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.
VENEZUELAN ACTION: Marco Rubio said that previous US interdiction efforts have not stemmed the flow of illicit drugs into the US and that ‘blowing them up’ would US President Donald Trump on Wednesday justified a lethal military strike that his administration said was carried out a day earlier against a Venezuelan gang as a necessary effort by the US to send a message to Latin American cartels. Asked why the military did not instead interdict the vessel and capture those on board, Trump said that the operation would cause drug smugglers to think twice about trying to move drugs into the US. “There was massive amounts of drugs coming into our country to kill a lot of people and everybody fully understands that,” Trump said while hosting Polish President
Japan yesterday heralded the coming-of-age of Japanese Prince Hisahito with an elaborate ceremony at the Imperial Palace, where a succession crisis is brewing. The nephew of Japanese Emperor Naruhito, Hisahito received a black silk-and-lacquer crown at the ceremony, which marks the beginning of his royal adult life. “Thank you very much for bestowing the crown today at the coming-of-age ceremony,” Hisahito said. “I will fulfill my duties, being aware of my responsibilities as an adult member of the imperial family.” Although the emperor has a daughter — Princess Aiko — the 23-year-old has been sidelined by the royal family’s male-only
A French couple kept Louise, a playful black panther, in an apartment in northern France, triggering panic when she was spotted roaming nearby rooftops. The pair were were handed suspended jail sentences on Thursday for illegally keeping a wild animal, despite protesting that they saw Louise as their baby. The ruling follows a September 2019 incident when the months-old feline was seen roaming a rooftop in Armentieres after slipping out of the couple’s window. Authorities captured the panther by sedating her with anesthetic darts after she entered a home. No injuries were reported during the animal’s time on the loose. The court in the
Another tanker carrying liquefied natural gas from Russia’s sanctioned Arctic LNG (liquefied natural gas) 2 project has docked in a Chinese port, ship-tracking data showed, days after Russian President Vladimir Putin met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing. The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) tracking data indicated the Russian Voskhod LNG tanker was anchored at an LNG terminal in the port of Tieshan in Guangxi, China. The Russian flagged tanker, with a cargo of 150,000 cubic meters of LNG, was loaded up at the Arctic LNG 2 facility in Gydan in northern Siberia on July 19, LSEG data showed.
RSS