Central America & the Caribbean

"Nearly nine months after Zika was declared a global health emergency, the virus has infected at least 650,000 people in Latin America and the Caribbean, including tens of thousands of expectant mothers. But to the great bewilderment of scientists, the epidemic has not produced the wave of fetal deformities so widely feared when the images of misshapen infants first emerged from Brazil. Instead, Zika has left a puzzling and distinctly uneven pattern of damage across the Americas."

"The scale of a cholera outbreak in Haiti after Hurricane Matthew may be underreported because remote areas are cut off, a United Nations official in charge of controlling the disease said on Tuesday, adding protests over slow aid made the problem worse."

"The number of people killed by Hurricane Matthew in Haiti rose rapidly into the hundreds on Thursday, mainly in villages making contact with the outside world days after the cyclone ripped through the impoverished nation's picturesque western peninsula."

"President Barack Obama on Wednesday said the U.S. government has teams and supplies positioned to respond to Hurricane Matthew as the storm barrels toward Florida and other southeastern states." Millions were told to evacuate in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina.

"Hurricane Matthew assaulted Haiti’s southern coast with deadly fury on Tuesday, destroying homes and crops, sweeping away livestock and cutting off transportation as a large part of the Caribbean was pummeled by the storm’s 145-mile-per-hour winds and torrential rain."

"LES CAYES, Haiti -- Haitians living in vulnerable coastal shacks frantically sought shelter as the strongest Caribbean storm in nine years, Hurricane Matthew, closed in on the southwestern peninsula, sending storm surges, wind and rain into seaside towns."

"The United States prepared to airlift hundreds of people from its Guantanamo Bay naval base as the most powerful cyclone to form over the Atlantic since Hurricane Felix in 2007 ground slowly toward Jamaica, Haiti and Cuba."

"Six months after President Raul Castro declared war on the Zika virus in Cuba, a militarized nationwide campaign of intensive mosquito spraying, monitoring and quarantine appears to be working."

"The Zika epidemic that has spread from Brazil to the rest of Latin America is now raging in Puerto Rico — and the island’s response is in chaos."

"Honduran police have arrested three men for the murder of Lesbia Urquia, an environmental activist who fought against hydroelectric and mining projects on indigenous lands in the Central American country, authorities said on Wednesday."