Thousands of flesh-eating piranhas have infested a river beach popular with tourists in western Brazil and have bitten at least 15 unwary swimmers, authorities said on Wednesday.
Officials in the city of Caceres in Mato Grosso state said this is the first time they have had a problem with piranhas at the Daveron beach on the Paraguay River, where the aggressive fish began schooling about two weeks ago.
“People have got to be very careful. If they’re bitten, they’ve got to get out of the water rapidly and not allow the blood to spread,” firefighter Raul Castro de Oliveira told Globo TV’s G1 Web site.
Elson de Campos Pinto, 22, was bitten on Sunday.
“I took a dip in the river and when I stood up, I felt pain in my foot,” Pinto told G1. “I saw that I had lost the tip of my toe. I took off running out of the river, afraid that I would be further attacked because of the blood. I’m not going back in for a long time.”
BEACH STILL OPEN
City officials said the beach will remain open because it’s an important draw for tourists in Brazil’s Pantanal region, known for its ecotourism.
Each September, Caceres hosts what local officials bill as Brazil’s biggest fishing festival, a weeklong event that draws 200,000 people for fishing tournaments and concerts.
Gonzaga Junior, a spokesman for the city government, said he didn’t think the piranha attacks would hurt that event since it is many months away.
He tried to put the best face on the problem.
“Everyone knows there are piranhas in the region and have always taken the necessary precautions,” he said. “What is different this time is that they’ve appeared where they never appeared before.”
The city has seen far fewer people than normal use the beach recently because of the piranha attacks. It was deserted on Tuesday, a national holiday in Brazil, normally a heavy beach day.
Officials have put up large signs warning swimmers about the piranhas, reading in blood red letters: “Attention swimmers. Area at risk of piranha attacks. Danger!”
WISE FISHERMAN
Local fisherman Hildegard Galeno Alves said that when he throws out fishing nets near the beach of late, he catches numerous piranhas.
“I come here with my kids and I always see blood on the river banks,” he told G1. “The worst is that the attacks are in shallow water, next to the bank.”
Despite making his living off the river, Alves left no doubt about his feelings for the water.
“I would never even think of going in there,” he said.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese