International

Neighbors, rescuers search for 52 missing after Venezuela landslide

Foto: Yuri Cortez / AFP

AFP | Margioni Bermúdez

Neighbors helped rescue teams comb through mud and debris Monday for signs of 52 people missing after a landslide swept through a town in Venezuela, killing at least 25.

Another 13 people were killed in heavy rains elsewhere in the South American country, while four died in Central America after tropical storm Julia dumped torrential rain on El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua.

Residents of Las Tejerias some 50 kilometers (31 miles) from Caracas, used picks, shovels and any tools they could find to dig through a thick bank of mud deposited on the town Saturday.

“It came too fast, we had no time,” resident Carlos Camejo, 60, said of the mudslide.

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“The town is lost, Las Tejerias is lost,” added Carmen Melendez, 55, desperately waiting for news on the whereabouts of a missing relative.

Some 1,000 rescuers were involved in the effort, Interior Minister Remigio Ceballos told AFP, with the military also deployed.

Authorities erected shelters for the displaced in Maracay, capital of the affected Aragua province.

The efforts had continued by lamplight overnight, with dogs and drones.

“We are working to find the people who are still missing, that is our main task right now,” Ceballos posted on social media late Sunday.

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President Nicolas Maduro decreed three days of national mourning after the biggest river flood in the area in 30 years.

A torrent of mud several meters deep razed houses and businesses in Las Tejerias, a town of 54,000 people nestled in the mountains.

The deluge swept away cars, homes and telephone poles and felled large trees that were dragged by mud through the streets of the town left without electricity.

By the last count, Ceballos put the toll at 25 dead and 52 missing.

According to Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, five streams in the region overflowed after “as much rain fell in eight hours as normally falls in a month,” blaming the “climate crisis.”

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Crews of workers with machinery were clearing the debris-covered roads while residents battled to clean out meters of mud dumped inside their homes.

Las Tejerias resident Jose Santiago spent 40 minutes clinging to an antenna while the flood dragged along several houses. His home was left standing but a torrent of mud swept through it.

“The river caught me and I couldn’t find anything to do besides climb a roof and grab onto an antenna,” the 65-year-old recounted.

‘Life-threatening’

Further afield, four people died in Honduras and El Salvador when tropical storm Julia raced across Central America.

El Salvador police said on Twitter that “at least two people died” after a house collapsed in the town of Guatajiagua, some 150 kilometers east of San Salvador.

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Wilmer Wood, mayor of the eastern Honduran town of Brus Laguna, said two people died after Julia capsized a boat.

A third person is missing, said Wood.

The storm barelled into Nicaragua early Sunday as a hurricane packing sustained winds of 140 kilometers per hour, before weakening to tropical storm status but still inundating parts of the country with heavy rains that caused flooding.

By Monday morning, Julia’s eye was moving northwestward along the El Salvadoran and then Guatemalan coasts, according to the US National Hurricane Center which warned of “life-threatening flash floods and mudslides” across Central America and Southern Mexico.

The system was forecast to weaken to a tropical depression later Monday.

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In Venezuela, the Tigres de Aragua and Caracas Lions baseball teams availed their stadiums as collection points for donations, and the Caracas metro said it too would raise collections from the public for those affected.

The crisis-hit country is no stranger to seasonal storms, but this was the worst so far this year following historic rain levels that caused dozens of deaths in recent months.

In 1999, about 10,000 people died in a massive landslide in the northern state of Vargas.

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Residents walk among the rubble of destroyed houses washed away by a landslide during heavy rains in Las Tejerias, Aragua state, Venezuela, on October 9, 2022. - A landslide in central Venezuela left at least 22 people dead and more than 50 missing after heavy rains caused a river to overflow, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez said Sunday. (Photo by Yuri CORTEZ / AFP)
Residents walk among the rubble of destroyed houses washed away by a landslide during heavy rains in Las Tejerias, Aragua state, Venezuela, on October 9, 2022. - A landslide in central Venezuela left at least 22 people dead and more than 50 missing after heavy rains caused a river to overflow, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez said Sunday. (Photo by Yuri CORTEZ / AFP)

International

Three U.S. Executions Set for Same Day as Trump Pushes to Expand Death Penalty

The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 U.S. states, while three others —California, Oregon and Pennsylvania— currently have moratoriums in place.

