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    U.S. Coast Guard Suspends Search for 5 People Missing in Alaska Waters

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    The Coast Guard received a mayday call from a fishing boat on Sunday just after midnight. Search crews looked for its passengers for almost 24 hours.The U.S. Coast Guard said on Monday that it had suspended a search for five people who made a mayday call from a fishing boat off Alaska just after midnight on Sunday.The Coast Guard spent almost a full day covering over 100 square nautical miles searching for the 50-foot fishing vessel, which was called Wind Walker, and its crew, according to a news release from the military branch. Search crews reported finding seven cold-water immersion suits and two strobe lights but no remnants of the boat or anyone onboard. The boat reportedly capsized near Couverden Point, Alaska, in the Icy Strait, according to the Coast Guard.The crew said they were evacuating onto an emergency life raft during their mayday call, according to Travis Magee, assistant public affairs officer for the Coast Guard. Emergency marine responders who answered the call attempted to get more information from the crew but got no response, Mr. Magee said.A nearby ferry vessel, AMHS Hubbard, heard the emergency call over a broadcast and arrived first to help. A helicopter and a boat were also deployed from the Coast Guard.“We stand in sorrow and solidarity with the friends and family of the people we were not able to find over the past 24 hours,” Chief Warrant Officer James Koon, a search and rescue mission coordinator at Coast Guard Sector Southeast Alaska, said in a statement.There were six-foot seas, heavy snow and winds of up to 60 miles per hour when the boat was lost, officials said. Alaska was under winter weather warnings over the weekend, and some have been extended through Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service.The search was called off for now “pending the development of new information,” the Coast Guard said in a statement. The names of those missing have not been released. More

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      Nigeria Boat Capsizes, Killing at Least 27

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      Rescuers were searching for survivors after the vessel, taking passengers to a food market, capsized along the River Niger, officials said.ABUJA, Nigeria — At least 27 people were killed and more than 100, mostly women, were missing on Friday after a boat transporting them to a food market capsized along the River Niger in northern Nigeria, the authorities said.About 200 passengers were on the boat traveling from the state of Kogi to the neighboring state of Niger when it capsized, said Ibrahim Audu, a spokesman for the Niger State Emergency Management Agency.Rescuers had managed to pull 27 bodies from the river by Friday evening, while divers were still searching for survivors, according to Sandra Musa, a spokeswoman for the Kogi state emergency services.The authorities have not confirmed the cause of the sinking, but local news outlets suggested the boat might have been overloaded. Overcrowding on boats is common in remote parts of Nigeria, where the lack of good roads leaves many with no alternative routes.Most previous deadly boat accidents in Nigeria have been attributed to overcrowding and the lack of maintenance of the boats, often built locally to accommodate as many passengers as possible in defiance of safety measures.Also, the authorities have not been able to enforce the use of life jackets on such trips, often because of the lack of availability or cost.Justin Uwazuruonye, who is in charge of Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency operations in the state, said rescuers had trouble finding the location of the capsized vessel for hours after tragedy struck.Such deadly episodes are increasingly becoming a source of concern in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, as the authorities struggle to enforce safety measures and regulations for water transportation. More

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      1 Dead and 4 Are Missing After Boat Capsizes Off California

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      A search began after reports of six overdue boaters Saturday. Officials said a child was rescued and in stable condition and the body of a teenager was recovered.The U.S. Coast Guard recovered the body of a teenager and rescued an 11-year-old boy as it pressed its search for four boaters missing after their vessel capsized on Saturday off California, the authorities said.The U.S. Coast Guard received a report about six overdue boaters at about 11:40 p.m. on Saturday from the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, said Levi Read, chief petty officer with U.S. Coast Guard District 11.Three of those on board were adults, and the others were ages 11, 14 and 17, Petty Officer Read said.The group set out on a 21-foot blue-and-white motorized vessel from the Westside Marina in Bodega Bay around 3 p.m. for recreational crabbing, Petty Officer Read said.The boaters were supposed to be home by 7 p.m. the same day. When they didn’t return, family members alerted the authorities.Crews from several agencies, including the Coast Guard, the Sheriff’s Office and the California Air National Guard, searched a large area on Sunday that stretched from Bodega Bay south toward Point Reyes in Marin County and 20 miles offshore, Petty Officer Read said.It was unclear on Sunday where the group went crabbing, where and when the boat capsized or what led up to it overturning.The last cellphone ping the authorities received was around 4:30 p.m. on Saturday and about seven nautical miles west of Bodega Bay, Petty Officer Read said.An 11-year-old boy was found alive off South Salmon Creek Beach at around 8 a.m. on Sunday. He was taken to a hospital and was stable.The body of another child, a male, was recovered from the waters within the search area at about 10:15 a.m. on Sunday, Petty Officer Read said. It was unclear whether it was the 14-year-old or 17-year-old who was recovered.He said the group was from the Corning, Calif., area, and that five are family members, though their relationship was unknown. One is a family friend, Petty Officer Read said.“The search is ongoing,” he said. “Our thoughts are with the family and friends of the family that is missing.”The water on Sunday was about 52 degrees, the average year-round temperature for the Pacific Ocean, Petty Officer Read said.Winds were about 20 miles per hour, creating choppy seas and white caps, but the sky was otherwise clear and visibility was good, he said.Bodega Bay, about 70 miles north of San Francisco, is a fishing hamlet of about 1,000 year-round residents where Dungeness crab is trapped several months of the year. More

