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Colombo — The United Nations on Sunday urged Sri Lanka to bridge its "accountability deficit" and ensure justice as the country commemorated the 279 victims of its worst-ever attack against civilians five years ago. The U.N.'s top envoy to the country, Marc-Andre Franche, told a remembrance service in Colombo that there should be a "thorough and transparent investigation" to uncover those behind the Easter carnage in 2019. Islamist bombers hit three churches and three hotels in the island's deadliest suicide attack aimed at civilians, but grieving families say they are still waiting for justice. Among the dead were 45 foreigners, including tourists visiting the island a decade after the end of a brutal ethnic conflict that had claimed more than 100,000 lives since 1972. "Sri Lanka suffers from a continuing accountability deficit, be it for alleged war crimes, more recent human rights violations, corruption or abuse of power, which must be addressed if the country is to move forward," Franche said. He noted that victims were still seeking justice despite the country's Supreme Court holding the then president Maithripala Sirisena and his top officials responsible for failing to prevent the attack. "Delivering justice for victims of these attacks should be part of addressing the systemic challenge," Franche said. He said the U.N. Human Rights office has also called on Colombo to publish the complete findings of previous inquiries into the Easter Sunday bombings and to establish an independent investigation. The leader of Sri Lanka's Catholic church, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, accused President Ranil Wickremesinghe's government of suppressing new evidence and protecting those behind the jihadists. "It is clear that Islamist extremists carried out the attack, but there were other forces behind them," Ranjith said. "We have to conclude that the current government too is trying to protect them." He has previously alleged that military intelligence officers engineered the April 21, 2019 attack to help the political ambitions of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a retired army officer who campaigned on security. Seven months later he won the presidency. Since coming to power, Rajapaksa had systematically protected those behind the bombings, the Cardinal said. Rajapaksa was forced out of office in July 2022 following months of protests over an unprecedented economic crisis that caused shortages of food, fuel and medicines. Thousands of Sri Lanka's Catholic minority staged a silent protest outside the capital after multi-faith services to bless the victims, who included more than 80 children. Relatives carried photos of the dead and protested in the town of Negombo -- known as Sri Lanka's 'Little Rome' because of its heavy concentration of Catholics. Military personnel armed with automatic assault rifles watched as the protesters marched to the nearby St Sebastian's church, where 114 people were killed in the coordinated suicide bombings. Evidence tendered during a civil case brought by relatives of the victims showed that Indian intelligence officials warned Colombo of the bombings some 17 days earlier, but the authorities failed to act. Then-president Sirisena and his officials have been ordered to pay 310 million rupees ($1 million) in compensation to victims and relatives. But the ruling has yet to be fully implemented as Sirisena has appealed and a fresh hearing is scheduled for July.

London — Alexander Mutiso Munyao delivered another win for Kenya on a day the London Marathon remembered last year's champion Kelvin Kiptum. A race that started with a period of applause for Kiptum, who was killed in a car crash in Kenya in February, ended with his countryman and friend running alone down the final straight in front of Buckinhgam Palace to earn an impressive victory in his first major marathon.   Mutiso Munyao said he spoke to Kiptum after his win in London last year and that the world-record holder is always on his mind when he's competing.   “He’s in my thoughts every time, because he was my great friend,” Mutiso Munyao said. “It was a good day for me.” It was a Kenyan double on the day, with Olympic champion Peres Jepchirchir pulling away late to win the women’s race and cement her status as the favorite to defend her gold in Paris. With around 400 meters (yards) to go to, Jepchirchir left world-record holder Tigst Assefa and two other rivals behind to sprint alone down the final stretch. She finished in 2 hours, 16 minutes, 16 seconds, with Assefa in second and Joyciline Jepkosgei in third. Her time was more than 4 minutes slower than Assefa’s world record set in Berlin last year, but it was the fastest time ever in a women-only marathon, beating the mark of 2:17:01 set by Mary Keitany in London in 2017. The elite women’s field in London started about 30 minutes ahead of the elite men. For Jepchirchir, though, the main goal was to show Kenya's selectors for the Olympic team that she should be on the team again in Paris. “So I was trying to work extra hard to (be able to) defend my title in the Olympics,” she said. Mutiso Munyao denied 41-year-old Kenenisa Bekele a first London Marathon victory by pulling away from the Ethiopian great with about 3 kilometers to go Sunday for his biggest career win. Mutiso Munyao and Bekele were in a two-way fight for the win until the Kenyan made his move as they ran along the River Thames, quickly building a six-second gap that only grew as he ran toward the finish. “At 40 kilometers, when my friend Bekele was left (behind), I had confidence that I can win this race,” the 27-year-old Mutiso Munyao said. He finished in 2 hours, 4 minutes, 1 second, with Bekele finishing 14 seconds behind. Emile Cairess of Britain was third, 2:45 back. Bekele, the Ethiopian former Olympic 10,000 and 5,000-meter champion, was also the runner-up in London in 2017 but has never won the race. Mutiso Munyao is relatively unknown in marathon circles and said he wasn't sure whether this win would be enough to make Kenya's Olympic team for Paris. “I hope for the best,” he said. “If they select me I will go and work for it.” 

