By Patricia Mazzei and Mary Williams Walsh 24 January 2018 (The New York Times) – The devastation wrought by Hurricane Maria has made Puerto Rico’s already dire financial situation even worse: The island’s leaders acknowledged late Wednesday that they will not be able to pay down any portion of their more than $70 billion debt […]
By Nicole Carr 2 February 2018 ST. THOMAS, Virgin Islands (WSB-TV) – A trip along the winding mountain countryside in Saint Thomas reveals scenes that are not scattered across network news shows anymore. Tarps cover the homes of people fortunate enough to have a promise of federal aid. Music equipment that used to amplify voices […]
By John D. Sutter 1 February 2018 On the path of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico (CNN) – Each morning before work, Héctor Luis Rodríguez Nieves showers with a garden hose behind his tattered home. He uses the jungle as his restroom.He sleeps on a mattress in what once was the kitchen. Above the bed, […]
By Anthony Faiola; Photos by Salwan Georges 16 January 2018 (The Washington Post) – Months after Hurricane Irma blazed its destructive path through the Caribbean, the once vibrant community on the tiny island of Barbuda is still struggling to rebuild paradise lost. Before the September storm, Barbuda was a forgotten Eden about the physical size […]
By Caitlin Werrell and Francesco Femia 29 January 2018 (The Center for Climate and Security) – On Friday, the U.S. Department of Defense’s Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics released a comprehensive new survey of climate change-related risks to military infrastructure worldwide. The study, prosaically titled “Climate-Related Risk to […]
By Peter Richards 30 December 2017 BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC) – In 2017, the Caribbean felt the full brunt of climate change with a warning that current trends indicate that there will be no respite. Within a two-week period, Hurricanes Irma and Maria brought home the reality of the impact of climate change as they churned […]
By Megan Janetsky and Geoff West 24 January 2018 (Center for Responsive {Politics) – The small Montana energy company that botched the critical rebuilding of Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria spent $150,000 lobbying Congress last quarter amid investigations, a disclosure report filed Friday shows.The fourth quarter lobbying report shows that Whitefish paid […]
31 January 2018 (Orlando Sentinel) – After a flurry of bipartisan complaints from Florida members of Congress and others, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said its plan to end distributing food and water in Puerto Rico would not take effect on Wednesday after all. “Provision of those commodities will continue,” spokesman William Booher told National […]
By Ray Sanchez, Khushbu Shah, and Leyla Santiago 30 January 2018 (CNN) – More than four months after Hurricane Maria battered Puerto Rico, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is halting new shipments of food and water to the island, an agency official with direct knowledge of the plan told CNN on Tuesday. The island government […]
By Daniel Bases, with additional reporting by Nick Brown and Jessica Resnick-Ault; Editing by Leslie Adler and Clive McKeef 22 January 2018 NEW YORK (Reuters) – Puerto Rico’s governor said on Monday he intends to sell off its troubled power utility to the private sector, saying the process could take roughly 18 months to complete.The […]
