MIAMI — A depression that was formerly Tropical Storm Barry dumped rain on eastern Mexico late Sunday as Tropical Storm Flossie brewed off its southwestern Pacific coast. The weakening and ill-defined depression came ashore south of Tampico with maximum sustained winds of 35 mph (55 kph), the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said. It was moving northwest at 9 mph (15 kph). All tropical storm warnings and watches were lifted, but rainfall and a risk of flooding were expected through Monday.

In the Pacific, Tropical Storm Flossie maintained strength early Monday with maximum sustained winds of 45 mph (72.4 kph). It was centered about 185 miles (297 kilometers) south of Zihuatanejo and was moving northwest at 10 mph (16 kph).

Mexico’s government issued a tropical storm warning along the southwestern coast from Punta San Telmo to Playa Perula.

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A tropical storm watch remained in effect for the southwest coast from Zihuatanejo to Cabo Corrientes. A watch means tropical storm conditions are possible in the area within two days.

PARATY, Brazil — My son had a high fever, so my wife and I decided to cut short our beach vacation and head home, worried about the quality of health care so far from Rio de Janeiro. I packed our bags, took one last look at the calm shoreline and headed out to load up the car.

I popped open the trunk door of our hatchback and commenced with that intricate game of Tetris practiced by all vacation dads.

I’d noticed weeks before that rust was eating away at one of the hatch door’s support beams but hadn’t given it much thought — not, at least, until it suddenly snapped and the full weight of the door came slamming down on me.

I stumbled away and grabbed my head, only realizing how badly I’d been hurt when I pulled my hand away and saw it was covered in blood. There was more on my clothes and in the dirt below. I fell to the ground, yelled for my wife and, suddenly woozy, heard muffled voices beginning to holler for someone to call an ambulance.

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Even after six years in Brazil as The Washington Post’s Rio de Janeiro bureau chief, I confess one of my first thoughts was stubbornly American. Out of the murkiness, it came with sudden clarity: How much is this going to cost me?

Six hours later — after an ambulance ride, CT scan, X-ray cranial imaging and six stitches in my head — I had my answer: $0.

At a time when health care remains one of the most divisive issues in Washington — and the Congressional Budget Office estimates President Donald Trump’s signature domestic legislation could leave millions more Americans uninsured — my unexpected admission to a Brazilian public hospital served as an education of sorts on a fundamentally different system.

Health care is a basic right in Brazil, enshrined in the constitution. Every one of its 215 million citizens — in addition to 2 million foreign residents — is entitled to free care in what has become the world’s largest public health system.

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The government says the Sistema Único de Saúde — known to everyone here as SUS — tallies an astounding 2.8 billion admissions per year. More than 7 in 10 Brazilians rely on it entirely, receiving everything from mundane care to complex surgeries on the public dime.

SUS is far from perfect. Patients wait in long lines for specialized care. Lawmakers leave it underfunded. Workers routinely go on strike. It buckled during the worst days of the coronavirus pandemic and hospitals began turning patients away, leading to scenes of desperation across the country and inflaming political divisions.

Former President Jair Bolsonaro, a hard-line conservative, sought to privatize the system but quickly backed down after public backlash, organized under the banner “Brazil Needs SUS.” Current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a leftist who’s long championed a robust social safety net, has since vowed to relieve the strain on SUS with a fresh funding package.

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“We’re not going to let this program fail,” he said. “Because the poor need to be treated like people.”

Perhaps because I was more comfortable with a system more similar to the United States’, my family and I had always opted for Brazil’s private health care network, where the best hospitals rival anything in the developed world. Our son was delivered and receives his pediatric care in Rio de Janeiro’s private system.

So on that fateful Friday morning, when my son’s fever spiked in this seaside village where the only hospital is a public one, we called his pediatrician and decided to drive the four hours home. But the hatch door had a different plan. The first responders took my vital signs, wrapped my head in a thick bandage and helped me into an ambulance that had been dispatched by Hospital Hugo Miranda. Off we went.

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The contrast with the American system was immediately apparent — not from what hospital staff asked, but what they didn’t. No one inquired about our insurance coverage. No one even jotted down my tax identification number, which is solicited here even when paying parking meters or buying a bottle of toothpaste.

