Slow-moving Cristobal dousing Bahamas with rain

Tropical Storm Cristobal doused the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands with heavy rainfall as it moved slowly on a northern track in the Caribbean. One man died over the weekend and two other people were reported missing when they were caught up by swollen rivers on the island shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti, The Associated Press reported.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Cristobal may strengthen into a hurricane later in the week over the open Atlantic. The storm's center was expected to curve away from the U.S. East Coast.

The man who died was drowned when he tried to drive his pickup truck across a rushing river in the Dominican Republic's Hato Mayor, a province northeast of the capital of Santo Domingo, Juan Manuel Mendez, the country's emergency operations director, said Sunday.

The two missing people were swept away late Saturday by a river that burst its banks in the western Haiti port town of Saint Marc. "We're still looking for the bodies," said Luckecy Mathieu, a civil protection coordinator.

Many residents in the sparsely populated southeastern Bahamas and the tiny British Caribbean dependency of the Turks and Caicos Islands hunkered down as Cristobal's rains pelted windowpanes.

Capt. Stephen Russell, head of the Bahamas' emergency management agency, said there had been no reports of damage. Air traffic to the southeastern Bahamian islands had not been suspended, but sea vessels were advised to remain in port, he said.