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Extra! Texas On 'Weather Steroids'

At least four people have been killed in Texas over the past three days as the state has been hit by a series of storms. The Houston Chronicle described Wednesday what it called a region “on weather steroids.” In Mexico, at least 13 people were also killed as a tornado struck the border town of Ciudad Acuna.

In Houston, the largest city in Texas, 9.8 inches (25 cm) of rain fell in just a few hours, forcing some 2,000 residents out of their homes. Texas Governor Greg Abbott said the flash flooding had “tsunami-type power,” and expanded Tuesday the emergency disaster zone to at least 40 counties.

More than 100,000 gallons of wastewater also spilled out in the area because of the flooding, the Houston Chroniclereports. Electrical and mechanical systems were damaged at a treatment plant in the southwest of the city.

The death toll is expected to rise as many people are still missing after the storm. Hundreds of homes were destroyed and thousands of cars abandoned.

ABOUT THE SOURCE: The Houston Chronicleis the largest daily in Texas and Houston’s primary newspaper. It won the 2015 Pulitzer prize for Commentary.

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Society

Big Brother For The People: India's CCTV Strategy For Cracking Down On Police Abuse

"There is nothing fashionable about installing so many cameras in and outside one’s house," says a lawyer from a Muslim community. And yet, doing this has helped members of the community prove unfair police action against them.

A woman is walking in the distance while a person holds a military-style gun close up

Survellance and tight security at the Lal Chowk area in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India on October 4, 2022

Sukanya Shantha

MUMBAI — When sleuths of the National Investigating Agency suddenly descended on human rights defender and school teacher Abdul Wahid Shaikh’s house on October 11, he knew exactly what he needed to do next.

He had been monitoring the three CCTVs that are installed on the front and the rear of his house — a chawl in Vikhroli, a densely populated area in suburban Mumbai. The cameras told him that a group of men and women — some dressed in Mumbai police’s uniform and a few in civil clothes — had converged outside his house. Some of them were armed and few others with batons were aggressively banging at the door asking him to immediately let them in.

This was not the first time that the police had landed at his place at 5 am.

When the policemen discovered the CCTV cameras outside his house, they began hitting it with their batons, destroying one of them mounted right over the door. This action was captured by the adjacent CCTV camera. Shaikh, holed up in his house with his wife and two children, kept pleading with the police to stop destroying his property and simply show them an official notice.

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