The death toll from heavy rains in Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul state rose to 143, up from 136 on the day before, the local civil defense government body said on Sunday, as rains continue to pour on the state, Reuters reported.

Another 125 people remain unaccounted for in the state, where rivers are reporting rising levels. Weather service Metsul called the situation “extremely worrying.”

On Saturday evening the government announced around 12.1 billion reais ($2.34 billion) in emergency spending to deal with the crisis that has displaced more than 538,000 people in the state, out of a population of around 10.9 million.

With this new money, more than 60 billion reais in federal funds has already been made available to the state, said the federal government in a statement on Saturday.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the state will rebuild what was destroyed, read the report.

“We know that not everything can be recovered, mothers have lost their children and children have lost their mothers,” said Lula on social media X, in a statement to mark Mother’s Day.

On Saturday, U.S. President Joe Biden issued a statement, saying that his administration is in contact with Brazil’s government to provide assistance.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the people impacted by this tragedy and the first responders working to rescue and provide medical care to families and individuals,” said Biden.

More rain fell on Sunday and is expected on Monday. Less than two weeks after the rains began, the state is again on alert with the risk of water rising once more to record levels on the Guaiba lake, near the capital Porto Alegre, Reuters reported.

The state is at a geographical meeting point between tropical and polar atmospheres, which has created a weather pattern with periods of intense rains or drought.

Local scientists believe the pattern has been intensifying due to climate change.

A fourth person has been arrested and charged with the murder of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar last year, Canadian police said on Saturday, in a case that strained diplomatic relations with India.

Canadian police earlier this month arrested and charged three Indian men in the city of Edmonton in Alberta and said they were probing whether the men had ties to the Indian government, Reuters reported.

The Integrated Homicide Investigation Team (IHIT) announced Saturday that Amandeep Singh, 22, has been charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in Nijjar’s killing.

Singh, an Indian national who resided in Brampton, Surrey and Abbotsford, was already in custody for unrelated firearms charges out of Peel, Ontario, IHIT said.

Nijjar, 45, was shot dead in June outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, a Vancouver suburb with a large Sikh population. A few months later, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cited what he said was evidence of potential Indian government involvement, prompting a diplomatic crisis with New Delhi.

Nijjar was a Canadian citizen campaigning for the creation of Khalistan, an independent Sikh homeland carved out of India. The presence of Sikh separatist groups in Canada has long frustrated New Delhi, which had labeled Nijjar a “terrorist”.

The United Nations General Assembly on Friday overwhelmingly backed a Palestinian bid to become a full U.N. member by recognizing it as qualified to join and recommending the U.N. Security Council “reconsider the matter favorably.”

The vote by the 193-member General Assembly was a global survey of support for the Palestinian bid to become a full U.N. member – a move that would effectively recognize a Palestinian state – after the United States vetoed it in the U.N. Security Council last month.

The assembly adopted a resolution with 143 votes in favor and nine against – including the U.S. and Israel – while 25 countries abstained. It does not give the Palestinians full U.N. membership, but simply recognizes them as qualified to join.

The resolution “determines that the State of Palestine … should therefore be admitted to membership” and it “recommends that the Security Council reconsider the matter favorably.”

The Palestinian push for full U.N. membership comes seven months into a war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and as Israel is expanding settlements in the occupied West Bank, which the U.N. considers to be illegal.

“We want peace, we want freedom,” Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour told the assembly before the vote. “A yes vote is a vote for Palestinian existence, it is not against any state. … It is an investment in peace.”

“Voting yes is the right thing to do,” he said in remarks that drew applause.

Under the founding U.N. Charter, membership is open to “peace-loving states” that accept the obligations in that document and are able and willing to carry them out.

“As long as so many of you are ‘Jew-hating,’ you don’t really care that the Palestinians are not ‘peace-loving’,” U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan, who spoke after Mansour, told his fellow diplomats. He accused the assembly of shredding the U.N. Charter – as he used a small shredder to destroy a copy of the Charter while at the lectern.

“Shame on you,” Erdan said.

An application to become a full U.N. member first needs to be approved by the 15-member Security Council and then the General Assembly. If the measure is again voted on by the council it is likely to face the same fate: a U.S. veto.

ADDITIONAL U.N. RIGHTSDeputy U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Robert Wood told the General Assembly after the vote that unilateral measures at the U.N. and on the ground will not advance a two-state solution.

“Our vote does not reflect opposition to Palestinian statehood; we have been very clear that we support it and seek to advance it meaningfully. Instead, it is an acknowledgement that statehood will only come from a process that involves direct negotiations between the parties,” he said.

The United Nations has long endorsed a vision of two states living side by side within secure and recognized borders. Palestinians want a state in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip, all territory captured by Israel in the 1967 war with neighboring Arab states.

The General Assembly resolution adopted on Friday does give the Palestinians some additional rights and privileges from September 2024 – like a seat among the U.N. members in the assembly hall – but they will not be granted a vote in the body.

The Palestinians are currently a non-member observer state, a de facto recognition of statehood that was granted by the U.N. General Assembly in 2012.

They are represented at the U.N. by the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank. Hamas ousted the Palestinian Authority from power in Gaza in 2007. Hamas – which has a charter calling for Israel’s destruction – launched the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that triggered Israel’s assault on Gaza.

Erdan said on Monday that, if the General Assembly adopted the resolution, he expected Washington to cut funding to the United Nations and its institutions.

Under U.S. law, Washington cannot fund any U.N. organization that grants full membership to any group that does not have the “internationally recognized attributes” of statehood. The United States cut funding in 2011 for the U.N. cultural agency, UNESCO, after the Palestinians joined as a full member.

On Thursday, 25 Republican U.S. senators – more than half of the party’s members in the chamber – introduced a bill to tighten those restrictions and cut off funding to any entity giving rights and privileges to the Palestinians. The bill is unlikely to pass the Senate, which is controlled by President Joe Biden’s Democrats.

(Reuters)