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Fire on cargo ship off Alaska carrying EVs left burning

Fire on cargo ship off Alaska carrying EVs left burning
Smoke rises from cargo vessel Morning Midas approximately 300 miles south of Adak, Alaska, June 3, 2025, as the crew abandoned ship after they could not control a fire in the ship. (US Coast Guard/Courtesy Air Station Kodiak via AP)
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Updated 3 sec ago

Fire on cargo ship off Alaska carrying EVs left burning

Fire on cargo ship off Alaska carrying EVs left burning
  • Alaskan coast guard received a distress call on Tuesday reporting a fire onboard the Morning Midas
  • The 22 crew members evacuated on a lifeboat before being rescued by another private vessel

WASHINGTON: A fire on a cargo ship carrying electric vehicles off the coast of Alaska was left burning with salvage teams expected to intervene on Monday, according to media reports.

The Alaskan coast guard received a distress call on Tuesday reporting a fire onboard the Morning Midas, a British-managed cargo ship with 22 crew members and carrying thousands of vehicles.

The crew evacuated on a lifeboat before being rescued by another private vessel.

An overflight of the cargo ship, currently located around 547 kilometers southwest of Adak, confirmed the ship was still burning on Wednesday, the coast guard said in a statement.

“Currently, there are no visual indications that the ship is taking on water or listing, and the extent of the damage is unknown,” it said.

Dustin Eno, a spokesman for the ship’s management company Zodiac Maritime, said there were no firefighting vessels nearby to help extinguish the blaze, the New York Times reported.

A salvage team was expected to arrive on Monday, the outlet and the Los Angeles Times said.

Video footage released by the coast guard shows smoke rising from the 183-meter vessel, which is reported to be carrying more than 3,000 vehicles, around 750 of which are electric or hybrid.

Electric vehicles contain lithium-ion batteries, which are generally safe but can overheat and ignite if damaged.

The ship is also estimated to be carrying hundreds of metric tons of gas fuel, according to the coast guard.


Russia accuses Ukraine of ‘postponing’ POW swap

Updated 11 sec ago

Russia accuses Ukraine of ‘postponing’ POW swap

Russia accuses Ukraine of ‘postponing’ POW swap
MOSCOW: Russia on Saturday accused Ukraine of postponing a large-scale prisoner swap and the repatriation of the bodies of dead soldiers they had agreed on during peace talks in Istanbul.
“The Ukrainian side has unexpectedly postponed for an indefinite period, both the acceptance of the bodies and the exchange of prisoners of war,” Russia’s top negotiator Vladimir Medinsky said on social media.
Delegations from Moscow and Kyiv agreed on Monday to swap all wounded soldiers and those under the age of 25 who were still held as POWs.
It was the only concrete outcome from the talks, at which Russia has repeatedly rejected Ukrainian calls for an immediate ceasefire.
Medinsky said Russia had brought the bodies of 1,212 killed Ukrainian soldiers to the “exchange area” — the first of 6,000 to be handed over.
Moscow had also handed over a list to Kyiv with the names of 640 POWs to be swapped in the first stage.
More than 1,000 prisoners from each side are set to be released in the largest exchange of the three-year conflict.
“We urge Kyiv to strictly adhere to the timetable and all agreements reached, and begin the exchange immediately,” Medinsky said.
Kyiv did not immediately respond to the accusation.
After the Istanbul talks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the exchange would take place this weekend, while Russia said it was ready for Saturday, Sunday or Monday.

A top Taliban official offers amnesty to Afghans who fled the country and urges them to return

A top Taliban official offers amnesty to Afghans who fled the country and urges them to return
Updated 40 min 42 sec ago

A top Taliban official offers amnesty to Afghans who fled the country and urges them to return

A top Taliban official offers amnesty to Afghans who fled the country and urges them to return
  • Prime Minister Mohammad Hassan Akhund made the amnesty offer in his message for the Islamic holiday of Eid Al Adha

A top Taliban official said on Saturday that all Afghans who fled the country after the collapse of the former Western-backed government are free to return home, promising they would not be harmed if they come back.
Taliban Prime Minister Mohammad Hassan Akhund made the amnesty offer in his message for the Islamic holiday of Eid Al-Adha, also known as the “Feast of Sacrifice.”
The offer comes days after US President Donald Trump announced a sweeping travel ban on 12 countries, including Afghanistan. The measure largely bars Afghans hoping to resettle in the United States permanently as well as those hoping to go to the US temporarily, such as for university study.
Trump also suspended a core refugee program in January, all but ending support for Afghans who had allied with the US and leaving tens of thousands of them stranded.
Afghans in neighboring Pakistan who are awaiting resettlement are also dealing with a deportation drive by the Islamabad government to get them out of the country. Almost a million have left Pakistan since October 2023 to avoid arrest and expulsion.
Akhund’s holiday message was posted on the social platform X.
“Afghans who have left the country should return to their homeland,” he said. “Nobody will harm them.”
“Come back to your ancestral land and live in an atmosphere of peace,” he added, and instructed officials to properly manage services for returning refugees and to ensure they were given shelter and support.
He also used the occasion to criticize the media for making what he said were “false judgments” about Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers and their policies.
“We must not allow the torch of the Islamic system to be extinguished,” he said. “The media should avoid false judgments and should not minimize the accomplishments of the system. While challenges exist, we must remain vigilant.”
The Taliban swept into the capital Kabul and seized most of Afghanistan in a blitz in mid-August 2021 as the US and NATO forces were in the last weeks of their pullout from the country after 20 years of war.
The offensive prompted a mass exodus, with tens of thousands of Afghans thronging the airport in chaotic scenes, hoping for a flight out on the US military airlift. People also fled across the border, to neighboring Iran and Pakistan.
Among those escaping the new Taliban rulers were also former government officials, journalists, activists, those who had helped the US during its campaign against the Taliban.


