There has been no contact with the ARA San Juan since early Wednesday, prompting Buenos Aires to launch an air and sea search with help from countries including Brazil, Britain, Chile, Uruguay and the United States.

The search has, however, been complicated by stormy conditions, Argentine navy spokesman Enrique Balbi said on Saturday.

However, the defense ministry said it had detected seven satellite-transmitted signals that may be an attempt by the submarine to resume contact.

The signals were received at 10:52 am (1352 GMT) and 3:42 pm (1842 GMT) on various naval bases with the help from US satellite communication experts, but they did not lock in, thus preventing a full connection.

“Right now, we are working to pinpoint the exact location of what is emitting the signals,” presuming that it could be the missing sub, the ministry said.

Early Sunday, the US Southern Command said it was sending a second Navy P-8A Poseidon aircraft to join the search. The Florida-based plane and a crew of 21 are to reach Argentina later in the day.

A NASA P-3 research aircraft is already participating in the search, Southern Command said.

The California-based Undersea Rescue Command earlier said it was deploying two underwater crafts designed to rescue trapped submarine sailors at different depths, as well as a remotely-operated underwater robot known as an ROV.

‘Got to be afloat’

“We will do what is necessary to find the submarine as soon as possible,” Argentine President Mauricio Macri wrote on Twitter.

All land communications bases along the coast were ordered to scan for any followup, as family members of the missing waited nervously in the coastal city of Mar del Plata.

Claudio Rodriguez, whose brother Hernan is aboard the submarine, was hopeful, saying the satellite signals suggested the vessel was still afloat and would be found.

“They’ve got to be afloat. Thank God,” he said.

“That gives us hope, because we knew that if they were down below, they would be screwed,” he told TN news from the western city of Mendoza.

The navy has not ruled out any hypothesis, a spokesman said. The most likely scenario given is that a power short may have unexpectedly cut off the vessel’s communications.

Prayers from the pope

The San Juan is a TR-1700 class diesel-electric submarine which had been returning from a routine mission to Ushuaia near the southernmost tip of South America, to its base at Mar del Plata, some 400 kilometers (250 miles) south of Buenos Aires.

Among those on board is Argentina’s first female submarine officer, 35-year-old weapons officer Eliana Krawczyk.

It is one of three submarines in the Argentine fleet.

Sixty-five meters (213 feet) long and seven meters (23 feet) wide, it was built by Germany’s Thyssen Nordseewerke and launched in 1983.

It underwent a re-fit between 2007 and 2014 to extend its usefulness by some 30 years.

At the Vatican, Argentine-born Pope Francis said he offered “his fervent prayer” for the safety of the submarine sailors.//AFP

On Saturday night, Miss World’s social media accounts incorrectly posted a photo of the 1st and 2nd runners up of the recently-concluded pageant.

At 10:00 p.m., the pageant’s Facebook page and Twitter account announced that Miss England Stephanie Hill had won as 1st runner up, while Miss Mexico’s Andrea Meza was 2nd runner up.

The posts stirred confusion among netizens as the announcement at the Miss World’s coronation said Mexico’s Meza won 1st runner up and England’s Hill was 2nd.

Hours later, the Miss World’s Facebook page posted an album with a caption with the correct winners.

Miss World’s Facebook page announces the correct winners for 1st and 2nd runners up.

Some of the netizens who pointed out the mix-up were Filipinos who relied on social media to know the pageant’s outcome, since GMA Channel 7’s Miss World 2017 telecast was slated at 11:00 p.m., or almost four hours after the start of the live broadcast on Saturday.

As of Sunday 3:00 p.m. in Manila, the organization had not corrected or taken down the erroneous Twitter post, which was still active as of this writing. The wrong Facebook announcement was still live as of posting.

The incident brings to mind the Miss Universe 2015 blooper by comedian-host Steve Harvey, who incorrectly announced Miss Colombia Ariadna Gutierrez as the winner. Miss Philippines Pia Wurtzbach actually won as Miss Universe.

