Hurricane milton has re strengthened to a category five storm as it barrels straight towards florida. People there are evacuating en masse, ahead of its projected landfall on wednesday night local time. The national hurricane center says the storm has doubled in size since tuesday. You can see this timelapse, here shared by american astronaut matthew dominick, showing how this storm looks from space. Local authorities and weather experts say milton will bring a destructive storm surge, in which some areas will not be survivable. Hundreds of flights have been canceled ahead of its landfall, which is expected to bring strong winds of up to 165 mph or 270 kph. Milton comes just days after hurricane helene tore through the south eastern us; 225 people were killed by the natural disaster across six states. The back to back storms are expected to leave historic levels of damage that could take years to recover from. Unlike helene, milton will only pass through florida on its way to the atlan
You can see this time lapse here shared by american astronaut matthew dominick showing how this storm looks from space. Milton comes just days after hurricane helene tore through the southeastern us 225 people were killed by the natural disaster across six states. The back to back storms are expected to leave historic levels of damage that could take years to recover from. Unlike helene, milton will only pass through florida on its way to the atlantic ocean. President biden has postponed a trip to germany to oversee preparations and prepare a federal response. He urged those in milton s path to evacuate, calling it a matter of life and death also warning this could be one of the worst storms to hit florida in a century. Melanie bevan is the chief of police in bradentown a town that is right in the path of hurrican milton and experienced a lot of damage during the recent hurricane helene. She spoke about what a forecast like this means for law enforcement in the area. We have
tonight may soon be the top story in the markets or even on main street. the president summoning leaders to the white house scheduled for next week to face what they re now calling a far more urgent threat of default with some republicans threatening to take the economy hostage. the final deadline is earlier in the month, republicans doubling down on threats which you may recall picked up in the obama years that instead of voting against new spending, which is the standard way that a politician or a legislator can curb the size of government, totally fine, you say, hey, let s not spend as much. nowadays you may have heard, republicans try to hijack the process of paying the bill, the debt, and they do that as a sort of a voodoo to scare the market, scare the white house, e tract concessions and keep the government from paying the bills it has, that includes naturally bills run up by both democrats and republicans, including recent spending under former president trump. we
a total of thirty seven people including 23 children were killed in an attack that has shocked the nation. those are the headlines. now on bbc news it s time for hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i m stephen sackur. lebanon is experiencing one of the most disastrous economic collapses of the last 100 years. the national economy is less than half the size it was just three years ago. one powerful symbol of the catastrophe, people are holding up banks in a desperate attempt to get their money out, amid rampant inflation and a currency crisis. my guest is lebanon s minister of economy and trade, amin salam. politicians have failed lebanon for decades. will that change before the meltdown is complete? minister amin salam, currently in washington, dc, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. thank you, stephen, glad to be with you. well, we re delighted to have you in our washington studio. let me ask you, minister, do you think you and your government are levelling with the lebanese peop