Beach-goers should stay on their toes – if they don’t want to risk losing them – as thousands of aggressive piranhas infest Daveron beach in western Brazil

Travellers planning a visit to Cáceres in Mato Grosso, western Brazil should think twice before dipping their toes in the water at Daveron beach, as thousands of flesh-eating piranhas have stormed the shallow waters of this popular river-side.

Over the past two weeks 15 attacks have been reported, with swimmers losing chunks of their toes, ankles and legs, but local authorities refuse to close the beach. Instead large signs have been posted warning swimmers that the area is at risk of piranha attacks. Beach-goers have also been told to leave the water immediately if they are bitten to reduce the risk of blood spreading.

Despite remaining open, the normally popular beach has lost its allure. The piranha-infested waters have locals and tourists keeping their distance; the beach stayed deserted on Tuesday regardless of being a national Brazilian holiday.

Although piranhas are common in rivers on the outskirts of the city, Daveron Beach had never experienced problems with these aggressive fish until they began schooling in the area roughly two weeks ago.

There are numerous myths surrounding piranha attacks, one of the most common being that a single drop of blood can attract a school of piranha, resulting in the laceration of a human body in seconds. However, there is little scientific evidence to back this up. Piranhas typically only bite once, but a single bite is enough to cause serious damage, including blood and tissue loss.

Early Sunday morning, 3,000 police and soldiers arrived in Rocinha, the biggest slum in Rio, all of Brazil, and even Latin America, to begin the process of pacification. They arrived heavily armed, some in armoured tanks. By the afternoon, troops hoisted the state and national flags, declaring the favela under state control. The massive operation met no resistance, and not a single shot was fired.

As some predicted, the occupation was peaceful. Rocinha, after all, does suffer from violence, but less in comparison to other favelas, notably Complexo do Alemão, which is known as Rio’s “Gaza Strip.” Rocinha is also a place constantly frequented by outsiders: Cariocas from around the city for funk parties, foreigners and Cariocas working for local NGOs, and tourists. Since the initial occupation was mostly uneventful, it left many wondering why such a massive operation with such intensive media coverage was necessary.

The name of the operation itself seemed an oxymoron: Operação Choque de Paz, or Operation Shock of Peace. It was hardly a shock, given that the occupation was announced well in advance and everyone knew it was coming, and wasn’t so much of a military “shock” given the lack of violence. While the capture of Rocinha’s top drug trafficker helped avoid a clash during the occupation, other traffickers had time to flee. Since several police officers and traffickers were arrested “escorting” some of the traffickers during Nem’s failed escape, it’s likely other drug traffickers had ample time to leave Rocinha before the occupation. (In the past, though, some of the traffickers simply moved out of newly pacified favelas into other favelas.) Conspiracy theorists even speculated if the state government made a deal with traffickers to leave before the operation.

Security forces encountered no resistance from traffickers, except for trash left blocking some streets and oil poured on the roads in Rocinha and Vidigal (a nearby favela that was also occupied) intended to make the streets slippery. By announcing the massive operation ahead of time and raising the possibility of clashes between traffickers and police, the state government guaranteed its success with the eventual absence of violence by exceeding expectations. Also, by demonstrating a show of force, the state government also gave Rio’s middle and upper classes, as well as the foreign community de olho before the World Cup and Olympics, a sign that it’s serious about combating crime and imposing order.

Want to know the size of Prince Charles’s feet, where to have Christmas lunch or how to stop the buzzing noise in your apartment? Don’t ask the Foreign Office.

Minister Jeremy Browne has had to tell Britons abroad not to seek such answers at the UK’s network of embassies, high commissions and consulates, as FO staff get contacted about weather forecasts, booking tickets and the best fishing spots in Greece.

“We will always try to help where we can but there are limits to the support that we can provide,” said Browne, the minister responsible for consular affairs. “Our priority is to help people in real difficulty abroad and we cannot do this if our time is diverted by people trying to use us as a concierge service. We need to be able to focus primarily on helping victims of serious crimes, supporting people who have been detained or assisting people who have lost a loved one abroad.”

The government had to set up a special call centre in Malaga, Spain, to filter inquiries. Recent ones included a request for Phil Collins’s telephone number and someone wanting to know the heir to the throne’s shoe size so she could send him a pair as a present. A caller in Malaga wanted to know in September where she could get Christmas lunch because everywhere she had rung so far was already full.

A man rang the consulate in Sydney to find out what clothes he should pack for his holiday while a Brit in Sofia, Bulgaria, hoped consulate staff could sell his house for him. A caller in Florida wanted advice on dealing with ants in his holiday villa, a woman in Moscow complained about the buzzing in her apartment and someone in Greece wanted to know how to go about setting up a chicken coop in his garden. In Dubai, staff were asked if they could meet a man’s dog on arrival at customs as he would be on holiday.

According to a new survey, conducted by TripAdvisor, UK travellers have the worst back-home blues.

The poll showed that 78% of British travellers suffer from post-holiday blues and back-to-work stress. However, compared with figures from 2009 this is an improvement – two years ago 88% of Brits complained of being blue when they returned home.

