An alarming trend is emerging in south Florida where officials are seeing a rising number of migrants, primarily Haitians and Cubans, journeying to U.S. shores on makeshift boats.U.S. Coast Guard crews have intercepted more than 6,000 Cubans since last October, according to the agency, the most in a fiscal year since the 1990s."We've seen this before. It's a natural phenomenon. However, seeing the uptick for us is really concerning and the fact that we're seeing more individuals on not-so-seaworthy vessels, putting a significant amount of those individuals at very dangerous risk for loss of life," said Walter Slosar, chief patrol agent of the Miami Sector.For years, Cubans have been fleeing the island, but recent unrest, persecution, and shortages of basic goods have pushed more to leave."Individuals have come to us with stories of persecution from the local government for their inability to participate in certain events, for not agreeing with local and communist policy of the island. It's not just them but also many stories of family members, friends that have been apprehended, detained for minor, non-criminal offenses," said David Claros, director of Immigration Legal Services Southeast Region at Church World Service, adding that he's hiring additional staff to meet the demand.Patrols here are complicated by the varying terrain, requiring coordination among agencies on land, air, and sea. CNN recently embedded with U.S. Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine Operations, the U.S. Border Patrol, and Coast Guard.The agencies will work together to identify and interdict migrants so they may be repatriated. If they make landfall, however, they're brought into Border Patrol custody.While the Coast Guard tries to intercept migrants before they make it to the US coast, thousands have made it to shore. So far this fiscal year, border authorities arrested nearly 3,600 in the Miami Sector, which covers more than 1,200 miles of Florida's coast, up from just over 1,000 last year.Authorities encounter a wide array of vessels out at sea and on shore, ranging from surfboards tied together and boats with limited provisions and no navigation system for what is often a days-long journey. Just an hour into a Coast Guard patrol, crew members spotted a makeshift vessel at sea with roughly eight people.And it's not just Cubans. Officials are also grappling with an increasing number of Haitian migrants journeying by sea. The Coast Guard has responded to incidents of large sail freighters carrying dozens, if not hundreds of, Haitian migrants, putting those on board at great risk."The conditions on board were horrible," said Mark Lamphere, a Coast Guard marine interdiction agent, recalling a vessel that arrived at the Florida coast this year."There were reports of injured people in the hull, so I had to jump down in there and it was just obvious standing room only," he said. Two hundred of them packed in there and they would defecate and urinate right where they're standing."Slosar acknowledged the demand on resources to address the new trends."We're all working with finite resources, and as we encounter these individuals, you don't know who's on that boat. It is our mission to understand who is coming into the country. It takes our agents time to bring them into our custody, make sure that they're healthy and that they're clean and that they're fed and they're safe and then identify exactly who they are," he said.

HAVANA (AP) — Cuban officials said they had begun to restore some power Wednesday after Hurricane Ian knocked out electricity to the entire island while devastating some of the country’s most important tobacco farms when it hit the island’s western tip as a major storm.

At least two people were reported killed.

The Energy and Mines Ministry announced it had restored energy to three regions by activating two large power plants in Felton and Nuevitas and was working on getting others back online.

Lights started to flicker on in the capital, Havana. Still, much of the city and other parts of western Cuba remained without power on Wednesday in the wake of the major hurricane, which had advanced northward to Florida. It was the first time in memory — perhaps ever — that the whole island had lost power.

On Tuesday, Ian hit Cuba, which has been struggling with an economic crisis and has faced frequent power outages in recent months. It made landfall as a Category 3 storm on the island’s western end, devastating Pinar del Río province, where much of the tobacco used for Cuba’s iconic cigars is grown.

Tens of thousands of people were evacuated, and others fled the area ahead of the arrival of Ian, which caused flooding, damaged houses and toppled trees. State media reported two deaths in the province: a woman killed by a falling wall and another by a collapsed roof.

Ian’s winds damaged one of Cuba’s most prestigious tobacco farms, Finca Robaina.

“It was apocalyptic, a real disaster,” said Hirochi Robaina, owner of the farm that bears his name and that his grandfather made known internationally.

Robaina posted photos on social media of wood-and-thatch roofs smashed to the ground, greenhouses in rubble and wagons overturned.

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel visited the affected region, telling the population, “Although the first impact is very painful, there's nothing to do but overcome the adversity.”

“Being in the hurricane was terrible for me, but we are here alive,” said Pinar del Rio resident Yusimí Palacios, who asked authorities for a roof and a mattress.

Officials had set up 55 shelters and took steps to protect crops, especially tobacco.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Cuba suffered “significant wind and storm surge impacts” when the hurricane struck with top sustained winds of 125 mph (205 kph).

Ian was even stronger Wednesday as it approached the coast of Florida with top winds of 155 mph (250 kph), threatening to cause catastrophic damage there.

In Cuba, local government station TelePinar reported heavy damage at the main hospital in Pinar del Rio city, tweeting photos of collapsed ceilings and downed trees. No deaths were reported.

Videos on social media showed downed power lines and cut-off roads in the provinces of Pinar del Rio, Artemisa and Mayabeque. A hospital in Pinar del Río was damaged.

“The town is flooded,” said farmer Andy Muñoz, 37, who lives in Playa Cajío in Artemisa.

He said many people lost their belongings due to the storm surge.

“I spent the hurricane at home with my husband and the dog. The masonry and zinc roof of the house had just been installed. But the storm tore it down,” said Mercedes Valdés, who lives along the highway connecting Pinar del Río to San Juan y Martínez. “We couldn’t rescue our things ... we just ran out.”

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AP journalist Osvaldo Angulo in Pinar del Rio contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON —

China has been operating a spy base in Cuba since at least 2019, part of a global effort by Beijing to upgrade its intelligence-gathering capabilities, according to a Biden administration official.

