Oil seeped from storage tanks on Grand Bahama Island on Friday following storm damage from Hurricane Dorian, the AP reports.
Our thought bubble, via Axios' Amy Harder: The oil spill is a stark and tragic reminder of the risk we face by using polluting and inflammable energy types, which are inherently more dangerous in extreme weather than, say, wind turbines.
Hurricane Dorian’s outer most winds, blowing between 39 and 73 mph, had at most a 20% chance of reaching Alabama between Tuesday, August 27 and Monday, Sept. 2, NOAA said in an unsigned statement.
Why it matters: NOAA's statement confirms President Trump's weeklong insistence that he was correct about the storm threatening Alabama. The Birmingham office of the National Weather Service refuted the president's comments in a tweet on Sept. 1. NOAA, in their Friday statement, said the Birmingham office's tweet was “inconsistent with probabilities from the best forecast products available at the time.”
The Dorian death toll in the Bahamas officially has reached 30 people — but hundreds are still missing, and authorities said that figure could soar.
The impact: The final death count will be "staggering," Health Minister Duane Sands told local radio: "[T]he public needs to prepare for unimaginable information about the death toll and the human suffering," per the BBC.
The $3 million Breakthrough Prizes were awarded to researchers working at the forefront of math, physics and life sciences — including the scientists behind the first-ever photo taken of a black hole.
Why it matters: Scientists often work on the fringes of popular consciousness, but prizes like these are designed to help bring their discoveries to the public by celebrating their accomplishments.
The Pentagon is deferring $400 million in Hurricane Maria recovery projects in Puerto Rico so the funds can instead go toward construction of President Trump's border wall, a Defense Department list published Wednesday shows.
Why it matters: Puerto Rico declared bankruptcy in 2017 amid "the biggest government financial collapse in United States history," and it's still struggling to recover from Hurricane Maria. The funding had been allocated for 10 military construction projects in the U.S. territory.
