PROVIDENCIALES, Turks and Caicos — A boat was found drifting about a mile off Grand Turk island with 20 dead people on board, including two children, authorities in the Turks and Caicos Islands said Sunday.

Officials said investigators had ruled out foul play but were still trying to determine what happened. The identities and origin of the dead were also under investigation.

Uganda has reimposed a 42-day lockdown as coronavirus infections surge in the East African country. President Yoweri Museveni said in his Friday night address that he was tired of receiving calls about deaths, but critics say he presented a wish list that would instead worsen the situation for Ugandans.

Earlier Friday, the Health Ministry shared the latest coronavirus figures indicating 1,564 new cases recorded in the previous 24 hours.

This included 42 new deaths, bringing the total to 584. One thousand four active cases have been admitted at health facilities around the country.

After presenting those figures in his national address Friday night, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni said Ugandans had been violating an earlier ban on interdistrict travel.

In his speech, Museveni said every village has community health workers who are in touch with families and keep records on the health status of the villages. They know how many people are in the village, how many are pregnant, how many have children, etc.

Private vehicles, other than those operated by essential workers will only be allowed to travel if they have permission from their local village chairman or health worker to transport a patient to hospital.

"All cross-boundary district and intradistrict movement of public transport and by private vehicles or boda bodas is hereby suspended for 42 days starting today," said Museveni. "Why 42 days? Because we know that this virus, once it doesn’t spread in 14 days, it gets out of your body.”
The virus has significantly spread to 108 districts, out of which 20, including Kampala and Wakiso, have been most affected. Museveni noted that the country is experiencing very high hospitalization and death rates for COVID-19 patients among all age groups. He says Ugandans have not been serious and have not adhered to earlier COVID-19 directives.

"I’m getting from all over the place, telephones, telephones, so and so has died, so and so has died. Imagine. And yet we told you," said Museveni. "We told you from March last year, I said you people … And when people listened, we controlled the disease. As such, the curfew time throughout the country is pulled back to 19:00 hours up to 05:30 hours.”

Museveni also noted that the number of severely and critically ill COVID-19 patients has more than doubled, straining the health system, particularly the available oxygen supply. While an average non-COVID-19 patient requires one to two cylinders per day, a severely ill COVID-19 patient needs four to six cylinders per day.

"With the estimated COVID-19 patient increase in the coming weeks, the daily oxygen consumption will rise to 25,000 cylinders per day in one month, unless we change the course. This is nearly a ninefold increase in the overall national oxygen requirement," said Museveni.

The Health Ministry this week indicated that they had secured $7 million from the Global Fund to install seven oxygen plants in the country.

Unlike last year’s distribution of food to vulnerable city dwellers – an effort that did not reach many of the targeted people and spurred complaints about the food -- Ugandans must use the little they have to survive the 42 days this time.

Sarah Birete, who is executive director at Center for Constitutional Governance, criticizes Museveni’s directives, saying they are merely wish lists that will only worsen the already difficult situation for citizens.

"It’s a good thing to do, but with no budget line, with no capacity, no arrangements," said Birete. "The way our systems are normally disorganized, it’s a wish list and it’s going to risk people's lives more. When you look at general limitation constraints on transport. You know people don’t want to engage with the LDUs [local defense units] and the way they treat people. So many people who do not want to be caught up in that fracas are likely to die in silence.”

Ugandans will now have to wait till July 30 to resume normal lives unless the spread of the coronavirus is contained before then.

Conflicting accounts have been circulating in the days following the incident on 22 June.

The Ethiopian government said it was targeting militants, but multiple sources have described heavy civilian casualties including women and children.

We've used witness accounts, aerial images and official statements to build a detailed picture of what happened.
Shortly after 13:00 local time on 22 June, a teenage boy was playing a game at one of the shops at the market when he heard a loud bang.

"I rushed out and saw a lot of people lying on the ground injured," he told the BBC. "My leg was hurt as I ran to escape the area."

