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.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
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