Typhoon leaves at least seven people dead and thousands displaced in the Philippines
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A typhoon has finally moved away from the Philippines, leaving at least seven people dead, mostly due to floods or toppled trees, and forcing the closures of several seaports, stranding thousands of passengers, officials said Tuesday.
Typhoon Ewiniar crept by the country’s eastern coast late Friday night and lingered over the Philippine islands for several days, before shifting northeastward away from the archipelago. All storm warnings were lifted Tuesday.
The typhoon’s shift in direction spared the densely populated capital, Manila, from a potentially damaging hit.
Ewiniar, locally known as Aghon, was last tracked Tuesday about 450 kilometres (280 miles) east of the northern town of Basco in Batanes province with sustained winds of 130 kph (81 mph) and gusts of up to 160 kph (99 mph), according to government forecasters.
At least six villagers drowned in floodwaters or died after being hit by falling trees during the sudden deluge in the hard-hit province of Quezon, provincial police said. In southern Misamis Oriental province, a villager died when a tree fell and struck a motorcycle taxi she was riding on with her sister as they were on their way to school, police said.
Many villages were overwhelmed by flash floods. Some low-lying areas were engulfed in up to eight feet (2.4 meters) of water in Lucena, Quezon province’s capital city. The flooding was partly due to clogged drainage systems after an extra-hot summer season, Quezon Governor Angelina Tan and other provincial officials said.
Israeli army says it used small munitions in Rafah airstrike, and fire was caused by secondary blast
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The Israeli military says an initial investigation into a strike that sparked a deadly weekend fire in a tent camp in the southern Gaza city of Rafah has found the blaze was caused by a secondary explosion.
A military official, speaking on condition of anonymity pending a formal announcement, said Tuesday that the military fired two 17-kilogram (37-pound) munitions that targeted two senior Hamas militants. The official said the munitions would have been too small to ignite a fire on their own and the military is looking into the possibility that weapons were stored in the area.
Palestinian health officials say at least 45 people, around half of them women and children, were killed in Sunday’s strike. The fire also could have ignited fuel, cooking gas canisters or other materials in the densely populated camp housing displaced people.
The strike caused widespread outrage, including from some of Israel’s closest allies. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was the result of a “tragic mishap.”
New strikes in the same western Tel al-Sultan district of Rafah that was hit Sunday killed at least 16 Palestinians, the Palestinian Civil Defense and the Palestinian Red Crescent said Tuesday. Residents reported an escalation of fighting in the southern Gaza city once seen as the territory’s last refuge.
An Israeli incursion launched in early May has caused nearly 1 million to flee from Rafah, most of whom had already been displaced in the war between Israel and Hamas. They now seek refuge in squalid tent camps and other war-ravaged areas.
Spain, Norway and Ireland formally recognize a Palestinian state as EU rift with Israel widens
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Spain, Norway and Ireland formally recognized a Palestinian state on Tuesday in a coordinated effort by the three Western European nations to add international pressure on Israel to soften its response to last year’s Hamas-led attack. Israel condemned the diplomatic move, which will have no immediate impact on the war in Gaza.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said in a televised address from Madrid that “this is a historic decision that has a single goal, and that is to help Israelis and Palestinians achieve peace.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz quickly lashed out at Spain on X, saying that Sánchez’s government was “being complicit in inciting genocide against Jews and war crimes.”
Ireland and Norway soon joined Spain in formalizing a decision they had jointly announced the previous week.
The Palestinian flag was raised in Dublin outside Leinster House, the seat of Ireland’s parliament.
“I hope (this) sends the Palestinian people a message of hope that — in this their darkest hour — Ireland stands with them,” Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris told lawmakers in Ireland’s parliament after his Cabinet formally signed off on the decision.
“It is no longer enough just to condemn. It is no longer enough just to be repulsed,” he added. “We must be on the right side of history.”
Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said in a statement that “for more than 30 years, Norway has been one of the strongest advocates for a Palestinian state. Today, when Norway officially recognizes Palestine as a state, is a milestone in the relationship between Norway and Palestine.”