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Kabul — One person was killed and three others wounded by an explosion in Kabul on Saturday evening, Afghan police said, with the Islamic State group claiming responsibility for the sticky bomb attack. The improvised explosive device was detonated in the Kot-e-Sangi neighborhood, near an enclave of the historically persecuted Shiite Hazara community, which has been targeted by the militant group in the past. "The sticky bomb was planted on a minibus," Kabul police spokesperson Khalid Zadran said in a statement late Saturday. "The driver of the vehicle lost his life, and three other civilians were injured." Security personnel were investigating the incident, the statement added. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility on its Telegram channel, saying a minibus carrying Hazaras was blown up as it passed through a Taliban checkpoint. The attack "led to its destruction and the killing and wounding of around 10" people, the IS statement said. The number of bombings and suicide attacks in Afghanistan has reduced dramatically since the Taliban ended their insurgency after ousting the U.S.-backed government and returning to power in August 2021.  However, a number of armed groups, including IS, remain a threat. Multiple people were killed last month when an IS suicide bomber targeted a bank as people were gathering to collect their salaries. Authorities put the blast's toll at three, but hospital sources told AFP 20 people were killed. 

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

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Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

HONOLULU — A single mother of two, Amy Chadwick spent years scrimping and saving to buy a house in the town of Lahaina on the Hawaiian island of Maui. But after a devastating fire leveled Lahaina in August and reduced Chadwick's home to white dust, the cheapest rental she could find for her family and dogs cost $10,000 a month. Chadwick, a fine-dining server, moved to Florida where she could stretch her homeowners insurance dollars. She's worried Maui's exorbitant rental prices, driven in part by vacation rentals that hog a limited housing supply, will hollow out her tight-knit town. Most people in Lahaina work for hotels, restaurants and tour companies and can't afford $5,000 to $10,000 a month in rent, she said. "You're pushing out an entire community of service industry people. So no one's going to be able to support the tourism that you're putting ahead of your community," Chadwick said by phone from her new home in Satellite Beach on Florida's Space Coast. "Nothing good is going to come of it unless they take a serious stance, putting their foot down and really regulating these short-term rentals." The August 8 wildfire killed 101 people and destroyed housing for 6,200 families, amplifying Maui's already acute housing shortage and laying bare the enormous presence of vacation rentals in Lahaina. It reminded lawmakers that short-term rentals are an issue across Hawaii, prompting them to consider bills that would give counties the authority to phase them out. Gov. Josh Green got so frustrated he blurted an expletive during a recent news conference. "This fire uncovered a clear truth, which is we have too many short-term rentals owned by too many individuals on the mainland and it is b———t," Green said. "And our people deserve housing, here." Vacation rentals are a popular alternative to hotels for those seeking kitchens, lower costs and opportunities to sample everyday island life. Supporters say they boost tourism, the state's biggest employer. Critics revile them for inflating housing costs, upending neighborhoods and contributing to the forces pushing locals and Native Hawaiians to leave Hawaii for less expensive states. This migration has become a major concern in Lahaina. The Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, a