Teams scramble to locate survivors four days after #Venezuela earthquakes.

LA GUAIRA, Venezuela — Local and international rescue teams raced against the clock to pull survivors from the rubble in #Venezuela on Sunday, four days after two powerful earthquakes shook the northern state of La Guaira.

The government reported 1,450 dead from the quakes Sunday afternoon as it faced growing criticism from Venezuelans that its response was inadequate and was overshadowed by civilian-led efforts to rescue people buried under collapsed buildings. Thousands have been reported missing.

Even as the likelihood of finding people alive diminished with each passing hour, rescuers continued to free survivors from mountains of debris, offering anguished families reason to keep hopes alive. Aid agencies consider the first 48 to 72 hours after a natural disaster as crucial for retrieving people alive, though that can be extended if they have access to food and water.

Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez said Sunday night that even as the threshold passed, the search for survivors would continue. More than 2,600 rescue workers from around the world had arrived with trained search dogs and machinery, the government said.

“It’s been incredibly hard work, but we’re going strong,” said Jason Mercano, a civilian who was able to communicate with family buried under the rubble and was working with rescue teams to pull them out.

“We’ve never given up hope,” he added.
More than 770 buildings partially or totally collapsed

Still, many Venezuelans are struggling to hold onto hope in an increasingly desperate situation. The one-two punch of 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes that hit last Wednesday have left a trail of devastation.

A layer of dust coated coastal communities, and as the stench of decomposing bodies spread, more people began to wear masks.

Authorities said Sunday that more than 770 buildings had totally or partially collapsed from the earthquakes, twice as many as were reported destroyed or damaged on Friday. The risk of further damage remains as aftershocks continued to shake Venezuela; quakes measuring 4.2 and 4.5 hit Sunday morning.

🇳🇦🇩🇪 NEW: #Namibia demands Germany pay up for colonial genocide.

KRASNODAR, June 28. Drone fragments fell in the town of Slavyansk-on-Kuban in southern Russia’s Krasnodar Region, sparking a fire on the territory of a local refinery, the region’s crisis response center said on the Max messenger.

"In Slavyansk-on-Kuban, falling drone fragments started a fire on the territory of an oil refinery. Also, the fragments damaged a power line and smashed windows at a local house," the center said in a statement.

No casualties were reported. First responders are working in the area.

In a separate incident, a man was wounded and four houses were damaged by drone fragments in the settlement of Trudobelikovsky in the Krasnodar Region.

The man received first aid on site. Hospitalization was not required.

#Chinese dissident who fled by dinghy to South Korea arrives in #Canada: friend, HONG KONG — A Chinese political dissident who had fled to South Korea last month in a dinghy has arrived in Canada, his friend said on social media on Saturday.

Dong Guangping was aboard a 3.3 metre (10.8 foot) inflatable boat in the waters off a western South Korean island in May when he was detained by South Korea’s coast guard for allegedly violating the country’s immigration law. It was his fourth known attempt to flee China.

Appearing at a court hearing in South Korea, he told reporters that he hopes to go to Canada to reunite with his wife and daughters, who have already been resettled there, according to South Korean media.

In a post Saturday on X, his friend Sheng Xue, a Chinese Canadian activist, said Dong had landed in Toronto following an Air Canada flight on Friday.

“He just had a big bowl of noodles with eggs, tomatoes and shrimps,” she wrote in the post, adding that she has spent more than 10 years trying to get him out of China.

She attached a photo of Dong in a car with her and another photo of Dong holding a bowl.

Dong, a former police officer in China, had previously been detained several times for his activism. He was imprisoned for three years in 2001 for “inciting subversion of state power” and spent more than eight months behind bars after being arrested in 2014 for participating in a memorial for victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, according to past statements from Amnesty International.

He previously escaped to Thailand and Vietnam, but authorities there deported him back to China. Dong also unsuccessfully tried to swim to a Taiwanese island.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has not immediately commented.

Kanis Leung, The Associated Press

Artificial intelligence may fuel inflation not just by driving up the cost of chips, but also by making consumers wealthier and more willing to spend, according to the International Monetary Fund’s chief #economist

#Utah governor restricts fireworks as largest U.S. wildfire surges uncontained

As costs rise, Calgary businesses count on Stampede’s economic boost. CALGARY - With the Calgary Stampede less than a week away, some business owners say this year’s event could not come at a better time as they grapple with rising costs and tighter margins.

For restaurant owner and chef Ashish Damle, the annual influx of visitors can make a big difference.

“The impact is significant. It really, really helps a small business operator like us,” said Damle, owner of Wok and Co. and several other Calgary restaurants.

Damle said his restaurants typically sees weekly revenue increase by between 40 and 60 per cent during the Stampede, with elevated sales often continuing through the rest of July.

The additional customers are especially welcome this year.

“It is challenging. I’m not going to sugar-coat it. Costs are really up,” he said.

“With prices of food and fuel especially, that affects the price of food and alcohol that we buy. The bottom line changes, but then we get relief through events like this.”