The blast had occurred in the market area of Togoga town - about 25km (15 miles) north-west of the region's capital, Mekelle.

Speaking to the BBC Tigrinya service, witnesses and victims have corroborated the time and describe a busy scene prior to the attack.

We've traced a social media post from Tigrayan opposition official Hailu Kebede referring to the incident at 13:37 local time.
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
View original tweet on Twitter
The market is an open area with traders selling goods, surrounded by grocery stores, beauty shops, tailors and coffee houses.

A young woman was shopping in the market when the missile struck.

She collapsed and remembers others falling to the ground around her.

These survivors of the attack had been able to get to a hospital in Mekelle from where they told their stories.

LOS ANGELES — Two firefighters were killed Saturday in Arizona as wildfires raged through the West, threatening California's overburdened power grid during an oppressive heat wave and ongoing drought.

The firefighters were killed in a plane crash while conducting aerial reconnaissance over the Cedar Basin Fire near the Prescott National Forest, the Bureau of Land Management said in a statement.

"Our hearts are heavy tonight with sincere condolences to families, loved ones and firefighters affected by this tragic aviation accident that occurred today in Arizona on the #CedarBasinFire," the agency tweeted.
Meanwhile, the Bootleg Fire in southern Oregon doubled in size Saturday to nearly 77,000 acres in the Fremont-Winema National Forest, interrupting three electrical lines that transmit power from Oregon to California, energy officials said. As a result, California lost thousands of megawatts of imported power and struggled to maintain operating reserves as temperatures soared into triple digits in parts of the state.

Thousands of people were being evacuated from villages around a rumbling volcano near the Philippine capital Friday, but officials said they faced another dilemma of ensuring emergency shelters will not turn into epicenters of COVID-19 infections.

The alert was raised to three on a five-level scale after Taal Volcano blasted a dark gray plume into the sky Thursday. The five-minute steam- and gas-driven explosion was followed by four smaller emissions, but the volcano was generally calm on Friday, volcanologists said.

Level three means “magma is near or at the surface, and activity could lead to hazardous eruption in weeks,” according to the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology. Level five means a life-threatening eruption is occurring that could endanger communities.

The agency asked people to stay away from a small island in a scenic lake where Taal sits and is considered a permanent danger zone along with a number of nearby lakeside villages in Batangas province south of Manila.

An eruption of Taal last year displaced hundreds of thousands of people and briefly closed Manila’s international airport. However, the volcano agency’s chief, Renato Solidum, said it was too early to know if the volcano’s current unrest will lead to a full-blown eruption.

The preemptive evacuations that began late Thursday involved residents in five high-risk villages in the lakeside towns of Laurel and Agoncillo.

More than 14,000 people may have to be moved temporarily away from the volcano, said Mark Timbal, a spokesman for the government’s disaster-response agency.

Town officials, however, faced an extra predicament of ensuring emergency shelters, usually school buildings, basketball gymnasiums and even Roman Catholic church grounds, would not become coronavirus hotspots. Displaced villagers were asked to wear face masks and were sheltered in tents set safely apart, requiring considerably more space than in pre-pandemic times.

In Laurel town, Imelda Reyes feared for her and her family’s safety in their home near the volcano and in the crowded grade school-turned-evacuation center where they took shelter Friday.

“If we stay home, the volcano can explode anytime,” Reyes told The Associated Press. “But here, just one sick person can infect all of us. Both are dangerous choices.”

Reyes, who washes laundry and has four children, wept in desperation as she said she and her husband, a corn farmer, wanted to leave the evacuation camp for a friend’s house in northern Nueva Ecija province but lamented they did not have money for the bus fare.

Most evacuation camps have set up isolation areas in case anyone began showing COVID-19 symptoms.

“It’s doubly difficult now. Before, we just asked people to rush to the evacuation centers and squeeze themselves in as much as possible,” said disaster-response officer Junfrance De Villa of Agoncillo town.

