Subtropical Storm Nicole is now expected to become a hurricane over the Bahamas before hitting Florida’s east coast on Wednesday, just well enough after polls close to avoid disrupting voting on Election Day, forecasters said.

“We won’t really start to see any significant impacts from Nicole until really Tuesday night to Wednesday, so really it shouldn’t have a huge impact on voting operations tomorrow,” hurricane specialist Phillippe Papin said.

“Unfortunately this is going to be a very large storm, with a very large wind field on the north side. This is going to cause quite substantial surf, potentially dangerous storm surge somewhere along the Florida east coast, and heavy rainfall and probably significant winds over a large area,” Papin added.

Hurricane watches are in effect for the northwestern Bahamas and Florida’s Atlantic Coast from Hallandale Beach, north of Miami, to just north of Daytona Beach, as well as inland to Lake Okeechobee, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said in its latest advisory.

The Mambilla Plateau is a plateau in the Taraba State of Nigeria. The plateau is Nigeria’s northern continuation of the Bamenda Highlands of Cameroon.

The Mambilla Plateau has an average elevation of about 1,600 metres above sea level, making it the highest plateau in Nigeria.

Some of its villages are situated on hills that are at least 1,828 metres above sea level.

Some mountains on the plateau and around it are over 2,000 metres high, like Gang Peak Chappal Waddi which has a height of 2,419 metres above sea level.

It is the highest mountain in Nigeria and the highest mountain in West Africa.

The Mambilla Plateau measures about 96 km along its curved length; it is 40 km wide and is bounded by an escarpment that is about 900 m high in some places.

The plateau covers an area of over 9,389 square kilometres.

Fog rolled into downtown Toronto, creating an eerie scene from the top of the CN Tower.

The CN Tower is a 553.3-meter-high concrete communications and observation tower in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

According to meteorologist Anthony Farnell, on a sunny day, the land can heat up faster than water.

The air over land can also warm and rise, drawing in cool, damp and dense air over lakes such as Lake Ontario.

While temperatures reached around 12-13 C in Toronto, it still left people with captivating images of downtown. Some had difficulty seeing as they moved around.

Primary schools in New Delhi, India will be shut down, as the capital continued to be engulfed by high levels of air pollution, the local government said.

Parents in the city had raised concerns about sending their children to school after residents complained of discomfort in breathing and irritation in the eyes, nose and throat.

Plus, plumes of smoke rose in India’s north on Friday as farmers burned stubble in their fields as they prepared to plant crops, worsening the pollution in nearby cities including capital New Delhi.

According to data from the Central Pollution Control Board, New Delhi’s 20 million residents were effectively breathing smoke on Thursday as the air quality index breached the “severe” and “hazardous” categories in nearly all monitoring stations of the Indian capital.

In a huge pit in Shabara in south-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, thousands of illegal miners work daily to dig out rocks containing the speckled blue-gold ore, cobalt.

The country holds over 70 per cent of world supply of this key ingredient in rechargeable batteries, electric cars, and mobile phones.

It is estimated that some 200,000 people works as informal diggers in country’s cobalt mines in flagrant violation of its laws.

The mining at Shabara has been carrying on for years in defiance of the site’s owner, a subsidiary of mining and commodities giant, Glencore.

So-called artisanal miners says they can make equivalent of $200 on a good week, which is a small fortune in a country where most live on under $2 a day.

‘Here, we’re independent, everyone comes, works independently, goes to sell the ore at the trading centre, and makes money. Compared to other mining areas where I’ve worked, here I work in order,’ says Antoine Dela wa Monga.

But the sector’s image is tainted by artisanal mining, with accusations of child labour, dangerous working conditions, and corruption.

‘Normally, when you produce and export, you have to pay a fee. But when it is not declared, nothing can be paid on it. Hence the importance of being able to set up procedures that can guarantee traceability from upstream to downstream, to ensure that these flows become compliant,’ says Tosi Mpanu Mpanu, who is working on the formalisation of artisanal cobalt mining.