The United States is set to carry out three executions on the same day, a rare occurrence that has not happened since 2010, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.

President Donald Trump has sought to expand the use of capital punishment for what he describes as “the most heinous crimes.” In April, the Department of Justice proposed expanding execution methods to include firing squads, lethal gas and electrocution.

Tennessee is scheduled to execute Anthony Darrell Dugard Hines, 66, on Thursday. He was sentenced to death for the 1985 murder of a woman, according to local media.

In Oklahoma, Carlos Cuesta-Rodríguez, 70, is scheduled to be executed for a 2003 murder.

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Meanwhile, Alabama plans to execute Jeremy Williams, 42, who was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of a five-year-old girl.

The United States carried out 47 executions in 2025, the highest number since 2009, when 52 executions were recorded.

Florida conducted the largest number of executions last year, with 19, followed by Alabama, South Carolina and Texas, with five each.

Of the executions carried out in 2025, 39 were conducted by lethal injection. Three were carried out by firing squad and five through nitrogen hypoxia, a method that involves forcing nitrogen gas into a face mask, depriving the prisoner of oxygen.

The United Nations has condemned nitrogen gas as a cruel and inhumane method of capital punishment.

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International

Colombia Earthquake Death Toll Reaches 265 as Rescue Teams Race Against Time

The 7.4-magnitude earthquake that struck Colombia on Monday, the strongest to hit the country this century, has so far left 265 people dead and around 3,500 injured.

In Cali, Pereira and other cities in western Colombia, rescue teams are working around the clock as they search for survivors. The first 72 hours following the earthquake will be reached at 7:34 a.m. local time (12:34 GMT), a critical window for rescue efforts as the chances of finding survivors generally decline significantly after that point.

Among those anxiously awaiting news is Valeria Cardona, a 26-year-old student searching for two of her cousins in Cali.

“We have some suspicions about their location, but there are no signs of life,” she said. “Hope is the last thing you lose, but we are anxious about receiving news we don’t want to hear.”

A team of members from the Topos Aztecas, the renowned Mexican volunteer rescue group, has also arrived in Cali to join the search. The rescuers had been working in neighboring Venezuela, where a double earthquake on June 24 left more than 6,000 people dead.

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“We all came from Venezuela, from La Guaira. The 41 days we spent working there made us stronger because we overcame hunger, pain and sleepless nights,” said Héctor Méndez, 80, president of Topos Aztecas.

Méndez encouraged those affected by the disaster not to lose hope and emphasized the commitment required from rescue teams during an emergency.

“Do not feel like victims. This is not an office or workshop schedule. This is real life, where the best part of the human spirit emerges. These are things of nature that happen,” he said.

International

German Authorities Investigate More Than 100 New Cases Against Convicted Nurse

German authorities announced Monday that they are investigating more than 100 additional cases involving a nurse who was sentenced to life in prison in November for the murder of 10 patients.

The man, who was 44 at the time of his conviction, worked in palliative care at a hospital in Würselen, near Aachen. He was also found guilty of 27 attempted murders.

Aachen prosecutors are now examining 121 new cases, a spokesperson for the office said.

Prosecutors leading the investigation are preparing a new indictment that could be filed next year. Nearly 40 bodies have so far been exhumed as part of the investigation, which covers alleged incidents dating back to September 2022.

Meanwhile, prosecutors in the city of Cologne are investigating 18 additional cases. According to a spokesperson, the oldest case dates back to 2010.

Before working at the Würselen hospital, the nurse is believed to have worked at a clinic in eastern Cologne, according to local media reports.

At the time of his November conviction, the court ruled that the severity of his crimes was particularly serious, a finding that would make it difficult for him to obtain early release after 15 years in prison.

Between December 2023 and May 2024, the nurse administered overdoses of sedatives or painkillers to terminally ill patients, most of them elderly, according to the indictment in the original case.

His alleged motive was to sedate patients who required care so that he could minimize his workload during night shifts, prosecutors said.

According to the indictment, the nurse worked «without enthusiasm» and «without motivation». When faced with patients requiring extensive care, he allegedly became «irritated» and showed a lack of empathy.

The case has revived painful memories in Germany of Niels Högel, a former nurse and serial killer who was sentenced to life imprisonment in June 2019 for the murders of at least 85 patients.