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Hurricane Erin Intensifies to Category 3 Storm as it Nears Caribbean

This satellite image provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows Hurricane Erin forming in the Atlantic Ocean - AFP
This satellite image provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows Hurricane Erin forming in the Atlantic Ocean - AFP
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Hurricane Erin Intensifies to Category 3 Storm as it Nears Caribbean

This satellite image provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows Hurricane Erin forming in the Atlantic Ocean - AFP
This satellite image provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows Hurricane Erin forming in the Atlantic Ocean - AFP

Hurricane Erin strengthened rapidly to a Category 3 storm early Saturday as it churned towards the Caribbean, with a warning issued that flash floods and landslides were possible.

The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said the storm's maximum sustained winds had increased to 120 miles (193 kilometers) per hour by 0900 GMT, making it a major hurricane, AFP reported.

Erin, the first hurricane of the Atlantic season this year, was located about 170 miles (275 kilometers) northeast of Anguilla in the northern Leeward Islands, an area that includes the US and British Virgin Islands.

"Continued rapid strengthening is expected, and Erin is forecast to become a Category 4 hurricane later today," the NHC said in its latest bulletin on Saturday.

Tropical storm watches remained in effect for St. Martin, St. Barthelmy and Sint Maarten, with tropical storm conditions possible within 12 hours.

The NHC discontinued a tropical storm watch for Anguilla as the storm moved away from the island.

The hurricane's center is expected to move over the weekend just north of the northern Leeward Islands, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

The storm could drench the islands with as much as six inches (15 centimeters) of rain in isolated areas, the NHC said.

It also warned of "locally considerable flash and urban flooding, along with landslides or mudslides".

Swells generated by Erin will affect portions of the northern Leeward Islands, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Hispaniola and the Turks and Caicos Islands through the weekend.

Those swells will spread to the Bahamas, Bermuda and the US East Coast early next week, creating "life-threatening surf and rip currents," the NHC said.

The hurricane is forecast to turn northward by late Sunday. While meteorologists have expressed confidence that Erin will remain well off the US coastline, they said the storm could still cause dangerous waves and erosion in places such as North Carolina.

The Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June until late November, is expected to be more intense than normal, US meteorologists predict.

Several powerful storms wreaked havoc in the region last year, including Hurricane Helene, which killed more than 200 people in the southeastern United States.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration -- which operates the NHC -- has been subject to budget cuts and layoffs as part of President Donald Trump's plans to greatly reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy, leading to fears of lapses in storm forecasting.

Climate change -- namely, rising sea temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels -- has increased both the possibility of the development of more intense storms, and their more rapid intensification, scientists say.

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Varieties

NASA Delivers Harsh Assessment of Botched Boeing Starliner Test Flight

NASA duo Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were stuck on the ISS for nine months. Handout / NASA TV/AFP/File
NASA duo Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were stuck on the ISS for nine months. Handout / NASA TV/AFP/File
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NASA Delivers Harsh Assessment of Botched Boeing Starliner Test Flight

NASA duo Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were stuck on the ISS for nine months. Handout / NASA TV/AFP/File
NASA duo Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were stuck on the ISS for nine months. Handout / NASA TV/AFP/File

NASA on Thursday blamed what it called engineering vulnerabilities in Boeing's Starliner spacecraft along with internal agency mistakes in a sharply critical report assessing a botched mission that left two astronauts stranded in space.

The US space agency labeled the 2024 test flight of the Starliner capsule a "Type A" mishap -- the same classification as the deadly Challenger and Columbia shuttle disasters -- a category that reflects the "potential for a significant mishap," it said.

The failures left a pair of NASA astronauts stranded aboard the International Space Station for nine months in a mission that captured global attention and became a political flashpoint.

"Starliner has design and engineering deficiencies that must be corrected, but the most troubling failure revealed by this investigation is not hardware. It's decision-making and leadership," said NASA administrator Jared Isaacman in a briefing.

"If left unchecked," he said, this mismanagement "could create a culture incompatible with human spaceflight."

The top space official said the investigation found that a concern for the reputation of Boeing's Starliner clouded an earlier internal probe into the incident.

"Programmatic advocacy exceeded reasonable bounds and place the mission, the crew and America's space program at risk in ways that were not fully understood at the time," Isaacman said.

He said Starliner currently "is less reliable for crew survival than other crewed vehicles" and that "NASA will not fly another crew on Starliner until technical causes are understood and corrected" and a problematic propulsion system is fixed.

But the administrator insisted that "NASA will continue to work with Boeing, as we do all of our partners that are undertaking test flights."

In a statement, Boeing said it has "made substantial progress on corrective actions for technical challenges we encountered and driven significant cultural changes across the team that directly align with the findings in the report."

- 'We failed them' -

Isaacman also had harsh words for internal conduct at NASA.

"We managed the contract. We accepted the vehicle, we launched the crew to space. We made decisions from docking through post-mission actions," he told journalists.

