As Dorian approached Atlantic Canada, hurricane and tropical storm warnings were issued for Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland. On September 6, the Halifax Regional Municipality encouraged residents living along the eastern shores of Nova Scotia to evacuate, citing expected high winds, heavy rainfall, and waves up to 15 m (49 ft) in height. The Nova Scotia Emergency Management Office implored residents to secure easily dislodged objects to prevent high winds from turning them into projectiles, drawing comparisons to Hurricane Juan in 2003. Nova Scotia Power set up an emergency operations center and mobilized 1,000 personnel, including forestry crews, damage assessors, as well as power line technicians from adjacent provinces, to prepare for Dorian's impacts. WestJet, Air Canada, and Porter Airlines issued travel advisories for the weekend and waived rebooking fees for flights to and from affected areas.
On August 19, 2019, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) identified a tropical wave—an elongated trough of low air pressure—within a monsoon trough over Guinea and Senegal in western Africa. Convective activity associated with the wave was limited by an abundance of Saharan dust in the region. Propagating west over the tropical Atlantic Ocean, the system remained disorganized for several days. On August 23, a defined area of low pressure consolidated at the surface and thunderstorm activity increased. The system acquired sufficient organized convection to be classified as Tropical Depression Five at 15:00 UTC on August 24. At this time the system was situated 805 mi (1,300 km) east-southeast of Barbados. A deep ridge imparted continued westward movement of the depression, steering it toward the Lesser Antilles. A small cyclone, it soon developed a defined inner-core with a 12 mi (18 km) wide eye-like feature. This marked the system's intensification into a tropical storm, at which time it was assigned the name Dorian by the NHC. Thereafter, moderate wind shear and surrounding dry air limited further organization. Rainbands gradually wrapped more around Dorian on August 25–26, though convection remained inconsistent.
More InfoDCB Finance, a Virgin Islands-based shell company founded by North Korean banker Kim Chol-sam and British banker Nigel Cowie, also ignored international sanctions and continued to do business with North Korea with the help of the Panamanian firm. The US Treasury Department in 2013 called DCB Finance a front company for Daedong Credit Bank and announced sanctions against both companies for providing banking services to North Korean arms dealer Korea Mining and Development Trading Corporation, attempting to evade sanctions against that country, and helping to sell arms and expand North Korea's nuclear weapons programme. Cowie said the holding company was used for legitimate business and he was not aware of illicit transactions.
More InfoMossack Fonseca, required by international banking standards to avoid money-laundering or fraudster clients, is, like all banks, supposed to be particularly alert for signs of corruption with politically exposed persons (PEP), in other words, clients who either are or have close ties to government officials. However they somehow failed to turn up any red flags concerning Tareq Abbas even though he shares a family name with the president of Palestine, and sat on the board of directors of a company with four fellow directors the firm did deem PEP because of their ties to Palestinian politics. Yet Mossack Fonseca actually did and documented due diligence research, including a Google search.
More InfoEarly voting for most counties in the special election in North Carolina's 3rd congressional district and for some counties in the special election for the 9th congressional district was also temporarily halted after Wednesday, September 4 as a result, until the North Carolina State Board of Elections could decide what action to take. Ultimately, Karen Brinson Bell, the Board's Executive Director, would opt to use her emergency powers to extend early voting hours for the 9th district through Saturday, September 7, but only in four harder-hit counties that actually closed polling sites, and to have other counties further inland which did not close polling sites end early voting on Friday, September 6, as originally prescribed under state law, in order to make the most of the district's resources. Likewise, the Board extended early voting hours through Saturday for 11 counties in the 3rd district, but not for 6 other affected counties suffering from "power outages, poor conditions or a lack of workers."
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