Category: East Asia

The acting head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has attempted to soothe public concern over the hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship — which has seen 17 Americans evacuated from the vessel and seven others return to five states — saying: “This is not Covid.”
Three people died and five others have fallen ill in the outbreak which originated on the MV Hondius ocean vessel last month. Travelers were evacuated from the ship in Spain’s Canary Islands Sunday.
None of the 140 passengers who remained on board have virus symptoms, global health officials said. Hantavirus is spread when people inhale contaminated residue of rodent droppings.
The 17Americans from the boat will be taken to the National Quarantine Unit, a secured facility on the University of Nebraska Medical Center campus in Omaha. They will be “interviewed and assessed for risk,” Acting CDC Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya told CNN Sunday.
“This is not Covid and we don’t want to treat it like Covid,” he said…

Twenty two British passengers on board a cruise ship hit by a hantavirus outbreak have been evacuated from the vessel off Tenerife, with most of them now flying back to the UK.
A chartered Titan Airways flight departed from the Canary Island’s south airport on Sunday evening, with the Airbus A320’s passengers to be taken from Manchester Airport to isolate at the UK’s initial Covid quarantine site.
It comes after the MV Hondius arrived in Tenerife in the early hours of Sunday, triggering an evacuation operation with passengers ferried to a port by small boat, not before medics in full PPE checked all remained asymptomatic.
Some 22 British nationals were taken to shore – with 20 getting on the repatriation flight and two dual-nationals heading elsewhere.
While they were being bussed from the port at Granadilla de Abona to Tenerife South Airport, some British passengers, clad in blue PPE, waved and gave thumbs up as they passed watching media.
For updates on the evacuation – visit our ..

U.S. companies have named artificial intelligence as the leading driver of job cuts for the second consecutive month, a new analysis has found.
In April, employers announced 83,387 layoffs — a 38 percent increase from March — according to a report released Thursday by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a global outplacement firm.
AI accounted for 26 percent of those cuts, making it the most frequently cited reason for workforce reductions for a second month. So far this year, 49,135 layoffs have been attributed to AI, ranking it as the third-largest cause of planned job losses overall.
Companies are deepening their reliance on AI with major firms, including Google, Amazon, and Meta, pouring billions into the emerging technology particularly in the construction of large-scale data centers across the nation.
In April, Meta announced it would slash about 10 percent of its workforce, citing increased expenditures on AI. Earlier in the year, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said: “I think that 2..

More than 100 passengers and over a dozen crew members have fallen ill with norovirus aboard the Caribbean Princess during a 13-day voyage through the Eastern Caribbean.
The Princess Cruises ship departed Port Everglades, Florida, last week and is scheduled to arrive at Port Canaveral in the state Monday. At the time of the outbreak, the vessel was carrying 3,116 passengers.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 102 passengers became sick with the highly contagious stomach virus. In addition, 13 of the 1,131 crew members onboard also reported illness.
Those affected experienced typical norovirus symptoms including vomiting and diarrhea, according to health officials. The virus is known for spreading rapidly in close-contact environments such as cruise ships, where shared dining spaces and frequently touched surfaces can make containment difficult once an outbreak begins.
Most people who contract norovirus begin showing symptoms within 12-48 hours of exposure, whi..

President Donald Trump on Friday used a Rose Garden luncheon held in honor of Mother’s Day to ramble about his paving over of the world famous spot, to bash his predecessor repeatedly and to boast about extrajudicial killings of suspected drug smugglers as he addressed a group of Gold Star moms.
Trump opened his speech to the audience of military parents, White House staffers and other guests by discussing the merits of the stone patio he used to pave over the grass in the Rose Garden, which was designed during the Kennedy Administration, claiming that it was impossible for anyone to walk on the grass because the White House “was built on a wetland and the grass was always soaking wet,” and suggesting that his Agriculture secretary could not properly deliver remarks because she was too concerned with damage to her high heels.
“When Brooke Rollins would get up and start making a magnificent speech, and she'd be standing in mud, and she'd say, ‘I ruined my shoes’ — her speeches..

Donald Trump chastised a reporter for asking a “stupid question” on his White House renovations.

Gun rights advocate Kyle Rittenhouse, who fatally shot two Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020, was hospitalized after being bitten by a venomous spider.
The 23-year-old shared photos from his hospital bed Wednesday and told his followers on social media that he was bitten by a brown recluse.
“The communists couldn't take me out and i'll be damned if I let a brown recluse take me out,” Rittenhouse said, along with images of himself attached to an IV and another showing the swollen bite mark.
Rittenhouse boasted that the spider “did not survive” in a follow-up post.
“The spider, like the commies, also thought it was a good idea to come after me while I was armed,” he said.
open image in galleryGun rights advocate Kyle Rittenhouse, pictured at his 2021 trial over fatally shooting two Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020, was hospitalized after being bitten by a venomous spider (Getty Images)It was not immediately clear when or where the incident took place. His well-wishers ..

Tornadoes cut across the state of Mississippi, leaving residents to sift through the debris and save what they can. This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors.

First Lady Melania Trump appeared to leave her husband a bit uncomfortable when she reminded a group of military mothers at the White House of the 13 U.S. service members who’ve died in the war he started with Iran more than two months ago.
Speaking in the East Room Tuesday at an event billed as a Military Mother's Day Event, Melania Trump recalled how she’d been overwhelmed with feelings when she joined her husband at a dignified transfer ceremony marking the return of the dead service members to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware in March.
As her husband, President Donald Trump, stood next to her and watched, she told the military mothers and other attendees that she “often” finds herself thinking “about the brave people who make the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom.”
“When I went to honor the fallen, fallen service members from the 103rd Sustainment Command at Dover Air Force Base last March, I realized that words cannot comfort the all consuming grief that family members — a..

After a losing streak in his attempts to toss out two multi-million dollar defamation verdicts, Donald Trump is hoping the Supreme Court — and the U.S. government — will bail him out.
Trump and the Department of Justice are asking the Supreme Court to grant the president “immunity” from having to pay nearly $90 million to E. Jean Carroll after two federal juries found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation.
It’s the second time the president has turned to the nation’s high court to toss out a verdict against him in his long-running legal battles with Carroll. The former Elle magazine writer was awarded $5 million in 2022 after a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse, and a separate grand jury awarded her $83.3 million for the president’s defamatory statements about her and the case.
Last week, a federal appeals court rejected Trump’s attempts to rehear his arguments against Carroll, who has accused the president of repeatedly defaming her by claiming he had never met her, labell..