The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the U.S. intelligence community has been aware of China's spying from Cuba and a larger effort to set up intelligence-gathering operations around the globe for some time.

The Biden administration has stepped up efforts to thwart the Chinese push to expand its spying operations and believes it has made some progress through diplomacy and other unspecified action, according to the official, who was familiar with U.S. intelligence on the matter.

The existence of the Chinese spy base was confirmed after The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that China and Cuba had reached an agreement in principle to build an electronic eavesdropping station on the island. The Journal reported China planned to pay cash-strapped Cuba billions of dollars as part of the negotiations.

The White House called the report inaccurate.

"I've seen that press report, it's not accurate," White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said in an MSNBC interview Thursday. "What I can tell you is that we have been concerned since day one of this administration about China's influence activities around the world; certainly in this hemisphere and in this region, we're watching this very, very closely."

The U.S. intelligence community had determined Chinese spying from Cuba has been an "ongoing" matter and is "not a new development," the administration official said.

Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío also refuted the report in a Twitter post Saturday.

"The slanderous speculation continues, evidently promoted by certain media to cause harm and alarm without observing minimum patterns of communication and without providing data or evidence to support what they disseminate," he wrote.

President Joe Biden's national security team was briefed by the intelligence community soon after he took office in January 2021 about a number of sensitive Chinese efforts around the globe where Beijing was weighing expanding logistics, basing and collection infrastructure as part of the People's Liberation Army's attempt to further its influence, the official said.

Chinese officials looked at sites spanning the Atlantic Ocean, Latin America, the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa and the Indo-Pacific. The effort included looking at existing collection facilities in Cuba, and China conducted an upgrade of its spying operation on the island in 2019, the official said.

Tensions between the U.S. and China have been fraught throughout Biden's term.

The relationship may have hit a nadir last year after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to democratically governed Taiwan. That visit, the first by a sitting House speaker since Newt Gingrich in 1997, led China, which claims the island as its territory, to launch military exercises around Taiwan.

U.S.-China relations became further strained early this year after the U.S. shot down a Chinese spy balloon that had crossed the United States.

Beijing also was angered by Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen's stopover in the U.S. last month which included an encounter with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The speaker hosted the Taiwanese leader at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in southern California.

Still, the White House has been eager to resume high-level communications between the two sides.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is planning to travel to China next week, a trip that was canceled as the balloon was flying over the U.S. Blinken expects to be in Beijing on June 18 for meetings with senior Chinese officials, according to U.S. officials, who spoke Friday on condition of anonymity because neither the State Department nor the Chinese foreign ministry has yet confirmed the trip.

CIA Director William Burns met in Beijing with his counterpart last month. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with his Chinese counterpart in Vienna over two days in May and made clear that the administration wanted to improve high-level communications with the Chinese side.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin recently spoke briefly with Li Shangfu, China's minister of national defense, at the opening dinner of a security forum in Singapore. China had earlier rejected Austin's request for a meeting on the sidelines of the forum.

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AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

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Some high-ranking members of the Trump administration say they experienced feelings of vertigo, memory loss and confusion while they were on White House grounds, as CBS reported. The symptoms are similar to those of American diplomats who've been diagnosed with having "Havana Syndrome" while in foreign countries since 2016.

The stories from officials have been corroborated by former National Security Adviser John Bolton, the report says.

Bolton said, "If we were at war and an adversary could disable the president and his top advisers, or commanders in the field, it could render us extraordinarily vulnerable." He said, "We don't know that that's the threat we're facing. But I would much rather focus on finding out the answer now, rather than finding out later when it may be too late."

William Burns, the director of the CIA said, "It's a very complicated issue, you know, dealing with a whole range of incidents which have… different kinds of explanations for them as well." He said, "It's a very charged issue emotionally as well. I understand that very clearly. And that's what… makes me even more determined not only to ensure people get the care that they deserve but also that we get to the bottom of this."

Earlier this month, a panel of intelligence experts wasn't able to identify a single culprit for apparent brain injuries reported by U.S. personnel that have been linked to so-called “Havana syndrome. But officials who briefed reporters Wednesday say several potential causes remain plausible, including the use of devices that emit beams of directed energy.

The CIA announced that the agency considers it unlikely Russia or another foreign adversary is mounting a broad campaign to attack Americans with energy-emitting devices. But in a smaller number of cases, psychological factors alone cannot explain the symptoms and other characteristics displayed by people affected.

Hundreds of American diplomats and intelligence officers attribute their brain injuries and other symptoms to what's come to be known as “Havana syndrome.”

The findings are drawing immediate criticism from those who have reported cases and from advocates who accuse the government of long dismissing the array of ailments. Most cases under review by intelligence officers have been linked to other known medical conditions or to environmental factors. That's according to one official familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the intelligence.

A boat from Cuba capsized in the storm-hit Straits of Florida this week, spurring a search in which nine people were still missing Wednesday after 13 were rescued, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

Crews of two Coast Guard cutters were still searching for the missing on Wednesday, the service said.

The boat carrying 22 people capsized at about 8 p.m. Monday after departing Cuba, survivors told the Coast Guard.

Tropical Storm Elsa would have been crossing Cuba east of Havana at the time, and its outer bands would have been affecting the seas.

A bulk carrier ship's crew found people Tuesday afternoon in the water some 26 miles southeast of Key West, reported this to the Coast Guard and rescued some of them, the service said.

A Coast Guard cutter responded to the area, and its small boat crew rescued others from the water, the Coast Guard said. In total, 13 were rescued, according to the service. Fifteen people earlier had been reported rescued.

Survivors told the Coast Guard that nine people — seven males and two females — are missing.