Very very little news in the US about catastrophic flooding in wide areas of South America, including Bolivia and Peru.
Around 90,000 people are stranded in the capital of the north-eastern Beni province (Bolivia), reports say.
The situation could grow worse if rising floodwaters overflow a dyke surrounding the city, officials say.
At least 35 people have died and 350,000 have been affected by the worst floods to hit Bolivia in 25 years.
Weekend storms in and around the Peruvian city of Cuzco have caused a river to burst its banks, flooding homes and farmland.
The town of Huarcarpay was worst hit, with almost half of the town under water. Some houses were completely washed away by the floods.
And of course there are those who see the larger implications.
As Bolivia faces a second straight year of devastating floods, David Choquehuanca, Bolivia’s Foreign Minister, argued that developed nations who produce most of the world’s greenhouse gases are morally obligated to pitch in when the negative effects of climate change strike poorer countries.
A rainy season aggravated by La Nina — a periodic cooling of waters in the Pacific Ocean — has hit hard all across the country. In the capital La Paz, high in the Andes, hundreds of thousands of residents are living under severe water rationing after rain-fed landslides last month ruptured water mains throughout the city.
The mountain storms’ runoff is now flooding the eastern lowlands. Trinidad, a city of 90,000, was surrounded by muddy water, and thousands of local residents camped out under tarps along the shoulders of the city’s one raised highway.
Some scientists believe that global warming has raised ocean temperatures and increased evaporation, boosting the amount of moisture in the air and making La Nina storms more intense.