'Catastrophic' Hurricane Milton heads to Florida

And how the Trump-Harris fight is going in the Pennsylvania county that picks presidents.

Sign up for Reuters newsletters  Daily Briefing Daily Briefing By Kate Turton In the US, Floridians are bracing for Category 5 Hurricane Milton, and tensions are rising in the Pennsylvania county that has voted with the winning presidential candidate for the last four elections. We also cover the latest news from the Middle East, as Hezbollah targets Israeli troops on the Lebanese border and Iran warns Gulf states against the use of airspace for attacks. Today's Top News   A view of an empty Cancun beach as Hurricane Milton advances past Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula on its way to Florida. October 8, 2024. REUTERS/Paola Chiomante US news Residents of Florida's Gulf Coast are in a race against time to evacuate before Category 5 Hurricane Milton hits. Video journalist Julio Cesar Chavez is in the path of the storm and joins the Reuters World News podcast from the Tampa Bay area as residents there board up their homes.  Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump will stage a rally in President Joe Biden's hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, as he looks to win over the blue-collar voters who have traditionally been Biden loyalists in the critical state. Middle East Hezbollah militants targeted Israeli soldiers near the Lebanese border village of Labbouneh with artillery shells and rockets, the group said, a day after Israel said it had killed two successors to its slain leader. Tehran has told Gulf Arab states it would be "unacceptable" if they allowed use of their airspace or military bases against Iran and warned that any such move would draw a response, a senior Iranian official said. In other news President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Ukraine needed to secure and deploy advanced missiles and to achieve faster results with them on the battlefield. Follow the latest from the war in Ukraine. Haiti's armed gangs are increasingly recruiting children into their ranks, a report by Human Rights Watch warned, as near-famine conditions push boys to pick up guns while girls are sexually abused and forced into domestic work. North Korea's Army said it will completely cut off roads and railways connected to South Korea, and fortify the areas on its side of the border, state media KCNA reported. Business & Markets   Boeing considers issuing stock and equity-like securities to raise cash. REUTERS/Randall Hill/File Photo Boeing is examining options to raise billions of dollars through a sale of stock and equity-like securities, two sources familiar with the matter said, as the planemaker tries to avoid slipping in to junk territory on its credit ratings. Meanwhile, the company said that it had withdrawn its pay offer to around 33,000 US factory workers and no further negotiations were planned.  China's runaway stocks rally stuttered and commodities struggled to find a footing as investors tempered their expectations for a robust Chinese economic recovery, keeping pressure on shares globally. Several European Central Bank policymakers argued their case for another interest rate cut next week, even if some of their colleagues remained unconvinced as turmoil in the Middle East fuels volatility in energy costs. Honda is recalling about 1.7 million vehicles in the US as difficulty in steering on certain models can increase the risk of a crash, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said. "They don't want an escalating trade war with Europe." Listen to Kevin Krolicki on the Reuters World News podcast for his insights into the trade spat between Beijing and Brussels as China hits back with taxes on European brandy after the EU imposed taxes on Chinese EVs.  The US said it may ask a judge to force Google to divest parts of its business, such as its Chrome browser and Android operating system, that it says are used to maintain an illegal monopoly in online search. Rio Tinto said it would buy US based Arcadium Lithium for $6.7 billion in deal that would catapult it to become one of the world's largest miners of the metal used in electric vehicles and mobile devices. Sign up for the Reuters Power Up newsletter for everything you need to know about the global energy industry. This Pennsylvania county picks presidents. How the Harris vs. Trump fight is going.   Bartender at The Brewerie at Union Station, Erin Miller, 38, poses for a portrait in Erie, September 24, 2024. REUTERS/Hannah Beier The command center for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign in one of the most hotly contested counties in the most important election battleground state of Pennsylvania sits in a small room of a strip-mall office rented by Erie County's Republican Party. A few miles away in a bustling office in downtown Erie, paid staff and volunteers on Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign make phone calls, press new campaign buttons and organize watch parties and phone banking.  Read about the battle for Erie And Finally... A view of the sign for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, Sweden, October 9, 2024. REUTERS/ Tom Little Scientists David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the award-giving body said, for work on the structure of proteins. Read more Sponsors are not involved in the creation of newsletters or other Reuters news content. 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