Seven people have died after a high-speed Philippine ferry carrying 134 people caught fire on Monday, with seven passengers still missing, the coast guard said.
The ship caught fire just before reaching the port of Real in Quezon province, about 60 km (37.28 miles) east of the capital Manila. It had left Polilio Island at 5:00 a.m. local time (2100 GMT Sunday) and made a distress call at 6:30 a.m.
Five women and two men had died, while 120 passengers had been rescued, with 23 of them treated for injuries, the coast guard said in a statement.
It was not immediately clear the cause of the fire, but the Philippines, an archipelago of more than 7,600 islands, has a poor record for maritime safety, with vessels often overcrowded and many vessels ageing.
Anthony Albanese became the 31st prime minister of Australia on Saturday after winning the Australian general election and ending almost a decade of conservative rule.
Speaking to supporters, Albanese said it was an extraordinary honour to lead the country and that he wanted to bring Australians together.
In results so far, Labor had yet to reach the 76 of the 151 lower house seats required to form a government alone. Final results could take time as the counting of a record number of postal votes is completed.
Labor had 72 seats and Morrison’s coalition 52. Independents and the Greens held 11, the Australian Broadcasting Corp projected. A further 16 seats remained in doubt.
Earlier, conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he had called Albanese to concede defeat in Saturday’s election and congratulate Albanese on his victory.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison conceded defeat to Anthony Albanese’s Labor Party on Saturday night, ending nine years of conservative rule.
Flanked by his wife and daughters, Morrison described the result as “humbling” and “difficult”. He thanked his family, whom he described as his ‘biggest miracle’, and said he took responsibility for the result and would be standing down as leader of the Liberal party.
Partial results showed Morrison’s Liberal-National coalition had been punished by voters in Western Australia and affluent urban seats in particular.
Labor had yet to reach 76 of the 151 lower house seats required to form a government alone. Final results could take time as counting a record number of postal votes is completed.
A strong showing by the Greens and a group of so-called “teal independents”, who campaigned on policies of integrity, equality and tackling climate change, means the makeup of the new parliament looks set to be much less climate-sceptic than the one that supported Morrison’s pro-coal mining administration.
Morrison became prime minister in 2018 after several leadership changes.
Ukraine on Saturday ruled out agreeing to a ceasefire with Russia and said Kyiv would not accept any deal with Moscow that involved ceding territory.
Acknowledging that Kyiv’s stance on the war was becoming more uncompromising, presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said making concessions would backfire on Ukraine because Russia would hit back harder after any break in fighting.
“Any concession to the Russian Federation would instantly lead to an escalation of the war. So the war will not stop. It will just be put on pause for some time,” he told Reuters in an interview in the heavily guarded presidential office, where some of the windows and corridors are protected by sandbags.
“After a while, with renewed intensity, the Russians will build up their weapons, and manpower and work on their mistakes, modernise a little, fire many generals… And they’ll start a new offensive, even more, bloody and large scale, taking into account all mistakes.”
Podolyak dismissed as “very strange” calls in the West for an urgent ceasefire that would involve Russian forces remaining in a territory they have occupied in Ukraine’s south and east.
Both sides say peace talks have stagnated. Each blames the other.
Thousands of people have been killed, millions have been displaced and towns and cities have been devastated since Russia invaded on Feb. 24.
Russia says it has taken full control of the southern city of Mariupol in what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine, but its invasion has stalled in other areas and Ukraine has been bolstered by increasing arms supplies from its allies.
A ceasefire would play into the Kremlin’s hands, Podolyak said.
“They want to lock in some kind of military success. Certainly, they are not going to have military successes, given the help that our Western partners are giving to us now,” he said.
“It would be good if European and American elites understood to the end that Russia can’t be left halfway, because we will fuel their revanchist moods, they will be even more violent in two-three years, they will hate us even worse, not only us, Ukraine, they will hate the whole Western world. They already hate it now.”
Boeing’s new Starliner capsule was launched Thursday (May 19) on a do-over uncrewed test flight bound for the International Space Station, aiming to deliver the company a much-needed success after more than two years of delays and costly engineering setbacks.
