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Hurricane Melissa made landfall this morning in Cuba, after hitting Jamaica on Tuesday, causing damage and electrical blackouts across the island, and killing at least three people. The Category 5 storm also killed three people in Haiti and one in the Dominican Republic. Jamaica saw winds of up to 185 miles per hour, making the storm the strongest to hit land in the Atlantic since Hurricane Dorian in 2019. Jamaican authorities said on Tuesday that a damage assessment was not yet available, but many roads remain flooded or blocked with debris. Melissa is set to cross Cuba today, including the country’s second most populous city, Santiago de Cuba. Cuba has so far evacuated roughly 750,000 people. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced this morning that its ceasefire with Hamas resumed at 10 a.m. local time, following a series of air strikes the IDF launched against Hamas targets on Tuesday. The strikes were on infrastructure in southern Gaza and came in response to Hamas violating the ceasefire agreement by not returning any bodies of deceased Israeli hostages in more than a week—with 13 still in Gaza—and attacking Israeli troops in Rafah yesterday afternoon, killing one soldier. Hamas claimed earlier on Tuesday to have retrieved two more bodies of deceased Israeli hostages, but has yet to hand over the remains. Vice President J.D. Vance acknowledged the Rafah attack carried out by “Hamas or somebody else within Gaza” was a blip in the ceasefire, but he maintained it would not crumble. “The ceasefire is holding,” he told reporters on Tuesday. “That doesn’t mean that there aren’t going to be little skirmishes here and there.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Tuesday that the U.S. military launched air strikes targeting four suspected drug trafficking boats off the western coasts of Central and South America, killing 14 people. Hegseth claimed there was one survivor, who had been rescued, and that U.S. intelligence had identified the four boats as being operated by “narco-terrorists,” traveling along known drug trading routes. “These narco-terrorists have killed more Americans than Al-Qaeda,” the defense secretary tweeted on Tuesday, “and they will be treated the same.” The federal government shutdown continues, with the Senate voting on Tuesday against a House-passed, Republican-backed temporary government funding bill. This was the 13th time the legislation failed to pass in the chamber. On Monday, Everett Kelley—the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees—called for both parties to come to terms on a government funding bill immediately, but House Democrats—publicly and privately—indicated they would not back off their demands and favor the GOP-backed bill. Federal air traffic controllers missed their first paycheck on Tuesday, and 25 states plus Washington, D.C., sued the administration on Tuesday, arguing that the government has a legal obligation to distribute Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, after the administration said the benefits would be suspended on November 1. Also, a federal district judge issued a preliminary injunction, extending her previous order that temporarily barred the White House from firing federal employees during the shutdown. The Senate also voted 52-48 on Tuesday to end an emergency declaration that justified President Donald Trump’s 50 percent tariff on most imports from Brazil, with five Republican senators joining Democrats. In July, Trump imposed the tariff, citing trials of Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro over charges that he attempted to organize a coup to remain in power, which Trump described as a “Witch Hunt.” But the House of Representatives is unlikely to vote or advance the bill in the near future.