nonprofit, estimates at least 1,500 households — or a quarter of those who lost their homes — have left since the August wildfire. The blaze burned single family homes and apartments in and around downtown, which is the core of Lahaina's residential housing. An analysis by the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization found a relatively low 7.5% of units there were vacation rentals as of February 2023. Lahaina neighborhoods spared by the fire have a much higher ratio of vacation rentals: About half the housing in Napili, about 11 kilometers north of the burn zone, is short-term rentals. Napili is where Chadwick thought she found a place to buy when she first went house hunting in 2016. But a Canadian woman secured it with a cash offer and turned it into a vacation rental. Also outside the burn zone are dozens of short-term rental condominium buildings erected decades ago on land zoned for apartments. In 1992, Maui County explicitly allowed owners in these buildings to rent units for less than 180 days at a time even without short-term rental permits. Since November, activists have occupied the beach in front of Lahaina's biggest hotels to push the mayor or governor to use their emergency powers to revoke this exemption. Money is a powerful incentive for owners to rent to travelers: a 2016 report prepared for the state found a Honolulu vacation rental generates 3.5 times the revenue of a long-term rental. State Rep. Luke Evslin, the Housing Committee chair, said Maui and Kauai counties have suffered net losses of residential housing in recent years thanks to a paucity of new construction and the conversion of so many homes to short-term rentals. "Every alarm bell we have should be ringing when we're literally going backwards in our goal to provide more housing in Hawaii," he said. In his own Kauai district, Evslin sees people leaving, becoming homeless or working three jobs to stay afloat. The Democrat was one of 47 House members who co-sponsored one version of legislation that would allow short-term rentals to be phased out. One objective is to give counties more power after a U.S. judge in 2022 ruled Honolulu violated state law when it attempted to prohibit rentals for less than 90 days. Evslin said that decision left Hawaii's counties with limited tools, such as property taxes, to control vacation rentals. Lawmakers also considered trying to boost Hawaii's housing supply by forcing counties to allow more houses to be built on individual lots. But they watered down the measure after local officials said they were already exploring the idea. Short-term rental owners said a phase-out would violate their property rights and take their property without compensation, potentially pushing them into foreclosure. Some predicted legal challenges. Alicia Humiston, president of the Rentals by Owner Awareness Association, said some areas in West Maui were designed for travelers and therefore lack schools and other infrastructure families need. "This area in West Maui that is sort of like this resort apartment zone — that's all north of Lahaina — it was never built to be local living," Humiston said. One housing advocate argues that just because a community allowed vacation rentals decades ago doesn't mean it still needs to now. "We are not living in the 1990s or in the 1970s," said Sterling Higa, executive director of Housing Hawaii's Future. Counties "should have the authority to look at existing laws and reform them as necessary to provide for the public good." Courtney Lazo, a real estate agent who is part of Lahaina Strong, the group occupying Kaanapali Beach, said tourists can stay in her hometown now but many locals can't. "How do you expect a community to recover and heal and move forward when the people who make Lahaina, Lahaina, aren't even there anymore?" she said at a recent news conference as her voice quivered. "They're moving away."