The gumdrop-shaped CST-100 Starliner blasted off shortly before 7 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT) from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, carried aloft atop an Atlas V rocket furnished by the Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture United Launch Alliance (ULA).
If all goes as planned, the capsule will arrive at the space station in about 24 hours and dock with the research outpost orbiting some 250 miles (400 km) above Earth on Friday evening.
The Boeing craft is to spend four to five days attached to the space station before undocking and flying back to Earth, with a parachute landing cushioned by airbags on the desert floor of White Sands, New Mexico.
A successful mission will move the long-delayed Starliner a major step closer to providing NASA with a second reliable means of ferrying astronauts to and from the space station.
Since resuming crewed flights to orbit from American soil in 2020, nine years after the space shuttle program ended, the U.S. space agency has had to rely solely on the Falcon 9 rockets and Crew Dragon capsules from Elon Musk’s company SpaceX to fly NASA astronauts.
Previously the only other option for reaching the orbital laboratory was by hitching rides aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
Thursday’s launch also comes at a pivotal time for Boeing as the Chicago-based company scrambles to climb out of successive crises in its jetliner business and its space-defence unit. The Starliner program alone has forced Boeing to take $595 million in charges since the failure of its first uncrewed test flight to orbit in 2019.
The Starliner was not flying to orbit empty. The capsule was carrying a research mannequin to collect data on crew cabin conditions during the journey, plus 500 pounds of cargo for delivery to the space station’s crew – three NASA astronauts, a European Space Agency astronaut from Italy and three Russian cosmonauts.
Two of the U.S. astronauts will have the task of boarding the capsule during Starliner’s stay to take measurements of its interior environment and unload the supplies.
Thursday’s launch marked a repeat of a 2019 test mission that failed to achieve a successful rendezvous with the space station because of a flight-software malfunction. Subsequent problems with Starliner’s propulsion system, supplied by Aerojet Rocketdyne, led Boeing to scrub an attempt to launch the capsule last summer.
The spacecraft remained grounded for nine more months while the two companies sparred over what caused its fuel valves to stick shut and which firm was responsible for fixing them, as reported by Reuters last week.
Boeing says it has since resolved the glitch with a temporary workaround and plans to redesign the propulsion system’s fuel valve system after this week’s flight.
The Starliner was developed with a $4.5 billion fixed-price NASA contract to provide the U.S. space agency a second avenue to low-Earth orbit, along with SpaceX.
If the second uncrewed trip to orbit succeeds, Starliner could fly its first team of astronauts in the fall, though NASA officials caution that time frame could get pushed back.
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Mike Fincke had been designated to fly Starliner’s maiden crewed mission. But NASA officials, reluctant to tie down two astronauts to a flight whose launch date is uncertain, said on Wednesday (May 18) that the mission could end up carrying at least two of any of the four astronauts now training to test-fly Starliner.
Taliban authorities in Afghanistan have asked television broadcasters to ensure that female presenters on local stations cover their faces when on air, an official said on Thursday.
The move comes days after authorities ordered women to cover their faces in public, a return to a policy of the Taliban’s past hardline rule and an escalation of restrictions that are causing anger at home and abroad. Read full story
“Yesterday we met with media officials… they accepted our advice very happily,” Akif Mahajar, spokesman for the Taliban’s Ministry of Vice and Virtue, told Reuters, adding this move would be received well by Afghans.
While he framed the move as “advice,” Mahajar added: “The last date for face covering for TV presenters is May 21,” referring to when compliance with the new requirement should begin.
He did not respond to a query on what the consequences would be of not following the advice. Mahajar said female presenters could wear a medical face mask, as has been widely used during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Most Afghan women wear a headscarf for religious reasons, but many in urban areas such as Kabul do not cover their faces. During the Taliban’s last rule from 1996 to 2001, it was obligatory for women to wear the all-encompassing blue burqa.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday that he is in “intense contact” with Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, the United States and the European Union to restore Ukrainian grain exports as the global food crisis worsens.
