Florida appeared to have dodged a “worst-case scenario” during Hurricane Milton, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said on Thursday. Milton made landfall on Wednesday night as a Category 3 storm before passing over the state.

Milton, which formed in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico, strengthened to a Category 5 hurricane with 185 mph winds several days before it slammed into Florida’s Gulf Coast about 50 miles south of Tampa. But as the storm neared Florida, the National Hurricane Center downgraded the system to a Category 3.

“We will better understand the extent of the damage as the day progresses,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said. “The storm was significant but thankfully, this was not the worst-case scenario.” Read the full story here›

TD Bank pleaded guilty on Oct. 10 to conspiring to violate the Bank Secrecy Act and money laundering, agreeing to pay about $3 billion in penalties as part of a historic settlement involving multiple regulatory agencies.

TD Bank admitted to having “long-term, pervasive, and systemic deficiencies” in its anti-money-laundering (AML) policies, procedures, and controls from January 2014 to October 2023, according to a Department of Justice statement.

These failures allowed criminal networks, including drug traffickers dealing in fentanyl and other narcotics, to launder more than $670 million through the bank’s accounts over several years. “The bank enabled drug trafficking,” Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo said. Read the full story here›

Latin America is increasingly heading in an autocratic direction as a result of influence from China, Iran, and Russia, and becoming more inhospitable to the United States, argues analyst Joseph Humire, the executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society.

In 2009, the Chinese Community Party paid $350 million to join the Inter-American Development Bank. From there, China has been busy establishing dual-use infrastructure throughout the region, from deep water ports to satellite tracking stations. In the region, Venezuela is the most indebted to China, owing nearly $60 billion.

“If you think China is simply doing this for economic ambitions, you're not reading the tea leaves on how China operates. They're buying a country. They're buying the sovereignty of this country,” he said in an interview with Jan Jekielek on American Thought Leaders. Read the full story here›

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