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — As the sun sets, a burly man bellows into a megaphone while a curious crowd gathers around him. Next to him is a small cardboard box with several banknotes worth 10 Haitian gourdes — about 7 U.S. cents. "Everyone give whatever they have!" the man shouts as he grabs the arms and hands of people entering a neighborhood in the capital of Port-au-Prince that has been targeted by violent gangs. The community recently voted to buy a metal barricade and install it themselves to try to protect residents from the unrelenting violence that killed or injured more than 2,500 people in Haiti from January to March. "Every day I wake up and find a dead body," said Noune-Carme Manoune, an immigration officer. Life in Port-au-Prince has become a game of survival, pushing Haitians to new limits as they scramble to stay safe and alive while gangs overwhelm the police and the government remains largely absent. Some are installing metal barricades. Others press hard on the gas while driving near gang-controlled areas. The few who can afford it stockpile water, food, money and medication, supplies of which have dwindled since the main international airport closed in early March. The country's biggest seaport is largely paralyzed by marauding gangs. "People living in the capital are locked in, they have nowhere to go," Philippe Branchat, International Organization for Migration chief in Haiti, said in a recent statement. "The capital is surrounded by armed groups and danger. It is a city under siege." Phones ping often with alerts reporting gunfire, kidnappings and fatal shootings, and some supermarkets have so many armed guards that they resemble small police stations. Gang attacks used to occur only in certain areas, but now they can happen anywhere, any time. Staying home does not guarantee safety: One man playing with his daughter at home was shot in the back by a stray bullet. Others have been killed. Schools and gas stations are shuttered, with fuel on the black market selling for $9 a gallon, roughly three times the official price. Banks have prohibited customers from withdrawing more than $100 a day, and checks that used to take three days to clear now take a month or more. Police officers have to wait weeks to be paid. "Everyone is under stress," said Isidore Gédéon, a 38-year-old musician. "After the prison break, people don't trust anyone. The state doesn't have control." Gangs that control an estimated 80% of Port-au-Prince launched coordinated attacks on February 29, targeting critical state infrastructure. They set fire to police stations, shot up the airport and stormed into Haiti's two biggest prisons, releasing more than 4,000 inmates. At the time, Prime Minister Ariel Henry was visiting Kenya to push for the U.N.-backed deployment of a police force. Henry remains locked out of Haiti, and a transitional presidential council tasked with selecting the country's next prime minister and Cabinet could be sworn in as early as this week. Henry has pledged to resign once a new leader is installed. Few believe this will end the crisis. It's not only the gangs unleashing violence; Haitians have embraced a vigilante movement known as "bwa kale," that has killed several hundred suspected gang members or their associates. "There are certain communities I can't go to because everyone is scared of everyone," Gédéon said. "You could be innocent, and you end up dead." More than 95,000 people have fled Port-au-Prince in one month alone as gangs raid communities, torching homes and killing people in territories controlled by their rivals. Those who flee via bus to Haiti's southern and northern regions risk being gang-raped or killed as they pass through gang-controlled areas where gunmen have opened fire. Violence in the capital has left some 160,000 people homeless, according to the IOM. "This is hell," said Nelson Langlois, a producer and cameraman. Langlois, his wife and three children spent two nights lying flat on the roof of their home as gangs raided the neighborhood. "Time after time, we peered over to see when we could flee," he recalled. Forced to split up because of the lack of shelter, Langlois is living in a Vodou temple and his wife and children are elsewhere in Port-au-Prince. Like most people in the city, Langlois usually stays indoors. The days of pickup soccer games on dusty roads and the nights of drinking Prestige beer in bars with hip-hop, reggae or African music playing are long gone. "It's an open-air prison," Langlois said. The violence has also forced businesses, government agencies and schools to close, leaving scores of Haitians unemployed. Manoune, the government immigration officer, said she has been earning money selling treated water since she has no work because deportations are stalled. Meanwhile, Gédéon said he no longer plays the drums for a living, noting that bars and other venues are shuttered. He sells small plastic bags of water on the street and has become a handyman, installing fans and fixing appliances. Even students are joining the workforce as the crisis deepens poverty across Haiti. Sully, a 10th-grader whose school closed nearly two months ago, stood on a street corner in the community of Pétion-Ville selling gasoline that he buys on the black market. "You have to be careful," said Sully, who asked that his last name be withheld for safety. "During the morning it's safer." He sells about 19 liters a week, generating roughly $40 for his family, but he cannot afford to join his classmates who are learning remotely. "Online class is for people more fortunate than me, who have more money," Sully said. The European Union last week announced the launch of a humanitarian air bridge from the Central American country of Panama to Haiti. Five flights have landed in the northern city of Cap-Haïtien, site of Haiti's sole functioning airport, bringing 62 tons of medicine, water, emergency shelter equipment and other essential supplies. But there is no guarantee that critical items will reach those who most need them. Many Haitians remain trapped in their homes, unable to buy or look for food amid whizzing bullets. Aid groups say nearly 2 million Haitians are on the verge of famine, more than 600,000 of them children. Nonetheless, people are finding ways to survive. Back in the neighborhood where residents are installing a metal barricade, sparks fly as one man cuts metal while others shovel and mix cement. They are well underway, and hope to finish the project soon. Others remain skeptical, citing reports of gangs jumping into loaders and other heavy equipment to tear down police stations and, more recently, metal barricades.

