Hurricane death toll in Puerto Rico likely higher than official count

More than 1,000 people died in Puerto Rico in the weeks after Hurricane Maria — meaning the storm’s death toll is likely much higher than the official tally, new data reveals.

There were at least 1,065 fatalities on the water-and-electricity-starved island in the 42 days after the storm struck on Sept. 20, according to a report released by The Center for Investigative Journalism on Thursday.

At least 985 more people died in the country during September and October 2017 than the same time period last year, according to the data.

Puerto Rican officials have said the number of people who died as a result of the natural disaster is 62.

The most people died on Sept. 25 — the same day Puerto Rican Governor Ricardo Rosselló warned the country was on the brink of a mass exodus. There were a total of 135 fatalities on that day, compared to 75 last year.

Overall, more than 100,000 people have fled the storm-ravaged island this year, according to The City University of New York’s Center for Puerto Rican Studies.

In September, the island’s average daily death rate spiked by 43 percent — and soared as high as 80 percent in the five days after the storm struck, according to the report. In October, the death toll increased by 23 percent.

The biggest spike in deaths hit people between the ages between 70 and 79 in September. Many of them died in hospitals and nursing homes from preexisting conditions such as diabetes, Alzheimer’s, kidney disease, and respiratory diseases as temperatures hit 90 degrees.

In October, the biggest increase in fatalities hit people over the age 90, according to the report.

But the death rate also soared among people in their 30s and 40s.

Fatalities among people ages 30 to 39 years old increased by 36 percent in October. The rate among people 40 to 49 years old spiked 23.3 percent, according to the report.

On Sept. 29, Puerto Rico’s public safety secretary, Héctor Pesquera, said he expected the death toll to increase — but not by much.

“Will it go up? I am pretty sure it will go up,” he said in a statement. “It won’t double or triple. It’s not like an earthquake where you have a building and you don’t know whether there were 20 in the building or 300 in the building until you get all the rubble out.”

Hurricane Maria was the tenth-most powerful Atlantic hurricane and the most intense tropical cyclone so-far in 2017.

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New documents show prosecutors tracking Manafort’s edits

Prosecutors for special counsel Robert Mueller are revealing they know every word Paul Manafort changed in an opinion piece about his involvement in Ukrainian politics.

They say they tracked the changes the former Trump campaign chairman made as he edited the piece while under house arrest.

Prosecutors say the op-ed was part of a public effort Manafort was trying to orchestrate that would have violated a judge’s order to refrain from trying his case in the press.

Manafort’s attorneys argue that he had only edited the piece after receiving it from a former Ukrainian public official whom he knew through his consulting work in Ukraine.

They also say Manafort didn’t violate the judge’s order and was exercising his free speech rights to defend himself.

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