Hurricane Helene resulted in deaths of at least 84 people. A single county in North Carolina reported 30 deaths over the weekend. Buncombe County, which includes the mountain city of Asheville, North Carolina, reported 30 people killed due to Hurricane Helene, pushing the overall death toll to at least 84 people across several states.

Helene made landfall late Sept. 26 as a Category 4 hurricane along a largely undeveloped expanse of pine trees and salt marshes on Florida’s Big Bend coast, before it weakened to become a tropical storm hours later. The storm produced far-reaching effects across much of the southern United States, producing flooding and tornadoes several hundred miles away.

In North Carolina, Helene’s heavy rains in the state’s western mountains caused massive flooding and mudslides in the Asheville region, cutting off most communication and making roads impassable. President Joe Biden on Sept. 29 approved the declaration of a federal major disaster in North Carolina and Florida. Read the full story here›

Federal immigration authorities have revealed that more than 13,000 illegal immigrants convicted of homicide are currently not in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and could be roaming free in the United States.

The data was disclosed in a Sept. 25 letter from ICE deputy director Patrick Lechleitner to Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), who issued a statement calling the situation “beyond disturbing.”

“The truth is clear—illegal immigrants with a criminal record are coming into our country,” Gonzales said.

Lechleitner’s letter to Gonzales indicates that as of July 21, there were 662,566 illegal immigrants with criminal histories on the agency’s national docket. Of these, 435,719 have been convicted of crimes, while another 226,847 face pending criminal charges. Read the full story here›

The Chinese military is launching “multiple waves” of missiles inland in China, following the Chinese Rocket Force’s first test-fire of an intercontinental ballistic missile since 1980, just days ago. Beginning at about 6:50 a.m. local time, the waves of missiles were fired in Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Qinghai, and Xinjiang, about 1,200 miles from Taiwan.

The Taiwanese Defense Ministry stated that it was “continuously monitoring relevant developments, and air defense forces have maintained a high level of vigilance and strengthened their alert.” The ministry had earlier criticized the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for launching the ICBM into the Pacific with little notice to its neighbors, warning the international community that the CCP’s renewed military activity was creating instability in the region.

Last week, the ministry detected 29 aircraft joining Chinese warships for war games and another instance of 43 Chinese military aircraft operating around Taiwan, half of them moving through the Bashi Channel that separates Taiwan from the Philippines. Read the full story here›

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