Rio de Janeiro - The number of people killed in accidents linked to heavy rains in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina rose to 72 Tuesday, while several of the 30 towns affected by the disaster were starting to experience looting and sharp rises in food prices.

According to the latest report by Civil Defence authorities, close to 54,000 people had to be evacuated from their homes and 137,000 homes had no power.

According to state authorities, four cities had declared a state of catastrophe and eight municipalities had been cut off from the outside world.

Civil Defence officials warned that the number of dead could continue to rise, since several people remained missing in the wake of collapses of buildings and mudslides.

Manama, Bahrain  - The speaker of the Syrian People Assembly, Mahmoud al-Abrash, said on Tuesday that allegations of a secret military nuclear programme by his country were fabricated.

"There are attempts to accuse Syria of having a military nuclear programme despite all the assurances and the reality on the ground that prove that Syria has no nuclear programme," al-Abrash told repoters in Manama at the end of an official two-day visit to Bahrain.

"We don't have a nuclear program but we have a plan that aims to rid the region of mass destruction weapons and we are honestly pointing out the fact that Israel is the country with the largest arsenal of mass destruction weapons in the region."

Bogota  - Some 50,000 people suffered damage to their property in north-western Colombia after the Cauca river overflowed following heavy rains, regional authorities said Tuesday.

The Cauca - a tributary of the Magdalena river, the largest in Colombia - broke its levees on Tuesday and completely flooded the town of Nechi, in the province of Antioquia, some 400 kilometres north of Bogota.

Los Angeles - Los Angeles wants to become the United States' first solar city by generating 10 per cent of its electricity through solar power, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday.

The ambitious plan would create the largest solar base of any city in the world, according to solar energy experts.

Under the plan proposed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa the sprawling city would purchase 1,280 megawatts of solar power - about 500 megawatts would come from private generating plants in the Mojave Desert, a further 380 megawatts would come from a programme to encourage residents to put solar panels on their roofs, while another 400 megawatts would come from panels on city-owned buildings.

Budapest - The European Commission gave conditional approval Tuesday for a consortium led by Rail Cargo Austria (RCA) to purchase MAV Cargo, the freight wing of the state-owned Hungarian railways.

The deal was a[pproved on condition RCA - a subsidiary of the Austrian state railway company OBB - sever all structural ties and review its contractual links with the only other consortium member, the small Hungarian-Austrian railway company GySEV.

The RCA-GySEV consortium won the tender for the privatisation of MAV Cargo in May last year with a bid of 102.5 billion forints (41 million euros), along with a commitment to invest a further 43.5 billion forints (174 million euros) on infrastructure over five years.

New York - More than 5 million people have signed a petition to support the UN campaign to end violence against women, a programme spearheaded by Academy Award winner Nicole Kidman, the UN said Tuesday.

The petition was presented to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to mark Tuesday's International Day to End Violence Against Women.

"We thought that the more names we collected, the stronger our case to make ending violence against women a top priority for governments everywhere," Kidman said at a press conference at UN headquarters in New York.

The campaign, known as "Say NO," was managed by the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), for which Kidman serves spokeswoman and goodwill ambassador.