What happened
A week of relentless storms caused widespread destruction in the Midwest and killed at least seven people in Indiana and another one in Ohio, officials said yesterday. President Donald Trump on Saturday approved Indiana Gov. Mike Braun’s disaster emergency declaration for the entire state. In Hawaii, Hurricane Lala grazed the state over the weekend, battering the islands with heavy rains and winds, but did not make landfall. 

Who said what
Lala “continued to punish” Hawaii yesterday with “strong gusts and pounding rain, reaching a total of nearly three feet” in places, The Associated Press said. The Ka’u District on the southeastern side of the Big Island, “appeared to suffer the worst damage,” The New York Times said. There were no confirmed deaths, Gov. Josh Green (D) said. “But boy, a lot of work ahead.”

Days of heavy rains in Indiana “caused significant flooding along the White River,” including in Indianapolis, The Wall Street Journal said. The National Weather Service in Indianapolis “had never issued a flash flood emergency — its most dire flood alert — until Wednesday,” the Times said. “It issued the warning three times that day.” 

What next?
As the Midwest shifts to recovery efforts, the “heavy rainfall has moved eastward” to the central Appalachians, the Journal said, “bringing the threat of flash flooding to West Virginia” this morning.

What happened
Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s Mideast envoy and son-in-law, reportedly met yesterday with Hamas political leader Khalil al-Hayya in Egypt, as the White House and regional allies attempt to revive the Trump-backed proposal for peace in Gaza. Representatives from Egypt, Turkey, Qatar and Trump’s Board of Peace also attended. 

Who said what
Trump said last month that Hamas had agreed to his Gaza road map, but the plan “​​appeared to hit a dead end” when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly rejected it, The New York Times said. Hamas leaders yesterday “reaffirmed their commitment to disarm and demilitarize” as Israel withdraws from Gaza, Axios said. Kushner “used the rare direct meeting to press Hamas for tangible steps,” warning that “Israel doesn’t trust the group to follow through.”

Hamas told mediators it was waiting for Israel to agree to the plan so they could “work out a timetable for implementation,” The Associated Press said. Instead, “Israel has resumed airstrikes in the past few days,” Reuters said. 

What next?
Kushner and Board of Peace members Nickolay Mladenov and Tony Blair are set to meet with Netanyahu today. The Israeli leader “faces a challenging election on Oct. 27” with a “coalition that includes ministers taking a harsh line on Gaza,” the AP said, “and it’s not clear whether he will take decisive steps on the ceasefire before then.” 

There’s trouble brewing in the water. The war with Iran has stranded more than 1,500 ships in the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, since February. While closure of the strait has led to severe economic consequences, there is also a burgeoning ecological crisis: Invasive species growing on the hulls of the trapped ships could soon voyage across the globe.

There’s a “high likelihood” that the idle ships in the Strait of Hormuz will “facilitate the extensive spread of economically and ecologically damaging invasive species as they reenter the global shipping network,” according to a study published in the journal Biological Invasions. Ships “normally only remain at anchor in a harbor for one to three days,” said The Guardian. During the current block of the Strait of Hormuz, many vessels have “remained stationary for months, allowing dense marine communities to establish themselves.”

The marine organisms of the Middle East “can withstand extremes,” Mario Tamburri, a professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and the study’s lead author, said to USA Today. They are “tolerant organisms, which makes them good candidates for invasions when they go to a new location.” 

Marine invasive species “have profound ecological and economic impacts on coastlines across the globe,” said Carolyn Tepolt, a biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and co-author of the study. They are “extremely difficult, if not impossible, to eradicate once they become established.”