More than 600,000 Rohingya are languishing in Bangladeshi refugee camps after fleeing a brutal Myanmar army campaign launched in late August.

The UN says the scorched-earth operation, which has left hundreds of villages burned to ash in northern Rakhine state, amounts to ethnic cleansing.

Bangladesh, which already hosted some 250,000 Rohingya before the current exodus, wants the latest arrivals to return swiftly and is keen to enlist help from China, a staunch ally of Myanmar.

Foreign Minister A. H. Mahmood Ali held talks in Dhaka on Saturday with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi over the issue.

“When the issue of exodus of displaced Myanmar nationals was raised, the Chinese Foreign Minister stated that as a friend China will help resolve the issue and will not be partial to any side,” Bangladesh foreign ministry said in a statement after the talks.

The statement added Wang stressed the “importance of continued consultations and dialogue between Bangladesh and Myanmar on the issue.”

No details were given on what concrete steps Beijing might take.

Myanmar has faced growing international anger over its treatment of the Rohingya but China has helped shield the country from censure.

Earlier this month the UN Security Council dropped plans to adopt a resolution demanding an end to the violence in Myanmar in the face of strong opposition from China.

According to Bangladesh’s private news agency UNB, Wang held a briefing for a small number of local media at China’s embassy in Dhaka where he said Beijing supports “a proper solution of the problems through bilateral channels”.

But he warned against further moves at the UN to criticise or punish Myanmar.

Wang is the first of a host of foreign ministers from Asia and Europe who are visiting Bangladesh for talks on a refugee crisis that has left the impoverished nation reeling.

Bangladesh Foreign Minister Ali will take his counterparts from Germany, Sweden and Japan, together with the European Union’s diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini, to the border town of Cox’s Bazar on Sunday to see the camps.

Refugees are penned inside vast, squalid camps, and UNICEF estimates that 25,000 children are suffering from severe malnutrition that could easily become a major killer.

The ministers will also meet Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Bangladesh and Myanmar have agreed in principle to begin repatriation of the Rohingya but are still tussling over the details.

Yet on Thursday Myanmar’s powerful army chief distanced himself from any suggestion of a quick return. The Rohingya, he said, could only return if Buddhist citizens accepted them — a highly unlikely scenario given that the minority are so widely loathed and ostracised inside Myanmar.//AFP

The app was developed by a study group led by the Jikei University School of Medicine. It has been adopted on a trial basis by the American football club at Hosei University, known as a collegiate powerhouse, to manage the health of its players.

Concussions are caused by an impact to the head, neck or other parts of the body, and result in such symptoms as temporary confusion and loss of consciousness. The risk of aftereffects to the brain increases with repeated concussions, or after suffering a series of concussions in a short period of time, so managing a patient’s health after they develop symptoms is very important.

Hiroyuki Takao, an associate professor at the Jikei University School of Medicine in Minato Ward, Tokyo, specializes in neurosurgery and works for the Hosei club. Together with an information technology company, he developed an app that can record the severity of concussions on smartphones and tablets.

The app enabled Takao to ascertain the condition of more than 100 Hosei team members without visiting the team’s practice ground in Kawasaki.

When a player shows signs of the disorder, such as dizziness or headaches, after a collision, team assistants and other people on the scene are the first to use the app. They input information by responding to questions such as “Did the player lose consciousness?” and “Can the player speak?”

This and other information will be used by a doctor to ascertain the general condition of a player via a smartphone. The doctor can then issue instructions on emergency treatment through the app.

It can also be used to share information on follow-up treatment. A doctor who diagnoses a player with a concussion will input information about whether the player is capable of taking part in practice sessions or games, which helps coaches make decisions.

Players can also confirm their condition and study rehabilitation measures with the app, and return to the field after completely recovering.

“Playing American football should never ruin a player’s life,” Hosei coach Shuichi Yasuda said. “I want to strictly manage the concussions of players and work hard to secure their safety.”

