HURRICANE RAVAGES CARIBBEAN
Considerable damage to Ayiti Federation wrought by fearsome tempest
Reaction from stock-markets, mercantile exchanges, &c.
JARAGUA, AYITI FEDERATION— A mighty tropical hurricane has swept through the Caribbean Sea, killing hundreds and displacing thousands more from the centers of commerce & industry of the Ayiti Federation. In addition to the tangible damage to homes & not insignificant loss of life, the incalculable economic effects are expected to ripple in all portions of the globe whose waters are plied by Ayiti merchantmen; which is to say, the greater part of the civilized world.
The Tegesta peninsula (known to the Sino-Iberians as “la Florida”, or “the flowery land”), the oldest & most densely populated of the Federation’s multitudinous possessions in mainland Avalon, was the most severely affected, with Ayiti authorities characterizing the peninsula’s leading city of Mayaimi as “flattened”, with scores of its survivor inhabitants forced to seek what shelter they could in the unwholesome Pa-hay-okee wetlands surrounding the devastated metropolis.
The Ayiti Home islands were dealt a less severe blow, but a blow nonetheless. Port facilites and harbours throughout the Federation were buffeted by winds of incredible speed and strength, sending unknown tonnes of shipping with all their hands to a watery grave and severely disrupting regional trade.
Stock markets all over the world, including both local markets such as Ayiti’s own Jaragua Stock Exchange or the Lenape Republic’s Manhattan Stock Exchange and those as far afield as those in Edinburgh, Constantinople, and Shanghai have been seized by panic, with share prices decreasing across the board. Prices in goods Ayiti deals heavily in, including sugar, fruit, maize, tobacco, and cotton, as well as commodities manufactured by Ayiti from those base components, are speedily increasing in price and scarcity throughout the ‘Old World’.
The Board of Directors of the Federation, speaking on behalf of Cacique Executive Officer Anacaona IV Nitaino, have stressed that the ample gold & silver reserves possessed by the federation and other liquid assets would be more than sufficient to provide for reconstruction of the devastated regions.
‘HOME-GROWN’ INDUSTRY SPINS COTTON IN LAI ANG HEARTLAND
LEÓN— The Rt. Hon. Muhammad Hu, 1st Baron Astorga, has achieved prosperity for himself and his house by investing in the construction of a first-rate cotton mill in Lai Ang territory.
‘I’m sure you’re aware there’s been a shortage of cotton goods in the Near West ever since that dreadful business with the hurricane earlier this year,’ the Lord Astorga told the Eleftherotypia, ‘but unlike the disruptions in, say, sugar, it wasn’t the cultivation of cotton that was adversely affected, as the majority of Ayiti’s cotton is grown well north of the tempest’s path. The trouble was the damage to the mills that turned the cotton into finished garments back in the Home Islands. I thought, well, it’s well within Lai Ang’s capacity to ship bales of cotton from Avalon to Iberia, so what’s stopping us from turning a bale of cotton into a summer hanfu or a pair of pantaloons right here in Europe?’
The Lord Astorga is representative of Lai Ang’s nobility, who are rapidly investing their feudal fortunes into the new factories whose smokestacks and water-wheels now dot the Iberian countryside…
CIVIL WAR IN ASITELAHAN
Lai Ang intrigues suspected in so-called ‘Crimean War’
CRIMEA— Crimean separatists, claiming to have restored the old Crimean merchant republic of centuries past, have seized much of southern Asitelahan, dealing a crippling blow to an empire which once seemed poised to dominate the Black Sea region. While claiming the mantle of idealists motivated by the ‘liberal nationalism’ which animated separatists in Bulgaria, Sicily, and elsewhere, interference by Lai Ang, who feel their Black Sea foothold in Azov and Kaffa is threatened by a strong Asitelahan, is alleged by the Byzantine foreign office.
COUP IN EASTERN HINDUSTAN FAILS
ORISSA– An attempt by a rival noble family to depose Queen Padma I Suryavamsi and install a more pliable candidate on the Hindustani throne has failed. While traitorous army officers succeeded in briefly seizing control of Suryavamsi Palace, the queen herself and her entourage were absent at the time on a grand hunt in the countryside. Notified of the attempted coup, she was easily able to gather a vast loyalist host and storm her own palace.
The officers who executed the scheme and their pretender king have all been executed, and the Queen has sworn that the nobles who backed the plot would be swiftly apprehended and meet the same fate.
GHANA DEMOBILIZES MILITARY
Swords into Plowshares?
Sultan Khalifa I Keita has announced plans to drastically decrease the size of the Sultanate of Ghana’s military.
‘The Mossi and Ashanti have been long since vanquished, and Mauritania crippled by dynastic infighting,’ he told the Ghanese parliament, ‘We have no enemies, and have reigned in splendid isolation for decades. There is little need to drain our finances to maintain a standing army with little use outside the parade-grounds.’