vancouver, british columbia — A new, digestible mini-robotic camera, about the size of a multivitamin pill, was demonstrated at the annual TED Conference in Vancouver. The remote-controlled device can eliminate invasive medical procedures. With current technology, exploration of the digestive tract involves going through the highly invasive procedure of an endoscopy, in which a camera at the end of a cord is inserted down the throat and into a medicated patient’s stomach. But the robotic pill, developed by Endiatx in Hayward, California, is designed to be the first motorized replacement of the procedure. A patient fasts for a day, then swallows the PillBot with lots of water. The PillBot, acting like a miniature submarine, is piloted in the body by a wireless remote control. After the exam, it then flushes out of the human body naturally. For Dr. Vivek Kumbhari, co-founder of the company and professor of medicine and chairman of gastroenterology and hepatology at the Mayo Clinic, it is the latest step toward his goal of democratizing previously complex medicine. If procedure-based diagnostics can be moved from a hospital to a home, "then I think we have achieved that goal," he said. The new setting would require fewer medical staff personnel and no anesthesia, producing "a safer, more comfortable approach.” Kumbhari said this technology also makes medicine more efficient, allowing people to get care earlier in the course of an illness. For co-founder Alex Luebke, the micro-robotic pill can be transformative for rural areas around the world where there is limited access to medical facilities. "Especially in developing countries, there is no access" to complex medical procedures, he said. "So being able to have the technology, gather all that information and provide you the solution, even in remote areas - that's the way to do it.” Luebke said if internet access is not immediately available, information from the PillBot can be transmitted later. The duo are also utilizing artificial intelligence to provide the initial diagnosis, with a medical doctor later developing a treatment plan. Joel Bervell is known to his million social media followers as the “Medical Mythbuster” and is a fourth-year medical student at Washington State University. He said the strength of this type of technology is how it can be easily used in remote and rural communities. Many patients “travel hundreds of miles, literally, for their appointment. Use of a pill that would not require a visit to a physician "would be life-changing for them.”  The micro-robotic pill is undergoing trials and will soon be in front of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for approval, which developers expect to have in 2025. It's expected that the pill would then be widely available in 2026. Kumbhari hopes the technology can be expanded to the bowels, vascular system, heart, liver, brain and other parts of the body. Eventually, he hopes, this will allow hospitals to be left for more urgent medical care and surgeries.

CHICAGO — The closure of Wadsworth Elementary School in 2013 was a blow to residents of the majority-Black neighborhood it served, symbolizing a city indifferent to their interests.  So when the city reopened Wadsworth last year to shelter hundreds of migrants without seeking community input, it added insult to injury. Across Chicago, Black residents are frustrated that long-standing needs are not being met while the city's newly arrived are cared for with a sense of urgency, and with their tax dollars.  "Our voices are not valued nor heard," said Genesis Young, a lifelong Chicagoan who lives near Wadsworth.  Chicago is one of several big American cities grappling with a surge of migrants. The Republican governor of Texas has been sending them by the busload to highlight his grievances with the Biden administration's immigration policy.  To manage the influx, Chicago has already spent more than $300 million of city, state and federal funds to provide housing, health care, education and more to over 38,000 mostly South American migrants who have arrived in the city since 2022, desperate for help. The speed with which these funds were marshaled has stirred widespread resentment among Black Chicagoans. But community leaders are trying to ease racial tensions and channel the public's frustrations into agitating for the greater good.  Political reactions The outcry over migrants in Chicago and other large Democrat-led cities is having wider implications in an election year: The Biden administration is now advocating a more restrictive approach to immigration in its negotiations with Republicans in Congress.  Since the Wadsworth building reopened as a shelter, Young has felt "extreme anxiety" because of the noise, loitering and around-the-clock police presence that came with it. More than anything, she and other neighbors say it is a reminder of problems that have been left unsolved for years, including high rates of crime, unemployment and homelessness.  "I definitely don't want to seem insensitive to them and them wanting a better life. However, if you can all of a sudden come up with all these millions of dollars to address their housing, why didn't you address the homeless issue here?" said Charlotte Jackson, the owner of a bakery and restaurant in the South Loop neighborhood.  "For so long we accepted that this is how things had to be in our communities," said Chris Jackson, who co-founded the bakery with his wife. "This migrant crisis has made many people go: 'Wait a minute, no it doesn't.' "  Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson declined to comment for this story.  The city received more than $200 million from the state and federal governments to help care for migrants after Johnson appealed to Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and President Joe Biden. The president will be in Chicago in August to make his reelection pitch at the 2024 Democratic National Convention.  Some see opportunity Some Black Chicagoans are protesting the placement of shelters in their neighborhoods, but others aim to turn the adversity into an opportunity.  "Chicago is a microcosm to the rest of the nation," said the Reverend Janette C. Wilson, national executive director of the civil rights group PUSH for Excellence. Black communities have faced discrimination and underinvestment for decades and are justifiably frustrated, Wilson said. The attention the migrants are receiving is deserved, she added, but it's also a chance for cities to reflect on their responsibility to all underserved communities.  "There is a moral imperative to take care of everybody," Wilson said.  After nearly two years of acrimony, the city has begun to curb some accommodations for migrants – which has caused its own backlash. The city last month started evicting migrants who overstayed a 60-day limit at shelters, prompting condemnation from immigrant rights groups and from residents worried about public safety.  Marlita Ingram, a school guidance counselor who lives in the South Shore neighborhood, said she was concerned about the resources being shared "equitably" between migrants and longtime residents. But she said she also believed that "it doesn't have to be a competition" and sympathized with the nearly 6,000 migrant children now enrolled in Chicago's public schools.  As the potential for racial strife rises, some activists are pointing to history as a cautionary tale.  Hundreds of thousands of Black Southerners moved to Chicago in the early 20th century in search of greater freedoms and economic opportunities. White Chicagoans at the time accused them of receiving disproportionate resources from the city, and in 1919 tensions boiled over.  In a surge of racist attacks in cities across the U.S. that came to be known as "Red Summer," white residents burned large swaths of Chicago's Black neighborhoods and killed 38 Black people, including by lynching.  "Those white folks were, like, 'Hell, no, they're coming here, they're taking our jobs,' '' said Richard Wallace, founder of Equity and Transformation, a majority-Black community group that co-hosted a forum in March to improve dialogue between Black and Latino residents.  Echoes of past He hears echoes of that past bigotry — intentional or not — when Black Chicagoans complain about the help being given to migrants. "How did we become like the white folks who were resisting our people coming to the city of the Chicago?" he said.  Labor and immigrant rights organizers have worked for years to tamp down divisions among working class communities. But the migrant crisis has created tensions between the city's large Mexican American community and recently arrived migrants, many of whom hail from Venezuela.  "If left unchecked, we all panic, we're all scared, we're going to retreat to our corners," said Leone Jose Bicchieri, executive director of Working Family Solidarity, a majority-Hispanic labor rights group. "The truth is that this city wouldn't work without Black and Latino people."  Black Americans' views on immigration and diversity are expansive. The Civil Rights Movement was instrumental in pushing the U.S. to adopt a more inclusive immigration policy.  About half of Black Americans say the United States' diverse population makes the country strong, including 30% who say it makes the U.S. "much stronger," according to a March poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.  Many leaders in Black neighborhoods in and around Chicago are trying to  acknowledge the tensions without exacerbating them.  "Our church is divided on the migrant crisis," said the Reverend Chauncey Brown, pastor of Second Baptist Church in Maywood, Illinois, a majority-Black suburb of Chicago where some migrants are living in shelters.  There has been a noticeable uptick of non-English speakers in the pews, many of whom have said they are migrants in need of food and other services, Brown said. Some church members cautioned him against speaking out in support of migrants or allotting more church resources to them. But he said the Bible's teachings are clear on this issue.  "When a stranger enters your land, you are to care for them as if they are one of your own," he said.

