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Heavy rains in northwestern Haiti kill 12 people and damage hundreds of homes

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Heavy rains over the past few days in northwestern Haiti have killed at least 12 people, flooded farmland and damaged hundreds of homes, authorities said Tuesday.

The rains flooded a local hospital and more than 900 homes. They also destroyed a bridge, dozens of roads and crops in a country where more than half of its nearly 12 million inhabitants face high levels of acute food insecurity.

The rains began on Saturday and continued through Monday, according to a statement from Haiti’s Civil Protection Agency. The hardest hit towns include Port-de-Paix, Saint Louis du Nord and Anse-a-Foleur.

Local authorities said they are unable to access communities that urgently need food and other basic goods because roads are flooded. The bad weather forced officials in some towns to shutter schools and businesses.

Iran attacks Bahrain and Kuwait following US strikes, threatens to end talks to end the war

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard launched drone and missile attacks Sunday targeting Bahrain and Kuwait in response to U.S. airstrikes that hit the Islamic Republic, and threatened a “complete halt” could come to negotiations to end the war if Washington continues its attacks. Efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf that once carried a fifth of the world's oil and natural gas, without Iran's direct oversight sparked the crossfire now gripping the region. A multinational maritime body overseen by the U.S. Navy said Saturday that it would expand a route near Oman in the Strait of Hormuz to allow for both inbound and outbound traffic — setting up a new flashpoint with Tehran. Iran insists it alone must govern the strait after the war, upending decades of the world considering that the strait was international waters free for all, despite its sitting in Iran and Oman's territorial waters. Tehran has twice attacked vessels going through the Oman route, backed by a United Nations agency, in recent days. Early Sunday, the U.S. military’s Central Command said it struck Iranian military “surveillance infrastructure, communication systems, air defense sites, drone storage facilities and minelayer capabilities” following an attack on a ship at sea early Saturday morning. That ship, the Panamanian-flagged tanker Kiku, carried crude oil for the state-run energy company of Qatar, a key negotiator between Iran and the United States.
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