Fears rise of a second landslide at site of Papua New Guinea disaster
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Authorities fear a second landslide and a disease outbreak are looming at the scene of Papua New Guinea’s mass-casualty disaster because of water streams and bodies trapped beneath the tons of debris that swept over a village. Thousands are being told to prepare to evacuate, officials said Tuesday.
A mass of boulders, earth and splintered trees devastated Yambali in the South Pacific nation’s remote highlands when a limestone mountainside sheared away Friday. The blanket of debris has become more unstable with recent rain and streams trapped between the ground and rubble, said Serhan Aktoprak, chief of the International Organization for Migration’s mission in Papua New Guinea.
The UN agency has officials at the scene in Enga province helping shelter 1,600 displaced people. The agency estimates 670 villagers died, while Papua New Guinea’s government has told the United Nations it thinks more than 2,000 people were buried. Six bodies had been retrieved from the rubble by Tuesday.
“We are hearing suggestions that another landslide can happen and maybe 8,000 people need to be evacuated,” Aktoprak told The Associated Press.
“This is a major concern. The movement of the land, the debris, is causing a serious risk, and overall the total number of people that may be affected might be 6,000 or more,” he said. That includes villagers whose source of clean drinking water has been buried and subsistence farmers who lost their vegetable gardens.
Defense lawyer begins delivering closing arguments in Trump’s hush money case
NEW YORK (AP) — Closing arguments in Donald Trump ‘s historic hush money trial began Tuesday morning in a Manhattan courtroom, giving prosecutors and defence attorneys one final opportunity to convince the jury of their respective cases before deliberations begin.
Defence lawyer Todd Blanche said he expected to speak for about 2 1/2 hours while prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said he might go as long as 4 1/2 hours.
Jurors will undertake the unprecedented task of deciding whether to convict the former U.S. president of felony criminal charges stemming from hush money payments tied to an alleged scheme to buy and bury stories that might wreck Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
At the heart of the charges are reimbursements paid to Michael Cohen for a $130,000 hush money payment that was given to porn actor Stormy Daniels in exchange for not going public with her claim about a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump.
Prosecutors say the payments to Cohen, Trump’s then-lawyer, were falsely logged as “legal expenses” to hide the true nature of the transactions.
Trump has denied all wrongdoing.
He pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records, charges which are punishable by up to four years in prison.
Closing arguments are expected to last all day Tuesday, with jury deliberations beginning as soon as Wednesday.
The case is the first of Trump’s four indictments to go to trial as he seeks to reclaim the White House from Democrat Joe Biden.
The other cases centre on charges of illegally hoarding classified documents at his estate in Palm Beach, Florida, and conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election. It’s unclear whether any of them will reach trial before the November election.
Pope apologizes after being quoted using vulgar term about gay men in talk about ban on gay priests
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis apologized Tuesday after he was quoted using a vulgar and derogatory term about gay men to reaffirm the Catholic Church’s ban on gay priests.
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni issued a statement acknowledging the media storm that erupted about Francis’ comments, which were delivered behind closed doors to Italian bishops on May 20.
Italian media on Monday had quoted unnamed Italian bishops in reporting that Francis jokingly used the term “faggotness” while speaking in Italian during the encounter. He had used the term in reaffirming the Vatican’s ban on allowing gay men to enter seminaries and be ordained priests.
Bruni said Francis was aware of the reports and recalled that the Argentine pope, who has made outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics a hallmark of his papacy, has long insisted there was “room for everyone” in the Catholic Church.
“The pope never intended to offend or express himself in homophobic terms, and he extends his apologies to those who were offended by the use of a term that was reported by others,” Bruni said.
With the statement, Bruni carefully avoided an outright confirmation that the pope had indeed used the term, in keeping with the Vatican’s tradition of not revealing what the pope says behind closed doors. But Bruni also didn’t deny that Francis had used the term and acknowledged that some people had been offended by it.
A missile attack damages a ship in the Red Sea off Yemen’s coast near previous Houthi rebel assaults
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A missile attack damaged a ship Tuesday in the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen, with a private security firm saying radio traffic suggested the vessel took on water after being struck.
