1 Dead in Florida as Earl Batters Caribbean

A surfer is dead, a swimmer is missing, and authorities are warning people to be careful in the water along much of the Atlantic seaboard as distant hurricanes generate rip tides. The body of 47-year-old surfer Tazwell Brown was recovered by his peers in central Florida on Saturday, and police called off the search for another person who never returned from a swim in Ocean City, Md., yesterday, the AP reports. Hurricane Earl, one of the storms causing the riptides, intensified into a Category 3 storm and is predicted to become a Category 4 in the next few days, and could threaten the US directly.

Experts say Earl will run across the Caribbean to the north and then turn north on a track parallel to the East Coast. "Interests from North Carolina all the way to Maine should keep an eye on the system," said a meteorologist at the Hurricane Center. (More Florida stories.)