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      At Least 7 Dead After Ferry Dock Collapses on Sapelo Island, Georgia

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      The circumstances of the accident in Sapelo Island, south of Savannah, were not immediately clear.At least seven people were killed on Saturday when the gangway of a ferry dock collapsed on an island in Georgia, forcing at least 20 people into the water, the authorities said.The deaths on Sapelo Island were confirmed by Mark Deverger, the volunteer fire chief for McIntosh County. He said he did not know the specifics of what had happened. The island is about 70 miles by road south of Savannah, Ga.The Georgia Department of Natural Resources, which manages the island and operates the ferry service, said in a statement that at least 20 people went into the water when the gangway collapsed.A spokesman for the U.S. Coast Guardin Savannah said that he could not confirm how many people had been injured or killed in the accident.The McIntosh County Sheriff’s Office said on Facebook that it was “working an active situation on Sapelo Island,” and that multiple agencies were responding. A fire department in nearby Glynn County said that emergency crews had responded around 4:30 p.m.J.R. Grovner, who owns Sapelo Island Tours, a company that uses the dock, was on the scene shortly after the gangway collapsed. As he arrived at the dock, he said, he saw bodies floating in the Duplin River.“Most of the bodies were already on the edge of the river, and people were pulling them up,” Mr. Grovner said by phone on Saturday night, adding that several of the victims appeared to be elderly. He said he had helped to check some of their pulses as people at the scene administered C.P.R.“I’ve been on Sapelo for 44 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,” Mr. Grovner said. A majority of the people visiting the island on Saturday were attending an annual Cultural Day festival, Mr. Grovner said.The festival is organized by the Sapelo Island Cultural and Revitalization Society, a nonprofit that helps to preserve the heritage of the Gullah Geechee people who live along the coasts of the Carolinas, Georgia and northern Florida. The Gullah Geechee are descendants of enslaved West African people who were brought to the southeastern United States more than two centuries ago.The society could not immediately be reached for comment late Saturday.This is a developing story. More

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      Stranded Mariner Seemingly Floated in the Gulf for Hours After the Hurricane

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      The U.S. Coast Guard on Thursday rescued a man who had seemingly done the impossible: he survived for hours in the Gulf of Mexico with nothing but a life jacket and a cooler to cling to.The agency posted a video of a Coast Guard crew member dropping from a helicopter about 30 miles off Longboat Key to grab the man from choppy seas and lift him to safety.The man, the captain of a fishing vessel, had lost contact with the Coast Guard around 7 p.m. on Wednesday as the storm worsened. He wasn’t found until 1:30 p.m. on Thursday.He managed to stay alive despite winds as fast as 90 miles per hour and waves as high as 20 to 25 feet through the night, said Lt. Cmdr. Dana Grady, the St. Petersburg command center chief of the U.S. Coast Guard.“This man survived in a nightmare scenario for even the most experienced mariner,” he said in a statement. The rescued captain, who was not identified, was taken to Tampa General Hospital to receive medical care. More

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      For Families of Those Missing After Israeli Strike in Beirut, an Agonizing Wait

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      After a nightlong vigil, with an untold number of hours of waiting still ahead, Najwa Qubaisi pushed away every relative who tried to coax her from the concrete skeleton of the building that had once been home to her grandson and his family.“How can I leave? I can’t,” she said, her eyes puffy from hours of crying. “I want to stay until I get some kind of news.”A day after an Israeli strike razed two buildings in an attack that killed members of its regional foe, Hezbollah, in suburban Beirut, the relatives of those who lived there were anxiously waiting on Saturday to learn the fate of dozens of loved ones still unaccounted for.Desperate, dazed-looking family members huddled in crowds just beyond the remains of sidewalks that had been ripped away and torn apart by the force of the blast. The occasional screeches of ambulance sirens were audible as rescuers brought in heavy equipment to remove tons of concrete in search of the missing.The blasts on Friday were not only a painful military blow to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed group that lost two top commanders and over a dozen members in what Israel described as a strike on a meeting held after a string of Israeli attacks this past week. They were also devastating to the largely Shiite Muslim community of Beirut’s southern suburbs, where Hezbollah has long held sway.The toll of the blast has risen to 37, according to Lebanon’s health ministry, with three children among the dead. And sorrow and rage emanated from those still awaiting news.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What We Know About the Deadly Floods in Central Europe

