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When The New Yorker’s David Kirkpatrick set out to determine just how much Donald Trump and his family have profited from his time as president, experts told him the exact figures were unknowable. So Kirkpatrick crunched the numbers himself, and the scale he reported is staggering: Since entering the White House in 2017, Kirkpatrick says the Trump family has reportedly reaped an astonishing $3.4 billion.

According to Kirkpatrick’s new report in The New Yorker, the profits stretch across the entire Trump family network. Much of this wealth would have been unimaginable without the presidency. A $2 billion Saudi investment flowed into Jared Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners, while Emirati and Qatari investors contributed billions more, as recently as last year. (Kushner has denied that investments in his company represent a conflict of interest.)

As Kirkpatrick notes, after doing the math, it’s reasonable to assume that Kushner could personally pocket between half and two-thirds of Affinity’s fees over the next 10 years.

There’s also the luxury jet given to the president by the emir of Qatar, which Trump has said will be donated to his presidential library after he leaves office, and at least five separate crypto ventures marketed with Trump’s name and political brand. But that’s just scratching the surface.

Start with Mar-a-Lago. Once a $100,000 club, Trump began sharply raising the initiation fee after the 2016 election. Kirkpatrick notes that, as of last fall, it was set to increase to a whopping $1 million. Kirkpatrick estimates Mar-a-Lago alone generated at least $125 million in additional profits directly tied to Trump’s political rise.

Then there’s Trump merch. He’s the first presidential candidate to run a private online store funneling supporters’ money straight into his pocket. Kirkpatrick reported that nearly $28 million has flowed in from MAGA hats, sneakers, picture books and even that infamous “God Bless the USA” Bible.

Don’t forget all those legal bills. Under U.S. law, campaign funds can’t cover a candidate’s personal expenses — but political action committees can. According to Kirkpatrick, Trump found a loophole by using PACs as his own personal piggy bank for funding his lawyers. By Kirkpatrick’s estimate, more than $100 million in supporter contributions have gone to defending Trump against lawsuits and criminal charges.

When you add up the money from Mar-a-Lago, merch and money spent for legal fees by PACs, Trump has reportedly raked in about $253 million — and that’s before you count the foreign money. From Kushner’s money from the Saudis, to steady business from gulf monarchies and foreign governments such as Vietnam, Trump’s businesses have become influence pipelines for despots and states eager to win him over.

“The claims that this President has profited from his time in office are absolutely absurd,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to The New Yorker. Leavitt said Trump had actually sacrificed “hundreds of millions of dollars” by choosing to serve as president and not work on his businesses full time.

It’s a fundamental rewiring of what public service means. Once upon a time, Americans worried about politicians being bought. Under Trump, the most powerful office in the country is up for sale.

But it doesn’t stop at self-enrichment. As The Wall Street Journal reported, Trump is reshaping the U.S. economy into something that looks like “state capitalism with American characteristics.” Like in China, it’s a system where the state — or in this case, Trump — rewards friends and punishes enemies.

The president has steered billion-dollar deals, pushed out CEOs and, as the Journal points out, extracted $1.5 trillion in investment pledges from Japan, the European Union and South Korea, which he claims he will personally direct, though no legal mechanism for doing so appears to exist.

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But lawyers for the Justice Department signaled that the administration could not, or would not, use those funds despite the looming shortfall.

In court filings and oral arguments, the Trump administration maintained that there were legal obstacles to transferring existing money to SNAP, technical hurdles in remitting payments quickly and other budgetary constraints to consider at the Agriculture Department, where the funds would originate.

Throughout the Thursday hearing, Judge Indira Talwani of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts frequently expressed skepticism about the administration’s claims. At one point, the judge said she saw no reason the government could not tap its own emergency reserves, given the nature and duration of the fiscal crisis.

“Congress has put money in an emergency fund,” she said. “It’s hard for me to understand how this isn’t an emergency, when there’s no money, and a lot of people are needing their SNAP benefits.”

Judge Talwani later said she believed it was up to the Trump administration to “figure out how you’re going to stretch that emergency money for now.”