The economic benefits are also being felt beyond the restaurant industry.

Robby Khunkhun, an Airbnb host and real estate specialist, said July is consistently his busiest month of the year but so far things have been slow.

“It has been a little bit challenging. I think the number of bookings I’ve seen compared to (this time) last year it’s a little bit less. But we do have so many last-minute bookings when it comes to the summertime,” he said.

He said the city is lucky to have an event like the Stampede to give them the economic lift.

“A lot of people are relying on this income to bank for the summer, to help them get through the winter.”

Moshe Lander, economics professor with Concordia University, said a combination of Canadians choosing to vacation closer to home to save money and potential spillover from the FIFA World Cup in Vancouver, may be what’s helping drive interest in this year’s Stampede.

“Anybody who’s in Vancouver and has a little bit of leftover time is going to say, ‘Hey, let me check out the Calgary Stampede. I’ve heard a lot about this,’” he said.

Beyond the financial gains, Damle said the Stampede also provides valuable exposure for local businesses.

“There’s going to be more people on the streets and we’ll get better exposure as far as a brand goes. That will bring in, of course, financial gains and people will get to know about us more,” he said.

According to an economic impact analysis conducted by MNP for the Calgary Stampede, Stampede-related activity generated $872.4 million in economic output nationally in 2025, including $664.2 million in Calgary and nearly $191 million in wages and salaries for Calgarians.

#UK: King Charles breaks precedent to reveal £30 million paid in taxes since 2022

Get a load of this: Humans and great apes share similar giggles.

How do we know this? Researchers tickled 13 captive apes — including gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees and #bonobos — and recorded the results. The new research reexamined those decades-old recordings and compared them with the newly captured giggles of four young children while they were being tickled and playing at home.

It turns out that the chuckles of humans and great apes follow similar rhythms, with regular timing between their laughs, a uniting thread that likely reflects their ties to a common ancestor, researchers said.

“In a way, we are very similar to other great apes because we’ve been laughing in a similar way for 15 million years,” said study author Chiara De Gregorio, a primatologist at the University of Warwick in England.

Laughter communicates a playful, happy feeling without using words. Many animals can laugh too, but the giggles don’t follow human patterns as closely. When researchers tickle rats, for example, they respond with ultrasonic squeaks.

Scientists trying to uncover how laughter evolved have picked apart animals’ facial expressions, but less work has been done on how laughs sound. And compared with apes, human laughter has become faster and more complex. For one, our laughs sound different based on context — from a polite chuckle among colleagues to a full-bodied guffaw with close friends.

“We are like the masters of laughter, I would say,” said De Gregorio, whose findings were published Thursday in the journal Communications Biology.

These giggles evolved to best suit animals’ different social lives, said Brittany Florkiewicz, who studies animal communication at Lyon College and had no role in the new research. She said the study’s findings make sense, and point to a need for more investigation.

Florkiewicz said she’d like to hear comparable recordings of other animals with playful facial expressions, like dogs, horses and cats. That could tell us more about how laughter evolved, so we can “understand what makes us uniquely human, but also what is similar between humans and other animals.”

Studying the origins of laughter may seem corny, but it’s one aspect of human communication that can help us understand others — including how we learned to speak. Because sounds don’t fossilize, scientists are using the evidence we do have to trace things back, one chuckle at a time.

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Adithi Ramakrishnan, The Associated Press

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

‘It’s heartbreaking’: #Canada’s #Venezuelan community reeling after devastating earthquakes. Among the devastating images coming out of Venezuela, is one of a woman waving a piece of clothing from a damaged building in La Guaira, hoping to be rescued.

She is one of many people who were trapped inside their homes following two of the strongest earthquakes to hit the country in more than a century. Both quakes struck near Venezuela’s northern coast, with the first — a magnitude 7.2 — hitting at around 6:04 p.m. local time, and the second — a magnitude 7.5 — occurring just 40 seconds later.

“I don’t think we can really comprehend just what this is, you know, having two huge earthquakes so close together,” said Jon Rosemberg, a Toronto resident who grew up in Caracas. “It’s heartbreaking.”

First responders, rescue workers and civilians spent the night combing through the rubble of collapsed buildings trying to find survivors. The two earthquakes battered the country’s already fragile infrastructure with hundreds of buildings toppled in the cities of Caracas and La Guaira. Nearly 200 people have been killed and there are fears the death toll could climb to the thousands. But rescue efforts have been complicated by decades of corruption and a lack of investment in basic services some say.

“First responders and all of the infrastructure that can be used for a situation like this, there’s no resources available,” said Rosemberg in an interview with CTV News.

Today Venezuela’s President Delcy Rodriguez, called for unity in the face of the disaster in a televised address The earthquake is likely to further test her presidency as new concerns about the long-term impact the damages will have on the stability of the country.

Rodriguez was installed after the United States ousted former president Nicolas Maduro in January. While many Venezuelans had hoped their country had turned a corner after decades of his oppressive rule, they say the natural disaster could present new challenges.