Kyrgyzstan dismantles Central Asia’s tallest Lenin statue

Kyrgyzstan dismantles Central Asia’s tallest Lenin statue
Updated 07 June 2025

Kyrgyzstan dismantles Central Asia’s tallest Lenin statue

Kyrgyzstan dismantles Central Asia’s tallest Lenin statue
  • Officials said the statue was quietly taken down overnight and is set to be relocated

BISHKEK: Russian ally Kyrgyzstan on Saturday quietly dismantled Central Asia’s tallest monument to Vladimir Lenin, the revolutionary founder of the Soviet Union.
Ex-Soviet states across the region are seeking to strengthen their national identities, renaming cities that have Russian-sounding names and replacing statues to Soviet figures with local and national heroes.
Russia, which has military bases in Kyrgyzstan, is striving to maintain its influence there in the face of competition from China and the West and amid its invasion of Ukraine.
Officials in the city of Osh — where the 23-meter (75 foot) high monument stood on the central square — warned against “politicizing” the decision to “relocate” it.
Osh is the second largest city in the landlocked mountainous country.
The figure was quietly taken down overnight and is set to be “relocated,” Osh officials said.
The decision “should not be politicized,” city hall said, pointing to several other instances in Russia “where Lenin monuments have also been dismantled or relocated.”
“This is a common practice aimed at improving the architectural and aesthetic appearance of cities,” it said in a statement.
Despite some attempts to de-Sovietise the region, memorials and statues to Soviet figures are common across the region, with monuments to Lenin prevalent in the vast majority of cities in Kyrgyzstan.
Kyrgyzstan was annexed and incorporated into the Russian Empire in the 19th century and then became part of the Soviet Union following the 1917 Bolshevik revolution.
It gained independence with the collapse of the USSR in 1991.


An electric scooter is blamed for a violent fire that killed 4 in a French city

An electric scooter is blamed for a violent fire that killed 4 in a French city
Updated 07 June 2025

An electric scooter is blamed for a violent fire that killed 4 in a French city

An electric scooter is blamed for a violent fire that killed 4 in a French city

PARIS: Four people were killed in an “extremely violent” blaze seemingly caused by a battery-powered electric scooter that tore through a 10-story housing block in Reims, the capital of France's Champagne region, authorities said Saturday.
A 13-year-old jumped to his death from the 4th-floor apartment where the fire started in the early hours of Friday and a burned body found inside is believed to be that of his older brother, aged 15, said Reims prosecutor François Schneider.
An 87-year-old woman and her 59-year-old son who lived on the 8th floor suffocated to death in the smoke, he said.
Two people were seriously injured, including the dead boys' stepfather who was badly burned, and 26 others were treated in hospital for lighter injuries, he said.
Schneider said there is “no doubt” that the blaze was accidental, spreading quickly from the scooter that caught fire for reasons unknown.
Battery fires “are extremely difficult to extinguish” and fire officers battled the blaze for more than three hours, the prosecutor said.


Bangladesh to hold national elections in April 2026, interim leader Yunus says

Bangladesh to hold national elections in April 2026, interim leader Yunus says
Updated 07 June 2025

Bangladesh to hold national elections in April 2026, interim leader Yunus says

Bangladesh to hold national elections in April 2026, interim leader Yunus says
  • Yunus took over three days after former PM Sheikh Hasina was ousted in uprising last year
  • Bangladesh Nationalist Party, Hasina’s rival, eyes forming new government after polls

DHAKA: Bangladesh’s interim leader Muhammad Yunus on Friday said that the country will hold national elections in the first half of April 2026.

In a televised address to the nation on Friday, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate said that the Election Commission would roll out a detailed roadmap for the election in due course.

Yunus took over three days after former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was ousted in a student-led mass uprising in August 2024, ending her 15-year rule. Hasina has been in exile in India since.

The interim government banned Hasina’s Awami League party, which is one of the country’s two largest political parties. Hasina faces trial for hundreds of deaths related to the uprising in July and August last year.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, or BNP, headed by Hasina’s archrival and former prime minister Khaleda Zia, had been demanding the elections be held in December. The BNP is the main political party and is hoping to form the next government in the absence of Hasina’s party.

Salahuddin Ahmed, a spokesman for BNP, criticized Yunus for failing to “to meet the expectation of the nation” about the polls schedule.

He told Channel 24 television that April is not ideal for an election because the annual month of fasting that starts in mid-February makes campaigning challenging. He said it would also be difficult for a new government to formulate the year’s budget, usually announced in June.

The Jamaat-e-Islami party, the country’s largest Islamist party, may also be able to take part in the elections after the country’s Supreme Court on June 1 cleared the path for the party to regain its registration as a political party.

Hasina’s party had fiercely criticized it for its opposition to Bangladesh gaining independence from Pakistan in 1971. Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was the country’s independence leader.

Yunus had earlier said that the election would be held between December and next June. The relationship between Yunus and the BNP has been frosty in recent months over a disagreement about the election schedule. Zia’s party accused Yunus of tactics to delay a vote.

In February, a new party was formed by student leaders who led the anti-Hasina uprising. Yunus’ critics say the party had backing from him, and Hasina’s party calls the new National Citizen Party a “king’s party.”