The administration’s refusal to act underscored its broader strategy over the course of a government shutdown still with no end in sight. Throughout, President Trump has been willing to reprogram the federal budget, but only selectively, safeguarding programs at the heart of his political agenda while leaving some Americans to face the risk of real harm.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

For the roughly 42 million Americans who participate in the food stamp program, the immediate threat is hunger and financial hardship, with SNAP benefits set to disappear starting on Nov. 1. The benefits average around $187 a month, costing the federal government about $8 billion monthly, which lawmakers replenish every year as part of the budget process.

SNAP also maintains a reserve in case of emergencies or shortfalls, and many Democrats and Republicans had encouraged the Trump administration to tap that fund — totaling about $5 billion — in the event the shutdown entered November. Initially, the Agriculture Department signaled publicly that it would indeed use this contingency money to prevent any interruption to food stamp benefits.

But the Trump administration abruptly reversed course this month, saying that it could not legally drain the available reserves, except in cases of natural disasters. It also warned states that it would not reimburse them if they tried to finance food stamps on their own, though some local officials have forged ahead anyway.

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It remained unclear if, when, or how much of the money would reach the roughly 42 million people who depend on it to buy groceries. Credit…Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

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People taking popular new weight-loss drugs such as Wegovy and Zepbound often celebrate the number of pounds they shed and the related health benefits, but many doctors at weight-loss clinics are noticing a puzzling response in certain individuals. Andres J. Acosta, a gastroenterologist at the Mayo Clinic, says some of his patients have expressed frustration and disappointment as they watch friends or colleagues drop significant weight while taking the drugs but lose little or no weight themselves—even when they adhere to the medication’s instructions perfectly.

“They see themselves as a failure,” Acosta says. But the drugs’ effectiveness is likely outside of their direct control—scientists think their nonresponse could be related to what’s driving their excess weight in the first place.

About 12 percent of Americans have reported using one of the new drugs—known as glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists—for weight loss. Real-world data show that as many as one in four people on these drugs are “nonresponders,” which many experts define as those who lose less than 5 percent of their body weight after three months of taking a GLP-1 drug. (Five percent is the threshold above which people start to see improvements in health.) Clinical trials funded by Novo Nordisk on semaglutide, the active ingredient in the company’s weight-loss drug Wegovy and diabetes medication Ozempic, found that up to 23 percent of people fell into the nonresponder category. In Novo Nordisk’s latest trial, giving people a higher semaglutide dose didn’t decrease the proportion of nonresponders. To better understand why people show such big differences in their response to these medications, scientists have started investigating their underlying biology.

No two people respond exactly the same way to any weight-loss approach—whether it involves medication, surgery or lifestyle changes such as diet and exercise—because obesity is a complex phenomenon. GLP-1 drugs cause weight loss primarily by making people feel full. Variations in biological pathways that influence that mechanism—and that lead to excess weight or obesity—may make some people more likely to benefit from the drugs than others.

Researchers already know some factors that may influence how well someone responds to the drugs. Overall, people with type 2 diabetes who are taking the medication tend to lose less weight than those taking it for weight loss, and men, on average, lose less weight than women. But researchers suspect genetics may also play a role.

A small fraction of people with obesity carry rare, single-gene mutations that cause what is known as “monogenic obesity,” which leads to health issues at an early age. But for most people, obesity is thought to be polygenic, meaning it can originate from thousands of genetic variants. Environmental, biological, and behavioral factors also play a role, says Ruth Loos, a geneticist specializing in obesity and metabolism at the University of Copenhagen.

Acosta and his colleagues have worked on identifying four distinct biological phenotypes, or traits, of people with excess weight that may influence how they respond to the new weight-loss drugs. For example, some people have a “hungry brain” phenotype and need an abnormally high number of calories to feel full compared to others. On the other hand, people with a “hungry gut” phenotype may become full quickly but are hungry again soon after. The team’s latest study, published in August, found that some people felt full after consuming 140 calories in one sitting, whereas others needed more than 2,000. Although factors such as sex, body composition, and hormone levels helped explain this difference, genetics also seemed to play an important role.

