Feed aggregator

TORONTO — The season's first major wildfires have spread to roughly 10,000 hectares (24,710 acres) across Western Canada on Sunday as authorities issued an evacuation order for a community in British Columbia and warned of poor air quality across provinces. In British Columbia, thousands of residents in Northern Rockies Regional Municipality and Fort Nelson First Nations were evacuated as the nearby blaze nearly doubled to 4,136 hectares. Fort Nelson First Nation, 7 kilometers (4.35 miles) from the town, also issued an evacuation order for Fontas, an Indigenous community. Northern Rockies Regional Municipality Mayor Rob Fraser in a TV interview said most of the 3,500 residents in and around Fort Nelson had been evacuated. Across the border in Alberta, residents of Fort McMurray, an oil hub, faced extensive damage from wildfires in 2016, were asked to prepare to leave. Alberta said two wildfires were extreme and out of control and recorded 43 active fires, including one located 16 kilometers southwest of Fort McMurray. It grew significantly over the weekend to 5,500 hectares, much larger than what was reported on Friday. On Sunday, authorities said the fire had subdued but was expected to increase as the temperatures soar. Winds from the southeast are expected to push the wildfire away from a major highway and toward the Athabasca River. Fraser said the fire was started by a tree blown down by strong winds falling onto a power line. Six crews of wildland firefighters, 13 helicopters and air tankers were taming the fire on Sunday, said Alberta authorities. Evacuation alerts were in place for Fort McMurray, Saprae Creek Estates and expanded to Gregoire Lake Estates and Rickards Landing Industrial Park. Although there is no immediate risk to these communities, the alert ensures residents are prepared to evacuate if conditions change. Smoke in Fort McMurray on Saturday was coming from fires in northern British Columbia, Alberta said. Environment Canada issued a special air quality statement that extends from British Columbia to Ontario on Sunday. Last year, a veil of smoke blanketed the U.S. East Coast, tinging the skies a fluorescent orange as smoke reached parts of Europe as hundreds of forest fires burnt millions of acres of land and forced about 120,000 people to leave their homes. The federal government has warned Canada faces another "catastrophic" wildfire season as it forecast higher-than-normal spring and summer temperatures across much of the country, boosted by El Nino weather conditions. Canada experienced one of its warmest winters with low to non-existent snow in many areas, raising fears ahead of a hot summer triggering blazes in forests and wildlands amid an ongoing drought.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Barcelona, Spain — Commuter rail service for Barcelona and northeastern Spain has suffered major disruption because of the theft of copper cables from a train installation, Spanish rail authorities said Sunday. Thousands of commuters were stranded at train stations in and around Barcelona after trains couldn't run on several commuter lines. The disruption to local transport came while more than 5.7 million voters were eligible to participate in a regional election in Catalonia. Spain’s state-owned railway authority ADIF said that the theft of electrical cabling from a station just north of Barcelona in the town of Montcada caused “several fires in the cables of the signaling system.” It said that the incident around 4 a.m. local time (0200 GMT) caused a “serious” impact to the local train service and affected all the rail lines. Catalonia’s commuter rail service suffers regular delays, some because of similar acts of theft.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Moscow — Russia's President Vladimir Putin began a Cabinet shakeup on Sunday, proposing the replacement of Sergei Shoigu as defense minister as he begins his fifth term in office. In line with Russian law, the entire Russian Cabinet resigned on Tuesday following Putin's glittering inauguration in the Kremlin, and most members have been widely expected to keep their jobs, while Shoigu's fate appeared uncertain. Putin signed a decree on Sunday appointing Shoigu as secretary of Russia's national security council, the Kremlin said. The appointment was announced shortly after Putin proposed First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov to become the country's defense minister in place of Shoigu. Belousov's candidacy will need to be approved by Russia's upper house in parliament, the Federation Council. It reported Sunday that Putin introduced proposals for other Cabinet positions as well, but Shoigu is the only minister on that list who is being replaced. Several other new candidates for federal ministers were proposed Saturday by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, reappointed by Putin on Friday. Shoigu's deputy, Timur Ivanov, was arrested last month on bribery charges and was ordered to remain in custody pending an official investigation. The arrest of Ivanov was widely interpreted as an attack on Shoigu and a possible precursor of his dismissal, despite his close personal ties with Putin. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Sunday that Putin had decided to give the defense minister role to a civilian because the ministry should be "open to innovation and cutting-edge ideas" and Belousov, who until recently served as the first deputy prime minister, is the right fit for the job. Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said in an online commentary that Shoigu's new appointment to Russia's Security Council showed that the Russian leader viewed the institution as a political holding space. Figures such as former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev have also been appointed to the security council: Medvedev has served as the body's deputy chairman since 2020. "The Security Council is becoming a reservoir for Putin's "former" key figures — people who he can't let go, but doesn't have a place for," Stanovaya wrote on social media. The announcement of Shoigu's new role came as 12 people were reported dead and 20 more wounded in Russia's border city of Belgorod, where a section of a residential building collapsed after what Russian officials said was Ukrainian shelling. In Ukraine, thousands more civilians have fled Russia's renewed ground offensive in Ukraine's northeast that has targeted towns and villages with a barrage of artillery and mortar shelling, officials said Sunday. The intense battles have forced at least one Ukrainian unit to withdraw in the Kharkiv region, capitulating more land to Russian forces across less defended settlements in the so-called contested gray zone along the Russian border. By Sunday afternoon, the town of Vovchansk, among the largest in the northeast with a prewar population of 17,000, emerged as a focal point in the battle. Volodymyr Tymoshko, the head of the Kharkiv regional police, said that Russian forces were on the outskirts of the town and approaching from three directions. "Infantry fighting is already taking place," he said. A Russian tank was spotted along a major road leading to the town, Tymoshko said, illustrating Moscow's confidence to deploy heavy weaponry. An Associated Press team, positioned in a nearby village, saw plumes of smoke rising from the town as Russian forces hurled shells. Evacuation teams worked nonstop throughout the day to take residents, most of whom were older, out of harm's way. At least 4,000 civilians have fled the Kharkiv region since Friday, when Moscow's forces launched the operation, Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said in a social media statement. Heavy fighting raged Sunday along the northeast front line, where Russian forces attacked 27 settlements in the past 24 hours, he said. Analysts say the Russian push is designed to exploit ammunition shortages before promised Western supplies can reach the front line. Ukrainian soldiers said that the Kremlin is using the usual Russian tactic of launching a disproportionate amount of fire and infantry assaults to exhaust their troops and firepower. By intensifying battles in what was previously a static patch of the front line, Russian forces threaten to pin down Ukrainian forces in the northeast, while carrying out intense battles farther south where Moscow is also gaining ground. It comes after Russia stepped up attacks in March targeting energy infrastructure and settlements, which analysts predicted were a concerted effort to shape conditions for an offensive. Meanwhile, a 10-story apartment building partially collapsed in Belgorod near the border, killing at least 12 people and injuring 20 others. Russian authorities said the building collapsed following Ukrainian shelling. Ukraine hasn't commented on the incident. The Russian Defense Ministry said Sunday that its forces had captured four villages on the border along Ukraine's Kharkiv region, in addition to five villages reported to have been seized on Saturday. These areas were likely poorly fortified because of the dynamic fighting and constant heavy shelling, easing a Russian advance. Ukraine's leadership hasn't confirmed Moscow's gains. But Tymoshko, the head of the Kharkiv regional police, said that Strilecha, Pylna and Borsivika were under Russian occupation, and it was from their direction they were bringing in infantry to stage attacks in other embattled villages of Hlyboke and Lukiantsi.

Cairo — Chinese companies won four bids to explore Iraqi oil and gas fields, Iraq's oil minister said Sunday as the Middle Eastern country's hydrocarbon exploration licensing round continued into its second day. The oil and gas licenses for 29 projects are mainly aimed at ramping up output for domestic use, with more than 20 companies pre-qualifying, including European, Chinese, Arab and Iraqi groups. Chinese companies have been the only foreign players to win bids, taking nine oil and gas fields since Saturday, while Iraqi Kurdish company KAR Group took two. There were notably no U.S. oil majors involved, even after Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia met representatives of U.S. companies on an official visit to the United States last month. China’s National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC) -Iraq won a bid to develop Iraq's Block 7 for oil exploration that extends across the country's central and southern provinces of Diwaniya, Babil, Najaf, Wasit and Muthanna, said oil minister Hayan Abdul Ghani. ZhenHua, Anton Oilfield Services and Sinopec won bids to develop the Abu Khaymah oilfield in Muthanna, the Dhufriya field in Wasit and the Summer field in Muthanna respectively, the minister said. Iraq's main goal with its sixth licensing round was to increase gas output that it wants to use to fire power plants that rely heavily on gas imported from Iran. However, no bids were made on at least two fields with large gas potential, potentially undermining those efforts. Iraq, OPEC's second-largest oil producer behind Saudi Arabia, has been hampered in its oil sector development by contract terms viewed as unfavorable by many major oil companies as well as recurring military conflict and growing investor focus on environmental, social and governance criteria.

