Sustainable Switch: More than 100 dead after eastern Congo floods

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Devastating floods have hit the Democratic Republic of Congo where more than 100 people have died after heavy rains in a village near the shores of Lake Tanganyika, a local official said. The fatal floods in eastern DRC took place as seven people in Somalia died after a flood swept through its capital, according to a government official.
The DRC flooding, which affected the village of Kasaba, comes at a vulnerable moment for the Central African nation.
Rwanda-backed M23 rebels have intensified an offensive in the eastern region since the start of the year, with thousands killed in fighting in the first two months of the year.
The affected area is still under the administration of Kinshasa and is not among the zones taken by M23.
Samy Kalodji, administrator of Fizi territory in South Kivu province where the village is located, said that reports from the area "indicated more than 100 deaths."
Didier Luganywa, spokesperson for the South Kivu government, said in a statement the flooding incident occurred between Thursday night and Friday when torrential rains and strong winds caused the Kasaba river to overflow its banks.
Fatal floods in Somalia
In Somalia at least seven people died and the rain flooded the houses of 200 families and caused nine houses to collapse, according to Saleh Hassan, a spokesperson for the mayor of Mogadishu.
Among the dead was a young boy whose body was recovered from the debris on one of the damaged streets on Saturday.
"I was hoping the water would spit him out but all was in vain. This morning, my friends joined me with hammers and spades and we managed to remove his body," local resident Nuradin Mohammed told Reuters.
Conflict and extreme weather
The extreme weather in DRC and Somalia came days after the World Food Programme (WFP) released a report that focused on West and Central Africa's food crisis.
The report found that some 52 million people in those regions will struggle to meet their basic food and nutrition needs in the upcoming lean season, driven by conflict, extreme weather and economic deterioration, the WFP said in its report.
The report flagged food inflation, made worse by rising fuel costs in countries including Ghana, Guinea and Ivory Coast, and recurrent extreme weather in the central Sahel, around the Lake Chad Basin and in the Central African Republic.
Conflicts have displaced 10 million people in the region, the WFP said, including eight million internally displaced inside Nigeria and Cameroon.
Although the report did not include DRC, as Rwandan-backed M23 rebels have staged a major advance, some 28 million people face acute hunger in the region, according to a report released in late March by the WFP and the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
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Health: Measles – one of the world's most contagious diseases — is approaching a return to endemic status in the United States, meaning continuously present, decades after it was declared eradicated, researchers warn.
The disease has spread in 30 states with over 1,000 confirmed cases as of May 8, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Click here for the full Reuters graphics explainer on the rapid spread of measles in Texas.
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