■CENTRAL AMERICA
Heavy rains kill nearly 50
Weeks of rain have caused the deaths of nearly 50 people and left more than 20 missing in Honduras and killed dozens more in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua and the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, officials said. Most of the victims were buried in landslides and drowned in rivers that overflowed their banks, authorities said on Sunday. In Honduras, 100,000 people were affected by flooding while the emergency services agency estimated damage to highways, bridges, crops and houses at US$150 million. The flooding could postpone party elections to choose presidential candidates from Nov. 16 to Nov. 30. In Nicaragua, tens of thousands of people have been evacuated to higher ground.
■MEXICO
Gunmen kill 11 officers
Eleven policemen have been shot to death near Mexico City in a three-day string of drug-gang attacks, prosecutors said on Sunday. Mexico State prosecutor Alberto Bazbaz said 10 suspects believed linked to drug gangs had been arrested in the killings, which mainly occurred on highways and at police checkpoints in the state that loops around Mexico’s capital. Some of the suspects were carrying rifles and grenades at the time of their arrest. Bazbaz said that many of the suspects were from the neighboring state of Michoacan, a hotbed of drug violence dominated by a drug gang known as “The Family.” But he said evidence indicates that low-level traffickers and criminals, rather than organized cartel hit squads, were responsible for the attacks.
■CANADA
Baby elephant dies in zoo
A baby elephant died at the Calgary Zoo in Alberta over the weekend after a brief battle with a virus that has killed dozens of captive elephants around the world in the past two decades, zoo officials said. The 15-month-old pachyderm, named Malti, collapsed and died on Saturday afternoon, one day after being diagnosed with elephant herpesvirus, a disease that can cause internal bleeding, zoo officials said in a press release. “The disease, which has also been diagnosed in the wild, is responsible for the death of nearly a dozen young North American elephants in the past 20 years,” the zoo said.
■UNITED STATES
Court hears amputee’s case
A musician who lost her arm because of a botched drug injection is squaring off against drug maker Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and the government in one of the most closely watched business cases of the Supreme Court’s term. At issue is whether the federal government can limit lawsuits by consumers like Diana Levine, who have been harmed by prescription medications. The justices were to hear arguments in Levine’s case yesterday, shortly after the court announces whether it would accept other cases for argument sometime next year. Levine, a guitarist and pianist, lost her right arm after an injection of the anti-nausea drug Phenergan.
■UNITED STATES
Five homeless people dead
Five people were found shot to death on Sunday in a homeless encampment obscured by heavy brush in the shadow of a Long Beach freeway, Los Angeles police said. Officers received an anonymous call on Sunday morning and went to an area between several commercial buildings and freeway ramps. They found five dead adults, all of them gunshot victims, Long Beach Deputy Police Chief Robert Luna said. Detectives have not determined a motive or identified a suspect.
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