No group immediately claimed responsibility, but suspicion immediately fell on Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who have launched a number of attacks targeting ships over Israel’s war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The attack happened off the port city of Hodeida in the southern Red Sea, near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait that links it to the Gulf of Aden, according to the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center. The vessel “sustained damage” in the assault and later reported an “impact in the water in close proximity to the vessel,” the UKMTO said.
“The crew are reported safe and the vessel is proceeding to its next port of call,” the center said.
The private security firm Ambrey said the vessel reported by radio of having “sustained damage to the cargo hold and was taking on water.”
The location of the attack corresponded to the Marshall Islands-flagged bulk carrier Laax. The vessel reported being heading to Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates.
The Houthis did not immediately acknowledge the attack, though it can take the rebels hours or even days to claim their assaults.
At least 17 are killed when a stone quarry collapses in India’s northeast. 12 others remain missing
GUWAHATI, India (AP) — A stone quarry collapsed Tuesday in India’s northeast due to heavy rain triggered by a tropical storm, killing 17 quarry workers and leaving 12 missing, officials said.
Senior police officer Rahul Alwal said rescuers recovered the bodies of those killed in the quarry in Melthum, about 6 kilometers (3.5 miles) from the Mizoram state capital, Aizwal, and were able to pull out two workers alive from the debris.
Alwal said rescue workers were trying to reach trapped workers while searching for more survivors.
Mizoram has many quarries where stones are mined for road and building construction. Many companies, however, extract stones without getting the required environmental clearance.
Last year, seven workers were killed in the state’s Mamit town when a stone quarry collapsed. In 2022, 12 workers were killed in another similar collapse.
Alwal said four more people were killed in separate landslides in the state.
India’s northeastern states are experiencing heavy rainfall after tropical storm Remal made landfall in Bangladesh on Monday.
India’s Meteorological Department has warned that heavy rains may damage vulnerable structures and thatched houses and trigger landslides in the region.
‘Son of Sam’ killer Berkowitz denied parole in 12th attempt
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — “Son of Sam” killer David Berkowitz, who set New York City on edge with late-night shootings in the 1970s, was denied parole after his twelfth board appearance.
Berkowitz, 70, was rejected after a Board of Parole prison interview on May 14, according to information listed on a state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision web site. Officials with the corrections agency would not provide additional information on Tuesday.
Berkowitz terrorized the city with a series of shootings that killed six people and wounded seven beginning in July 1976. The shooter targeted young women and couples sitting in cars. The papers called him the ”.44 Caliber Killer.” In taunting notes to police and a journalist, he called himself “Son of Sam” and said he received demonic messages to kill.
Berkowitz was arrested Aug. 10, 1977, a little more than a year after the first victim, Donna Lauria, was shot and killed in the Bronx.
The New York Police Department formed a 200-person task force to find the killer. The case was finally cracked after a witness reported a strange man on the street near the final shooting. Police checked traffic tickets that had been issued in the area and traced them to Berkowitz’s car and home in nearby Yonkers.
Berkowitz was sentenced in 1978 to the maximum prison term of 25 years to life for each of the six slayings. He first became eligible for parole in 2002.
Berkowitz has since expressed remorse and said he is a born-again Christian. He is being held at Shawangunk Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison about 60 miles (97 kilometres) north of New York City.
Former Pakistani premier Sharif is re-elected as his party’s president as it now rules the country
LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan’s former premier Nawaz Sharif was re-elected president of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-N party on Tuesday. He last held the position in 2017, when he was forced out of office amid corruption allegations.
The PML-N came into power with the Feb. 8 elections that Sharif’s key rival, former premier Imran Khan, alleged were rigged. Sharif’s younger brother, Shehbaz Sharif, now leads a coalition government and Sharif is a member of Parliament.
Nawaz Sharif was ousted from power in 2017 when the Supreme Court disqualified him from holding any public office over concealing financial assets, a charge Sharif denies. His conviction and sentences were overturned last year, allowing him to hold any public or party office.
Sharif returned to Pakistan in October from self-imposed exile in London, where he went in 2019 for medical treatment when Khan was in power.
Khan was ousted through a no-confidence vote in 2002 and is serving multiple prison terms.
