AFTER 859 days, thousands of miles and “50,000 mosquito bites,” Ed Stafford became the first man known to have walked the entire length of the Amazon river when the waves of the Atlantic Ocean lapped at his feet in northern Brazil yesterday.

HOPES grew for three Irish families that their loved ones’ final resting place will be traced after wreckage thought to be from the missing Air France plane was spotted in seas off the coast of northern Brazil.

Raging torrents from a ruptured dam swamped a rural Brazilian city, killing four people and destroying at least 120 homes in a region already devastated by more than a month of floods.

Across Brazil’s Amazon basin, river dwellers were adding new floors to their stilt houses, trying to stay above rising floodwaters that have killed 44 people and left 376,000 homeless.

Brazil stepped up efforts to get food and other aid to people isolated by severe flooding as waters kept rising in some areas, including a jungle river nearing its highest level in more than 50 years.