Acosta and his team developed a score that combined genetic and physiological data to predict these differences in the number of calories needed to feel satiated. Using this score, the researchers found that people with the “hungry brain” phenotype tended to respond poorly to liraglutide, an early-generation GLP-1 drug, but they did better on phentermine-topiramate, a non-GLP-1 drug that acts on appetite suppression in the brain but is controversial for its cardiovascular risks. On the other hand, those with a “hungry gut” phenotype responded better to liraglutide. Acosta, also a founder and stockholder of an obesity precision medicine company involved in this research, says it might be because GLP-1 drugs prolong feelings of fullness after meals. The team saw similar results with semaglutide in unpublished results presented at the American Gastroenterological Association conference last year.

Other research groups are exploring specific genes that might influence GLP-1 drug response. Scientists at the Cleveland Clinic are investigating neurobeachin, a gene that appears to influence how people lose weight on GLP-1 drugs. The amount of variation—and the specific types of variations—in the neurobeachin gene can be used to create a genetic score that predicts a person’s response to the medication, says Daniel Rotroff, a precision medicine researcher at the Cleveland Clinic. In Rotroff and his colleagues’ analysis, people who had a higher score for these variations were at least 50 percent more likely than people who scored lower to not lose any weight on liraglutide. (The score was unable to predict how someone would respond to semaglutide.)

Some clues could explain why the gene might affect a person’s response to GLP-1 drugs. Variations in neurobeachin might affect how efficiently an enzyme called protein kinase A (PKA) helps the hypothalamus, a brain region that regulates appetite suppression. Because GLP-1 is known to activate PKA in other cells, genetic variations of neurobeachin may “ultimately impact how well the medication works for weight loss,” Rotroff explains.

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Once you step inside a home in Morocco, chances are you’ll be greeted with a pour of steaming, freshly made Berber whiskey. 

Despite its name, Berber whiskey doesn’t contain a drop of liquor. It’s essentially mint tea, made in a specific style exclusive to the region. It’s also known as the country’s national drink. 

Berber refers to the indigenous people of North Africa, also known as Amazigh, whose history in Morocco dates back thousands of years and predates the arrival of Islam and Arab peoples.

The nickname ‘Berber whiskey’ originated from foreign visitors,” says Mohammed Ait Belhaj, mint tea master at the Kasbah Tamadot hotel in Asni, Morocco. “[Visitors] noticed that Moroccans drink [mint] tea almost all the time, with the same enthusiasm that whiskey might be served in other cultures.” The alternate name has become endearing to locals and is now proudly used to express their affection for the drink.

Moroccans sip Berber whiskey at almost any time of day. “In the morning with breakfast, after lunch, and in the evening during family gatherings,” says Ait Belhaj. “It’s a cherished tradition and an essential part of our daily life.”

What is Berber whiskey (Moroccan mint tea)?

Berber whiskey, or Moroccan mint tea, is made from Chinese green tea (specifically gunpowder tea), fresh mint, sugar, and boiling water. It’s brewed in a Moroccan teapot with a tall, curved spout, then poured from high above to aerate the tea and create a foamy “head” of bubbles. 

There are several ways to prepare mint tea, and perfecting the process is considered an art form. For Ait Belhaj, his preferred method is using a metal teapot and heating the tea over charcoal. This approach allows the gentle heat to add depth to the tea’s flavors. Once ready, he serves the tea in small, engraved glasses.

Beyond the tea’s refreshing and comforting flavors, the drink represents so much more. “It’s a symbol of hospitality, generosity, and warmth,” says Ait Belhaj. He says that it’s rare to find oneself in a family or social gathering with no tea in sight. “It’s a way to connect, to share a moment, and to show respect to guests.”

Mint tea as a moment for conversation and sharing

Ait Belhaj has worked at Kasbah Tamadot for over 20 years. He started as a waiter at the hotel’s restaurant and then was the resort’s manager for a decade. Soon after retiring, he returned, making it his life’s mission to share and teach Morocco’s mint tea tradition to guests from around the world.

Every day, Ait Belhaj prepares tea in front of guests and shares the process from start to finish. During this demonstration, he carefully explains every ingredient and step. 

“My favorite moment is the serving itself, seeing the guests’ smiles as they taste the tea for the first time,” says Ait Belhaj. “Preparing mint tea is a bridge to discover other cultures.” The entire tea-making process allows him to learn more about the guests while sharing a taste of Moroccan history and heritage.