The reporters were detained on Tuesday night, days before Cambodia’s main opposition party was dissolved over accusations it conspired with the US in a treason plot.

That case was blasted by Washington as baseless and decried by rights groups as hastening the country’s descent into a de facto one-party state under premier Hun Sen.

The ruling followed months of legal attacks aimed at silencing Hun Sen’s political rivals, outspoken NGOS and independent media. Radio Free Asia was forced to shut its office after 20 years due to a series of threats.

The former RFA journalists — Oun Chhin and Yeang Sothearin — now face up to 15 years in jail for allegedly running an illegal media studio from a guesthouse in the capital, according to police.

After seeing “enough grounds, the prosecutor at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court decided to charge them with providing a foreign state information that is destructive to the national defence”, said court spokesman Ly Sophana.

Hun Sen, a firebrand ultra-nationalist in power since 1985, has been leaning heavily on anti-American rhetoric to justify the unprecedented clampdown on critics before elections in 2018 which he is now guaranteed to win.

His allegations of a US-backed coup plot have sent relations with Washington into a tailspin.

On Friday Washington demanded the immediate reversal of the ruling against the opposition party, which it said had stripped next year’s election of any legitimacy.

A spokesman for Hun Sen’s ruling party said the country would be fine without American backing.

The widening rift is the latest chapter in a complex history between the two nations.

After pummelling Cambodia with bombs during the Vietnam War, the US went on to become one of its biggest donors as the kingdom rebuilt from the ashes of the brutal Khmer Rouge era of 1975-79.

But America’s influence has waned significantly in recent years as China muscles into Southeast Asia, propping up authoritarian leaders like Hun Sen with aid and investment free of pressure to safeguard human rights.

Critics say Beijing’s backing has given Hun Sen the confidence to drop even the facade of respecting a free press and other democratic institutions.

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip will celebrate their platinum wedding anniversary on November 20, marking 70 years since they married in the splendour of Westminster Abbey.

Despite three of their four children (Charles, Anne and Andrew) having divorced, this royal union has endured through the decades without any public hint of marital strife.

Now, they join a small club of couples who have spent seven decades together.

No events are planned to celebrate their landmark, but the bells of Westminster Abbey will ring at 1300 GMT in tribute.

Elizabeth and Philip will spend the day with other members of the royal family, a Buckingham Palace spokesman told AFP.

After 70 years of marriage it’s a burgeoning clan, with four children, eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

They expect to welcome a sixth great-grandchild in April, when Prince William and wife Kate Middleton’s third child is due.

The 96-year-old Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, retired from the public eye this summer, enjoying his newfound free time reading and painting.

For her part the Queen, at 91, is slowly passing over some of her official duties to her son Prince Charles, now aged 69.

Meeting at 13 years-old

It was a version of love at first sight.

Elizabeth was aged just 13 when she first laid eyes on her future husband Philip, then a dashing 18-year-old blond army officer.

The pair may have met in their teens, but it would be eight years until the nation celebrated with pomp their fairy-tale wedding at Westminster’s famous abbey on November 20, 1947.

The princess dazzled, dressed in a satin dress embroidered with roses and decorated with 10,000 pearls and sparkling crystals.

In this post-war period, it was “a flash of colour on the difficult road we’re taking,” said Winston Churchill, leader of a Conservative Party then in opposition.

Fresh memories of the war and fears of anti-German sentiment meant several of Prince Philip’s German relatives — including his three surviving sisters — were not invited to the ceremony.

Prior to the wedding, the Queen Mother asked her future son-in-law if he would cherish her daughter.

“Cherish Lilibet? I wonder if that word is enough to express what is in me,” he replied, using the Queen’s childhood nickname.

He went on to say that he had “fallen in love completely and unreservedly” with her.

Sacrifices

After their honeymoon — at Balmoral, the Scottish holiday estate of the royal family — the newlyweds moved to Malta where Philip, a naval officer, had been stationed.

