Hurricane Hanna makes landfall in US
Hanna, the first of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, has made landfall in the US state of Texas, with maximum winds of 90 mph and heavy rains.
Hanna morphed from a tropical storm into a Category 1 hurricane on Saturday and made landfall on Padre Island at 5 p.m., about 53 km south of Corpus Christi, Xinhua news agency quoted the National Hurricane Center as saying.
“Significant structural damage" and a gust up to 83 mph were reported in nearby Port Mansfield, the National Weather Service in Brownsville said in a tweet on Saturday afternoon.
A television news reporter in Florida is crediting an eagle-eyed viewer for noticing a lump on her neck and emailing her that she should get it checked out. Victoria Price, a reporter for WFLA in Tampa, followed the advice and was diagnosed with cancer.
Price tweeted that she is undergoing surgery on Monday to remove the tumor, her thyroid and a couple of lymph nodes.
"Doctor said it's spreading, but not too much, and we're hopeful this will be my first and last procedure," she said.
The viewer emailed Price last month, saying the lump reminded her of one she had had.
Price, 28, an investigative reporter, said this week that her television station's catchphrase is "8 On Your Side." "But the roles recently reversed when I found a viewer on MY side, and I couldn't be more grateful," Price said. "I will be forever grateful for the woman who went out of her way to email me, a total stranger. She had zero obligation to, but she did anyway. Talk about being on your side, huh?"
Stranded on a tiny Italian island, a cancer researcher grew increasingly alarmed to hear that one, and then three more visitors had fallen ill with COVID-19.
Paola Muti braced for a rapid spread of the coronavirus to the 800 closely-knit islanders, many of whom she knows well. Her mother was born on Giglio Island and she often stays at the family home with its charming view of the sea through the parlor's windows.
But days passed and none of Giglio's islanders developed any
COVID-19 symptoms even though the conditions seemed favorable for the disease to spread like wildfire.
Dr. Armando Schiaffino, the island's sole physician for around 40 years, shared Muti's worry that there would be a local outbreak.
Muti, a breast cancer researcher at the University of Milan where she is an epidemiology professor, decided to try to find out why it wasn't happening this time.
Were residents perhaps infected but didn't show symptoms? Was it something genetic? Something else? Or just plain luck? "Dr. Schiaffino came to me and told me, 'Hey, look, Paola, this is incredible. In this full pandemic, with all the cases that came to the island, nobody is sick.' So I said to myself: ' Right, here we can do a study, no? I am here,'" Muti said.
By then, Muti was trapped on the island by Italy's strict lockdown rules. What was especially puzzling to her was that many of the islanders had had close contact with the visitors.
Of the 800 or so year-round residents, 723 volunteered to be tested. Only one was found to have antibodies, an elderly Gigliese man who had sailed on the same ferry to the island with the German visitor, Muti said. She hadn't reached any conclusions by the time she was preparing to leave the island this month.