Kasbah Tamadot offers guests a range of meaningful mint tea experiences, from learning how to brew the tea firsthand to visiting neighboring villages and enjoying a fresh cup in the homes of Berber families.

In Morocco, sharing mint tea among friends and family is considered one of the most important rituals of the day. The time spent both making and drinking the tea is meant for conversation and sharing.

How to enjoy Moroccan-style mint tea in the U.S.

Moroccan mint tea can easily be enjoyed at home, but there are a few key steps to follow to ensure you brew an authentic pot.

First, find a Moroccan teapot with a long, curved spout. Next, gather your ingredients — green tea, sugar, mint, and boiling water. For a complete and proper presentation, serve the tea on a tray with elegant tea glasses. Ait Belhaj says the most essential tip is to use good-quality Chinese gunpowder green tea and fresh mint.

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Credit: Raquel Arocena Torres / Getty Images

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It was quite predictable that China would respond to an international dispute by weaponizing its control over rare earths, for that is what it did with Japan in 2010. Sure enough, two days after Trump announced his Liberation Day tariffs, China announced export controls for some rare earths. It then greatly expanded the export controls this month.

It soon became obvious that President Xi Jinping of China had us over a barrel, for the United States economy depends on Chinese rare earths far more than China depends on American soybeans.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says that negotiators have now “reached a substantial framework” for a trade deal between Trump and Xi. If the framework holds, it appears that the United States will cut and cancel tariffs and China will suspend its latest restrictions on rare earth mineral exports and resume soybean purchases. On the surface, that might look like a return to the status quo before the trade war, but it’s more like our surrendering and ending up in a weaker position after a conflict we started.

That’s because the dispute led China to weaponize its control of rare earths and hold this over us indefinitely as a cudgel. Indeed, a one-year suspension of export controls on rare earths would be a brilliant move by Xi, allowing Beijing to retain its leverage over the United States without causing such disruption that America and other countries would make all-out efforts to break China’s near-monopoly on the minerals.

At a conference over the weekend, I asked a large room full of international relations experts for a show of hands: Who thought the United States was winning the trade war, who believed China was winning and who thought it was too soon to tell? Overwhelmingly, people said China was winning and now holds the advantage.

Now that Trump has induced China to weaponize rare earths, we don’t have any rapid way of finding alternative sources. (Republican and Democratic presidents over the years should have worked much harder to develop rare earth mines and refineries.) Terry Lynch, the chief executive of Power Metallic Mines, a major mining company based in Canada, told me that the West needs a Manhattan Project-scale effort to develop rare earth capabilities, but that even such an all-out initiative would probably take five to seven years to get results.

“In that interim time, we’re going to have to make a deal with China,” he said.

In effect, Trump started a trade war and soon found that he was carrying a tariff to a knife fight. The trade bully unexpectedly found himself bullied, so he began to court China and make concessions.

Trump dialed back tariffs (before threatening new ones). He eased rules on exporting chips to China. He allowed TikTok to continue to operate in the United States, despite serious national security concerns. He blocked a visit to the United States by Taiwan’s president and reportedly delayed an arms sale to Taiwan. As the Center for American Progress put it, “the Trump administration’s approach to China is in a strategic free fall.”

That’s what I worry about in the coming years. Xi sees our weakness. He has established that he has the upper hand in the bilateral relationship and that Trump is the weak one who will buckle under pressure, including on security matters. And because Trump has betrayed and antagonized allies, they are less likely to work with us in resisting Beijing.

Xi may suspend his rare earths restrictions for a year, but I doubt he’ll let us build stockpiles. I suspect it will be more difficult for American companies to acquire rare earths to make fighter aircraft and submarines — and in fairness, Xi in some respects is simply doing to the United States what we have done to China.

In any case, a one-year suspension of rare earth licensing may simply be a way of reminding American leaders — and others around the world, for the restrictions were global — of their vulnerability. The aim presumably would be to induce more compliant behavior on issues Beijing cares about, from Taiwan to human rights complaints about Xinjiang and Tibet.

