Sorted by date Results 1 - 13 of 13
TEKNAF, Bangladesh (AP) — The wind had whipped the waves to nearly three times the woman's height when her panicked voice crackled over the phone. "Our boat has sunk!" Setera Begum shouted, as a storm threatened to spill her and around 180 others into the inky black sea south of Bangladesh. "Only half of it is still afloat!" On the other end of the line, hundreds of miles away in Malaysia, was her husband, Muhammed Rashid, who picked up the phone at 10:59 p.m. his time on Dec. 7, 2022. He had not seen his family in 11 years. And he had only l...
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — The plane laden with vaccines had just rolled to a stop at Santiago's airport in late January, and Chile's president, Sebastián Piñera, was beaming. "Today," he said, "is a day of joy, emotion and hope." The source of that hope: China – a country that Chile and dozens of other nations are depending on to help rescue them from the COVID-19 pandemic. China's vaccine diplomacy campaign has been a surprising success: It has pledged roughly half a billion doses of its vaccines to more than 45 countries, according to a country-b...
The gleaming white booth towered over the medical conference in Italy in October, advertising a new brand of antidote for opioid overdoses. "Be prepared. Get naloxone. Save a life," the slogan on its walls said. Some conference attendees were stunned when they saw the company logo: Mundipharma, the international affiliate of Purdue Pharma — the maker of the blockbuster opioid, OxyContin, widely blamed for unleashing the American overdose epidemic. Here they were cashing in on a cure. "You're in the business of selling medicine that causes a...
SYDNEY (AP) — The gunman behind at least one of the mosque shootings in New Zealand that left 49 people dead on Friday tried to make a few things clear in the manifesto he left behind: He is a 28-year-old Australian white nationalist who hates immigrants. He was angry about attacks in Europe that were perpetrated by Muslims. He wanted revenge, and he wanted to create fear. He also, quite clearly, wanted attention. Though he claimed not to covet fame, the gunman — who authorities identified as Brenton Harrison Tarrant — left behind a 74-pa...
FATUKOKO, Indonesia (AP) — The stranger showed up at the girl's door one night with a tantalizing job offer: Give up your world, and I will give you a future. It was a chance for 16-year-old Marselina Neonbota to leave her isolated village in one of the poorest parts of Indonesia for neighboring Malaysia, where some migrant workers can earn more in a few years than in a lifetime at home. A way out for a girl so hungry for a life beyond subsistence farming that she walked 22 kilometers (14 miles) every day to the schoolhouse and back. She grabbe...
SYDNEY (AP) — A judge on Friday sentenced a man to at least 14 years in prison for the slaying of an Aboriginal woman who bled to death from a violent sexual assault on a remote beach, closing a six-year battle for justice by the woman's family in a case that exposed Australia's deep racial divide. New South Wales Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Fullerton said Adrian Attwater had shown "callous indifference" toward Lynette Daley, and sentenced him to a maximum of 19 years in prison, with a non-parole period of 14 years and three months, for m...
SYDNEY (AP) — U.S. military officials called off a search and rescue operation on Sunday for three U.S. Marines who were missing after their Osprey aircraft crashed into the sea off the east coast of Australia while trying to land. The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps suspended the rescue operation and launched a recovery effort instead, the Marine base Camp Butler in Japan said in a statement, essentially confirming the military does not expect to find the missing Marines alive. The Marines' next of kin had been notified, and Australia's defense for...
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — The most senior Vatican official ever charged in the Catholic Church sex abuse crisis made his first court appearance in Australia on Wednesday in a scandal that has stunned the Holy See and threatened to tarnish the pope's image as a crusader against abusive clergy. Cardinal George Pell, Australia's highest-ranking Catholic and Pope Francis' top financial adviser, has maintained his innocence since he was charged last month with sexually abusing multiple people years ago in his Australian home state of Victoria. T...
SYDNEY (AP) — Half a world from where an Australian woman was shot dead by a Minneapolis police officer, Tuesday's front-page headline in her hometown Sydney newspaper summarized Australia's reaction in blunt terms: "AMERICAN NIGHTMARE." In Justine Damond's native country, news of the meditation teacher's baffling death has dominated the airwaves, newspapers and websites for days, feeding into Australians' long-held fears about America's notorious culture of gun violence. "The country is infested with possibly more guns than people," said P...
SYDNEY (AP) — Tesla announced on Friday it will build the world's largest lithium-ion battery in southern Australia, part of a bid to solve an energy crisis that has led to ongoing blackouts across the region. Tesla will partner with French renewable energy company Neoen to build the 100-megawatt battery farm in South Australia state, with Tesla CEO Elon Musk promising to deliver the system within 100 days of signing the contract or it will be free. The billionaire entrepreneur originally made the 100-day pledge via Twitter in March, and he a...
SYDNEY (AP) — More than 700 Australian women in a class-action case against pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson that started Tuesday argued that the company's vaginal mesh implants caused them devastating pain, ravaged their bodies and, in some cases, ruined their lives. Patients across the United States, United Kingdom and Canada have filed tens of thousands of lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson and other pelvic mesh manufacturers over the devices, which are used to treat urinary incontinence and repair pelvic organ prolapse, a condition o...
SYDNEY (AP) — Reducing pollution and curbing overfishing won't prevent the severe bleaching that is killing coral at catastrophic rates, according to a study of Australia's Great Barrier Reef. In the end, researchers say, the only way to save the world's coral from heat-induced bleaching is with a war on global warming. Scientists are quick to note that local protection of reefs can help damaged coral recover from the stress of rising ocean temperatures. But the new research shows that such efforts are ultimately futile when it comes to s...
SYDNEY (AP) — A man was charged with two counts of murder on Friday in a notorious, 20-year-old case that terrified residents of Western Australia and became one of the country's longest-running investigations. The development in the so-called "Claremont serial killings" case comes two decades after three women vanished from the wealthy Perth suburb of Claremont in Western Australia. The remains of two of the women — Jane Rimmer and Ciara Glennon — were later found in remote areas; the third, Sarah Spiers, remains missing. Over the years, hundr...