"A considerable portion of the responsibility and accountability rests here."

In June 2024 Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams embarked on what was meant to be an eight-to-14-day mission. But this turned into nine months after propulsion problems emerged in orbit and the Starliner spacecraft was deemed unfit to fly them back.

The ex-Navy pilots were reassigned to the NASA-SpaceX Crew-9 mission. A Dragon spacecraft flew to the ISS that September with a team of two, rather than the usual four, to make room for the stranded pair.

The duo, both now retired, were finally able to arrive home safely in March 2025.

"They have so much grace, and they're so competent, the two of them, and we failed them," NASA associate administrator Amit Kshatriya told Thursday's briefing.

"The agency failed them."

Kshatriya said the details of the report were "hard to hear" but that "transparency" was the only path forward.

"This is not about pointing fingers," he said. "It's about making sure that we are holding each other accountable."

Both Boeing and SpaceX were commissioned to handle missions to the ISS more than a decade ago.

Varieties

Abandoned Baby Monkey Finds Comfort in Stuffed Orangutan

A baby Japanese macaque named Punch sits next to a stuffed orangutan at Ichikawa City Zoo, in Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, February 19, 2026. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
A baby Japanese macaque named Punch sits next to a stuffed orangutan at Ichikawa City Zoo, in Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, February 19, 2026. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
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Abandoned Baby Monkey Finds Comfort in Stuffed Orangutan

A baby Japanese macaque named Punch sits next to a stuffed orangutan at Ichikawa City Zoo, in Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, February 19, 2026. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
A baby Japanese macaque named Punch sits next to a stuffed orangutan at Ichikawa City Zoo, in Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, February 19, 2026. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

At a zoo outside Tokyo, the monkey enclosure has become a must-see attraction thanks to an inseparable pair: Punch, a baby Japanese macaque, and his stuffed orangutan companion.

Punch's mother abandoned the macaque when he was born seven months ago at the Ichikawa City Zoo and when an onlooker noticed and alerted zookeepers, they swung into action.

Japanese baby macaques typically cling to their mothers to build muscle strength and for a ‌sense of security, ‌so Punch needed a swift intervention, zookeeper ‌Kosuke ⁠Shikano said. The keepers ⁠experimented with substitutes including rolled-up towels and other stuffed animals before settling on the orange, bug-eyed orangutan, sold by Swedish furniture brand IKEA.

“This stuffed animal has relatively long hair and several easy places to hold," Shikano said. "We thought that its resemblance to a monkey might help ⁠Punch integrate back into the troop later ‌on, and that’s why ‌we chose it."

Punch has rarely been seen without it since, ‌dragging the cuddly toy everywhere even though it is ‌bigger than him, and delighting fans who have flocked to the zoo since videos of the two went viral, Reuters reported.

“Seeing Punch on social media, abandoned by his parents but still trying ‌so hard, really moved me," said 26-year-old nurse Miyu Igarashi. "So when I got the ⁠chance to ⁠meet up with a friend today, I suggested we go see Punch together.”

Shikano thinks Punch's mother abandoned him because of the extreme heat in July when she gave birth.

Punch has had some differences with the other monkeys as he has tried to communicate with them, but zookeepers say that is part of the learning process and he is steadily integrating with the troop.

"I think there will come a day when he no longer needs his stuffed toy," Shikano said.

Varieties

Trump Says he’s Ordering Release of Data on UFOs, Aliens

US President Donald Trump speaks aboard Air Force One (AP)
US President Donald Trump speaks aboard Air Force One (AP)
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Trump Says he’s Ordering Release of Data on UFOs, Aliens

US President Donald Trump speaks aboard Air Force One (AP)
US President Donald Trump speaks aboard Air Force One (AP)

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday he is ordering federal agencies to begin “identifying and releasing” government files related to UFOs and aliens, a move sought for decades by some Americans.

“Based on the tremendous interest shown, I will be directing the Secretary of War, and other relevant Departments and Agencies, to begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs),” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.

Trump claimed earlier Thursday that his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, made classified information public when he confirmed the existence of extraterrestrial life.

“He gave classified information. He's not supposed to be doing that,” he told reporters on Air Force One. “He made a big mistake.”

During an ⁠interview with podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen released ‌on Saturday, Obama was asked if aliens were real.

“They're real, but I haven't seen them, and they're not being kept in ... Area 51. There's no underground facility unless there's this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States,” Obama said.

Area ⁠51 is a classified Air Force facility in Nevada that fringe theorists have speculated holds alien bodies and a crashed spaceship. CIA archives released in 2013 said it was a test site for top-secret spy planes.

“I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!” Obama said in an Instagram post on Sunday.

In the post, Obama explained his belief that aliens exist by saying the statistical odds of life beyond Earth were high because the universe is so ⁠vast. He added that the chances of extraterrestrial life visiting Earth were low given the distance.

Following his comments ⁠on Obama, Trump added that he had not seen evidence that aliens exist, saying, “I don't know ⁠if they're ⁠real or not.”