Flooding in central and southeast Mexico kills 28, and damages homes and hospitals
Flooding in central and southeast Mexico kills 28, and damages homes and hospitals/node/2618497/world
Flooding in central and southeast Mexico kills 28, and damages homes and hospitals
Flooding caused by heavy rains in central and southeastern Mexico has set off landslides, damaged homes and highways. People wade through a flooded street in Poza Rica, Veracruz state on Oct. 10, 2025. (Reuters)
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Updated 8 sec ago
AP
Flooding in central and southeast Mexico kills 28, and damages homes and hospitals
One of the hardest hit areas was the central state of Hidalgo, where 16 deaths have been reported
Streets turned into rivers carrying away vehicles and houses were almost completely covered in water
Updated 8 sec ago
AP
MEXICO CITY: Flooding caused by heavy rains in central and southeastern Mexico has set off landslides, damaged homes and highways, and left at least 28 people dead, authorities said Friday.
Videos on social media from different parts of the affected areas showed streets turned into rivers carrying away vehicles and houses almost completely covered in water.
Mexico deployed 8,700 military personnel to assist the population.
One of the hardest hit areas was the central state of Hidalgo, where 16 deaths have been reported, according to state Interior Secretary Guillermo Olivares Reyna.
At least 1,000 homes, 59 hospitals and clinics, and 308 schools have suffered damage in the state because of landslides and rivers topping their banks. Some 17 of the states 84 municipalities were without electricity, he said.
In neighboring Puebla state, nine people died and 13 were missing, according to Gov. Alejandro Armenta. He requested help from the federal government to rescue 15 people, including some children, who were stranded on rooftops by floodwaters. He estimated some 80,000 people were affected by the heavy rains and said a gas pipeline was ruptured by a landslide.
In the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, two people died, including a police officer, Gov. Rocío Nahle said. Some 5,000 homes were damaged and the Navy evacuated nearly 900 people to shelters. The city of Poza Rica was one of the hardest hit by river flooding. Authorities cut electricity as a precaution.
Earlier, authorities in the central state of Queretaro confirmed that the child had died after being caught in a landslide.
The heavy rainfall also caused power outages affecting more than 320,000 users and damage to almost 1,000 kilometers of roads in six states, authorities said.
Philippines begins clean-up after powerful twin quakes
Destruction comes less than two weeks after a 6.9-magnitude quake struck the central Philippine island of Cebu
Earthquakes are a near-daily occurrence in the Philippines, which is situated on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”
Updated 2 sec ago
AFP
MANAY, Philippines: Dazed survivors of a pair of major earthquakes in the southern Philippines awoke on Saturday to scenes of devastation, after hundreds of aftershocks rocked the region overnight. Many coastal residents of Mindanao island had slept outdoors, fearful of being crushed to death by aftershocks of the 7.4- and 6.7-magnitude quakes that struck off the coast within hours of each other on Friday. Philippine authorities said at least eight people were killed but they were still assessing the extent of the damage. In Manay, a Mindanao municipality of 40,000, people were removing debris and sweeping up broken glass from homes and other buildings Saturday morning. “Our small house and our small store were destroyed,” resident Ven Lupogan said. “We have nowhere to sleep. There’s no electricity. We have nothing to eat.” The destruction came less than two weeks after a 6.9-magnitude quake struck the central Philippine island of Cebu, killing 75 people and wrecking about 72,000 houses. 800 aftershocks Some people in Manay slept in tents, under improvised tarps and hammocks, inside vehicles, and on mats laid out in parks or the sides of streets as aftershocks rippled across the region of 1.8 million people. At the heavily damaged Manay government hospital, patients lay on beds outside waiting for treatment. Many had been wheeled out on Friday because government engineers said the building had been structurally compromised. Nearby shopkeepers cleaned up broken glass and put merchandise back on shelves, AFP journalists saw. Vilma Lagnayo scrambled to save her family’s clothes and belongings from their collapsed Manay home. “Reconstructing (our home) is difficult now... Money is a problem,” Lagnayo said. The Philippine seismology office has recorded more than 800 aftershocks since the first quake struck Mindanao, which is riddled by major faults. It said these are expected to last for weeks. In Mati, about two hours’ drive southwest along the coast, Margarita Mulle and her relatives held a wake for her older sister who had earlier died from disease, even as neighbors stayed away after tsunami warnings that have since been lifted. “In case something happens, they (relatives) will carry the body using a ‘tora-tora’,” a tearful Mulle said, using a local term for a hand tractor-drawn cart that is a major mode of transport in rural areas of the south. Earthquakes are a near-daily occurrence in the Philippines, which is situated on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of intense seismic activity stretching from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin. An 8.0-magnitude quake off Mindanao island’s southwest coast in 1976 unleashed a tsunami that left 8,000 people dead or missing, the Philippines’ deadliest natural disaster.
