meetings. More

The ECB cut interest rates last month and said it would keep an open mind about October but a long list of policymakers have already made the case for a follow-up move, suggesting that a cut next week was likely despite some lingering opposition.The ECB’s account of the September meeting showed a more cautious mood, with the emphasis on the remaining hurdles towards stabilising inflation at the bank’s 2% target despite an increasingly bleak outlook for growth.”Members broadly concurred that a gradual approach to dialling back restrictiveness would be appropriate if future data were in line with the baseline projections,” the ECB said in the accounts. ING’s global head of macro said the minutes revealed an ECB “that is increasingly concerned about disappointing growth but still very reluctant to give the all-clear on inflation”. The bank has cut interest rates twice already as inflation is now within striking distance of its 2% target and said that further easing is only a question of timing given weak growth, easing price pressures and slowing wage growth.The bank next meets on Oct. 17 and a cut is almost fully priced in with a December move also firmly expected. The debate at the September meeting seemed evenly balanced, with some policymakers already raising the risk of inflation coming in too low while others insisted it was “too early to declare victory” over high price growth.”The baseline path to 2% depended critically on lower wage growth as well as on an acceleration of productivity growth towards rates not seen for many years and above historical averages,” the ECB said. “Conversely, it was stressed that inflation had recently been declining somewhat faster than expected, and the risk of undershooting the target was now becoming non-negligible.” More

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