“Iam hopeful, but there is still some way to go,” said Guterres, who visited Moscow and Kyiv late last month. “The complex security, economic and financial implications require goodwill on all sides.”
Addressing a food security meeting at the United Nations hosted by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Guterres appealed to Russia to allow “the safe and secure export of grain stored in Ukrainian ports” and for Russian food and fertiliser to “have full and unrestricted access to world markets”.
Russia’s war in Ukraine has caused global prices for grains, cooking oils, fuel and fertiliser to soar, and Guterres warned this would worsen food, energy and economic crises in poor countries.
“It threatens to tip tens of millions of people over the edge into food insecurity, followed by malnutrition, mass hunger and famine, in a crisis that could last for years,” Guterres warned.
Ukraine used to export most of its goods through seaports but since Russia’s February 24 invasion, it has been forced to carry out exports by train or via its small Danube River ports.
UN food chief David Beasley appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin: “If you have any heart at all, please open these ports.” Beasley heads the World Food Programme, which feeds some 125 million people and buys 50 per cent of its grain from Ukraine.
“This is not just about Ukraine. This is about the poorest of the poor who are on the brink of starvation as we speak,” Beasley said.
Russia and Ukraine together account for nearly a third of global wheat supplies. Ukraine is also a major exporter of corn, barley, sunflower oil and rapeseed oil, while Russia and Belarus – which has backed Moscow in its war in Ukraine – account for more than 40 per cent of global exports of potash, a crop nutrient.
Blinken said Russia must be compelled to create corridors so that food and other vital supplies can safely leave Ukraine by land or sea.
“There are an estimated 22 million tonnes of grain sitting in silos in Ukraine right now – food that could immediately go toward helping those in need if it can simply get out of the country,” Blinken said.
Blinken also said it was “false” to blame sanctions because the United States had created exceptions and was working to ensure measures imposed by Washington “are not preventing food or fertilisers from leaving Russia or anywhere else”.
The United Nations has said 36 countries count on Russia and Ukraine for more than half of their wheat imports, including some of the poorest and most vulnerable in the world, including Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Would granting an elephant some of the same rights as humans mean people could no longer keep dogs as pets? That was among the questions that judges on New York state’s top court during arguments in Albany Wednesday asked a lawyer for an animal rights group that is pushing to free Happy the elephant.
The 51-year-old Asian elephant has been called the venerable New York City zoo home since 1977. Happy has been kept apart from other elephants in a one-acre (0.4-hectare) enclosure at the zoo since around 2006, court records show.
Four years ago, the Florida-based Nonhuman Rights Project began asking New York courts to release Happy to one of two elephant sanctuaries in the United States, saying the animal was being illegally imprisoned.
The group has said that Happy was entitled to habeas corpus, a legal process in which illegally detained people or someone acting on their behalf may inquire about the reason they are being held.
New York’s habeas corpus law does not define a “person,” and the group said Happy should be recognized as one. The Court of Appeals session was meant to address that question, after two lower courts sided with the Bronx Zoo, which maintains that Happy is well cared for.
The judges appeared sceptical of the Nonhuman Rights Project’s arguments, with some asking why habeas corpus would apply since the group was seeking to trade Happy’s confinement at a zoo for confinement at a sanctuary. Other judges appeared concerned that expanding certain legal rights to elephants could be a slippery slope.
“Does that mean I couldn’t keep a dog?” Associate Judge Jenny Rivera asked.
Monica Miller, a lawyer for the group, replied that there is not as much evidence about dogs’ cognitive abilities as there is for elephants.
According to a 2006 study, Happy passed a “mirror self-recognition” test, considered an indicator of self-awareness. The animal rights group argues that is among the many cognitive abilities Happy shares with humans. The Bronx Zoo, run by the Wildlife Conservation Society, has said the group is exploiting Happy without concern for the animal’s wellbeing. The judges quizzed Ken Manning, a lawyer for the zoo, on whether habeas corpus would apply to zoo animals if there was evidence they were being kept in unsuitable conditions.
Manning said that it might, but that zoo animals were “highly regulated” and Happy’s conditions complied with the law.