White House lays off thousands of US government workers, blaming shutdown/node/2618488/world
White House lays off thousands of US government workers, blaming shutdown
Trump administration begins layoffs amid government shutdown
Updated 11 October 2025
Reuters
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump on Friday blamed Democrats for his decision to lay off thousands of workers across the US government as he followed through on his threat to cut the federal workforce during the government shutdown.
Job cuts were under way at the Treasury Department, the US health agency, the Internal Revenue Service and the departments of education, commerce, and Homeland Security’s cybersecurity division, spokespeople said, but the total extent of the layoffs was not immediately clear. Roughly 300,000 federal civilian workers had already been set to leave their jobs this year due to a downsizing campaign initiated earlier this year by Trump.
“They started this thing,” Trump told reporters during an event in the Oval Office, calling the job cuts “Democrat-oriented.”
Trump’s Republicans hold majorities in both chambers of Congress, but need Democratic votes in the US Senate to pass any measure that would fund the government.
Democrats are holding out for an extension of health-insurance subsidies, arguing health costs will increase dramatically for many of the 24 million Americans who get their coverage through the Affordable Care Act.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to fire federal workers during the shutdown standoff, in its 10th day on Friday, and has suggested his administration will aim primarily at parts of the government championed by Democrats.
Trump has also ordered the freezing of at least $28 billion in infrastructure funds for New York, California and Illinois — all home to sizable populations of Democratic voters and critics of the administration.
The Justice Department said in a court filing more than 4,200 federal employees had gotten layoff notices at seven agencies, including more than 1,400 at the Treasury Department and at least 1,100 at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Democrats said they will not cave to Trump’s pressure tactics.
“Until Republicans get serious, they own this — every job lost, every family hurt, every service gutted is because of their decisions,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said.
Labor unions representing federal workers have sued to stop the layoffs, saying they would be illegal during a shutdown.
The administration said in a Friday court filing that the unions’ request should be denied because they lack the legal right to sue over federal personnel decisions.
A federal judge is due to hear the case on October 15.
The government is required by law to give workers 60 days’ notice ahead of any layoffs, though that can be shortened to 30 days.
Some Republicans objected to the layoffs, including Senator Susan Collins, the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
“Regardless of whether federal employees have been working without pay or have been furloughed, their work is incredibly important to serving the public,” Collins said in a statement.
Earlier in the day, White House budget director Russell Vought wrote on social media that: “The RIFs had begun,” referring to so-called reductions in force. A spokesperson for the budget office characterized the cuts as “substantial,” without offering further details.
The announcement came on the same day that many federal workers were due to get reduced paychecks that do not include any pay for the days since the shutdown began. Hundreds of thousands have been ordered not to report to work, while others have been ordered to keep working without pay. The nation’s 2 million active-duty troops will miss their October 15 paycheck entirely if the shutdown is not resolved before then.
Employees across multiple divisions of the Department of Health and Human Services have received layoff notices, communications director Andrew Nixon said. The 78,000 workers at the sprawling agency monitor disease outbreaks, fund medical research, and perform a wide range of other health-related duties.
Nixon said the layoffs were targeted at agency staff who have been ordered not to work, but did not provide further details. Roughly 41 percent of agency staff have been furloughed.
Layoffs have also begun at the Treasury Department, according to a spokesperson who requested anonymity.
A labor union official, Thomas Huddleston of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a court filing he had been told Treasury was preparing 1,300 layoff notices. Those layoffs could hit the tax-collecting Internal Revenue Service, which has been targeted for steep job cuts this year. Some 46 percent of the agency’s 78,000 employees were furloughed on Wednesday. Layoffs have also begun at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the union said.
Officials also confirmed job cuts at the Education Department, which Trump has vowed to shutter completely, and the Commerce Department, which handles weather forecasting, economic data reports, and other tasks.
Other media outlets reported layoffs at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy and the Department of Interior. Spokespeople at those agencies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Department of Homeland Security said layoffs were taking place at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which incurred Trump’s wrath after the 2020 election when its director said there was no evidence voting systems were compromised. Trump falsely claims that he lost that election to Democrat Joe Biden due to voter fraud.
The Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration are not affected, according to a source familiar with the situation.
With flattery and warnings, Russia tries to revive ‘spirit of Alaska’ with US/node/2618486/world
With flattery and warnings, Russia tries to revive ‘spirit of Alaska’ with US
Russia has tried playing good cop, bad cop — with officials at times appearing to threaten tough responses to US action and at others underlining shared values
On Friday, Putin praised Trump’s credentials as a potential Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and it sounded like music to Trump
Updated 11 October 2025
Reuters
MOSCOW: Two months after a smiling Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin shook hands at a military base in Alaska in what looked like the start of a US-Russia rapprochement, a top Russian diplomat has raised doubts that the “spirit of Alaska” is still alive.
For Russia, the Anchorage summit on August 15 had two goals: to persuade President Trump to lean on Ukraine and Europe to agree to a peace settlement favorable to Moscow, and to encourage a rapprochement in US-Russia ties.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said this week there had been scant progress on either front and “powerful momentum” had been lost. Moscow had signalled it was ready to rebuild ties but Washington had not reciprocated, he said.
“We have a certain edifice of relations that has cracked and is collapsing,” Ryabkov said. “Now the cracks have reached the foundation.”
Putin says complex issues require more study
After Ryabkov spoke, a Kremlin aide and Putin’s spokesman underlined that contacts with Washington continue, and the Russian leader sounded more optimistic than Ryabkov when asked about Ukraine and ties with the US on Friday.
“These are complex issues that require further consideration. But we remain committed to the discussion that took place in Anchorage,” Putin told a press conference.
His aide later told the Kommersant newspaper that Russia had agreed to unspecified concessions at the Alaska summit it would be ready to make if Trump got certain things from Ukraine and the Europeans.
Such a contrast in tone among senior officials is rare in Moscow and highlights the delicacy and sensitivity of the twin-track approach Russia is taking — combining flattery and warnings to adapt to diplomatic reversals since the summit.
Trump’s frustration
While a Trump initiative has raised hopes of peace in Gaza, he is frustrated by his failure to broker an end to fighting in Ukraine and has soured, at least publicly, on Russia.
There is no new Trump-Putin meeting on the agenda, no date has been set for the next talks on improving ties, and Washington, without an ambassador in Moscow since June, has not sought Russia’s approval to send a successor.
Trump has spoken of possibly supplying Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine, hitting a nerve with Putin, who said it would destroy what is left of US-Russia ties.
Trump has also said he wants Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to hold direct talks, but there appears no near-term prospect of that happening as the tempo of the war increases.
In a rhetorical U-turn, Trump has suggested Ukraine could win back all its lost territory, while dismissing Russia as “a paper tiger,” a snipe shrugged off by Moscow.
Music to Trump's ears
In response, Russia has tried playing good cop, bad cop — with officials at times appearing to threaten tough responses to US action and at others underlining shared values.
Putin offered to voluntarily maintain limits on deployed strategic nuclear weapons set out in the last arms control treaty with the US once it expires next year if Washington does the same.
Trump said “it sounds like a good idea,” but there has been no formal US response.
Putin on Friday praised Trump’s credentials as a potential Nobel Peace Prize laureate, saying his efforts to bring peace to Ukraine were sincere and that his Middle East mediation initiative was already an achievement and would be “a historic event” if he was able to see it through to the end.
Trump took to social media to show he had noted the praise: “Thank you to President Putin!” he wrote on Truth Social.
Melania Trump also disclosed on Friday that she had secured an open line of communication with Putin about repatriating Ukrainian children caught up in the war, and that some had been returned to their families with more to be reunited soon.
Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s presidential envoy, said Moscow appreciated Melania Trump’s “humanitarian leadership.”
At a foreign policy conference this month, Putin also went out of his way to make a series of US-focused statements likely to appeal to Trump.
Putin praised Michael Gloss, the son of a CIA official killed in Ukraine fighting on Russia’s side, saying he represented “the core of the MAGA movement, which supports President Trump.”
He also condemned the murder of Trump ally Charlie Kirk, saying Kirk had defended the “traditional values” which he said Gloss and Russian soldiers in Ukraine were giving their lives to defend.
Pushback, warnings and disappointment
But warnings have continued, and pushback against Trump’s talk of supplying Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine was immediate.
Putin said such a step would require the direct involvement of US military personnel, destroy bilateral relations and usher in a new stage of escalation.
