Flooding hits Montreal; two missing
MONTREAL — Flooding across Quebec inundated Montreal and surrounding areas on Sunday and Monday, driving thousands of people out of their homes and washing away at least two people, who remain missing.
Aerial footage in Rigaud, Quebec, west of Montreal, showed whole neighborhoods under water. Rescue workers transported people on boats in Rigaud.
The flooding in Montreal, which is centered on a group of islands at the confluence of the Saint Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers, began when waters breached dikes in the northern part of the city. The authorities declared a state of emergency in Montreal and other affected areas.
The flooding even reached the country’s capital, with hundreds of homes in Ottawa affected and at least 75 families displaced.
Unusually high rainfall in recent weeks has engorged the dams, reservoirs and rivers meant to handle the annual flood season, pushing Lake Ontario to a water level not seen since 1993.
Nun arrested for abuse
The students in the school for deaf children would call her the “bad nun,” the woman who was supposed to take care of them, but who would send them into rooms to be sexually abused by priests. Others said she committed abuse herself, and would force them to watch pornography on television.
And in a particularly abhorrent case, after a 5-yearold girl was sexually assaulted by a priest, the Roman Catholic nun allegedly forced her to wear a diaper in class, to conceal the bleeding.
Because the other children at the school in the Mendoza province of Argentina were deaf, only the victims’ abusers would have heard their cries.
The nun, a woman named Kosaka Kumiko, of Japanese heritage but Argentine nationality, was arrested and charged Friday on suspicion of helping priests sexually abuse children at the Antonio Provolo Institute. She was also charged with physically abusing the students.
China’s 1st passenger jet
BEIJING — China took a step toward the aviation big league Friday with the long delayed, but finally successful, maiden flight of its first modern passenger jet.
China hopes its airline industry can someday challenge the Western duopoly of Boeing and Airbus, especially for its own large and fast-growing domestic market. But the flight of the single-aisle, twin engine C919 is also a symbol of the country’s ambitions to develop an advanced high-tech economy over the next decade.
Also in the world …
Angry miners grieving the deaths of dozens of coworkers trapped after an explosion blocked the convoy of President Hassan Rouhani over the weekend, an extraordinary display of public anger two weeks before presidential elections. … A bomb explosion that killed two people in a Muslim community in Manila was sparked by a personal feud, but the Islamic State group claimed its fighters were responsible. … Nigerian newspapers published the names Monday of 82 Chibok schoolgirls set free three years after being kidnapped by Islamic extremists, but they remained behind closed doors and their parents awaited word on whether they could see them. … Facebook says it has deleted tens of thousands of accounts in Britain ahead of the June 8 general election in a drive to battle fake news. The company says it has made improvements to help them detect fake news accounts more effectively.