Baltimore, Maryland — After weeks of preparation, crews are scheduled to conduct a controlled demolition Sunday evening to break down the largest remaining span of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Maryland, which came crashing down under the impact of a massive container ship on March 26. The steel span — which is an estimated 152 meters long and weighs up to 544 metric tons — landed on the ship's bow after the Dali lost power and crashed into one of the bridge's support columns shortly after leaving Baltimore. Since then, the ship has been stuck among the wreckage and Baltimore's busy port has been closed to most maritime traffic. Six members of a roadwork crew plunged to their deaths in the collapse. The last of their bodies was recovered from the underwater wreckage earlier this week. All the victims were Latino immigrants who came to the U.S. for job opportunities. They were filling potholes on an overnight shift when the bridge was destroyed. The controlled demolition will allow the Dali to be refloated and guided back into the Port of Baltimore. Once the ship is removed, maritime traffic can begin returning to normal, which will provide relief for thousands of longshoremen, truckers and small business owners who have seen their jobs impacted by the closure. The Dali's 21-member crew will shelter in place aboard the ship while the explosives are detonated. William Marks, a spokesperson for the crew, said they would shelter "in a designated safe place" during the demolition. "All precautions are being taken to ensure everyone's safety," he said in an email. Officials said the demolition is the safest and most efficient way to remove steel under a high level of pressure and tension. "It's unsafe for the workers to be on or in the immediate vicinity of the bridge truss for those final cuts," officials said in a news release Sunday. In a videographic released this week, authorities said engineers are using precision cuts to control how the trusses break down. They said the method allows for "surgical precision" and the steel structure will be "thrust away from the Dali" when the explosives send it tumbling into the water. Once it's demolished, hydraulic grabbers will lift the resulting sections of steel onto barges. "It's important to note that this controlled demolition is not like what you would see in a movie," the video says, noting that from a distance it will sound like fireworks or loud thunder and give off puffs of smoke. So far, about 5,443 metric tons of steel and concrete have been removed from the collapse site. Officials estimate the total amount of wreckage at 45,359 metric tons, about the equivalent of 3,800 loaded dump trucks. Officials previously said they hoped to remove the Dali by May 10 and reopen the port's 15.2-meter main channel by the end of May. The Dali is currently scheduled to be refloated during high tide on Tuesday, officials said Sunday. They said three or four tugboats will be used to guide the ship to a nearby terminal in the Port of Baltimore. It will likely remain there for a few weeks and undergo temporary repairs before being moved to a shipyard for more substantial repairs. The Dali crew members haven't been allowed to leave the grounded vessel since the disaster. Officials said they have been busy maintaining the ship and assisting investigators. Of the crew members, 20 are from India and one is Sri Lankan. The National Transportation Safety Board and the FBI are conducting investigations into the bridge collapse. Danish shipping giant Maersk chartered the Dali for a planned trip from Baltimore to Sri Lanka, but the ship didn't get far. Its crew sent a mayday call saying they had lost power and had no control of the steering system. Minutes later, the ship rammed into the bridge. Officials have said the safety board investigation will focus on the ship's electrical system.

