Ships and planes scoured the northern Philippine seas yesterday for dozens of fishermen missing after waves the size of two-story buildings smashed their boats to pieces.
Forty-eight fishermen have been rescued after swimming ashore while clinging desperately to the wreckage of their boats, while at least 67 were still missing two days after gale-force winds and giant waves caught them at sea, the coast guard said.
One man drowned.
Officials and survivors said the waves were huge enough to crush some of the 80 outrigger fishing boats estimated to be at sea at the time.
"Wave after wave struck us, as tall as two-story buildings," 47-year-old Alfredo Macayan said. "I prayed, `Lord, save me and my son.'"
Macayan said he and his teenaged son hung on tightly to the outrigger of their smashed boat and swam toward shore.
But they lost four companions on two other boats.
"Their boats overturned and my companions sank into the sea. I never saw them again," Macayan said.
Tragedies at sea are common in the Philippines, an archipelago of more than 7,000 islands that is buffeted by 20 typhoons each year, on average.
The disaster took place on Friday night in the seas off La Union Province, 250km north of Manila, local officials said, clarifying an earlier coast guard report that said it happened early on Saturday.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate