Nation & World Glance

Hurricane Eta grinds inland into Nicaragua; at least 3 dead

MANAGUA, Nicaragua – Hurricane Eta churned inland through northeast Nicaragua Tuesday night with devastating winds and rains that destroyed rooftops, caused rivers to overflow and left at least three people dead in the region.

The hurricane had sustained winds of 105 mph (165 kph), according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center, down from an overnight peak of 150 mph (240 kph). Even before it made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane, Honduras reported the first death after a mudslide trapped a 12-year-old girl in San Pedro Sula and two miners were killed in a mudslide in Bonanza, Nicaragua.

Tuesday night, the Category 2 hurricane crawled inland from the coast, about 45 miles (70 kilometers) west-southwest of coastal Puerto Cabezas or Bilwi, and it was moving west near 6 mph (9 kph).

Landfall came hours after it had been expected. Eta’s eye had hovered just offshore through the night and Tuesday morning. The unceasing winds uprooted trees and ripped roofs apart, scattering corrugated metal through the streets of Bilwi, the main coastal city in the region. The city’s regional hospital abandoned its building, moving patients to a local technical school campus.

“It was an intense night for everyone in Bilwi, Waspam and the communities along the northern coast,” Yamil Zapata, local Bilwi representative of the ruling Sandinista Front, told local Channel 4 Tuesday.

Italy imposing night curfew, other restrictions

ROME — Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte has signed off on new pandemic rules that include a nationwide overnight curfew and tighter restrictions on the country’s regions where infections are surging and hospitals risk running out of beds for COVID-19 patients.

The decree is to take effect Thursday. Regions to be hit with the strictest limits are to be announced Wednesday. Those restrictions include at least a two-week ban on entering or leaving the region’s territory and closure of all shops except essential ones like food stores.

One of those areas is expected to be the northern region of Lombardy. It bore the brunt of the pandemic earlier this year, and it is reeling again under a new surge, especially in its financial capital, Milan.

HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE VIRUS OUTBREAK:

• Russia reports 18,000 coronavirus cases for 5th straight day

• Germany reports more than 15,000 daily cases

• UK to test all Liverpool residents for coronavirus

• Germany to expand use of antigen tests, hoping to keep nursing homes safe.

Turkish rescuers pull girl from rubble 4 days after quake

IZMIR, TURKEY — Rescuers in the Turkish city of Izmir pulled a young girl out alive from the rubble of a collapsed apartment building Tuesday, four days after a strong earthquake hit Turkey and Greece and as hopes of reaching survivors began to fade.

Wrapped in a thermal blanket, the girl was taken into an ambulance on a stretcher to the sounds of applause and chants of “God is great!” from rescue workers and onlookers.

Health Minister Fahrettin Koca identified her as 3-year-old Ayda Gezgin on Twitter. The child had been trapped inside the rubble for 91 hours since Friday’s quake struck in the Aegean Sea and was the 107th person to have been pulled out of collapsed buildings alive.

After she was pulled from the rubble, little Ayda called out for her mother, in video of the rescue broadcast on television.

But Ayda’s mother did not survive. Her body was found amid the wreckage hours later. Her brother and father were not inside the building at the time of the quake.

Rescuer Nusret Aksoy told reporters that he was sifting through the rubble of the toppled eight-floor building when he heard a child’s scream and called for silence. He later located the girl in a tight space next to a dishwasher.

The girl waved at him, told him her name and said that she was okay, Aksoy said.

“I got goosebumps and my colleague Ahmet cried,” he told HaberTurk television.

Ibrahim Topal, of the Humanitarian Relief Foundation, or IHH said: “My colleague and I looked at each other like ‘Did you hear that, too?’ We listened again. There was a very weak voice saying something like ‘I’m here.’ Then we shut everything down, the machines, and started listening again. And there really was a voice.”

Health ministry officials said the girl was in good condition but would be kept under observation in the hospital for a while. She asked for for meatballs and a yoghurt drink on her way to the hospital, state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

Meanwhile, the death toll in the earthquake climbed to 112, after emergency crews retrieved more bodies from toppled buildings in the city. Officials said 138 quake survivors were still hospitalized, and three of them were in serious condition.

The U.S. Geological Survey registered the quake’s magnitude at 7.0, though other agencies recorded it as less severe.

Tucson police: Officer shoots, wounds man wielding machete

TUCSON — A Tucson police officer on Tuesday shot and wounded a machete-wielding man who earlier engaged in threatening behavior during encounters with other people, police said.

The wounded man was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries, police told local news outlets.

According to police, the incident began at a convenience store where the man allegedly approached people in an “aggressive and confrontational manner,” prompting 911 calls to police.

Police searched for the man and located him, still armed with the machete, about a half-mile away near Flowing Wells High School, police said.

One officer shot the man after he ignored commends from police, police said.

No identities were released.