Russia blames fragments of a falling Ukrainian missile for a deadly strike on an apartment building in Belgorod. Ukraine so far has offered no comment. This, as Russian forces continue the capture of territory in Ukraine’s northeast. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has the story.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Washington — Two Air Force fighter jets recently squared off in a dogfight in California. One was flown by a pilot. The other wasn’t. That second jet was piloted by artificial intelligence, with the Air Force’s highest-ranking civilian riding along in the front seat. It was the ultimate display of how far the Air Force has come in developing a technology with its roots in the 1950s. But it’s only a hint of the technology yet to come. The United States is competing to stay ahead of China on AI and its use in weapon systems. The focus on AI has generated public concern that future wars will be fought by machines that select and strike targets without direct human intervention. Officials say this will never happen, at least not on the U.S. side. But there are questions about what a potential adversary would allow, and the military sees no alternative but to get U.S. capabilities fielded fast. “Whether you want to call it a race or not, it certainly is,” said Adm. Christopher Grady, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Both of us have recognized that this will be a very critical element of the future battlefield. China’s working on it as hard as we are.” A look at the history of military development of AI, what technologies are on the horizon and how they will be kept under control: From machine learning to autonomy AI's military roots are a hybrid of machine learning and autonomy. Machine learning occurs when a computer analyzes data and rule sets to reach conclusions. Autonomy occurs when those conclusions are applied to act without further human input. This took an early form in the 1960s and 1970s with the development of the Navy's Aegis missile defense system. Aegis was trained through a series of human-programmed if/then rule sets to be able to detect and intercept incoming missiles autonomously, and more rapidly than a human could. But the Aegis system was not designed to learn from its decisions and its reactions were limited to the rule set it had. “If a system uses ‘if/then’ it is probably not machine learning, which is a field of AI that involves creating systems that learn from data,” said Air Force Lt. Col. Christopher Berardi, who is assigned to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to assist with the Air Force's AI development. AI took a major step forward in 2012 when the combination of big data and advanced computing power enabled computers to begin analyzing the information and writing the rule sets themselves. It is what AI experts have called AI's “big bang.” The new data created by a computer writing the rules is artificial intelligence. Systems can be programmed to act autonomously from the conclusions reached from machine-written rules, which is a form of AI-enabled autonomy. Testing an AI alternative to GPS navigation Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall got a taste of that advanced warfighting this month when he flew on Vista, the first F-16 fighter jet to be controlled by AI, in a dogfighting exercise over California's Edwards Air Force Base. While that jet is the most visible sign of the AI work underway, there are hundreds of ongoing AI projects across the Pentagon. At MIT, service members worked to clear thousands of hours of recorded pilot conversations to create a data set from the flood of messages exchanged between crews and air operations centers during flights, so the AI could learn the difference between critical messages like a runway being closed and mundane cockpit chatter. The goal was to have the AI learn which messages are critical to elevate to ensure controllers see them faster. In another significant project, the military is working on an AI alternative to GPS satellite-dependent navigation. In a future war high-value GPS satellites would likely be hit or interfered with. The loss of GPS could blind U.S. communication, navigation and banking systems and make the U.S. military's fleet of aircraft and warships less able to coordinate a response. So last year the Air Force flew an AI program — loaded onto a laptop that was strapped to the floor of a C-17 military cargo plane — to work on an alternative solution using the Earth’s magnetic fields. It has been known that aircraft could navigate by following the Earth's magnetic fields, but so far that hasn't been practical because each aircraft generates so much of its own electromagnetic noise that there has been no good way to filter for just the Earth's emissions. “Magnetometers are very sensitive,” said Col. Garry Floyd, director for the Department of Air Force-MIT Artificial Intelligence Accelerator program. “If you turn on the strobe lights on a C-17 we would see it.” The AI learned through the flights and reams of data which signals to ignore and which to follow and the results “were very, very impressive,” Floyd said. “We're talking tactical airdrop quality.” “We think we may have added an arrow to the quiver in the things we can do, should we end up operating in a GPS-denied environment. Which we will,” Floyd said. The AI so far has been tested only on the C-17. Other aircraft will also be tested, and if it works it could give the military another way to operate if GPS goes down. Safety rails and pilot speak   Vista, the AI-controlled F-16, has considerable safety rails as the Air Force trains it. There are mechanical limits that keep the still-learning AI from executing maneuvers that would put the plane in danger. There is a safety pilot, too, who can take over control from the AI with the push of a button. The algorithm cannot learn during a flight, so each time up it has only the data and rule sets it has created from previous flights. When a new flight is over, the algorithm is transferred back onto a simulator where it is fed new data gathered in-flight to learn from, create new rule sets and improve its performance. But the AI is learning fast. Because of the supercomputing speed AI uses to analyze data, and then flying those new rule sets in the simulator, its pace in finding the most efficient way to fly and maneuver has already led it to beat some human pilots in dogfighting exercises. But safety is still a critical concern, and officials said the most important way to take safety into account is to control what data is reinserted into the simulator for the AI to learn from.

