A violent storm that spawned a tornado and mudslides killed at least 15 people across northern Argentina and southern Brazil, authorities said on Tuesday. Dozens were injured in the winds and hail as their homes were destroyed.
At least 10 died in Argentina, said Ricardo Veselka, civil defense director for the town of San Pedro, where the twister hit.
Four people were killed in the Brazilian city of Guaraciaba, and one person died in a Sao Paulo slum after a mudslide swept into ramshackle homes, civil defense officials said in a statement on their Web site. Civil defense earlier reported two victims there, but later lowered the death toll without explanation.
Rescue workers in Sao Paulo searched the rubble on Tuesday evening for three people still missing and were also trying to find two children believed buried after part of a school collapsed, civil defense officials said.
The worst damage was in the small Argentine towns of Santa Rosa and El Progreso, where officials said houses and even a city health center were blown away early on Tuesday. Trees fell on cars, blown down by winds of more than 100kph.
“Whole houses disappeared,” Veselka said. “There are posts down, trees down, and there are more than 50 injured.”
A city official in Santa Rosa, Paulo Alvez, expressed surprise at the severity of the damage.
“This is something unusual,” he said of the tornado.
But Maria Luisa Altinger de Schwarzkopf, an expert on severe weather, said tornados occur in Argentina between September and March.
Extremely heavy rains tangled traffic in Sao Paulo for most of the day and cut off phone service in some neighborhoods. Two rivers overflowed onto major highways in South America’s largest city.
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg was deported from Israel yesterday, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, the day after the Israeli navy prevented her and a group of fellow pro-Palestinian activists from sailing to Gaza. Thunberg, 22, was put on a flight to France, the ministry said, adding that she would travel on to Sweden from there. Three other people who had been aboard the charity vessel also agreed to immediate repatriation. Eight other crew members are contesting their deportation order, Israeli rights group Adalah, which advised them, said in a statement. They are being held at a detention center ahead of a
‘THE RED LINE’: Colombian President Gustavo Petro promised a thorough probe into the attack on the senator, who had announced his presidential bid in March Colombian Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay, a possible candidate in the country’s presidential election next year, was shot and wounded at a campaign rally in Bogota on Saturday, authorities said. His conservative Democratic Center party released a statement calling it “an unacceptable act of violence.” The attack took place in a park in the Fontibon neighborhood when armed assailants shot him from behind, said the right-wing Democratic Center, which was the party of former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe. The men are not related. Images circulating on social media showed Uribe Turbay, 39, covered in blood being held by several people. The Santa Fe Foundation
RSS