Oregon teen missing in Brazil
Sao Paulo, Brazil A 17-year-old American exchange student missing in Brazil was seen trying to hitchhike to the capital the day she disappeared, Brazilian authorities said Wednesday.
Mykensie Martin, a senior at Summit High School in Bend, Ore., was reported missing Sunday, said Kreg and Judy Roth of the Rotary Youth Exchange Program in Bend.
A witness spotted the girl Sunday evening on the side of a highway leading to Brasilia from the town of Unai, said Unai police detective Celso Avila Prado. Martin told the witness she was on her way to an event sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Brasilia and did not have enough money for a bus ticket, Prado said.
The FBI is working with its office in Brazil, as well as family members and the sheriff’s office in Oregon, said FBI spokeswoman Beth Anne Steele.
Johnson-Sirleaf takes lead in Liberia election
Monrovia, Liberia Liberia’s top female politician took a strong early lead Wednesday in a presidential runoff as her millionaire soccer star opponent charged the vote was fraudulent, clouding elections that had raised hopes for peace in the war-ravaged country.
Harvard-educated Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf had 56.4 percent of Tuesday’s vote with results in from 59 percent of polling stations across the country, the head of the National Election Commission said. George Weah had 43.6 percent.
Initial results were being reported as they came in, often from remote areas. It could take up to two weeks for the final outcome to be known.
Weah charged poll workers had plans to stuff ballot boxes in Johnson-Sirleaf’s favor. His allegations came despite U.N. assurances that the vote was clean.
Election commission chairwoman Frances Johnson-Morris said Weah’s camp had not filed evidence of fraud with the electoral commission. “If there is evidence, they need to share that evidence with us within 72 hours. That’s the rule,” she told reporters. “We have not gotten any complaints of that sort.”
Diarrhea spreading among quake surivivors
Muzaffarabad, Pakiston Health workers rushed Wednesday to contain an outbreak of acute diarrhea afflicting hundreds of earthquake survivors at a crowded, unsanitary camp in the capital of Pakistan’s part of Kashmir.
Meanwhile, porters carried emergency supplies on foot across the Line of Control dividing Kashmir as Pakistan and India took another small step toward opening the disputed border in the Himalayan territory where the quake left hundreds of thousands homeless.
Tent camps have sprung up in towns and cities across the region, housing local residents and people who fled distant villages that relief workers have struggled to reach.
Most camps were set up with official sanction and have sanitary facilities. But others have grown haphazardly wherever people find space, such as the camp on the sports field next to the devastated university in Muzaffarabad.
Humanity First, a German charity that provides health care at the camp, reported an alarming rise in acute diarrhea cases, including dysentery, in the past week.
Dr. John Watson of the World Health Organization said more than 200 such cases had been reported at the camp in the past week – none fatal. Acute diarrhea can cause life-threatening dehydration and can indicate the presence of deadly illnesses such as cholera.