I was pushed by wheelchair from room to room. First a nook where I received a shot of pain medication. Then a cramped room where a doctor injected a local anesthetic and closed my six-centimeter wound with six stitches. Then onward to an imaging suite where X-rays were taken to ensure the injury had been superficial. And finally to an adjoining center where a CT exam was performed to verify there was no bleeding in the brain.

As the hours went by, I saw Brazil’s diversity on display in the halls of the hospital. The population of Paraty is only 47,000, but the historic port town serves as the regional anchor for a vast dispersion of shoreline communities. Many people travel by boat across enormous distances to reach the hospital. On Friday, they crowded into waiting areas and exam rooms alongside the urban working class and affluent out-of-towners — all guaranteed the same level of care. For 40 minutes while waiting to be stitched up, I sat wordlessly next to a barefoot man with one eye.

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In the early afternoon, I was called back to the see the doctor who’d performed my intake. She counseled rest, prescribed pain medication and antibiotics, and sent me on my way.

But while I was getting better, my son’s fever had reached 104 degrees. We sought treatment for him, too. Hugo Miranda immediately admitted him; after an hour of waiting, his name was called.

Ten minutes with a pediatrician was all we needed for a diagnosis: tonsillitis.

The pediatrician prescribed antibiotics and Tylenol to reduce the fever, then called in the next patient on her list.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Nearly a week of heavy monsoon rains and flash floods across Pakistan have killed at least 46 people and injured dozens as continuing severe weather similar to past emergenicies remains possible, officials said Monday. The fatalities caused by abnormally strong downpours since Tuesday include 22 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 13 in eastern Punjab province, seven in southern Sindh and four in southwestern Balochistan, National Disaster Management Authority and provincial emergency officials said.

“We are expecting above-normal rains during the monsoon season and alerts have been issued to the concerned authorities to take precautionary measures,” said Irfan Virk, a Pakistan Meteorological Department deputy director.

Virk warned forecasters cannot rule out a repeat of the “extreme situation” seen during devastating floods in 2022 . Rains inundated a third of the country, killing 1,737 people and causing widespread destruction.

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The deaths from the past week include 13 tourists from a family of 17 who were swept away Friday. The other four family members were rescued from the flooded Swat River in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Rescuers found 12 bodies from the group and divers continued searching Monday for the remaining victim, said Bilal Faizi, a provincial emergency service spokesman.

PRAGUE — The Czech government survived a parliamentary no-confidence vote called by the main opposition party on Wednesday over a bitcoin-related scandal. Only 94 opposition lawmakers in the 200-seat lower house of Parliament voted in favor of dismissing the four-party coalition led by conservative Prime Minister Petr Fiala .

At least 101 votes were needed to oust the government at the end of a two-day debate.

The main opposition centrist ANO (YES) movement led by populist billionaire Andrej Babiš requested the vote after the Justice Ministry accepted a donation of bitcoins and sold them for almost 1 billion Czech koruna ($47 million) earlier this year.

Justice Minister Pavel Blažek resigned from his post over the issue on May 30 and was replaced by Eva Decroix on June 10.

Blažek said he wasn’t aware of any wrongdoing, but didn’t want the coalition to be harmed by the scandal. Fiala said he believed Blažek acted with goodwill.

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Decroix said she will order an independent probe into the ministry’s activities in the case.

The scandal focuses on the fact that the bitcoins were donated to the ministry by a person who was previously convicted of drug dealing and other crimes, while it was not clear why he did it.

The opposition has accused Blažek of possible money laundering, because it wasn’t clear where the bitcoins originated, and demanded the resignation of the entire government. The issue is being investigated by the national police’s organized crime unit.

It was the fourth no-confidence motion since the government took over after a 2021 election.

DAMASCUS, Syria — In a park overlooking Damascus, 25-year-old Khaldoun Hallak has spent the past few evenings with his friends, drinking yerba mate, snacking on nuts, smoking hookah pipes and watching the sky for missiles streaking overhead . “We’ve been through 14 years of war , and this is the first time Syria has nothing to do with it and we’re just spectators,” Hallak said.

Since Israel launched a barrage of strikes on Iran last week and Iran retaliated with missile and drone attacks against Israel, neighboring countries have been in the flight path.

Outside the scope

Downed missiles and drones have fallen in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, damaging houses, causing fires and reportedly killing one woman in Syria. But those countries have so far not been dragged directly into the conflict — which had killed at least 224 people in Iran and 24 in Israel as of Tuesday — and many in their war-weary populations are hoping it stays that way.

