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Weakened Nate brings flooding, power outages

- By Jeff Amy Associated Press

Biloxi public works employees clear debris from U.S. 90 in Biloxi, Mississipp­i, on Sunday after Hurricane Nate made landfall on the Gulf Coast.

BILOXI, Miss. — Hurricane Nate brought a burst of flooding and power outages to the U.S. Gulf Coast before weakening rapidly Sunday, sparing the region the kind of catastroph­ic damage left by a series of hurricanes that hit the southern U.S. and Caribbean in recent weeks.

Nate — the first hurricane to make landfall in Mississipp­i since Katrina in 2005 — quickly lost strength, with its winds diminishin­g to a tropical depression as it pushed northward into Alabama and toward Georgia with heavy rain. It was a Category 1 hurricane when it came ashore outside Biloxi early Sunday, its second landfall after initially hitting southeaste­rn

TODAY

Shanklin-Attaway Ladies Auxiliary Unit 5 will meet today at Post 5, 5 Shorter Ave, at 7:30 p.m. For more informatio­n call 706-2666791.

Shorter University,

315 Shorter Ave., will host a

in the Arnold Art Gallery on-campus for Angie Crea O’Neal, the Joan Alden Speidel Chair in English, Tuesday at 6 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. Light refreshmen­ts will be served. Louisiana on Saturday evening.

The storm surge from the Mississipp­i Sound littered Biloxi’s main beachfront highway with debris and flooded a casino’s lobby and parking structure overnight.

By dawn, however, Nate’s receding floodwater­s didn’t reveal any obvious signs of widespread damage in the city where Hurricane Katrina had leveled thousands of beachfront homes and businesses.

No storm-related deaths or injuries were immediatel­y reported.

Mississipp­i Gov. Phil Bryant praised state and local officials and coastal residents for working together to avoid loss of life.

Lee Smithson, director of the state emergency management agency, Justin Sellers / The Clarion-Ledger via AP said damage from Nate was held down in part because of work done and lessons learned from Katrina.

“If that same storm would have hit us 15 years ago, the damage would have been extensive and we would have had loss of life.” Smithson said of Nate. “But we have rebuilt the coast in the aftermath of Katrina higher and stronger.”

Nate knocked out power to more than 100,000 residents in Mississipp­i, Alabama, Louisiana and Florida, but crews were working on repairs.

As of Sunday afternoon, Alabama Power said more than 62,000 customers remained without power, while utilities and cooperativ­es in Mississipp­i said more than 21,000 were without electricit­y.

NOT REAL: Las Vegas Shooting Exposed as Antifa-led False Flag Attack

THE FACTS: Despite headlines floated by numerous websites, authoritie­s have revealed no links between Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock and the antifa movement that was spotlighte­d after a deadly white supremacis­t rally in Charlottes­ville, Virginia. Some articles include fabricated screen grabs of tweets attributed to President Donald Trump outing Paddock as a member of antifa — far-left militant groups that resist neo-Nazis and white supremacis­ts. InfoWars, the website of right-wing conspiracy theorist and radio host Alex Jones, claimed in a story that an anonymous FBI source told the outlet antifa literature was found in Paddock’s room. No such material can be seen in photos of the suite, and the FBI has given no indication that Paddock was connected to any group.

NOT REAL: Gordon Ramsay Has His Entire Staff Take A Knee-Refuses To Serve Miami Dolphins Players

THE FACTS: The restaurant named in this story created by hoax site The Last Line of Defense doesn’t even exist. The story claims four Dolphins players were denied service at Ramsay’s gastropub in New York City’s SoHo neighborho­od with Ramsay calling them disrespect­ful. Ramsay’s spokeswoma­n tells The Associated Press the chef has no gastropub in SoHo and the story is “nonsense.”

NOT REAL: Las Vegas: Video Confirms Multiple Shooters, Co-ordinated Attack

THE FACTS: A flickering light coming

NOT REAL: This man posed proudly with the bear he shot while it was hibernatin­g

THE FACTS: The article centers on a new federal law that removes protection­s for hibernatin­g bears. However, a photo showing a smiling man holding up the paw of a dead bear in a snowy location is completely unrelated to the law. The picture was taken at Alaska’s Becharof National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge’s Facebook page shared the picture last year, saying the bear was legally taken during the refuge’s spring hunt in 2014. At the time, it would have been illegal to kill a hibernatin­g bear.

NOT REAL: Pizza Hut is giving 3 FREE Large Pizza Coupon on their 58th Anniversar­y

THE FACTS: This offer is too good to be true, despite several Facebook posts that have been circulatin­g in recent weeks. The posts take users to a website that prompts them to take a survey and share the post on Facebook in order to receive a coupon. Pizza Hut responded to a similar “anniversar­y” scam on its own Facebook page last year. The company said the coupon offer was fraudulent and that any legitimate deal would be found on its website or social media pages. Also, it’s not Pizza Hut’s 58th anniversar­y. The chain turned 59 back in June.

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