The world in brief

LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY

“We wanted to take part in the referendum, but we have no documents left.”

Yusupjon Ibrakhimov,

among ethnic Uzbeks who said their identification documents were ripped to shreds or burned by Kyrgyz policemen Article, this page Flooding in Brazil kills 44, razes town

RIO DE JANEIRO - Torrential waters flattened a town as floods raged through two states in northeastern Brazil, and the death toll was expected to surpass 44 as rescuers searched Wednesday for hundreds of people reported missing.

Mayor Ana Lopes said the entire town of Branquinha, population 12,000, will have to be rebuilt in a different location. Television footage showed a train station washed away, its tracks ripped from the earth. Cars lay overturned and strewn along a riverbank.

Storms last week dumped a month’s worth of rain on parts of Alagoas state and neighboring Pernambuco state, near the point where Brazil juts farthest east into the Atlantic.

The Civil Defense Department said in a statement that 29 deaths had been reported so far in Alagoas, and 15 were reported dead in Pernambuco.

Talks on protecting whales collapse

Three years of talks aimed at reducing whaling activity by Japan, Norway and Iceland broke down Wednesday.

Anthony Liverpool, the acting chairman of the International Whaling Commission, told delegates meeting in Agadir, Morocco, that “fundamental positions remained very much apart,” The Associated Press reported.

The goal of the Morocco meeting was to forge a 10-year compromise that would create a legal framework to allow limited whale hunting by Japan, Norway and Iceland. Currently, all types of whale hunting are banned by the commission, but the three whale-hunting nations consistently ignore the bans and since the 1980s have caught thousands of the mammals, many purportedly under provisions in the law.

The talks reportedly failed over the issue of how many whales Japan could kill in the waters off Antarctica, where Japanese whalers hunt hundreds of whales each year.

Israel: Ships aim to get arms to Gaza

JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that the real motivation behind plans to send blockade-busting ships toward Gaza is to allow free flow of weapons into the Palestinian territory.

Netanyahu spoke as preparations were under way to send several ships carrying aid and pro-Palestinian activists toward Gaza.

On May 31, Israeli naval commandos killed nine pro-Palestinian activists in clashes aboard a Turkish ship headed for Gaza, setting off an international uproar and forcing Israel to ease its 3-year-old blockade.

Israel already has warned foe Iran to drop its plan to send a blockade-busting ship to Gaza. The Iranian ship is one of several that activists say will head for Gaza in the next few months.

Since the violent 2007 takeover of Gaza by Hamas - an Islamic militant group responsible for firing thousands of rockets at Israeli border communities - Israel has let in only limited humanitarian supplies, including basic foods and medicine.

Canada quake registering 5.0 jars U.S.

TORONTO - A magnitude-5.0 earthquake struck at the Ontario-Quebec border region of Canada on Wednesday, the U.S. Geological Survey said, and homes and businesses were shaken from Canada’s capital in Ottawa on south to an arc of U.S. states.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

Morgan Moschetti, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said it was not unusual for an earthquake to be felt 300 miles from the epicenter and noted that the latest quake was felt in the U.S. from Chicago to Maine.

Other states that reported feeling tremors were Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey and New York.

The epicenter of the quake was in Quebec, about 23 miles north of Cumberland, Ontario, on the Ottawa River, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The agency said the quake occurred at a depth of about 12 miles at 12:45 p.m. CDT. The agency initially said the quake had a 5.5 magnitude but later reduced it to a magnitude-5.0.