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In Lebanon, which is still reeling from last year’s war between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group, videos making the rounds on social media have shown revelers dancing and drinking on rooftops while projectiles flash across the sky in the background.

Firas Maksad, managing director for the Middle East and North Africa at the Eurasia Group, a New York-based risk consultancy organization, happened to be visiting Lebanon when the conflict broke out and was attending a wedding when a parade of missiles began lighting up the sky as the DJ played ABBA’s disco hit “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)”. He posted a video of the scene that went viral.

“Certainly most in Lebanon and also Syria are very satisfied to be outside the scope of this,” Maksad said.

No longer in the spotlight, a sense of relief

For some in the region, there is also measure of schadenfreude in watching the two sides exchange blows.

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There’s a Syrian expression that literally translates as, “The fang of a dog in the hide of a pig.” It means that two people perceived as despicable are fighting with each other. The phrase has surfaced frequently on social media as Syrians express their feelings about the Israel-Iran conflict.

Watching from a park

Many Syrians resented Iran’s heavy-handed intervention in support of former President Bashar Assad during the country’s civil war, but are also angered by Israel’s incursions and airstrikes in Syria since Assad’s fall. The Sunni-majority Syrian population also widely sympathizes with the Palestinians, particularly with civilians killed and displaced by the ongoing war in Gaza.

“May God set the oppressors against each other,” said Ahmad al-Hussein, 18, in Damascus, who was sitting in a park with friends waiting to see missiles pass overhead Monday night. “I hope it continues. We’ve been harmed by both of them.”

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Hallak echoed the sentiment.

“Every time we see a missile going up, we say, may God pour gasoline on this conflict,” he said. “If one side is hit, we will be happy, and if the other side is hit, we will also be happy. We will only be upset if there is a reconciliation between them.”

In Lebanon, where last year’s Israel-Hezbollah war killed more than 4,000 people, including hundreds of civilians, and left destruction in wide swathes of the country’s south and east and in Beirut’s southern suburbs, some see retribution in the footage of destroyed buildings in Tel Aviv.

Hezbollah remains largely quiet

A U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal brought an end to the latest Israel-Hezbollah war in November. The Lebanese militant group — which lost much of its senior leadership and arsenal in the conflict — has remained largely quiet since then and has given no indication that it intends to join the fray between Israel and Iran.

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Israeli forces have continued to occupy several border points in southern Lebanon and to carry out regular airstrikes on what Israel says are Hezbollah facilities since the ceasefire.

“Of course I am against the Israeli occupation, and Iran is an Islamic country standing up to it,” said Hussein al-Walid, 34, a welder in the southern coastal city of Sidon.

Iran’s axis

Despite the dramatic scenes of buildings reduced to rubble in Israel, Tehran and other Iranian cities have taken a worse pounding — and other regional countries, including Lebanon, could still be pulled into the conflict.

Caroline Rose, a director at the Washington-based New Lines Institute think tank said that while it seems “clear that Iran-backed proxies across the region — particularly Hezbollah—just do not have the capacity” to enter the fray, Israel could decide to expand the scope of its offensive beyond Iran.

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One of the goals announced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was to eliminate Iran’s “axis of terrorism” — the coalition of Tehran-backed armed groups across the region known as the “Axis of Resistance.”

That goal “is ambiguous and offers Israel the operational space to expand this war to countries it deems are hosting Iran-backed proxies, no matter how weak they may be,” Rose said.

Al-Walid shrugged off the possibility of a new war in Lebanon.

“The war is already present in Lebanon,” he said. “Israel isn’t abiding by the agreement and is striking every day.”

Shouts of jubilation

Hassan Shreif, a 26-year-old student from the city of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon, where Hezbollah has a strong base of support, said that after last year’s war in Lebanon and the heavy losses suffered by the militant group, many of its supporters “were clearly anguished and didn’t feel vindicated.”

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“So anything, even a window breaking in Tel Aviv, is (now) a victory for them,” he said. Every time Iranian missiles pass overhead, he said, people in the area break out in shouts of jubilation.

At the same time, Shreif said, “there’s always a silent group hugging the wall as we say in Arabic, treading carefully and praying we stay out of it.” ___