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SAO PAULO, Brazil (AFP) — At least 18 people were killed when a riverboat sank in the Amazon rainforest region, Brazilian authorities said Monday, as survivors described fleeing the foundering boat in terror. The ferry was taking passengers up the Jari River, a tributary of the Amazon, when it suddenly began to tip over on Saturday at around dawn. Authorities said late Monday that beyond the 18 fatalities, they had rescued 46 survivors and 30 […]
SAO PAULO, Brazil (AFP) — Brazil’s health ministry said on Wednesday a Sao Paulo resident has been diagnosed with the novel coronavirus, the first case recorded in Latin America. The 61-year-old patient had returned on February 21 from the Lombardy region of Italy, the epicenter of an outbreak in the European country, Brazil’s Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta said. Mandetta said authorities were trying to identify people that had been in contact with the patient […]
LIMA, Peru (AFP) — The death toll from the explosion of a gas tanker in Lima last month has risen to 30, Peru’s ministry of health said Thursday. Two women and a man were the most recent to succumb to burns from a fireball that occurred when the tanker truck carrying 10,000 liters (2,642 gallons) of liquefied gas exploded on January 23. Initially, only two people were killed and 50 injured, but the death toll […]
BOGOTA, Colombia (AFP) — Pablo Escobar’s most notorious hitman, known by the nickname Popeye, died on Thursday at age 57 after a life of crime he celebrated on YouTube, Colombia’s prison authorities said. Jhon Jairo Velasquez had boasted of killing hundreds of people for his “boss” Escobar, the infamous drug lord killed by Colombian police in 1993 while on the run to avoid extradition to the United States. Velasquez spent 23 years in prison after […]
BELO HORIZONTE, Brazil (AFP) — Another torrential downpour left the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte paralyzed Wednesday, with ruined cars abandoned on streets cake with mud, as the death toll from days of violent weather reached 54. Another 47,000 people across Minas Gerais, the southeastern state where the city is located, have been forced from their homes since the rains began on Friday, civil defense officials said. Tuesday evening’s downpour was nothing short of spectacular: […]
SABARÁ, Brazil (AFP) – Valeria PACHECO Elaine Almeida looked at her aunt’s ruined house in Sabará, a town in a southeastern region of Brazil where at least 45 people have died in floods that followed record rainfall. “The water rose more than two meters, she lost everything,” Almeida said. She and her aunt tried pushing the door of the house open, but the mud inside was so deep they had to give up. In Sabará, a […]
LIMA, Peru (AFP) — The death toll from the explosion of a gas tanker in Lima has risen to 15 following the death of a child with severe burns, Peru’s health ministry said Monday. Nearly 50 people were injured, including six children, when a tanker truck carrying 10,000 liters of liquefied gas exploded on Thursday, igniting a major fire that destroyed several houses and vehicles in the capital’s Villa El Salvador district. Five of the […]
BELO HORIZONTE, Brazil (AFP) — The death toll from days of intense storms and flooding in southeastern Brazil has risen to 37, authorities said Sunday. In addition to the dead, the number of injured has risen to 12 and of those missing to 25, local Civil Defense officials said. The dead have yet to be identified. Many were buried by landslides or in the debris of collapsed houses, which in many poorer parts of Brazil […]
RIO DE JAINEIRO, Brazil (AFP) — Flooding and landslides triggered by torrential rains have claimed six lives in southeast Brazil, firefighters said Saturday. Footage on social media showed streets in Espirito Santo state turned into rivers and cars being swept away by raging, muddy water. In one clip, the water almost reaches the roof of a gas station. The fatalities happened in the towns of Iconha and Alfredo Chaves, with three deaths in each […]
BRASILIA, Brazil (AFP) – Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest in northern Brazil soared 85 percent in 2019, compared with the previous year, official data showed Tuesday. The 9,166 square kilometers (3,539 square miles) cleared was the highest number in at least five years, according to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research. In 2018, the deforested area was 4,946 square kilometers. The sharp increase overlapped the first year in office of President Jair Bolsonaro, a climate […]
QUITO, Ecuador (AFP) — A volcano erupted on an uninhabited island in the Galapagos, Ecuadorian authorities said, spewing lava on the ecologically sensitive environment. La Cumbre volcano on Fernandina island, one of the youngest in the archipelago, began erupting Sunday evening, Galapagos National Park (PNG) officials said in a statement. The 1,467 meter high (4,813 feet) volcano has a crack along its south-eastern flank and “a lava flow descends to the coast”, PNG added. The […]
CARACAS, Venezuela (AFP) — Venezuela’s opposition leader Juan Guaido called on supporters to rally Thursday against the government of President Nicolas Maduro in a bid to rekindle popular momentum against an “illegitimate” leader. Guaido urged a new round of protests after he was sworn in earlier this week for another term as National Assembly speaker following a standoff with the armed forces. Amid skepticism that he can still mobilize large crowds as at the height […]
