April 15 (Monday) declared a public holiday

Published

2 years ago

2024/04/10

Priyan

The government has declared 15 April (Monday) as a public holiday,

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Rescuers race to find dozens missing in deadly Philippines landfill collapse

Published

9 hours ago

2026/01/11

Priyan

More than 30 people are thought to be missing following the landslide in Cebu [BBC]

Rescue workers are racing to find dozens of people still missing following a landslide at a landfill site in the central Philippines that occurred earlier this week, an official has said.

Mayor Nestor Archival said on Saturday that signs of life had been detected at the site in Cebu City, two days after the incident.

Four people have been confirmed dead so far, Archival said, while 12 others have been taken to hospital.

Conditions for emergency services working at the site were challenging, the mayor added, with unstable debris posing a hazard and crew waiting for better equipment to arrive.

The privately-owned Binaliw landfill collapsed on Thursday while 110 workers were on site, officials said.

Archival said in a Facebook post on Saturday morning: “Authorities confirmed the presence of detected signs of life in specific areas, requiring continued careful excavation and the deployment of a more advanced 50-ton crane.”

Relatives of those missing have been waiting anxiously for any news of their whereabouts. More than 30 people, all workers at the landfill, are thought to be missing.

“We are just hoping that we can get someone alive… We are racing against time, that’s why our deployment is 24/7,” Cebu City councillor Dave Tumulak, chairman of the city’s disaster council, told news agency AFP.

AFP via Getty Images A close up shot of a woman wiping a tear away from her eye at the scene of the landfill site, while a small boy looks across at her. — *Relatives of the missing are waiting anxiously for any news of their loved ones [BBC]*

Jerahmey Espinoza, whose husband is missing, told news agency Reuters at the site on Saturday: “They haven’t seen him or located him ever since the disaster happened. We’re still hopeful that he’s alive.”

The cause of the collapse remains unclear, but Cebu City councillor Joel Garganera previously said it was likely the result of poor waste management practices.

Operators had been cutting into the mountain, digging the soil out and then piling garbage to form another mountain of waste, Garganera told local newspaper The Freeman on Friday.

The Binaliw landfill covers an area of about 15 hectares (37 acres).

Landfills are common in major Philippine cities like Cebu, which is the trading centre and transportation gateway of the Visayas, the archipelago nation’s central islands.

A map showing the Philippines and the location of Cebu City

[BBC]

Foreign News

Trump seeks $100bn for Venezuela oil, but Exxon boss says country ‘uninvestable’

Published

9 hours ago

2026/01/11

Priyan

[File pic]

US President Donald Trump has asked for at least $100bn (£75bn) in oil industry spending for Venezuela, but received a lukewarm response at the White House as one executive warned the South American country was currently “uninvestable”.

Bosses of the biggest US oil firms who attended the meeting acknowledged that Venezuela, sitting on vast energy reserves, represented an enticing opportunity.

But they said significant changes would be needed to make the region an attractive investment. No major financial commitments were immediately forthcoming.

Trump has said he will unleash the South American nation’s oil after US forces seized its leader Nicolas Maduro in a 3 January raid on its capital.

“One of the things the United States gets out of this will be even lower energy prices,” Trump said in Friday’s meeting at the White House.

But the oil bosses present expressed caution.

Exxon’s chief executive Darren Woods said: “We have had our assets seized there twice and so you can imagine to re-enter a third time would require some pretty significant changes from what we’ve historically seen and what is currently the state.”

“Today it’s uninvestable.”

Venezuela has had a complicated relationship with international oil firms since oil was discovered in its territory more than 100 years ago.

Chevron is the last remaining major American oil firm still operating in the country.

A handful of companies from other countries, including Spain’s Repsol and Italy’s Eni, both of which were represented at the White House meeting, are also active.

Trump said his administration would decide which firms would be allowed to operate.

“You’re dealing with us directly. You’re not dealing with Venezuela at all. We don’t want you to deal with Venezuela,” he said.

The White House has said it is working to “selectively” roll back US sanctions that have restricted sales of Venezuelan oil.

Officials say they have been coordinating with interim authorities in the country, which is currently led by Maduro’s former second-in-command, Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez.

But they have also made clear they intend to exert control over the sales, as a way to maintain leverage over Rodríguez’s government.

The US this week has seized several oil tankers carrying sanctioned crude. American officials have said they are working to set up a sales process, which would deposit money raised into US-controlled accounts.