“No one’s claiming any harm to this animal. There’s been no harm to the animal. And you have three affidavits from the people at the zoo attesting to that. The animal is treated well,” Manning said.
Happy’s longtime companion, Grumpy, was attacked by two other elephants in the early 2000s. Grumpy never recovered from the injuries and was euthanized. Another of Happy’s companions, Sammie, later died.
The zoo’s other elephant, Patty, lives in an adjacent enclosure separated from Happy by a fence. The zoo has said the two interact with each other.
Prior efforts to grant legal personhood to animals, including chimpanzees, have been unsuccessful.
The Court of Appeals did not specify when it will rule.
Australians remain split on their election choice just days out from the national poll, with voters highlighting the rising cost of living, climate change and the unpopularity of Prime Minister Scott Morrison as key electoral issues.
With Australia going to the polls on Saturday (May 21), polls released on Wednesday (May 18) showed Morrison’s Liberal-National coalition losing narrowly to centre-left Labor, led by Anthony Albanese, ending nine years of conservative government.
Rising living costs have dominated the final stretches of the campaign with voters rating it as the most critical issue in some polls.
Australian wage growth ticked up by only a fraction last quarter, Wednesday’s data showed, even as a tightening labour market and record vacancies heightened competition for workers. But consumer price inflation has risen twice as fast as wages, keeping real income in the red.
Adding to cautious instincts on both sides ahead of the election, leaders are leery of spooking voters with talk of major policy shifts at a time when pandemic, war, inflation, climate change, and an increasingly assertive China have left voters keen for reassuring voices.
Paul Georgiou, co-owner of Bondi Surf Seafoods, said Morrison had his vote, believing he handled the COVID pandemic better than what Albanese could have done.
“Should I keep the devil I know or the devil I don’t know and I think I’m going to go with the devil I know,” he told Reuters.
Among criticisms of Morrison in his time in office since August 2018 have been his handling of bushfires that killed 24 people and left thousands homeless. He took a family holiday to Hawaii in December 2019 during the crisis, for which he apologised.
His popularity recovered briefly as COVID-19 hit but resumed its slide from mid-2020, Newspoll shows, due to his responses to shortfalls of COVID-19 vaccines and then rapid antigen tests, as well as allegations of sexual abuse and discrimination against women in parliament.
Morrison acknowledged last Friday (May 13) about being a “bulldozer” but said he would change after the election.
“I don’t like Morrison’s aggressiveness and I certainly don’t like his lying,” Sydney voter Robert McDonald said after voting early.
“He’s the worst liar – I’ve been following politics since I could vote and he’s the worst liar I’ve ever seen in the position of prime minister.”
But McDonald has not been overly impressed with Albanese’s performance either, with local media seizing on the Opposition Leader’s stumbles on policy details and him forgetting the national unemployment rate on the first day of the six-week campaign.
Rising numbers of climate-concerned voters in affluent parts of Sydney and Melbourne have meanwhile embraced environment-focused independent candidates in traditionally conservative seats, prompting speculation that neither party may win an outright majority and raising the prospect of another minority government.
With a rising number of public attacks on Morrison’s character from within his party and international leaders, voters are questioning whether they can trust their leaders and the support for a federal Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) is rising, especially after Morrison failed to follow through on his 2019 election promise to legislate an anti-corruption commission.
All Australian states and territories have an integrity commission, leaving the federal government the only government in the country to not have one.
Other issues raised by voters include better healthcare and education funding.
Nearly 6 million voters out of an electorate of 17 million have already cast their ballots through postal votes or early in-person voting, official data showed on Wednesday. An additional 1.1 million postal votes have been received so far versus the 2019 election.
On May 11, Gambia was in the middle of a week-long nationwide vaccination outreach campaign to get its citizens vaccinated against COVID-19.
Driving through busy streets on the outskirts of the Gambian capital, workers from the health ministry announced that vaccines are available on the spot if people wish to get their COVID shots.
The team managed to convince truck driver Adama Cessay.
“I wanted to do it, I had even heard that they were at the police office but as I am a driver until now, I did not have the opportunity to go and get vaccinated against COVID-19. I do it to protect myself but also to go to other countries like Senegal,” he said.
