BRAZIL
Flood death toll rises
Raging floods and mudslides have killed at least 57 people in the south and forced nearly 70,000 to flee their homes, the Civil Defense agency said on Saturday. At least 74 people were injured and another 67 were missing from the catastrophic flooding, it said. The toll did not include two people who died in an explosion at a flooded gas station in Porto Alegre, where rescue crews were attempting to refuel. The Guaiba River, which flows through the city, is at a historic high of 5.04m, well above the 4.76m that had stood as a record since devastating 1941 floods.
MEXICO
Bodies likely those of surfers
Three bodies recovered from a cliff-top shaft in the crime-hit Baja California are likely those of two Australian brothers and an American who disappeared on a surfing trip, local investigators said on Saturday. Although the bodies were in an “advanced state of decomposition” when they were hoisted out of a shaft a few steps from the edge of the Pacific Ocean cliff, authorities believe they were the bodies of the missing men based on certain physical descriptions, state Attorney General Maria Elena Andrade said. Another body found at the site had been there longer and was unconnected to the latest disappearances, officials said. Andrade said one line of inquiry is whether the deaths resulted from an attempt to steal the tourists’ pickup truck. The vehicle, which had been burned, was found nearby.
AFGHANISTAN
Last female diplomat resigns
An Afghan diplomat in India, who was appointed before the Taliban seized power in 2021 and said she was the only woman in the country’s diplomatic service, has resigned after reports emerged that she had been detained for allegedly smuggling gold. Zakia Wardak, the Afghan consul-general for Mumbai, on Saturday announced her resignation on X after Indian media reported that she was briefly detained at the city’s airport on allegations of smuggling 25 1kg bricks of gold from Dubai. Wardak made no mention of her reported detention or gold smuggling allegations, but wrote that over the past year she and her family had faced numerous personal attacks that “severely impacted my ability to effectively operate in my role and have demonstrated the challenges faced by women in Afghan society.”
GERMANY
Army meetings found online
The army faced more questions over security lapses after the Zeit Online news site on Saturday reported that thousands of its meetings were freely accessible online. Federal prosecutors are already investigating a secret army conversation on the Ukraine war that was wiretapped and ended up on Russian social media in March. The latest security flaw again concerned the online video-conference tool Webex. Zeit Online said it had been able to access army meetings by using simple search terms on the platform. “More than 6,000 meetings could be found online,” some of which were meant to be classified, it wrote.
UNITED STATES
TSA finds bag of snakes
Airport security officers in Miami found a slithering surprise late last month — a bag of snakes hidden in a passenger’s pants. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) wrote on X that officers at the Miami International Airport found the small bag of snakes hidden in a passenger’s trousers on April 26 at a checkpoint. The post included a photograph of two small snakes that were found in what appeared to be a sunglasses bag.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
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