GUWAHATI, India: Floods and landslides triggered by heavy rains have killed at least 16 people over the last two weeks in India’s northeast, where more than 300,000 have been displaced from their submerged homes, authorities said on Tuesday.
The Indian army and air force have been assisting with rescue efforts in Assam, one of the worst-hit states, where a military helicopter flew early Tuesday morning 13 fishermen to safety after being stranded for four days on a small island on the Brahmaputra, one of Asia’s largest rivers, officials said.
The Brahmaputra River, which flows 1,280 kilometers (800 miles) across Assam state before running through Bangladesh, overflows annually. However, this year, increased rainfall has made the river — already known for its powerful, unpredictable flow — even more dangerous to live near or on one of the more than 2,000 island villages in the middle of it.
In neighboring Arunachal Pradesh state, which borders China, landslides have wiped out several roads. Army troopers there rescued 70 students and teachers from a flooded school in Changlang district, police said. Similarly, heavy flooding in the states of Sikkim, Manipur and Meghalaya swept away roads and collapsed bridges.
So far, more than 80 people across six northeastern states have died since the end of May due to floods and mudslides brought on by the rains, according to official figures.
Back in Assam, animals at the famed Kaziranga National Park, home to some 2,500 one-horned Rhinos, are moving to higher ground to escape the floods. Park rangers are monitoring their movements to ensure their safety, the state’s chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said.
Disasters caused by landslides and floods are common in the country’s northeast region during the June-September monsoon season. India, and Assam state in particular, is seen as one of the world’s most vulnerable regions to climate change because of more intense rain and floods, according to a 2021 report by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, a New Delhi-based climate think tank.
Floods and landslides triggered by heavy rains in India’s northeast kill at least 16 people
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Floods and landslides triggered by heavy rains in India’s northeast kill at least 16 people
Fatal ICE shooting of Minneapolis activist sets stage for national protests
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Over 1,000 ‘ICE Out’ rallies planned across US
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Minnesota launches inquiry separate from federal probe
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Agent’s own video heightens contradictory accounts of shooting
MINNEAPOLIS: Civil liberties and migrant-rights groups called for nationwide rallies on Saturday to protest the fatal shooting of an activist in Minnesota by a US immigration agent, as state authorities opened their own investigation of the killing.
Protest organizers said more than 1,000 weekend events were planned across the country demanding an end to large-scale deployments of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents ordered by President Donald Trump, mostly to cities led by Democratic politicians.
Minneapolis became a major flashpoint of the Republican president’s militarized deportation roundups on Wednesday, when an ICE officer shot and killed a 37-year-old mother of three, Renee Good, behind the wheel of her car on a residential street.
The violence came soon after some 2,000 federal officers were dispatched to Minneapolis in what ICE’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, called the “largest DHS operation ever.” Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat, condemned the deployment as a “reckless” example of “governance by reality TV.”
CONFLICTING NARRATIVES OF KILLING
On Friday night, throngs of demonstrators staged a “noise protest” outside a Minneapolis hotel believed to be lodging a visiting contingent of ICE agents.
Video posted by activists on social media showed protesters, some wearing brightly colored inflatable costumes, creating a din by beating on drums, banging pots and pans, yelling through bullhorns and blowing on brass instruments and whistles. Others directed high-power flashlight beams at the hotel’s windows. The crowd thinned after yellow-vested state police in riot gear marched into the area and declared an unlawful assembly, CNN reported.
Police were responding to “information that demonstrators were no longer peaceful and reports of damage to property,” the Minnesota Department of Public Safety said on X. “Dispersal orders were given prior to arrests.”
At the time she was killed, Good was participating in one of numerous “neighborhood patrols” that track, monitor and record ICE activities, according to family and local activists.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other Trump administration officials said Good was “impeding” and “stalking” ICE agents all day, and that the officer opened fire in self-defense when she tried to ram her car into him in an “act of domestic terrorism.”
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, pointed to bystander video he said directly contradicted the federal government’s “garbage narrative.” Civil liberties advocates said the video showed federal agents lacked any justification for using deadly force.
Amid the sharply differing accounts of the shooting, Minnesota and Hennepin County law enforcement authorities said on Friday they were opening their own criminal inquiry of the incident separate from a federal investigation led by the FBI.
Some Trump administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance, asserted state prosecutors lack jurisdiction to charge a federal officer with a crime, though legal experts say federal immunity in such cases is not automatic.
The crisis atmosphere led Walz — a prominent Trump antagonist who branded Trump and his Republican allies as “weird” during his own run for vice president last year — to put the state’s National Guard on alert.
Federal-state tensions escalated further on Thursday when a US Border Patrol agent in Portland, Oregon, shot and wounded a man and woman in their car after an attempted vehicle stop. As in the Minneapolis incident, DHS said the driver had tried to “weaponize” his vehicle and run over agents.
DHS on Friday identified the wounded driver and passenger as suspected gang associates from Venezuela who were in the US illegally. The agency said the woman had been involved in a prior shootout in Portland but provided no evidence of its allegations against the pair.
VIDEO EVIDENCE EMERGES
Portland Mayor Keith Wilson, echoing Frey, said he could not be sure the government’s account was grounded in fact without an independent investigation.
The deployment of agents to Minneapolis follows Trump’s recent denunciations of Walz and his state’s large population of Somali immigrants over allegations of fraud dating back to 2020 by some nonprofit groups administering childcare and other social-service programs.
Good was shot dead just a few blocks from where George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer crushing his neck into the pavement with his knee during a videotaped arrest in May 2020. Floyd’s death sparked months of nationwide racial-justice protests during Trump’s first term in office.
Bystander video of the Minneapolis incident showed masked officers approaching Good’s Honda SUV while it was stopped at a perpendicular angle to the street, partially blocking traffic.
One agent is seen ordering her out of the car and grabbing onto the driver-side front door handle as the car pulls forward and steers away from the officers, one of whom jumps back and fires three shots into the front of the vehicle as it rolls past.
Video filmed by the officer who opened fire, identified through official comment and public records as Jonathan Ross, shows Good appearing calm. She is heard telling him, “That’s fine, dude, I’m not mad at you” — moments before he opens fire as she drives forward into the street, steering the car away from him.
Noem has said he was treated at a local hospital for unspecified injuries and released.
The car’s front bumper appears in the bystander video to pass Ross before he shot at Good. It is unclear from any of the footage whether the vehicle made contact with him.
In any case, Ross is shown remaining on his feet and can be seen walking after the incident, contradicting Trump’s assertion on social media that the woman “ran over the ICE officer.”
The two DHS-related shootings this week have drawn thousands of protesters to the streets of Minneapolis, Portland and other US cities, with many more demonstrations under the banner “ICE Out For Good” planned for Saturday and Sunday.
The rallies were being organized by a coalition of groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, MoveOn Civic Action, Voto Latino, and Indivisible, some of which were at the forefront of “No Kings” protests against Trump last year. (Reporting by Renee Hickman in Minneapolis and Nathan Layne in New York; Writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman; Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen, Joseph Ax and Maria Tsvetkova in New York and Brad Brooks in Colorado; Editing by William Mallard)