However, the premature death of King George VI, in 1952, put an end to the more carefree life the young couple had adopted on the Mediterranean island, and propelled Elizabeth to the throne.

It also forced Philip to sacrifice his career in the Royal Navy to become the Queen’s spouse.

The son of a Greek prince banished from the country, he renounced his titles and Greek Orthodox faith and became a British citizen to marry Elizabeth, adopting his mother’s anglicised name, Mountbatten.

But their children would take the Queen’s family name, Windsor.

On his 90th birthday in 2011, she surprised her husband by making him Lord High Admiral, the titular head of the Royal Navy and a role she had held since 1964.

It was reported to be a show of gratitude for his decades of unstinting support as her consort.

That support has come alongside a steady stream of gaffes, sometimes with xenophobic hints, which the Queen appears to have forgiven him for.

“I think the main lesson that we have learnt is that tolerance is the one essential ingredient of any happy marriage,” Philip said in a golden wedding anniversary speech in 1997.

“You can take it from me that The Queen has the quality of tolerance in abundance.”

The man she referred to as her “rock,” also once remarked: “My job first, second and last, is never to let the Queen down.”

The US President’s decision to yank the United States from the hard-fought global pact cast a long shadow over the talks, which ran deep into overtime. Negotiations were marked by revived divisions between developing countries and rich ones.

With a wary eye on America, which sent negotiators to a forum it intends to quit, envoys from nearly 200 countries got on with the business of designing a “rule book” for enacting the agreement, which enters into full force in three years’ time.

“The Trump administration failed to stop the global climate talks from moving forward,” said Greenpeace observer Jens Mattias Clausen.

Closing two weeks of talks, negotiators agreed in the early hours of Saturday to hold a stocktake in 2018 of national efforts to cut fossil fuel emissions.

The Paris treaty calls for limiting average global warming to “well under” two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial levels, or 1.5 C if possible.

Anything over 2 C, experts say, dooms the world to calamitous climate change, with more extreme superstorms, droughts, floods, and land-gobbling sea level rise.

A report this week warned that emissions of carbon dioxide, the main planet-warming gas, were set to rise by two percent in 2017 after three years of hardly any growth.

“Starting now, emissions need to decrease to zero over the next 40 years to prevent us breaching the 1.5 C threshold,” Piers Forster, a professor of climate change at the University of Leeds, said.

Nations have submitted voluntary emissions-cutting commitments under the Paris pact championed by Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama.

But scientists say current pledges place the world on course for warming of 3 C or more, and counsel an urgent upgrade of the global commitment to phasing out greenhouse gases produced by burning coal, oil and natural gas.

Islands in peril

“While the Paris Agreement represents a remarkable diplomatic achievement, it will be judged by history as little more than words on paper if the world fails to take the level of action needed to prevent the loss of entire island nations,” Maldives environment minister Thoriq Ibrahim told delegates Friday.

The stocktake agreed Saturday must quantify the shortfall to determine what more needs to be done.

In Bonn, negotiators also worked on a nuts-and-bolts rulebook, to be finalised at the next UN climate conference in Katowice, Poland in December 2018, for putting the Paris Agreement into action.

Some progress was made, but observers and delegates complained that things were moving too slowly.

Many lamented the void in “political leadership” left by the departure of Obama, and by German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s failure to set a timetable for phasing out coal-fired power plants, which produce 40 percent of Germany’s electricity.

The talks saw rich and poor nations butt heads on several issues — mainly money.

Developing countries demand detailed progress reports on rich nations’ promise to boost climate finance to $100 billion (85 billion euros) per year by 2020.

The world’s poorer nations — often the first to feel the sting of climate change impacts — need cash to make the costly shift away from atmosphere-fouling coal, and to shore up their defences against extreme weather.

Donor nations, in turn, insists that emissions cuts by developing countries be subject to verification.

Act, soon

The United States, which under Trump has slashed funding for climate bodies and projects, took a tough stance in the finance negotiations in Bonn, a position that angered some delegates.