With the United States recently deciding to pause some military aid shipments to Israel, the war in Gaza has now become part of heated rhetoric on the U.S. presidential campaign trail. Donald Trump has joined other Republicans in criticizing his political rival, President Joe Biden, for Biden’s stance on the matter. Veronica Balderas Iglesias has the story.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

New York — "The Fall Guy," the Ryan Gosling-led, action-comedy ode to stunt performers, opened below expectations with $28.5 million, according to studio estimates Sunday, providing a lukewarm start to a summer movie season that's very much to be determined for Hollywood. The Universal Pictures release opened on a weekend that Marvel has regularly dominated with $100 million-plus launches. (In 2023, that was "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" with a $118 million debut.) But last year's strikes jumbled this year's movie calendar; "Deadpool & Wolverine," originally slated to open this weekend, is instead debuting in July. So in place of a superhero kickoff, the summer launch went to a movie about the stunt performers who anonymously sacrifice their bodies for the kind of action sequences blockbusters are built on. Going into the weekend, forecasts had the film opening $30 million to $40 million. "The Fall Guy," directed by former stuntman and "Deadpool 2" helmer David Leitch, rode into the weekend with the momentum of glowing reviews and the buzz of a SXSW premiere. But it will need sustained interest to merit its $130 million production budget. It added $25.4 million in overseas markets. Working in its favor for a long run: strong audience scores (an "A-" CinemaScore) and good reviews (83% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes). Jim Orr, distribution chief for Universal, believes things line up well for "The Fall Guy" in the coming weeks. "We had a very solid opening," said Orr. "We're looking forward to a very long, very robust, very successful run throughout the domestic box office for literally weeks if not months to come." But the modest start for "The Fall Guy" hints at larger concerns for the film industry. Superhero films haven't been quite the box-office behemoth they once were, leading studios to search for fresher alternative. "The Fall Guy" seemed to check all the boxes, with extravagant action sequences, one of the hottest stars in the business, a director with a track-record for crowd pleasers and very good reviews. But instead, the opening for "The Fall Guy," loosely based on the 1980s TV series, only emphasized that the movie business is likely to struggle to rekindle the fervor of last year's "Barbenheimer" summer. "The Fall Guy" stars one from each: Gosling, in his first post-Ken role, and Emily Blunt, of "Oppenheimer." Both were Oscar nominated. "It's going to be a very interesting, nontraditional summer this year," said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore. In part due to the effects of last year's work stoppages, there are fewer big movies hitting theaters. Expectations are that the total summer box office will be closer to $3 billion than the $4 billion that's historically been generated. "The summer season is just getting started, so let's give 'The Fall Guy' a chance to build that momentum over time. It's a different type of summer kickoff film," said Dergarabedian. "There's always huge expectations placed on any film that kicks off the summer movie season, but this isn't your typical summer movie season." In a surprise, No. 2 at the box office went to the Walt Disney Co. rerelease of "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace." The first episode to George Lucas' little-loved prequels collected $8.1 million over the weekend, 25 years after "Phantom Menace" grossed $1 billion. Last week's top film, the Zendaya tennis drama "Challengers," slid to third place with $7.6 million in its second week. That was a sold hold for the Amazon MGM release, directed by Luca Guadagnino, dipping 49% from its first weekend. The Sony Screen Gems supernatural horror film "Tarot" also opened nationwide. It debuted with $6.5 million, a decent enough start for a low-budget release but another example of horror not quite performing this year as it has the last few years. Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday. 1. "The Fall Guy," $28.5 million. 2. "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace," $8.1 million. 3. "Challengers," $7.6 million. 4. "Tarot," $6.5 million. 5. "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire," $4.5 million. 6. "Civil War," $3.6 million. 7. "Unsung Hero," $3 million. 8. "Kung Fu Panda 4," $2.4 million. 9. "Abigail," $2.3 million. 10. "Ghostbuster: Frozen Empire," $1.8 million.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.