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By Kaya & Blank

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About four years ago, Clifford Harper, then 85, announced to his wife that he was quitting alcohol. Harper wasn’t a heavy drinker but enjoyed a good Japanese whiskey. It was the first of a series of changes Linda Kostalik saw in her husband. After he’d cleared out the liquor cabinet, Harper, a prolific academic who has authored several books, announced he was tired of writing. Next, the once daily runner quit going to the gym. Kostalik noticed he also was growing more forgetful.

The behaviors were unusual enough that, at an annual physical, the couple’s physician recommended they consult a neurologist. A battery of medical tests and brain scans revealed that Harper’s surprising actions and memory loss were the result of dementia.

Harper’s neurologist at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) asked whether he might like to enroll in a long-running study of dementia in African Americans.* The study’s focus on Black health piqued Harper’s interest, and he decided to participate for as long as he could. “I hope it will help other men like me,” Harper says.

As a Black American, Harper faces a risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias that is twice that of white Americans his age. The reasons for this disparity are still unclear, but researchers know Black Americans are particularly vulnerable to a number of confirmed risk factors, such as living in areas with higher rates of air pollution and encountering difficulties accessing healthy foods and high-quality education. Some studies suggest that experiencing racism and other forms of discrimination contributes to a higher risk of cognitive decline. Race or gender discrimination also raises a person’s risk of heart disease and, as a result, some forms of dementia.

That’s part of what prompted Harper to participate in OHSU’s study, called the African American Dementia and Aging Project (AADAPt), which was established in part to capture the unique history and experiences of Black communities in Oregon. The state’s first constitution banned nonwhite citizens from settling there. The ban was overturned by the early 1900s, and shipyard work during World War II brought an influx of Black workers to the region, but they still faced discrimination and racism in many forms. By the end of the war, racist lending practices—called redlining—led most of the Black community to live in segregated neighborhoods or those that were poor in resources needed for good health, such as parks and grocery stores.

Discrimination in the scientific world, along with other factors such as distrust of researchers, led to underrepresentation of Black communities in brain research. Even today, clinical trials for new treatments of Alzheimer’s include very few people of color. As a result, researchers and doctors are ill-equipped to understand the causes of dementia in these communities. “Not only are there health disparities around rates of Alzheimer’s, but we’ve understudied the Black population in relation to the causes,” says Andrea Rosso, an epidemiologist at the University of Pittsburgh.

Now that Alzheimer’s and some other dementias can be diagnosed early and their progress potentially slowed, figuring out who’s most vulnerable is even more critical. Diagnostic tests and interventions aren’t yet reaching all those who need them. Researchers should include historically minoritized communities in studies of these new frontiers in dementia diagnosis and treatment, says epidemiologist Beth Shaaban of the University of Pittsburgh. If adequate attention isn’t paid to diverse populations, communities that already experience disproportionate rates of dementia will be uninformed about their increased risk, how to lower it, and how to access diagnoses and care. “We are very concerned that these disparities and the rapid evolution of the new technology could leave people behind,” Shaaban says.

AADAPt and other studies aim to correct this inequity. The project seeks to understand the forces driving cognitive decline in Black Americans, identify protective factors that lead to healthy aging, and find practical solutions. The team hopes to eventually use the data to build predictive models that will catch cognitive decline early and potentially help people such as Harper access new medicines and treatments via clinical trials.

At the turn of the century, researchers projected that an aging baby boomer generation would drastically increase the incidence of Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. No treatments or protective strategies were known at the time, and the search for solutions focused largely on the tangles of proteins that jammed up brain circuits.

n the past two decades, scientists have discovered that certain drivers of Alzheimer’s may be controllable. In 2011, dementia researcher Deborah Barnes of the University of California, San Francisco, and her colleagues reported that poor education and smoking—things that could be addressed by behavioral changes and social reform—were among the greatest threats to aging brains. In a 2022 follow-up study, Barnes reported other modifiable risk factors for Alzheimer’s, such as midlife obesity and sedentary lifestyle, which can raise a person’s risk for heart disease.

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Many studies have shown that playing these games can improve people’s cognitive abilities — not just on the specific task they’re working on, but related tasks, too. That “isn’t terribly surprising,” said Adrian Owen, a professor of cognitive neuroscience and imaging at Western University in Ontario, Canada, just as someone who practiced memorizing phone numbers would probably get better at remembering dates.

Evidence that playing one type of game will make you smarter overall or help you improve on a completely different kind of task is less compelling.