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      At least 17 people have died and thousands have been displaced. “Relief is not expected to come before tomorrow, and more likely, the day after,” an official in Austria said.At least 17 people were dead and several others missing on Monday after days of flooding in Central Europe. Thousands were displaced, and with heavy rains continuing in some places, officials feared there could be more destruction ahead. The floodwaters have ravaged towns, destroyed bridges and breached dams since intense rainfall from Storm Boris — a slow-moving low-pressure system — began in some places late last week. Emergency workers have made daring rescues of people and even pets as officials assessed the scale of the damage.For some, the disaster recalled the devastating floods that struck the region in July 1997, killing more than 100 people and driving thousands of others out of their homes.“This was a very traumatic one for Poland — the one that is remembered,” Hubert Rozyk, a spokesman for Poland’s Ministry of Climate and Environment, said of that disaster. “And in some places, the situation is even worse than in 1997.”Here’s what we know about the destruction in some of the worst-hit countries.RomaniaTwo men rescued a third from rising floodwaters in the Romanian village of Slobozia Conachi on Saturday.Daniel Mihailescu/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSeven people have died in Romania, Dr. Raed Arafat, the head of the Department for Emergency Situations in the Ministry of Internal Affairs said in a phone call on Monday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      At Least 12 Die Trying to Cross English Channel, French Authorities Say

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      The French maritime authorities said that 65 people were picked up from the sea after their vessel encountered unspecified difficulties.At least 12 people died after a boat carrying migrants capsized off the coast of northern France on Tuesday during an attempt to cross the English Channel, the French authorities said. It was the deadliest episode in the waterway this year as French and British governments struggle to prevent attempts at the perilous crossing.Gérald Darmanin, France’s interior minister, said on the social media platform X that the vessel sank off the coast of Wimereux, in an area of the Pas-de-Calais region where several similar tragedies have occurred this year. Two people were still missing and several others were injured, Mr. Darmanin said.“All government services are mobilized to find the missing and care for the victims,” he said.The French maritime authorities said in a statement that dozens of people fell into the sea after their vessel encountered unspecified difficulties on Tuesday morning off the coast of Cap Gris-Nez, which at some points is less than 30 miles from the British coastline.Rescue workers picked up 65 people out of the water, some of them in critical condition, and rescue operations involving helicopters and several ships are still continuing, the maritime authorities said in a statement.One of the worst migrant-related accidents in the Channel happened in 2021, when 27 people died after their boat capsized, but similar tragedies have repeatedly occurred on a smaller scale. Five people died at sea in January near Wimereux as well; five people died in similar circumstances around the same area in April.Last week, Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain and President Emmanuel Macron of France pledged to increase cooperation in the English Channel and to dismantle human smuggling networks, which the authorities on both sides of the waterway have blamed for the repeated deaths.“The leaders agreed to do more together to dismantle smuggling routes further upstream and increase intelligence sharing,” Mr. Starmer’s office said in a statement after the two leaders met in Paris.The Channel is one of the busiest shipping routes in the world. Its waters are especially icy in the winter, winds can be treacherous, and migrants trying to cross often crowd onto flimsy inflatable boats.“It’s a particularly dangerous sector even when the sea looks calm,” the maritime authorities said in their statement on Tuesday.Most of those who try to cross the Channel leave from the Pas-de-Calais. Many are from Afghanistan, Albania, Eritrea, Iraq, Iran, Sudan and Syria, according to the French authorities, and they cluster in makeshift camps on the coast of northern France before trying to cross.Many prefer risking the trip over staying in France because they see Britain as an attractive destination with a strong job market where English is spoken, or because they already have family there or people they know from their home country. More

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      Hostage Rescued in Gaza as Israeli Airstrikes Kill Scores of Palestinians

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      A Bedouin Arab citizen of Israel was rescued after Israeli commandos found him alone in an underground warren, apparently abandoned by his captors.An elite Israeli military unit rescued a frail and gaunt hostage from a tunnel deep beneath the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, the eighth living captive to be freed by Israeli troops in nearly 11 months of war and the first to be found alive in the subterranean labyrinth used by Hamas.The rescue came amid Israeli airstrikes across Gaza that Palestinian emergency services said killed at least 20 people. At one of the bombing sites in the southern city of Khan Younis, emergency crews frantically searched for survivors trapped under a collapsed building.The rescued hostage, Farhan al-Qadi, 52, a member of Israel’s Bedouin Arab minority, was freed by commandos without a fight after being discovered in a room roughly 25 yards underground, Israeli officials said. More than 100 hostages remain in Gaza, at least 30 of whom are now presumed dead by the Israeli authorities.The Israeli military’s chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, portrayed the operation to rescue Mr. al-Qadi, as “complex and brave.” He said the soldiers reached him after “precise intelligence” was collected by Israel’s security services.But that account was at odds with details provided by two senior Israeli officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss a sensitive matter.Mr. al-Qadi, the Israeli officials said, was found by chance during an operation to capture a Hamas tunnel network. A team led by Flotilla 13, Israel’s equivalent to the U.S. Navy SEALs, were combing the tunnels for signs of Hamas when, to the forces’ surprise, they found Mr. al-Qadi on his own, without guards, the officials said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More