Foreign News
Frantic search for survivors of Texas floods that killed 43, including 15 children
A frantic search for survivors is under way in central Texas after flash floods killed at least 43 people, including 15 children.
Many were asleep when the Guadalupe River rose more than 26 ft (8m) in less than an hour in the early hours of Friday.
Officials in Kerr County have said 27 children are missing from a Christian youth camp located along the river. Some 850 people have been rescued so far.
Weather forecasts suggest that more rain and, potentially, more flooding could be on the horizon for the area.
Among the areas most severely hit by the floods were mobile homes, summer camps and camping sites where many had gathered for 4 July holiday celebrations.
At a press conference on Saturday afternoon, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said he had signed an expanded disaster declaration to boost search efforts.
He said officials would be relentless in ensuring they locate “every single person who’s been a victim of this event”, adding that “we will stop when job is completed”.
It remains a search and rescue mission, officials said, not a recovery effort.
They said rescuers were going up and down the Guadalupe River to try to find people who may have been swept away by the floods.
Much of the rescue has focused on a large all-girls Christian summer camp called Camp Mystic. The camp, where 27 remain missing, is on the banks of the Guadalupe River near Hunt, Texas.
Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick told the BBC’s Radio 4 PM programme that of the 27 children missing from Camp Mystic “many of these girls are younger girls under the age of 12”. He also said that many more people were likely to remain unaccounted for across the region, because some were visiting for the holiday weekend.
In an email to parents of the roughly 750 campers, Camp Mystic said that if they haven’t been contacted directly, their child is considered missing. Some of the families have already stated publicly that their children were among those who were found dead.
US President Donald Trump has said his administration is working closely with local authorities to respond to the emergency. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the president was “devastated” by the loss of life and promised full federal support. Noem joined Governor Abbott at Saturday afternoon’s press conference and said the federal government would soon be deploying the Coast Guard to help search efforts.
Elsewhere in central Texas, in Travis County, officials say another two people have died and 10 are missing because of the flooding.
Forecasters have warned that central Texas may see more flooding this weekend.
The National Weather Service (NWS) said the area could see 2 to 5in (5cm to 12cm) of rain on Saturday.
Up to 10in of rain was possible in some areas that are still reeling from Friday’s deluge.
As each truck pulled up to the Arcadia Live theatre in Kerrville, the mass of gathered parents began unloading heavy trunks filled with everything their daughters brought to Camp Waldemor for the summer.
Some parents were the lucky ones, having received confirmation on Friday morning that their children were safe.They awaited their children’s return at the reunification centre.
Rachel Reed drove five hours from Dallas to pick up her daughter. She told the BBC that members of her church and children’s school district were among the girls dead and missing.
“The families of those campers are living every parents’ worst nightmare,” she said. “My heart is just broken for those families, just in pieces. Our whole community is just in pieces.” “Of course,” she added, “it could have been me.”
Others started returning home in the flooded area, and the damage was enormous.
The floor of Anthony’s apartment in Kerrville was full of mud and debris. His refrigerator fell on the floor, and belongings were not salvageable, except a box holding childhood photos and his baby blanket. “I lost everything I own,” he told the BBC.
Anthony had sought food supply from a Red Cross shelter; he said he had no family in the area.
“Now I’m trying to figure things out,” he said.
[BBC]
Indian tax authorities and market regulator are considering widening their probe of United States trading giant Jane Street Group to investigate it for tax evasion in addition to an earlier charge of price rigging in the Bombay Stock Exchange’s benchmark Sensex, according to media reports.
The tax evasion charge comes on the heels of market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), seizing 48.43 billion rupees ($570m) and banning four Jane Street-related entities from operating in the market for alleged price manipulation in the National Stock Exchange (NSE).
SEBI’s order has roiled the Indian markets, raising questions about regulator surveillance and investor protection in the world’s largest options trading market. Trading in India’s weekly equity index options has slumped by a third on the ban on Jane Street, the Reuters news agency reported on Thursday.
Trading of equity options lets investors buy or sell a stock at a predetermined price and date. As the Indian market rapidly grew to handle more than half of all global options trades, retail investors entered the market too.
Questions of price manipulation have dogged this rapid rise but remained vacuous until a New York court case in April 2024, where Jane Street alleged that its rival, Millennium Partners, had stolen its algorithms that helped it make in the Indian options market. A whistleblower, Mayank Bansal, then made presentations to SEBI showing Jane Street’s trading patterns. Bansal had agreed to speak to Al Jazeera about his interaction with SEBI on the matter, but then backtracked.
