SAO PAULO: Authorities said heavy rains have caused a dam to rupture in northeastern Brazil, stranding nearly 3,000 people in a region where floods have killed 53 people and displaced more than 415,000.Officials say they launched an overnight rescue operation using five helicopters to aid nearly 600 families stranded by Wednesday's dam break in Piaui state.Piaui civil defense department spokeswoman Vanize Lemos said Thursday that 150 families have been rescued. She said some residents climbed trees and rooftops after a river rose 16 feet (5 meters).Heavy rains have battered northern and northeastern Brazil since April, causing floods and mudslides in a region extending from the Amazon rain forest to the Atlantic Ocean.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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