Puerto Rico fails to make payment

Puerto Rico fails to make payment

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico

The government of Puerto Rico confirmed Monday that it failed to make a $58 million debt payment in a significant escalation of the debt crisis facing the U.S. island territory.

Puerto Rico made a partial payment of $628,000 in interest but could not afford to make the remainder, which was due Saturday, because the legislature did not appropriate the funds, said Melba Acosta Febo, president of the Government Development Bank.

The government had warned Friday that it would not make the payment and argued that it should not be considered a default under a technical definition of the term, an argument rejected by Moody’s Investor Service and others.

NYC Legionnaires’ death toll rises to 7

NEW YORK

The death toll from an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease has risen from four to seven people, city health officials announced Monday at a public town hall meeting of concerned residents.

“We are taking this very seriously,” Dr. Mary Bassett, the city’s health commissioner, told the audience at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, where people waited in line to get in.

More than 80 people have been diagnosed with the disease, which is caused when water contaminated with a certain bacterium is inhaled into the lungs. Of those sickened, 64 have been hospitalized, with 28 of them treated and discharged.

The seven people who died were all older and had other health problems, officials said.

Circus tent collapse kills 2, injures 15

LANCASTER, N.H.

A circus tent collapsed when a severe storm raked a northern New Hampshire fairground Monday, killing two people and injuring 15 others, authorities said.

WMUR-TV reported that state Department of Safety spokesman Michael Todd confirmed the fatalities.

The accident happened Monday evening at the Lancaster fairgrounds, about 90 miles north of the state capital in Concord.

State police say it’s unclear exactly how many people were hurt, but up to 250 people were in the tent when it collapsed.

The National Weather Service had issued a severe- thunderstorm watch for the area during the time of the collapse.

Rio water cleanup

RIO DE JANEIRO

Rio de Janeiro Gov. Luiz Fernando Pezao signed a deal Monday with several Brazilian universities and research institutes to develop a plan for cleaning up the polluted waters of the city’s sewage-strewn Guanabara Bay, where Olympic sailing events will be held.

Pezao hailed the deal as a “very important step” toward the long-promised cleanup, which has dragged on for more than 20 years with little progress.

As part of Brazil’s Olympic project, authorities pledged more than six years ago to drastically cut the amount of raw human sewage in the bay before the 2016 games. But only one of the eight promised treatment plants aimed at filtering much of the waste out of the rivers that have become open-air sewage ditches has been built, and the bay’s once-crystalline waters remain fetid.

Calif. worker dies after bee attack

RIVERSIDE, Calif.

A fire chief says a worker has died after being stung by bees that swarmed a Southern California construction site.

Riverside Battalion Chief Tony Perna says three construction workers were stung Monday morning when a contractor was grading a parking lot. Perna says the grader struck an underground sprinkler control vault that housed a bee hive.

Associated Press