Amna Nawaz:
Tornadoes tore across Arkansas yesterday, some of them with flashes of bright light as they ripped through power lines. This morning, in places like Indiana, the damage was in full view. Trees crashed through roofs and splayed across front yards.
Elsewhere, like in Southeast Michigan, lingering floodwaters left cars partly submerged. The National Weather Service says more than 40 million Americans from Texas to Ohio could see catastrophic, potentially historic flash floods through the weekend. Some areas could see well over a foot of rain.
Turning overseas now, the death toll in Myanmar from last week’s deadly earthquake has climbed to more than 3,100 today, according to the military-run government. Officials say that hundreds of people remain missing, though the number is feared to be much higher, this as the head of Myanmar’s military regime made a rare visit to neighboring Thailand today, which is also reeling from Friday’s quake.
General Min Aung Hlaing, who has been shunned by the West for overthrowing his country’s democratically elected government in 2021, will try to garner international support. The U.N. says more than three million people in Myanmar had been displaced due to armed conflict even before the quake hit.
Now to the Middle East, where over 100 more Palestinians across the Gaza Strip are dead tonight in one of the deadliest single days since fighting resumed between Israel and Hamas. At least 27 of those killed were sheltering at a school in Northern Gaza when Israeli strikes rained down.
Our producer on the ground reports that family members of Hamas leaders appeared to be the intended targets. Overnight, airstrikes killed at least 55 more people, mostly in the south.
Meanwhile, all of this happened as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received red carpet treatment with full military honors in Hungary. Netanyahu, who faces allegations of war crimes in Gaza, traveled in defiance of an International Criminal Court warrant for his arrest. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban says his country, once a party to the ICC, will no longer recognize it. He called it a political tool. And the court criticized the move.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is in Brussels tonight attending a NATO meeting where he hoped to dispel any doubts about the U.S. commitment to the alliance. Before meeting with other foreign ministers, he stood alongside Secretary-General Mark Rutte and was crystal clear about NATO, despite criticism and mixed signals from President Trump.
Marco Rubio, U.S. Secretary of State: The United States is as active in NATO as it has ever been. And some of this hysteria and hyperbole that I see in the global media and some domestic media in the United States about NATO is unwarranted. The United States — President Trump has made clear he supports NATO. We’re going to remain in NATO.