“Now, we have to keep a close eye on the numbers. We’re doing everything to avoid congestion,” De Villa told The Associated Press by telephone.

A nearby town safely away from the restive volcano could accommodate up to 12,000 displaced Agoncillo residents in pre-pandemic times but could only shelter half of that now. A laidback town of more than 40,000 people, Agoncillo has reported more than 170 COVID-19 cases but only about a dozen remain ill. At least 11 residents have died, he said.

The 311-meter Taal, one of the world’s smallest volcanoes, erupted in January last year, displacing hundreds of thousands of people and sending clouds of ash to Manila, about 65 kilometers to the north, where the main airport was temporarily shut down.

Heavy ashfall also buried an abandoned fishing community, which thrived for years in the shadow of Taal on an island in Taal Lake, and shut down a popular district of tourist inns, restaurants, spas and wedding venues.

The Philippines lies along the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a region prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. A long-dormant volcano, Mount Pinatubo, blew its top north of Manila in 1991 in one of the biggest volcanic eruptions of the 20th century, killing hundreds of people.

The World Food Program (WFP) said on Friday that at least 3,800 metric tons of food had been blocked from reaching the Tigray region of Ethiopia, the Associated Press reported.
A bridge over the Tekeze River used to help transport aid into the region was destroyed on Thursday. WFP said in a statement that no flights
bringing United Nations or other aid to the region have been allowed by Ethiopia since June 22 and that another bridge was destroyed on Thursday, as well.
WFP emergency coordinator Tommy Thompson told reporters in Geneva that "more people will die" if access doesn't open. He added that an air bridge might be set up in the coming days.

A man was dead and a woman was injured after a security guard fired at them at a grocery store in Baltimore, police said Tuesday.
Officers saw a man and a woman with gunshot wounds while responding to reports of a shooting at about 4:30 p.m. in the 6600 block of Reisterstown Road, Baltimore police said. The grocery store is part of Giant Food chain, NBC affiliate WBAL reported.
The man and the woman were taken to a hospital, where the man was pronounced dead. The woman, who was not identified, had a gunshot wound to a hand.
"Investigators have learned that both the male and female were shot by an armed security guard working in the grocery store after a physical altercation," police said.
The homicide team will take over the investigation, the statement said.
Giant Food said it is "fully cooperating with the police in their investigation." The grocery chain declined to say whether it had a policy about armed guards at its locations, citing the investigation.

At least 50 people have died after a fire tore through the Covid isolation ward at a hospital in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah.

The death toll is expected to rise, as search operations at al-Hussain coronavirus hospital continued after the fire was brought under control. Sixteen people were rescued from the burning building.

“The victims died of burns and the search is continuing,” said Haydar al-Zamili, a spokesperson for the local health authorities, noting that there were fears that many victims were still trapped inside the building.

Initial police reports suggested that an oxygen tank explosion inside the hospital’s Covid-19 ward was the likely cause of the fire, a policeman at the scene of the fire said.
“Raging fires have trapped many patients inside the coronavirus ward and rescue teams are struggling to reach them,” a health worker told Reuters before entering the burning building.

Videos shared online showed thick clouds of smoke billowing from the Hussein hospital.

Earlier on Monday, a minor fire broke out at the health ministry’s headquarters in Baghdad, but it was quickly contained with no fatalities recorded.

The blaze at the hospital is the second such tragedy this year. In April, a fire at a Baghdad Covid-19 hospital killed 82 and injured 110, sparked by the explosion of badly stored oxygen cylinders.

Many of the victims were on respirators being treated for Covid-19 and were burned or suffocated in the resulting inferno. Dozens of relatives were visiting patients in the intensive care unit. The then health minister, Hassan al-Tamimi, resigned after the April fire.

