Death toll from China floodwaters climbs
BEIJING -- The death toll from flooding in the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou has risen to 51 people, state media reported Friday.
The official China Daily newspaper and other media said the number included just Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province. Other areas of the province have also faced heavy downpours, and rivers and reservoirs burst their banks.
The reports said losses in Zhengzhou totaled about $10 billion as the city continues to drain inundated areas, remove mud and cart away damaged vehicles and household items.
Streets were turned into rushing rivers, washing away people, vehicles and whole apartments. Shops and offices filled with muddy water, forcing people to seek shelter where they could.
Among the dead were 12 people trapped by floodwaters in Zhengzhou's subway system.
The flooding displaced nearly 400,000 people in the city of 12 million that is a major hub for industry and transportation.
China's president visits Tibetan capital
BEIJING -- Chinese leader Xi Jinping has made a rare visit to Tibet as authorities tighten controls over the Himalayan region's traditional Buddhist culture, accompanied by an accelerated drive for economic development and modernized infrastructure.
State media reported Friday that Xi visited sites in the capital, Lhasa, including the Drepung Monastery, Barkhor Street and the public square at the base of the Potala Palace that was home to the Dalai Lamas, Tibet's traditional spiritual and temporal leaders.
China's official Xinhua News Agency said Xi sought to "learn about the work on ethnic and religious affairs, the conservation of the ancient city, as well as the inheritance and protection of Tibetan culture."
China has in recent years stepped up controls over Buddhist monasteries and expanded education in the Chinese rather than Tibetan language. Critics of such policies are routinely detained and can receive long prison terms, especially if they have been convicted of association with the 86-year-old Dalai Lama, who has lived in exile in India since fleeing Tibet in 1959.
China doesn't recognize the self-declared Tibetan government-in-exile based in the hillside town of Dharmsala, and accuses the Dalai Lama of seeking to separate Tibet from China.
Meanwhile, domestic tourism has expanded in the region during Xi's nine years in office, with new airports, rail lines and highways constructed.
Mexico archaeologists to rebury tunnel
MEXICO CITY -- The costs of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic have forced Mexican archaeologists to rebury an unusual find that combined colonial and pre-Hispanic features.
The National Institute of Anthropology and History had announced in 2019 that it found a flood-control tunnel on the outskirts of Mexico City that had Spanish construction techniques but carved Aztec symbols embedded in it.
The institute had planned to make an exhibit of the strange tunnel, which was apparently built in the early 1600s. It replaced an earlier Aztec flood-control system built in the 1400s to protect Mexico City, then an island surrounded by shallow lakes, against periodic floods. After the Spanish conquered the Aztec capital in 1521, they unwisely destroyed parts of the pre-Hispanic system.
But the institute said Thursday that archaeologists would simply cover the finds with dirt again, in hopes that someday it would have enough money to build a display for it.
The institute said in a statement that "it must be considered that the world-wide COVID-19 health emergency forced all levels of government to place priority on assigning money to health care for the population. For that reason, the archaeological project had to be postponed."
Experts speculate that the pre-Hispanic symbols may have been placed in the wall because Indigenous laborers were the main workforce during its construction.
India flooding, landslides kill 100 people
NEW DELHI -- Landslides and flooding triggered by heavy monsoon rains hit parts of western India, killing more than 100 people, officials and news reports said Friday. More than 1,000 people were rescued.
The dead included 54 killed in four landslides in the Raigad and Ratnagiri districts in western Maharashtra state Thursday and Friday, said District Collector Nidhi Chaudhary and state government official Sagar Pathak.
Many of those who were rescued were stranded on rooftops and even on top of buses on highways, Chaudhary said.
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Pathak said more than 30 people were missing.
Chaudhary said the rain had slowed, but water levels were rising again because of a high tide Friday. Rescuers, however, have reached the worst-hit areas.
Twenty-seven people were killed by houses collapsing or being swept away in Satara district, the Press Trust of India news agency reported. It said more than 20 deaths have been reported from the eastern districts of Gondia and Chandrapur.
-- Compiled by Democrat-Gazette staff from wire reports