The UK’s figure is high however, compared with the European average of 69%. According to the report, the Spanish are the least likely to suffer from post-trip depression with only 61% feeling fed up after a trip.

An alarming 75% of Britons also said stress returned to pre-holiday levels within one month of arriving home.

The report also found that 74% of Britons plan their next trip as soon as they return.

Women in the Colombian town of Barbacoas have ended a near-four month ‘crossed legs’ strike.

The women decided on the period of abstinence in protest at the state of the road that led into their small and isolated town.

The action against their husbands was designed to encourage the government to pay for the track to be paved.

Now, transport minister German Cardona has pledged to invest more than US$20 million in the road’s redevelopment, paving 17 miles, around half, of the 163-year-old route.

Around 300 women took part in the strike, which started on 22 June.

A part of Venezuela’s capital is giving dangerous drivers the silent treatment. It’s sending mimes into the streets to do what police alone cannot: tame the lawless traffic.

About 120 mimes in clown-like outfits and white gloves have taken to the streets in Caracas’ Sucre district over the past week to wag their fingers at traffic violators and at pedestrians who streak across busy avenues rather than waiting at crosswalks.

They found plenty to keep them busy in a city where motorcycle riders roar down sidewalks, buses drop passengers in the middle of busy streets and drivers treat red lights and speed limits as suggestions rather than orders.

Mayor Carlos Ocariz of Sucre, in the eastern part of Caracas, turned to the mimes to encourage civility among reckless drivers and careless pedestrians. He is following the example of Antanas Mockus, a former mayor of Bogota, Colombia, who combined mimes and stricter police enforcement in a program that was widely seen as a success.

Until recently, Brazilians didn’t need to use English at all. But now that Brazil has landed two major games – the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016 – that has started to change. After the government won the bids, it began to require public schools in Rio de Janeiro to teach English to all children between the ages of 6 and 8, with plans to expand the program to Sao Paulo next year.

Called Crianca Global – Global Child, in English – the government program has been put in place in order to “prepare these children so that they can actively participate in the opportunities that will open up because of the Olympics,” according to a statement from Claudia Costin, Secretary of Education.

And as the country takes a bigger role on the world stage, Brazilians’ interest in the global society has begun to shape national culture. Businessmen and women want to work for big, international companies. Young people want to study abroad in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada.

The English language, at least in some Brazilian circles, has begun to be seen as more sophisticated than Portuguese.

In Sao Paulo, the largest city in South America with over 11 million people, private English-language schools have sprung up on nearly every block with names like Wizard, Skill and Wise Up. If students are lucky, they get a native-speaking teacher. If not, they get a Brazilian who has already been out of the country and gets almost all of the grammar right.

It doesn’t come cheap. Private lessons tend to run from 50-100 reals (US$26-US$53) per hour, which is no easy feat to pay when minimum wage is R$545 a month (about US$290).

And with such little time before people from all over the world jet into Brazil, it’s not clear whether the country will be as fluent in English as the government might like.

“I think they just have a lack of practice,” said John Milton, a professor of English literature and translation studies at the University of Sao Paulo for the past 27 years. “There’s generally no need to use English in their day-to-day lives, so it’s difficult for Brazilians to find a place where they can actually speak the language.”

Some Brazilians have opposed the government push.

“Brazil should worry about the quality of the Brazilian curriculum subjects before even thinking about teaching another language at school,” said Marisa Mayumi Oliveira, a communications specialist in Sao Paulo who speaks fluent English.

“Most Brazilians barely speak Portuguese correctly. Besides, do we have enough qualified English teachers to teach proper English at these public schools? I really doubt it. We don’t have enough teachers with good qualifications in basic subjects.”

The government isn’t waiting for everyone to learn English. Signs all over major cities and main highways are now in Portuguese, Spanish and English, and some stores even have names in English, which has led at times to some confusion.

“There are signs for Parque do Ibirapuera [in Sao Paulo] that also say Ibirapuera Park,” Milton said. “What’s the point in that?”

Said Oliveira: “I think the Brazilian government is just trying to add some makeup to the surface without treating the real problem, just so they can promote our country as an international nation for the World Cup and Olympics,” she said. “After that, the government will hand out a very Brazilian solution: they will forget the subject forever.”

One of the 21st Century’s grand scientific undertakings has begun its quest to view the “Cosmic Dawn.”

The Atacama large millimetre/sub millimetre array (Alma) in Chile is the largest, most complex telescope ever built.

Alma’s purpose is to study processes occurring a few hundred million years after the formation of the Universe when the first stars began to shine.

Its work should help explain why the cosmos looks the way it does today.

One of Alma’s scientific operations astronomers, Dr Diego Garcia, said that the effective switching on of the giant telescope ushered in a “new golden age of astronomy.”

“We are going to be able to see the beginning of the Universe, how the first galaxies were formed. We are going to learn so much more about how the Universe works,” he told BBC News.

Alma consists of an array of linked giant antennas on top of the highest plateau in the Atacama desert, close to Chile’s border with Bolivia.