On July 3, in a detailed interim order, the regulator said that “by preponderance of probability, there is no economic rationale that can account for this sudden burst of large and aggressive activity, other than the intent to manipulate the price of securities and index benchmark”.
SEBI has alleged that Jane Street accumulated large long positions in stocks that are a part of the NSE’s Bank Index and built large short positions in index options at the start of trade. Around market closing time, it would reverse its trades in the cash and futures segments, pushing down the index and earning large profits in the options segment.
This activity was blurred by its offshore entities making some of these trades.
“Lawyers [can] push back with SEBI on jurisdiction-related issues, but when underlying [Indian] securities are issued, SEBI can take action,” Joby Mathew, managing partner at the law firm Joby Mathew and Associates and a former legal officer at SEBI, told Al Jazeera.
Jane Street has disputed SEBI’s findings and has hired lawyers to represent it before SEBI in the case. It has deposited the 48.43 billion rupees ($563m) of allegedly ill-gotten gains in an account pending the investigation and final report.
[Aljazeera]
A highly respected police officer has shaken South Africa’s government – and won the admiration of many ordinary people – with his explosive allegations that organised crime groups have penetrated the upper echelons of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s administration.
Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi did it in dramatic style – dressed in military-like uniform and surrounded by masked police officers with automatic weapons, he called a press conference to accuse Police Minister Senzo Mchunu of having ties to criminal gangs.
He also said his boss had closed down an elite unit investigating political murders after it uncovered a drug cartel with tentacles in the business sector, prison department, prosecution service and judiciary.
“We are on combat mode, I am taking on the criminals directly,” he declared, in an address broadcast live on national TV earlier this month.
South Africans have long been concerned about organised crime, which, leading crime expert Dr Johan Burger pointed out, was at a “very serious level”.
One of the most notorious cases was that of South Africa’s longest-serving police chief, Jackie Selebi, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2010 after being convicted of taking bribes from an Italian drug lord, Glen Agliotti, in exchange for turning a blind eye to his criminal activity.
But Gen Mkhwanazi’s intervention was unprecedented – the first time that a police officer had publicly accused a cabinet member, let alone the one in charge of policing, of having links to criminal gangs.
The reaction was instantaneous. Mchunu dismissed the allegations as “wild and baseless” and said he “stood ready to respond to the accusations”, but the public rallied around Gen Mkhwanazi – the police commissioner in KwaZulu-Natal – despite the province also being Mchunu’s political turf.
#HandsoffNhlanhlaMkhwanazi topped the trends list on X, in a warning shot to the government not to touch the 52-year-old officer.
“He’s seen as a no-nonsense person who takes the bull by the horn,” Calvin Rafadi, a crime expert based at South Africa’s University of Johannesburg, told the BBC.
[BBC]
Three officers were killed in an explosion at a law enforcement training facility in East Los Angeles, officials say.
The blast occurred at around 07:30 local time (15:30 BST) on Friday at the Biscailuz Center Academy Training facility, which houses the Sheriff’s department’s special enforcement bureau and arson explosives detail, including the bomb squad.
The exact cause of the explosion is still under investigation, but Sheriff Robert Luna of the LASD described it as “an isolated incident”. There were no additional injuries.
The three officers killed in the blast were “fantastic experts” and veterans of the department, each serving between 19 to 33 years, the sheriff said.
Authorities have not released the names of the deceased officers, citing the need to notify their families first. All three were assigned to the sheriff department’s arson explosives detail.
Friday’s incident represents the department’s largest loss of life in a single incident since its founding in 1857, Sheriff Luna said.
“We have to go back and investigate what happened from the very beginning,” he said. The FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are assisting with the investigation.
US Attorney General Pam Bondi called the incident “horrific” and said federal agents had been deployed on the scene and “working to learn more”.
Authorities say the explosion took place in the parking lot of the facility’s special enforcement bureau.
According to the BBC’s US partner CBS, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s bomb squad responded to a Santa Monica garage on Thursday where at least one grenade was found.
The grenade was transported to the training facility on Friday, where officers were reportedly working to render it safe before it exploded, CBS reported citing police sources.
The area surrounding the facility was evacuated and has since been sealed off as investigators continue to work at the scene.
California Governor Gavin Newsom was briefed about the explosion and was “closely monitoring the situation”, his office said in a statement on X.
Newsom’s office added that state assistance has also been offered to help respond to the incident.
Kathryn Barger, Chief of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, wrote in a statement that she was “closely tracking the situation as we learn more about what occurred and the condition of those affected”.
“My heart is heavy, and my thoughts are with the brave men and women of the Sheriff’s Department during this difficult time,” she said.
[BBC]
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