Unfortunately, Cessay was only one of 10 people in the team led by the ministry of health worker; Joseph Mendy managed to get vaccinated that day.
While picking up Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine doses at the ministry, Mendy said he expected to vaccinate about 300 people, though he knew convincing them would be hard work.
“It is still complicated though because we have to talk to them before you start the actual process, you have to convince them that the vaccine is safe, is good, is beneficial before they take it. Now we are going to a university so most of them are already getting the information,” he said.
Once set up at the university campus, Mendy only encountered refusal after refusal, students either ignored him or said they were too afraid of needles.
After spending five hours trying to convince students, Mendy decided to try another location.
“This is frustrating. This is the situation we found ourselves in. It is difficult, so we will try another area we try our chance and to talk to them and see whether it will work,” he said.
Misinformation is also tough to unglue on a continent where sickness is often seen as resulting from supernatural forces, and where big pharmaceutical companies have in the past run dubious clinical trials resulting in deaths.
“If they inject the vaccine, they might have a side effect in your body you may ending losing your life so, that’s why,” said Bai Mbowe a student at the University of The Gambia.
The country’s experience is not unique on the continent.
Only 17% of Africa’s 1.3 billion population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19 – versus above 70% in some countries – in part, because richer nations hoarded supply last year. When global demand was greatest, to the chagrin of African nations desperate for international supplies.
Now though, as doses finally arrive in force in the continent, inoculation rates are falling. The number of shots administered dropped 35% in March, World Health Organization data shows, erasing a 15% rise seen in March. People are less afraid now. Misinformation about vaccines has festered.
That worries public health specialists who say that leaving such a large population unvaccinated increases the risk of new variants emerging on the continent before spreading to regions such as Europe just as governments there abandon mask mandates and travel restrictions.
In a sign of possible perils to come, cases of an Omicron subvariant have shot up in recent weeks in South Africa, the continent’s worst-hit nation, prompting officials there to warn of the fifth wave of infections.
In Sierra Leone, where 14% of the population is fully vaccinated, radio stations sometimes refuse to broadcast the government’s pro-vaccine messages because of unpaid invoices, said Solomon Jamiru, the country’s COVID-19 spokesman.
A World Bank fund for vaccine purchases and rollouts has sent $3.6 billion to sub-Saharan Africa. Of that, only $520 million has been spent. Amit Dar, the bank’s human development director for Eastern and Southern Africa, said outdated health systems had struggled to absorb the funding.
Health experts say more funding was needed at the start of the pandemic for logistics and training.
Niger, where 6% are fully vaccinated, lacks enough cold storage for vaccines in its vast rural areas, or motorbikes to distribute them, according to the World Bank.
In Zambia, where coverage is 11%, officials are planning outreach campaigns but worry they won’t be able to cover the cost of feeding doctors working far from home or pay for their transport.
The virus did not rip through African countries with the same devastating effect as in other regions.
Youthful populations and low testing rates camouflaged its spread and blunted fears.
Now the continent has too many COVID-19 vaccine doses. Vaccination sites lie empty; millions of unused vials are piling up, and one of Africa’s first COVID-19 vaccine producers is still waiting for an order.
To boost uptake, countries including Ghana, Gambia, Sierra Leone and Kenya are focusing on mobile vaccination campaigns that visit communities. But finances are stretched.
Health workers in bright yellow vests fanned out across the busy market stalls and stores of western Accra, one with a cool box slung over his shoulder containing COVID-19 vaccine shots, asking wary shoppers if they would like to receive an injection.
After an hour of toiling in the baking sun, the team administered just four doses.
“The strategy is to move to the community, move from door to door to convince them, to talk to them, to tell them how important the vaccine is, the role the vaccine plays in curbing the disease and all this,” said Joseph Dwomor Ankrah, who manages Ghana’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution.
Ghana, one of Africa’s most developed economies and one applauded for its early inoculation surge, has a funding gap of $30 million to carry out another campaign, according to the World Bank. Irregular power supply jeopardizes the vaccine cold chain. Doses expire.
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