“We are open for business,” Trump said.

On Friday, Trump signed an executive order that seeks to prohibit US courts from seizing revenue that the US collects from Venezuelan oil and holds in American Treasury accounts.

Any court attempt to access those funds would interfere with US foreign relations and international goodwill, the executive order states.

“President Trump is preventing the seizure of Venezuelan oil revenue that could undermine critical US efforts to ensure economic and political stability in Venezuela,” the White House wrote in a fact sheet about the order.

Venezuela’s oil production has been hit in recent decades by disinvestment and mismanagement – as well as US sanctions. At roughly one million barrels per day, the country accounts for less than 1% of global supply.

Chevron, which accounts for about a fifth of the country’s output, said it expected to bolster its production, building on its current presence, while Exxon said it was working to send in a technical team to assess the situation in the coming weeks.

Repsol, which currently boasts output of about 45,000 barrels per day, said it saw a path to triple its production in Venezuela over the next few years under the right conditions.

Executives at other firms also said Trump’s promises of change would encourage investment and they were hoping to seize the moment.

“We are ready to go to Venezuela,” said Bill Armstrong, who leads an independent oil and gas driller. “In real estate terms, it is prime real estate.”

But analysts say meaningfully increasing production would take significant effort.

“They are being as polite as humanly possible, and being as supportive as they can, without committing actual dollars,” said David Goldwyn, president of the energy consultancy Goldwyn Global Strategies and former US state department special envoy for international energy affairs.

Exxon and Shell are “not going to invest single-digit billions of dollars, much less tens of billions of dollars”, without physical security, legal certainty and a competitive fiscal framework, Goldwyn said.

“It’s not really welcome from an industry point of view,” he said. “The conditions are just not right.”

While smaller companies might be more eager to jump in and help boost Venezuela’s oil production over the next year, he said those investments would likely hover in the $50m range – far from the “fantastical” $100bn figure that Trump has floated.

Rystad Energy estimates it would take $8bn to $9bn in new investments per year for production to triple by 2040.

Trump’s suggested $100bn of investment into Venezuela could have a major impact on production – if it were to materialise, said the firm’s chief economist, Claudio Galimberti.

He said companies would only be likely to invest on that scale with subsidies – and political stability. Americans should not expect the situation in Venezuela to lower oil prices anytime soon, he added.

“It’s going to be difficult to see big commitments before we have a fully stabilised political situation and that is anybody’s guess when that happens,” he said.

[BBC]

Latest News

US military strikes Islamic State group targets in Syria, officials say

Published

9 hours ago

2026/01/11

Priyan

The US and its partner forces have carried out large-scale strikes against Islamic State (IS) group targets in Syria, the US Central Command (Centcom) has announced.

US President Donald Trump directed the strikes on Saturday, which are part of Operation Hawkeye Strike, in retaliation to the IS group’s deadly attack on US forces in Syria on 13 December, Centcom wrote on X.

The strikes were conducted in an effort to combat terrorism and protect US and partner forces in the region, according to Centcom.

“Our message remains strong: if you harm our warfighters, we will find you and kill you anywhere in the world, no matter how hard you try to evade justice,” Centcom said.

The US and its partner forces fired more than 90 precision munitions at more than 35 targets in an operation that involved more than 20 aircraft, an official told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.

The official added that aircraft including F-15Es, A-10s, AC-130Js, MQ-9s and Jordanian F-16s had taken part in the strikes.

The location of the strikes and the extent of any casualties is not yet clear.

“We will never forget, and never relent,” Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote on X on Saturday in reference to the military action.

The Trump administration first announced Operation Hawkeye Strike in December after an IS gunman killed two US soldiers and a US civilian interpreter in an ambush in Palmyra, located in the centre of Syria.

“This is not the beginning of a war – it is a declaration of vengeance,” Hegseth said when announcing the operation in December.

“The United States of America, under President Trump’s leadership, will never hesitate and never relent to defend our people.”

Prior to the latest strikes on Saturday, US forces killed or captured nearly 25 IS group members in 11 missions between 20 December and 29 December as part of Operation Hawkeye Strike, Centcom said.

In the operation’s first mission on 19 December, US and Jordanian forces carried out a “massive strike” against the IS group, deploying fighter jets, attack helicopters and artillery to strike “more than 70 targets at multiple locations across central Syria”, according to Centcom.

That operation, it said, “employed more than 100 precision munitions” targeting known IS infrastructure and weapons sites.

[BBC]