Already decimated by war and sanctions, Iraq’s healthcare system has struggled to cope with the coronavirus crisis, which has killed 17,592 people and infected 1.44 million people.

Some people who already had COVID-19 are hesitant to get the vaccine, as many believe their natural antibodies are enough protection, but those who never tested positive for the virus are even more resistant to being inoculated.
A recent Axios-Ipsos poll found 25 percent of people who think they had COVID-19 but never tested positive aren't interested in being vaccinated. Without knowing if a person actually had COVID-19, there's no way for health officials to accurately calculate the level of herd immunity or how many people could be susceptible to the virus.
People who thought they had COVID-19 but weren't sure if they did were more likely to resist vaccinations than those who confirmed their infection with a test. Of those who tested positive for the virus, 15 percent of poll respondents said they weren't interested in the vaccine.
An estimated 65.5 percent of adult Americans have had at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine and President Joe Biden is likely to fall short of his goal of 70 percent of vaccinated individuals by July 4. At the current pace, about 66.3 percent of adult Americans are expected to have received at least one dose by Sunday, according to a Brown University tracker.

SURFSIDE, Fla. (AP) — Emergency workers gave up Wednesday on any hope of finding survivors in the collapsed Florida condo building, telling sobbing families that there was “no chance of life” in the rubble as crews shifted their efforts to recovering more remains.
The announcement followed increasingly somber reports from emergency officials, who said they sought to prepare families for the worst.
“At this point, we have truly exhausted every option available to us in the search-and-rescue mission,” Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said at a news conference.
“We have all asked God for a miracle, so the decision to transition from rescue to recovery is an extremely difficult one,” she said.
Eight more bodies were recovered Wednesday, bringing the death toll to 54, the mayor said. Thirty-three of the dead have been identified, and 86 people are still unaccounted for.
Miami-Dade Assistant Fire Chief Raide Jadallah told families at a private briefing that crews would stop using rescue dogs and listening devices but would continue to search for their loved ones.
“Our sole responsibility at this point is to bring closure,” he said as relatives cried in the background.
Unlike some collapses that create W-shaped spaces where people can survive, a “pancake collapse” like the one in Surfside tends not to leave livable spaces, Jadallah said.
“Where a pancake collapses, unfortunately it is a floor or a wall on top of a floor on top of a floor on top of a floor,” he said. “Typically, an individual has a specific amount of time in regards to lack of food, water and air. This collapse just doesn’t provide any of that sort.”
Miami-Dade Fire Chief Alan Cominsky said he expected the recovery operation to take several more weeks.
The formal transition was to take place at midnight. Hours before the official change of mission, rescue workers, their helmets held to their hearts and their boots covered in dust, joined local officials, rabbis and chaplains in a moment of silence. The rabbis and chaplains walked down a line of officials, many of them sobbing, and hugged them one by one.
A Miami-Dade fire helicopter flew over the site. As the ceremony neared its end, an accordion player unseen on a nearby tennis court played Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man,” which was followed by a piccolo playing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Firefighters from Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, the federal government and elsewhere were also present.
On a tall nearby fence, families and well-wishers had posted photos of the victims, supportive messages and flowers. Firefighters hung a banner atop the fence that read “Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Mourns With You.”

The global death toll from COVID-19 eclipsed 4 million Wednesday as the crisis increasingly becomes a race between the vaccine and the highly contagious delta variant.

The tally of lives lost over the past year and a half, as compiled from official sources by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the number of people killed in battle in all of the world’s wars since 1982, according to estimates from the Peace Research Institute Oslo.

The toll is three times the number of people killed in traffic accidents around the globe every year. It is about equal to the population of Los Angeles or the nation of Georgia. It is equivalent to more than half of Hong Kong or close to 50% of New York City.

Even then, it is widely believed to be an undercount because of overlooked cases or deliberate concealment.
But in recent weeks, the mutant delta version of the virus first identified in India has set off alarms around the world, spreading rapidly even in vaccination success stories like the U.S., Britain and Israel.