WASHINGTON — A ancient giant snake in India might have been longer than a school bus and weighed a ton, researchers reported Thursday. Fossils found near a coal mine revealed a snake that stretched an estimated 11 meters to 15 meters. It's comparable to the largest known snake at about 13 meters that once lived in what is now Colombia. The largest living snake today is Asia's reticulated python at 10 meters. The newly discovered behemoth lived 47 million years ago in western India's swampy evergreen forests. It could have weighed up to 1,000 kilograms, researchers said in the journal Scientific Reports. They gave it the name Vasuki indicus after "the mythical snake king Vasuki, who wraps around the neck of the Hindu deity Shiva," said Debajit Datta, a study co-author at the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. This monster snake wasn't especially swift to strike. "Considering its large size, Vasuki was a slow-moving ambush predator that would subdue its prey through constriction," Datta said in an email. Fragments of the snake's backbone were discovered in 2005 by co-author Sunil Bajpai, based at the same institute, near Kutch, Gujarat, in western India. The researchers compared more than 20 fossil vertebrae to skeletons of living snakes to estimate size. While it's not clear exactly what Vasuki ate, other fossils found nearby reveal that the snake lived in swampy areas alongside catfish, turtles, crocodiles and primitive whales, which may have been its prey, Datta said. The other extinct giant snake, Titanoboa, was discovered in Colombia and is estimated to have lived around 60 million years ago. What these two monster snakes have in common is that they lived during periods of exceptionally warm global climates, said Jason Head, a Cambridge University paleontologist who was not involved in the study. "These snakes are giant cold-blooded animals," he said. "A snake requires higher temperatures" to grow into large sizes. So does that mean that global warming will bring back monster-sized snakes? In theory, it's possible. But the climate is now warming too quickly for snakes to evolve again to be giants, he said.

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ROSARIO, Argentina — The order to kill came from inside a federal prison near Argentina's capital. Unwitting authorities patched a call from drug traffickers tied to one of the country's most notorious gangs to collaborators on the outside. The criminals proceeded to hire a 15-year-old hit man, sealing the fate of a young father they didn't even know. At a service station on March 9 in Rosario, the picturesque hometown of soccer star Lionel Messi, 25-year-old employee Bruno Bussanich was whistling to himself and checking the day's earnings just before he was shot three times from less than a foot away, surveillance footage shows. The assailant fled without taking a peso. It was the fourth gang-related fatal shooting in Rosario in almost as many days. Authorities called it an unprecedented rampage in Argentina, which had never witnessed the extremes of drug cartel violence afflicting some other Latin American countries. A handwritten letter was found near Bussanich's body, addressed to officials who want to curb the power drug kingpins wield from behind bars. "We don't want to negotiate anything. We want our rights," it says. "We will kill more innocent people." Shaken residents interviewed by The Associated Press across Rosario described a sense of dread taking hold. "Every time I go to work, I say goodbye to my father as if it were the last time," said 21-year-old Celeste Núñez, who also works at a gas station. The string of killings offer an early test to the security agenda of populist President Javier Milei, who has tethered his political success to saving Argentina's tanking economy and eradicating narco-trafficking violence. Since taking office December 10, the right-wing leader has promised to prosecute gang members as terrorists and change the law to allow the army into crime-ridden streets for the first time since Argentina's brutal military dictatorship ended in 1983. His law-and-order message has empowered the hardline governor of Santa Fe province, which includes Rosario, to clamp down on incarcerated criminal gangs that authorities say orchestrated 80% of shootings last year. Under the orders of Governor Maximiliano Pullaro, police have ramped up prison raids, seized thousands of smuggled cellphones and restricted visits. "We are facing a group of narco-terrorists desperate to maintain power and impunity," Milei said after Bussanich was killed, announcing the deployment of federal forces in Rosario. "We will lock them up, isolate them, take back the streets." Milei won 56% of the vote in Rosario, where residents praise his focus on a problem largely neglected by his predecessors. But some worry the government's combative approach traps them in the line of fire. Gangs started their deadly retaliations just hours after Pullaro's security minister shared photos showing Argentine prisoners crammed together on the floor, heads pressed against each other's bare backs — a scene reminiscent of El Salvador President Nayib Bukele's harsh anti-gang crackdown. "It's a war between the state and the drug traffickers," said Ezequiel, a 30-year-old employee at the gas station