SWANNANOA, N.C. (AP) — Rescuers fanned out across the mountains of western North Carolina on Tuesday in search of anyone still unaccounted for since Hurricane Helene’s remnants caused catastrophic damage to the Southeast, with a death toll nearing 140 people. Many of those who survived what was one of the deadliest storms in U.S. history were left without electricity or any way to reach out for help. Some cooked food on charcoal grills or hiked to high ground in the hopes of finding a signal to call loved ones. The devastation was especially bad in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where at least 40 people died in and around the city of Asheville, a tourism haven known for its art galleries, breweries and outdoor activities.

 

*** 

BANGKOK (AFP) -  A bus carrying young students with their teachers caught fire in suburban Bangkok on Tuesday with 25 of those on board feared dead, according to officials and rescuers. The bus was carrying 44 passengers from central Uthai Thani province to Ayutthaya for a school trip when the fire started around noon in Pathum Thani province, a northern suburb of the capital, Transport Minister Suriya Jungrungruengkit told reporters at the scene. Interior Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said officials could not yet confirm the number of fatalities as they have not finished investigating the scene, but based on the number of survivors, he said 25 people are feared dead.  

 

*** 

KYIV (Reuters) - Ukraine’s defense minister is dismissing three of his deputies in a reshuffle as Kyiv struggles to fend off Moscow’s 2 1/2-year-old invasion, he said on Tuesday. Rustem Umerov said in a social media post he had asked the government to relieve Stanilsav Haider, Oleksandr Serhiy and Yuriy Dzhygyr of their duties as deputy defense ministers, and Liudmyla Darahan as ministry secretary. “I have set the task of completing the process of cleansing the system of procurement in close cooperation with law enforcement and anti-corruption authorities,” Umerov said. New appointments will be announced shortly. Ukrainian officials have sought to streamline bureaucracy and crack down on corruption.

 

*** 

SANTAREM, Brazil (Reuters) - Fires in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest region surged to the highest number for September in almost a decade and a half, preliminary government data showed on Tuesday, after reaching similar highs in the two preceding months. A prolonged drought across much of South America, linked to climate change, means the fires in Brazil’s Amazon have burned more intensely this year and at times smoke has covered more than half of the continent. Satellites detected 41,463 fire hot spots in Brazil’s Amazon in September, the largest number for that month since 2010, data from the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe) showed. Fires in the first nine months of the year are also the worst for that period since 2007. A Reuters reporter traveling on Monday on a flight to Santarem in the Amazonian state of Para saw hundreds of miles of haze. Para also recorded the highest number of fire hot spots for the month of September since 2007, the data showed. 

 

***

ZURICH (Reuters) - Swiss glaciers melted at an above-average rate in 2024 as a blistering hot summer thawed through abundant snowfall, monitoring body GLAMOS said on Tuesday.  Earlier this year, glaciologists had celebrated heavy winter and spring snow dumps in the Alps, hoping this would signal a halt to years of hefty declines or even a reversal of losses.  But with average August temperatures a few degrees above freezing even at the 3,571 meter high Jungfraujoch station perched above the Aletsch Glacier, scientists measured record ice losses across the country that month.  Overall, GLAMOS said Swiss glaciers lost 2.5% of their volume this year which was above the average of the past decade. “It is worrying to me that despite the perfect year we actually had for glaciers, with the snow-rich winter and the rather cool and rainy spring, it was still not enough,” said Matthias Huss, Director of GLAMOS.