However, government attempts to clear up the illegal mines are at a near standstill.

David Sturmes, director of corporate engagement and strategic partnerships at Fair Cobalt Alliances, says the situation is a lose-lose one for all.

‘Artisanal mining occurs on industrial concessions, so legally speaking, they are infringing on industrial miners territory. This makes it difficult for industrial miners to engage. The mining code doesn’t allow for them to purchase from artisanal miners or allow them on their concessions, but international human rights conventions don’t allow them to kick them off either.’

Under Congolese law, artisanal diggers are only allowed to work in government-designated zones and as part of approved cooperatives. But most diggers say the designated areas are unviable and prefer to work on industrial concessions with identified deposits.

Despite fluctuations in global prices, analysts say the metal’s future is strong given demand from the energy transition.

Sturmes says this means that mining firms and the illegal diggers share a common interest in cleaning up Congolese cobalt’s tainted image.

The Sans-Souci Palace was the royal residence of King Henri Christophe I of Haiti, the self imposed monarch who as a former slave had fought in the American Revolutionary War alongside George Washington.

He then went on to be a key leader in the Haitian Revolution in 1804, when the small nation gained independence from France.

It was the most important of nine palaces built by the king, as well as fifteen châteaux, numerous forts, and sprawling summer homes on his twenty plantations.

Construction of the palace started in 1810 and was completed in 1813. It is located in the town of Milot, Nord Department.

Its name translated from French means “carefree.” Haiti was divided in two in 1807, and Christophe became President of the northern half, officially known as the State of Haiti.

Seeking a more lofty title, Christophe decided to establish a kingdom in the north, and in 1811 had himself crowned Henry I, King of Haiti.

His full title also established him, among other things, as a self-appointed “Destroyer of tyranny, Regenerator and Benefactor of the Haïtian nation.”

The new king needed a royal residence, so he ordered the construction of Sans-Souci Palace at Milot, a former French plantation that Christophe had managed during the Revolution.

Thousands of slaves completed the building in 1813—Christophe’s ruthless national policy of forced labor contributed to the swift construction—and soon became a bustling whirlwind of feasting and dancing, with grandiose gardens, artificial springs, and a system of waterworks.

The impressiveness of Sans-Souci was part of Henri Christophe’s program to demonstrate to foreigners, particularly Europeans and Americans, the power and capability of the black race.

The African pride in the construction of the king’s palace was captured by the comment of his advisor, Pompée Valentin Vastey (Baron Valentin de Vastey), who said that the palace and its nearby church, “erected by descendants of Africans, show that we have not lost the architectural taste and genius of our ancestors who covered Ethiopia, Egypt, Carthage, and old Spain with their superb monuments.”

However, Christophe’s reign drew heavily on European monarchical signs of prestige. He established a hereditary nobility, along with coats of arms and prescribed ceremonial dress.

But Christophe did not enjoy his sumptuous surroundings for long. The public resented him for forcing them to work long hours in the fields, and a stroke on 15 August 1820 left him partially paralyzed.

The autocratic king committed suicide 54 days after his stroke by shooting himself with a silver bullet. His son and heir to the throne was assassinated by bayonet 10 days later.

An earthquake in 1842 earthquake destroyed several parts of the palace, but the remaining edifices give a sense of its former grandeur.

The palace (before its destruction) was acknowledged by many to be the Caribbean equivalent of the Palace of Versailles in France. UNESCO designated it World Heritage Site in 1982, together with the Citadelle.

Described as “one of the most remarkable attractions in the Western Hemisphere”, the Palace of Sans-Souci is “seldom visited by foreigners” due to “decades of political instability and lawlessness” in Haiti.

However, the area is relatively peaceful and easily accessible from the city of Cap-Haïtien.

That is why this abandoned and glorious historic palace nowadays is getting more attention, and it deserves to be well known all around the world, since it had an important role in the past.