It has been under construction since 2003. With the addition of new antennas, the telescope has been able to see progressively deeper into the cosmos and discern star formation processes in ever greater detail.

The full testing and commissioning of its 20th antenna has enabled Alma to record events that have never been seen before. It is now that the first scientific discoveries can be made.

As a taster of what is to come, the European Southern Observatory, one of the organisations that run the facility, has released the first images taken by Alma. They show – perhaps appropriately for the occasion – the collision of two galaxies known as the Antennae Galaxies.

These colossal collections of stars can be seen using optical telescopes, such as the Hubble Space Telescope. But Alma, which gathers light that is not visible to the eye, is able to pick out clouds of dense cold gas from which new stars form.

The images show concentrations of the star-forming gas at the centres of each galaxy and also in the chaotic region where they are colliding. It is here that new stars and planets will be born.

The image was taken using just 12 antennas. The sharpness and resolution of images will increase dramatically as more antennas are added. The aim is for Alma to have 66 antennas by 2013.

So what do the researchers hope to discover?

Alma observes light at millimetre and sub-millimetre wavelengths. It is at these wavelengths that astronomers can make out the swirling gas that came together in the very early Universe, more than 13 billion years ago, to form the very first stars to shine in the Universe.

Cosmologists have their theories of what happened at this time. Now, astronomers will be able to literally see for themselves whether these theories are correct.

Alma will also enable them to see the formation of planets around distant stars. One of the early projects is the study of a very young star called AU Microscopii which is just 1% the age of our own Sun.

It is thought that it has a “birth ring” of matter around it that is in the process of coalescing into planets.

Astronomers are also studying processes around another young star 400-light-years away, given the functional designation HD 142527 that may be forming up to a dozen Jupiter-sized planets.

Another intriguing project is to study the super massive black hole at the centre of our galaxy known as Sagittarius A. Dust prevents it from being seen by optical telescopes – but using Alma, astronomers will be able to see this mysterious object in unprecedented detail.

In addition, a Japanese team plans to use Alma to study another cosmic oddity: a dazzlingly bright galaxy called Himiko, creating the equivalent of 100 Suns each year, while around it little else is happening.

It is hoped that Alma can show the processes occurring deep inside Himiko’s star-forming nebula.

But as well as being scientifically ambitious, the project is an incredible feat of engineering. The man leading the European Southern Observatory’s efforts to construct the array, Pascal Martinez, described Alma as the “Pyramids of the 21st Century”.

He tells me: “The sheer scale of the engineering project, its technical complexity and what this hardware will achieve in terms of our understanding is really at the cutting edge and a tribute to humanity.”

Mr Martinez’s job is to supervise the assembly of antennas on Alma’s lower site, which is still at very high altitude – nearly 3,000m above sea level.

Each antenna is carefully put together from components shipped in from a number of high-tech companies around the globe, and then carefully transported up the plateau to the “high site” on giant 28-wheeled transport vehicles. The antennas are then placed on to their slots and connected to the rest of the array.

Alongside the European assembly site are the Japanese and North American astronomy agencies also assembling their antennas as part of their contribution to this huge international project.

Each agency, in friendly rivalry, claims that their design of antenna works best. But although the European, Japanese and North American systems each look subtly different, they do exactly the same job.

In collaboration with the Republic of Chile, each international partner has helped construct a new generation of telescope that has now begun to probe deeply into the origins of the early Universe.

Researchers have discovered human footprints in Mexico from as far back as 25,000 years ago.

The five markings, found in a remote area in the northern part of the country, appear to belong to adults and possibly a child.

They “are among the few impressions of the first inhabitants in the American continent found Mexico,” the Institute of Anthropology and History said, according to the Herald Sun.

The humans likely lived in caves, researchers said.

“It took us a lot of work to find them because they are not easily identified,” said anthropologist José Concepción Jiménez.

The findings, which are between 4,500 and 25,000 years old, were discovered by a local resident.

Jiménez said that the resident e-mailed him to tell him of the discovery in the Ahuatos Valley in the municipality of Bocoyna, according to Efe.

“After several searches we found them in a stream running down an incline in a place of approximately 1,000 square meters (1/4 acre). The imprints are located in an area about 2 meters (6 1/2 feet) into the stream that only has water during the rainy season and is dry the rest of the year,” he told the wire service.

One of the prints was likely made by the right foot of an adult male; another footprint might have been the left foot of another adult. The footprint of the child, meanwhile, indicates that she or he was about 3 or 4 years old.

Fidel Castro is mocking U.S. President Barack Obama for saying he’s open to changing U.S. policy toward Cuba if there is change on the island first.

Castro writes sarcastically: ‘How kind! How intelligent!’ He adds that such goodwill has not led Washington to end its five-decade-old economic embargo against the island.

Castro says many things will change in Cuba, but it will happen organically and in spite of pressure from Washington.

The ex-leader says ‘perhaps that empire will fall first,’ referring to the U.S. Later he calls Obama ‘stupid.’

Castro’s comments come in an article published in state media Thursday.

Earlier this week he called Obama’s speech to the U.N. General Assembly ‘gibberish.’