Britain, in fact, recorded a one-day total this week of more than 30,000 new infections for the first time since January, even as the government prepares to lift all remaining lockdown restrictions in England later this month.

Other countries have reimposed preventive measures, and authorities are rushing to step up the campaign to dispense shots.

At the same time, the disaster has exposed the gap between the haves and the have-nots, with vaccination drives barely getting started in Africa and other desperately poor corners of the world because of extreme shortages of shots.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — An already struggling and chaotic Haiti stumbled into an uncertain future Thursday after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, followed by a gunfight in which authorities said police killed four suspects, detained two others and freed three officers being held hostage.

Officials pledged to find all those responsible for the pre-dawn raid on Moïse’s home early Wednesday in which the president was shot to death and his wife, Martine, critically wounded. She was flown to Miami for treatment.

“The pursuit of the mercenaries continues,” Léon Charles, director of Haiti’s National Police, said Wednesday night in announcing the arrest of suspects. “Their fate is fixed: They will fall in the fighting or will be arrested.”

Officials did not provide any details about the suspects, including their nationalities, nor did they address a motive or say what led police to them. They said only that the attack condemned by Haiti's main opposition parties and the international community was carried out by “a highly trained and heavily armed group," whose members spoke Spanish or English.

according to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), which compiled data from cities across the country showing hundreds of injuries and deaths over a 72-hour period, the Fourth of July weekend was the most violent weekend in the United States so far this year.

Roughly 233 people were killed in the U.S. and hundreds more injured — from 5 p.m. Friday through Monday, according to the GVA data. The organization reported numbers exceeding 600 injuries as of Tuesday morning and is still finalizing numbers collected from police, media and government sources in real time.

By Emily Anthes
Published July 7, 2021
Updated July 14, 2021
The highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus is now the dominant variant in the United States, accounting for 51.7 percent of infections, according to new estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As health officials had expected, the Delta variant has rapidly overtaken Alpha, the variant that spread through the United States this spring. Alpha, first detected in Britain, now makes up just 28.7 percent of infections, according to the C.D.C.

Still, overall, the average numbers of new virus cases and deaths across the country, as well as hospitalizations, are significantly down from the devastating peaks during previous national surges.

Delta was first detected in India. Research suggests that most vaccines still provide good protection against it and remain highly effective at preventing hospitalizations and deaths.

In England, for instance, where the variant now causes almost all infections, case numbers have risen sharply in recent weeks, but hospitalization rates have increased more slowly and remain low. Next week, a final decision will be made about whether to lift most remaining restrictions in England, including mask rules, on July 19

KABUL - At least 11 civilians, including children, were killed when their vehicle set off a landmine in northern Afghanistan, local government officials said on Sunday, accusing Taliban insurgents for planting the mines.

No militant group, including the Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack that occurred on Saturday, hours before senior Taliban leaders and UN officials met in Qatar to discuss the Afghan peace process, security for diplomats and people working for humanitarian agencies in Afghanistan.

A Taliban spokesperson said in statement on Twitter that Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, the deputy head of the Taliban's political office "reiterated strong commitment to the Afghan peace process in the meeting" with UN officials.

While the Taliban delegation assured security to all relevant UN agencies staff and other diplomats based in Afghanistan, Afghan officials accused the Taliban of incessant violence against government forces and civilians in a bid to seize complete territorial control over several provinces.

Husamudim Shams, the governor of the northern province of Badgis, said 11 passengers, including three children, traveling to the city of Qala-e-Naw were killed in the blast on Saturday.

Roadside bombs, small magnetic bombs attached under vehicles and other attacks have targeted members of security forces, judges, government officials, civil society activists and journalists in recent months in Afghanistan.

Nearly 1,800 Afghan civilians were killed or wounded in the first three months of 2021 during fighting between government forces and Taliban insurgents despite efforts to find peace, the United Nations said in April this year.