“Brain training works in the sense that, if you want to learn to play the violin,” you will get better if you practice the violin, Dr. Owen said. But if you learn to play the violin, “do you get any better at the trumpet? Well, the obvious answer is no.”

Some brain training companies have said that their games can also help stave off cognitive decline, but research investigating the connection is slim. One of the few studies that has looked at this found that healthy older adults who played a game designed to improve processing speed had a 29 percent lower risk of dementia a decade later. People who played two other games, a memory task or a problem-solving task, also had decreased risk, though the benefit wasn’t significant compared to people who didn’t play any games.

Experts said this study suggested that brain training games have promise, but additional clinical trials are needed.

There is more research on how everyday hobbies and behaviors — like doing crossword puzzles, playing board games, reading books or newspapers, or learning another language — may protect against cognitive decline.

Several studies have suggested that the more often people engage in cognitively stimulating activities, the lower their risk for cognitive impairment or the later they receive a dementia diagnosis. For example, one found that, among adults who developed dementia, those who regularly completed crossword puzzles delayed the onset of memory decline by more than two years compared to those who didn’t.

If something is mentally challenging, “chances are that’s probably pretty good for your brain,” Dr. Ross said. But, she added, those studies of everyday activities are not randomized controlled trials — the gold standard in science and medicine — that would provide a definitive link between cognitively stimulating hobbies and a lowered risk of dementia. In other words, the current evidence only shows an association, not a direct cause and effect.

When asked why either of these types of activities, whether it’s a specially designed game or a crossword puzzle, might help the brain, experts mentioned the theory of “cognitive reserve.” The idea is the more “mental muscle” someone has built up, the more resilient they are to dementia, said Dr. Joe Verghese, the chair of the neurology department at the Stony Brook University Renaissance School of Medicine.

These activities likely won’t prevent the brain damage that leads to dementia. But if someone does get Alzheimer’s disease, cognitive reserve “can mask the effect and delay the onset of symptoms for a few years,” Dr. Verghese said.

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Josie Norton

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“An accountability center is involuntary, OK — you’re not coming in and out,” Randy Shumway, chairman of the state Homeless Services Board, said in an interview. Utah will end a harmful “culture of permissiveness,” he said, and guide homeless people “towards human thriving.”

While the Utah effort began before Mr. Trump’s return to office, it mirrors his pledge to move the homeless from urban cores to “tent cities” with services. And it accelerated after Mr. Trump issued an executive order in July, calling for strict camping bans and expanded power to involuntarily treat homeless people.

Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, quickly praised Mr. Trump’s order and told Utah planners to follow it.

Critics of the new plan say that confining people to a site on the city’s outskirts threatens civil liberties and warn that the promised services may not materialize. The efforts coincide with deep cuts to Medicaid, which could thwart the project’s financing.

“I’m super anxious about it,” said Jen Plumb, a physician and Democratic state senator who calls the promise of high-quality medical care “pie in the sky.”

Utah already has a severe shortage of psychiatric beds, she noted. The legislature is unlikely to fund hundreds of new beds, she said, and even if it did, there is no work force to staff them.

Without enormous new spending, she said, the center could function less as a treatment facility than “a prison or a warehouse.”

The emerging portrait of the Utah center, scheduled to open in 2027, brings to life a vow that Mr. Trump made two years ago in an extraordinary campaign video.

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The proposed site where Utah plans to place as many as 1,300 homeless people outside of Salt Lake City.

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A truck hauling “aggressive” monkeys thought to be carrying hepatitis C, herpes, and Covid-19 has overturned in Mississippi, with at least one on the loose, according to authorities.

The truck was loaded with caged Rehsus monkeys when it crashed on Interstate 59, north of Heidelberg, on Tuesday.

It was transporting the monkeys to a testing facility in Florida, Connecticut news outlet WFSB reported.

Jasper County Sheriff Randy Johnson told local outlet WAPT that 21 monkeys were on the truck, six of whom escaped.

“The monkey that got away actually crossed interstate, went out into a wooded area,” Johnson said.

The sheriff’s department initially said in a Facebook post that the monkeys posed “potential health threats.”

