An intensifying Tropical Storm Fred struck the Florida Panhandle Monday afternoon, making landfall at 3:15 p.m. ET, with a damaging coastal storm surge, high winds and heavy rains that could extend all the way north into the Mid-Atlantic region.
The big picture: Meanwhile, poorly organized tropical depression Grace continues to dump rain across Haiti and the Dominican Republic, complicating earthquake relief efforts in Haiti. It appears destined to enter the Gulf of Mexico.
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin has filed a complaint in federal court against NASA over the agency's decision to award SpaceX a contract to build a spacecraft that will carry astronauts to the Moon's surface as part of the Artemis program.
Why it matters: The complaint is a continuation of Blue Origin's campaign against NASA's awarding of the $2.89 billion contract to SpaceX, which Bezos' company disputed with the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) earlier this year.
The death toll from last week's severe flooding and mudslides in northern Turkey has risen to at least 70, with 47 people still unaccounted for, AP reports.
The big picture: Torrential rains in the Black Sea coastal provinces of Bartin, Kastamonu, Sinop and Samsun on Wednesday caused flooding and mudslides that destroyed homes and buildings — prompting more than 2,400 people to be evacuated across the region.
Grace weakened to a tropical depression on Sunday, but the threat of flooding and mudslides remains for earthquake-devastated Haiti.
Threat level: Grace was forecast to bring up to 10 inches of rainfall to Haiti and the Dominican Republic by Tuesday, per a National Hurricane Center advisory Monday morning. Its effects were expected to bring heavy rainfall to Florida later this week — which also faces the threat of a restrengthened Tropical Storm Fred.
Heavy rains across Japan triggered a mudslide and flooding on Sunday, as almost 2 million people were under evacuation orders, per the BBC.
Details: Rescuers found three of the eight people the mudslide had buried in the central Japanese prefecture of Nagano on Sunday, but three others were presumed dead, AP reports.
A man was stabbed and a journalist said he was assaulted during a protest against COVID-19 vaccinations outside Los Angeles' City Hall on Saturday.
Driving the news: A fight broke out after several hundred demonstrators rallied outside the City Hall and a small group of counterprotesters gathered nearby about 2pm local time, per the Los Angeles Times.
