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.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
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