Andrei Kartapolov, who heads Russian parliament’s defense committee, said Moscow would shoot down Tomahawk missiles and bomb their launch sites if the US supplied them, and find a way to retaliate against Washington that hurts.
In other terse comments, Ryabkov said Russia would quickly carry out a nuclear test if the US did the same, and that Moscow would “get by” if Washington did not take up Putin’s nuclear arms control offer.
Ryabkov also backed off a Russian offer to discuss the fate of US nuclear fuel at a nuclear plant Moscow controls in southern Ukraine, and spoke of how Russia was withdrawing from an agreement with the US to destroy weapons-grade plutonium.
“After the summit in Alaska, there was hope that Trump was ready to continue dialogue with Russia and take our interests into account,” wrote Andrei Baranov, a commentator for pro-Kremlin newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda.
“Donald has now thoroughly disappointed us with his trademark inconsistency.”
Magnitude 7.8 quake strikes off tip of South America
Updated 11 October 2025
Reuters
SANTIAGO, Chile: A magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck the Drake Passage, a stretch of water located between the southern tip of South America and Antarctica on Friday, prompting emergency authorities to issue a tsunami warning.
The earthquake struck just before 5:30 p.m. local time (2030 GMT) at a depth estimated at 10 km. the United States Geological Survey said.
Chile’s SHOA marine authority and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a precautionary tsunami alert for the country’s Antarctic territory and authorities asked people to evacuate the beaches.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and Chile’s SHOA marine authority withdrew the warnings around an hour later.
The deep waters and rough, windy seas of the Drake Passage mean tsunami waves are less likely to intensify before hitting land.
Macron reappoints Sebastien Lecornu as France’s PM
Lecornu on X said after the Elysee announcement that he had accepted the mission “out of duty.”
Macron, facing the worst domestic crisis since the 2017 start of his presidency, has yet to address the public
Updated 11 October 2025
AFP
PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday reappointed his outgoing prime minister, Sebastien Lecornu, back into that position, just four days after Lecornu gave his resignation.
Both allies and the opposition had been hoping for a fresh face in government to help end months of paralysis over an austerity budget, but Macron instead reappointed Lecornu, 39.
“The president of the republic has nominated Mr.Sebastien Lecornu as prime minister and has tasked him with forming a government,” the Elysee Palace said.
France has been mired in political deadlock ever since Macron gambled last year on snap polls that he hoped would consolidate power — but ended instead in a hung parliament and more seats for the far right.
Lecornu on X said after the Elysee announcement that he had accepted the mission “out of duty.”
“We must end the political crisis,” he said.
He pledged to do “everything possible” to give France a budget by the end of the year and added that restoring the public finances remained “a priority for our future.”
Macron, facing the worst domestic crisis since the 2017 start of his presidency, has yet to address the public.
Lecornu’s reappointment was met with indignation.
Far-right National Rally party leader Jordan Bardella called it a “bad joke” and pledged to immediately seek to vote out the new cabinet.
A spokesman for the hard left said Lecornu’s return was a huge “two fingers to the French people.”
The Socialists, a swing group in parliament, said they had “no deal” with Lecornu and would oust his government if he did not agree to suspend a 2023 pensions reform that increased retirement age from 62 to 64.
The French parliament toppled Lecornu’s two predecessors in a standoff over cost-cutting measures.
No ‘presidential ambitions’
Lecornu, a Macron loyalist who previously served as defense minister, after he quit agreed to stay on for two extra days to talk to all political parties.
He told French television late Wednesday that he believed a revised draft budget for 2026 could be put forward on Monday, which would meet the deadline for its approval by the end of the year.
But it was not immediately clear if this would require a fresh cabinet line-up to be announced by the end of the weekend.
He warned on Friday that all those who wanted to join his government “must commit to setting aside presidential ambitions” for 2027 elections.
Lecornu’s suggested list of ministers last Sunday sparked criticism that it did not break enough with the past, and he suggested on Wednesday that it should include technocrats.
The escalating crisis has seen former allies criticize the president.
In an unprecedented move, former premier Edouard Philippe, a contender in the next presidential polls, earlier this week said Macron himself should step down after a budget was passed.
But Macron has always insisted he would stay until the end of his term.
The far-right National Rally senses its best-ever chance of winning power in the 2027 presidential vote, with Macron having served the maximum two terms.
Its three-time presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has been barred from running after being convicted in a corruption case, but her 30-year-old lieutenant Bardella could be a candidate instead.