Adding to the tension, White House officials and energy company executives hosted an event on the conference margins to defend the use of fossil fuels.

On Thursday, 20 governments from both wealthy and developing nations, led by Britain and Canada, countered with the launch of a coal phase-out initiative.

The United States is the world’s biggest historical greenhouse gas polluter, second only to China.

“In a year marked by extreme weather disasters and potentially the first increase in carbon emissions in four years, the paradox between what we are doing and need to be delivering is clear,” WWF climate head Manuel Pulgar-Vidal said of the talks.

“Countries must act with greater climate ambition, and soon.”

Observers hope that the “One Planet Summit” hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on December 12 will boost momentum.

Macron has invited some 100 heads of state and government, but not Trump, as well as business leaders, to discuss finance for climate projects.

Scheduled to have closed late afternoon, the talks were still underway at 10:00 pm (2100 GMT), with China’s chief negotiator Xie Zhenhua telling AFP: “We have a lot to negotiate.”

Delegates said the talks were stalled mainly on finance, reviving a divide between rich and developing nations at the talks.

The world’s poorer nations, often at the forefront of the effects of climate change, need money to make the costly shift away from atmosphere-fouling coal, and to shore up their defences against weather extremes.

They are demanding more certainty and transparency from rich nations on progress made toward meeting a promise to ramp up climate finance to $100 billion (85 billion euros) per year by 2020.

Donor nations, in turn, insist on comparable obligations under the Paris pact for developing greenhouse gas polluters, who demand a certain degree of leeway.

President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the hard-fought Paris Agreement cast a long shadow over the talks.

The United States, which under Trump has also slashed funding for climate bodies and projects, took a tough stance in the finance discussions, delegates said, angering many negotiating parties.

America still has negotiators at the forum it has spurned.

Envoys from nearly 200 countries gathered to draw up a “rule book” for enacting key provisions in the agreement backed by all but the US, and due to enter into full force in just three years’ time.

The pact, adopted to cheers and champagne in 2015, commits countries to limiting average global warming to under two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over Industrial Revolution levels, and 1.5 C if possible, to avert worst-case climate change.

– Paradox –

Anything over 2 C, experts say, would doom the world to calamitous climate change, with ever more extreme superstorms, droughts, floods, and land-gobbling sea level rise.

Nations submitted voluntary emissions-cutting commitments to bolster the deal championed by Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama.

But scientists say current pledges place the world on course for warming of 3 C or more, and counsel urgency in reducing planet-warming greenhouse gases produced from mankind’s voracious burning of coal, oil and natural gas.

A report this week warned that emissions of carbon dioxide, the main planet-warming gas, were set to rise by two percent in 2017 after three years of no growth.

“Starting now, emissions need to decrease to zero over the next 40 years to prevent us breaching the 1.5 C threshold,” Piers Forster, a professor of climate change at the University of Leeds, said Friday.

The climate rule book will specify how countries count and report on their promised emissions cuts.

Halting progress was made at the talks, with observers and delegates complaining that things were moving too slowly.

Many lamented the “political leadership” void left by the departure of Obama, and by German Chancellor Angela Merkel who was criticised for not promising to phase coal out when she addressed the conference this week.

“In a year marked by extreme weather disasters and potentially he first increase in carbon emissions in four years, the paradox between what we are doing and need to be delivering is clear,” said WWF climate head Manuel Pulgar-Vidal.

Greater ambition

“Countries must act with greater climate ambition, and soon, to put us on a path to a 1.5 C future.”

The headline dispute at COP 23, however, was about coal.

On Monday, White House officials and energy company executives hosted an event on the conference margins to mount a defence of continued fossil fuel use — and this at a forum dedicated to the drawdown of fossil fuel emissions.

On Thursday, about 20 governments from both wealthy and developing nations countered with the launch of a coal phase-out initiative — led by Canada and Britain — that also has the backing of several regional governments.

The United States is the world’s biggest historical greenhouse gas polluter, and second only to China for current-day emissions.