Disaster

In less than two days, Hurricane Maria has strengthened from a tropical storm to a powerful category five hurricane, dubbed in no uncertain terms as "catastrophic" by the NHC. Though it has been downgraded to a category 4 overnight, the storm made landfall on the tiny Caribbean island of Dominica, leaving it utterly “devastated,” according to the island’s prime minister.

"We're just waiting for daybreak to do an assessment of the damage," Dominica Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit told CNN's Rosemary Church.

After the long-dormant supervolcano Campi Flegrei awakened late last year, a team of scientists that has pinpointed the now-active volcano's magma source says a potentially devastating eruption could be just around the corner.

It’s been nearly a month since Hurricane Harvey, a storm that some expect to rank among the costliest natural disasters in US history, and still tens of thousands of Texans remain marooned in temporary housing, unable to return to their flood-damaged homes, while thousands more are struggling to secure hotel rooms and other types of temporary housing, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Even as the damage from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma is still being tallied, a preliminary assessment released last week by Black Knight Financial Services estimated that as many as 300,000 borrowers in the vicinity of Houston could become delinquent on their loans and 160,000 could become seriously delinquent, or more than 90 days past due. 

New York City officials say three people were killed and 16 more were injured when an MTA bus and a Dahlia charter bus collided in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens early Monday morning, AM New York reports.

The driver of the Dahlia bus, a passenger on the MTA bus and a pedestrian on the sidewalk died, officials said. At least 16 others were hurt, they said. The accident occurred at about 6:15 am at Main Street and Northern Boulevard, the FDNY said. One victim died at the scene, two others at the hospital, according to the Associated Press.