“The driver of the truck told local law enforcement that the monkeys were dangerous and posed a threat to humans. We took the appropriate actions after being given that information from the person transporting the monkeys. He also stated that you had to wear PPE equipment to handle the monkeys,” the department said.

Authorities said the truck was carrying monkeys from Tulane University.

The university told The Independent that the monkeys left the Tulane National Biomedical Research Center in Covington, Louisiana, and were traveling to a non-Tulane-affiliated location.

“The primates in question belong to another entity,” the university said, adding that they were not being transported by a Tulane-affiliated service.

Tulane said in a statement on X Tuesday evening that the monkeys are not infectious.

“The primates in question belong to another entity & aren’t infectious. We’re actively collaborating with local authorities & will send a team of animal care experts to assist as needed,” the university wrote.

Tulane stressed to The Independent that the monkeys “have not been exposed to any infectious agent.”

As of Tuesday afternoon, “All but one of the escaped monkeys have been destroyed. We have been in contact with an animal disposal company to help handle the situation,” authorities said.

Mississippi Wildlife and Fisheries also responded to the scene.

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A truck hauling ‘aggressive’ monkeys carrying hepatitis C, herpes, and Covid has overturned in Mississippi, with several on the loose, according to authorities (Jasper County Sheriff’s Department)

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As Category 5 hurricane Melissa bears down on Jamaica, it is poised to be the worst storm to ever hit the Caribbean island, surpassing the damage from Hurricane Gilbert in 1988.

Gilbert, which hit Jamaica as a Category 4 hurricane, sent 19 feet of storm surge slamming into the eastern shore of the island and brought torrential rains and destructive winds. It killed 49 people, destroyed 100,000 homes, and did $700 million in damage, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Melissa, though, is far stronger and will hit from a direction that could expose more coastline to surge. And it is slower-moving, which means Jamaica will be subjected to the storm’s onslaught—especially torrential rains—for longer.

“This is going to be a lot worse than Gilbert,” says Phil Klotzbach, a senior research scientist at Colorado State University, who studies hurricanes.

Jamaica is no stranger to storms, but it has only been hit directly by five major ones (those of Category 3 or stronger), according to the best available historical records, which go back to the late 19th century. All of those major storms were either Category 3 or Category 4—we don’t know of any in recorded history that hit the island as a Category 5.

And Melissa is in rarefied company even among already rare Category 5 storms—it is exceptionally intense for an Atlantic basin hurricane. As of Monday afternoon, its maximum sustained winds are a stunning 175 miles per hour. Gilbert’s winds topped out at 130 mph when it collided with Jamaica.

Even if Melissa weakens some before it makes landfall in Jamaica, it will still be an exceptionally strong storm, and the fact that it is hitting from the south means it is running smack into a longer coastline than Gilbert did with its eastern approach. The nation’s capital, Kingston, sits on its southern shore.

The surge from Melissa is expected to reach nine to 13 feet above ground level, but exactly where that surge will be concentrated will depend on the storm’s exact path. Even small deviations could make a big difference in where the worst winds and waves hit. The farther west Melissa drifts before making a sharp turn to the northeast, the less likely it will be that the major population areas of the eastern half of the country, such as Kingston, will see the worst of the surge.

And then there is the fact that Melissa is creeping along at a pace between 3 and 5 mph, compared with Gilbert’s more typical 12 mph. “It’s barely moving,” Klotzbach says, which means the winds, surge, and rain will last agonizingly long. In fact, “they’ve been getting rain from this storm for days now,” Klotzbach says, as the weather system has drifted south of the island. Most of Jamaica is projected to get more than a foot of rain, and a wide area is forecast to get up to 30 inches. Some spots could see up to 40 inches. That amount of rain can be catastrophic, especially in Jamaica’s hilly terrain, where it can cause flash floods and landslides.

The Jamaican government has ordered mandatory evacuations for some flood-prone areas, according to the Jamaica Observer, and utilities are planning ahead for restoration efforts once the storm passes. “A Category Four hurricane potentially going through the middle of our island could have unprecedented damage on our facilities,” said Hugh Grant, chief executive officer of the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS), at a media briefing on Sunday, according to the Jamaica Observer. “Here at JPS, it’s likely to be a rebuild and not just a restoration.”

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