where Bussanich was killed. Ezequiel, who gave only his first name for fear of reprisals, said his mother has since begged him to quit. "We're the ones paying the price." Even Milei's supporters have mixed feelings about the crackdown, including Germán Bussanich, the father of the slain gas station worker. "They're putting on a show and we're facing the consequences," Bussanich told reporters. A leafy city 300 kilometers northwest of Buenos Aires, Rosario is where revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara was born, Messi first kicked a soccer ball and the Argentine flag was first raised in 1812. But it most recently won notoriety because its homicide numbers are five times the national average. Tucked into a bend in the Paraná River, Rosario's port morphed into Argentina's drug trafficking hub as regional crackdowns pushed the narcotics trade south and criminals started squirreling away cocaine in shipping containers spirited down the river to markets abroad. Although Rosario never suffered the car bombs and police assassinations gripping Mexico, Colombia and most recently Ecuador, the splintering of street gangs has fueled bloodshed. "It's not close to the violence in Mexico because we still have the deterrence capacity of the government in Argentina," said Marcelo Bergman, a social scientist at the National University of Tres de Febrero in Argentina. "But we need to keep an eye on Rosario because the major threats come not so much from big cartels but when these groups proliferate and diversify." Drug traffickers keep a tight grip over Rosario's poor neighborhoods full of young men vulnerable to recruitment. One of them was Víctor Emanuel, a 17-year-old killed two years ago by rival gangsters in an area where street murals pay tribute to slain criminal leaders. No one was arrested. "My neighbors know who's responsible," his mother, Gerónima Benítez, told the AP, her eyes shiny with tears. "I looked for help everywhere, I knocked on the doors of the judiciary, the government. No one answered." A fearful existence is all Benítez has ever known. But now, for the first time in Argentina, warring drug traffickers are banding together and terrorizing parts of the city previously considered safe. Imprisoned gang leaders in Latin America have long run criminal enterprises remotely with the help of corrupt guards. But according to an indictment unveiled last week, incarcerated gang bosses in Argentina have been passing instructions on how to kill random civilians via family visits and video calls. Court documents say the bosses paid underage hit men up to $450 to target four of the recent victims in Argentina's third-largest city. The killing of Bussanich, two taxi drivers and a bus driver in less than a week in March, federal prosecutors say, "shattered the peace of an entire society." Street emptied. Schools closed. Bus drivers picketed. People were too terrified to leave their homes. "This violence is on another level," 20-year-old Rodrigo Dominguez said from an intersection where a dangling banner demanded justice for another bus driver slain there weeks earlier. "You can't go outside." Panic was still palpable in Rosario last week, as police swarmed the streets and normally bustling bars closed early for lack of customers. A diner managed by Messi's family, a draw for fans, reported quiet nights and less profit. Women in one neighborhood said they carry 22‐caliber pistols. Analía Manso, 37, said she was too scared to send her children to school. Pope Francis last month said he was praying for his countrymen in Rosario. Assaults and public threats continue. This month, a sign appeared on a highway overpass warning Argentine Security Minister Patricia Bullrich that gangs would extend their offensive to Buenos Aires if the government doesn't back down. Authorities have sought to reassure the public by sending hundreds of federal agents into Rosario. The AP spent a night with police last week as officers patrolled neighborhoods logging suspicious activity and setting up checkpoints. Georgina Wilke, a 45-year-old Rosario officer in the explosives squad, said she welcomes federal intervention, including the military, to get crime under control. "We've been hit very hard," Wilke said. Omar Pereira, the provincial secretary of public security, promised the efforts represent a shift from failed tactics of the past. "There were always pacts, implicit or explicit, between the state and criminals," Pereira said, describing how authorities long looked the other way. "What's the idea of this government? There is no pact." But experts are skeptical a tough-on-crime approach will stop drug traffickers from buying control over Argentina's police and prisons. "Unless the government fixes its problems with corruption, the crackdown on prisons is unlikely to have any long-term effect," said Christopher Newton, an investigator at Colombia-based research organization InSight Crime. For years, Rosario's 1.3 million residents have watched warily as presidents and their promises come and go while the violence endures. "It's like a cancer that grows and grows," said Benítez from her home, its windows protected by wrought-iron bars. "We, on the outside, live in prison," she said. "Those inside have everything."

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