TODAY'S WORLD NEWS::

Seventeen killed in care home fire in Ukraine

Seventeen people have been killed after a fire broke out in a residential building housing elderly people in a village near Kiev, Ukraine's state emergency service said in a statement on Sunday.

It said the fire broke out in the early hours of Sunday morning in a privately-owned two-storey building that was temporarily housing 35 people in the village of Litochky, 37 kilometres (23 miles) northeast of Kiev.

"Emergency services units saved 18 people, five of whom have been hospitalised with burns of varying degrees of severity," it said. The fire was localised at 05:25 a.m. (0225 GMT), it said.

Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said the fire was a terrible tragedy that had caused irreparable loss and called for an immediate investigation into its causes, a statement on the government website said.

Rescued migrants say ship sank off Italy with hundreds aboard - NGO

Migrants rescued from two boats in the Mediterranean this week told humanitarian workers in Italy that they saw another vessel carrying some 400 migrants sink, Save the Children said on Saturday.

Three vessels carrying migrants already are confirmed to have sunk or capsized this week. More than 60 bodies are said to have been recovered, including those of three infants, and hundreds are believed to be missing.

But the possible sinking of a fourth vessel on Thursday had not been reported, said Giovanna Di Benedetto, spokeswoman for Save the Children in Italy.

That ship along with another fishing boat and a rubber boat left Sabratha in Libya late Wednesday night, according to interviews on Saturday with some of the more than 600 survivors from the two other vessels in the Sicilian port of Pozzallo.

They said the rubber boat had its own motor, but the smaller fishing boat, carrying some 400 migrants, did not. It was towed by the larger fishing vessel, which held about 500 others.

Eventually the smaller boat began to take on water and, when the captain of the larger boat ordered the tow line cut, sank with most of its passengers, the survivors told Save the Children. Those aboard the other two vessels were not rescued until much later.

"There were many women and children on board," the survivors said, according to Di Benedetto. "We collected testimony from several of those rescued from both (the rubber and fishing) boats. They all say they saw the same thing."

On the orders of the court of Ragusa, police have detained a man who they suspect was the captain of the larger boat, state news agency Ansa reported. Police are interviewing witnesses of the possible tragedy, la Repubblica Web site said.

Mild weather has brought on a surge in migrant traffic this week between Libya and Italy, and about 700 more migrants were picked up on Saturday, the coast guard said.

Pope Francis met with children at the Vatican earlier in the day to talk about migration, urging them to welcome migrants because they "are not dangerous, but in danger."

Jordan's King Abdullah appoints PM to oversee parliament elections: political source

AMMAN: Jordan's King Abdullah appointed veteran politician Hani Mulqi as prime minister after dissolving parliament on Sunday, charging him with overseeing elections before the end of the year, a senior political source said.

The monarch accepted the resignation of premier Abdullah Ensour, as is customary under the constitution before appointing an interim head of government to oversee the election.

Parliament had ended its four-year term and the election should be held within four months under the constitution.

'US-led coalition troops assisting Kurds in new offensive'

BAGHDAD: Servicemen from the U.S.-led coalition are assisting Kurdish Peshmerga forces in a new offensive in Iraq that aims to retake a handful of villages from Islamic State east of their Mosul stronghold, a coalition spokesman said.

Soldiers were seen loading armored vehicles outside the village of Hassan Shami, a few miles east of the frontline, a Reuters correspondent reported. They told people present not to take photographs.

They spoke in English but their nationality was not clear. Reuters had earlier reported that they were American but this could not be confirmed officially.

"U.S. and coalition forces are conducting advise and assist operations to help Kurdish Peshmerga forces," U.S. Army Colonel Steve Warren, the spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Baghdad told Reuters, commenting on the ground deployment of coalition soldiers seen near the battle front.

He said he could not confirm which country those seen by Reuters were from.

"They may be Americans, they may be Canadians or from other nationalities," he said.

Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces in the early hours of Sunday launched an attack to dislodge Islamic State fighters from villages located about 20 km (13 miles) east of Mosul alongside the road to the Kurdish capital, Erbil.

Gunfire and airstrikes could be heard at a distance, while Apache helicopters flew overhead. One of the villages, Mufti, was captured by mid-day, the Kurdistan Region Security Council said in a statement.

Mosul, with a pre-war population of about 2 million, is the largest city under control of the militants in both Iraq and Syria. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi at the end of last year expressed hope that the "final victory" in the war on Islamic State would come in 2016 with the capture of Mosul.

About 5,500 Peshmergas are taking part in Sunday's operation, said the Kurdish Region Security council.

"This is one of the many shaping operations expected to increase pressure on ISIL in and around Mosul in preparation for an eventual assault on the city,'' the council said.

"It's also to push ISIS threat away from the Kurdish area," a Kurdish officer, Akram Mohammed, said in Hassan Shami, referring to one of the acronyms of Islamic State.

The Peshmerga have driven the militants back in northern Iraq last year with the help of airstrikes from a U.S.-led coalition, and are positioned around Mosul in an arc running from northwest of the city to southeast.

The Iraqi army is also keeping up the pressure on Islamic State in their stronghold of Falluja, 50 kilometers (32 miles) west of Baghdad, in central Iraq.

Backed by Shi'ite militias on the ground and airstrikes from the U.S.-led coalition, the army is about to complete the encirclement of the city in an operation that started on May 23, state TV said Sunday citing military statements.

Counter-terrorism forces specialized in urban warfare have taken up positions around Falluja and should begin advancing in inside the city when the encirclement is complete, the TV said.

Turkey's new prime minister wins vote of confidence in parliament

ANKARA: Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim's government on Sunday won a vote of confidence in parliament as well as approval for his legislative program, parliament speaker Ismail Kahraman said.

Yildirim is a close ally of President Tayyip Erdogan and a co-founder of the ruling AK Party. He was declared prime minister after he was elected as the new leader of the AK Party at a party congress.

Yildirim's appointment marks another step in Erdogan's plan to create a full presidential system in Turkey.

Yildirim replaces Ahmet Davutoglu, who said he was stepping down after weeks of tension with Erdogan.

Kahraman said the result was 315 votes for approving the government and 138 against.

Rescued migrants say ship sank off Italy with hundreds aboard

ROME: Migrants rescued from two boats in the Mediterranean this week told humanitarian workers in Italy that they saw another vessel carrying some 400 migrants sink, Save the Children said on Saturday.

Three vessels carrying migrants already are confirmed to have sunk or capsized this week. More than 60 bodies are said to
have been recovered, including those of three infants, and hundreds are believed to be missing.

But the possible sinking of a fourth vessel on Thursday had not been reported, said Giovanna Di Benedetto, spokeswoman for
Save the Children in Italy.

That ship along with another fishing boat and a rubber boat left Sabratha in Libya late Wednesday night, according to
interviews on Saturday with some of the more than 600 survivors from the two other vessels in the Sicilian port of Pozzallo.

They said the rubber boat had its own motor, but the smaller fishing boat, carrying some 400 migrants, did not.
It was towed by the larger fishing vessel, which held about 500 others.

Eventually the smaller boat began to take on water and, when the captain of the larger boat ordered the tow line cut, sank
with most of its passengers, the survivors told Save the Children.

Those aboard the other two vessels were not rescued until much later. "There were many women and children on board," the survivors said, according to Di Benedetto.

"We collected testimony from several of those rescued from both (the rubber and fishing) boats. They all say they saw the same thing.

"On the orders of the court of Ragusa, police have detained a man who they suspect was the captain of the larger boat, state
news agency Ansa reported.

Police are interviewing witnesses of the possible tragedy, la Repubblica Web site said. Mild weather has brought on a surge in migrant traffic this week between Libya and Italy, and about 700 more migrants were picked up on Saturday, the coast guard said.

Pope Francis met with children at the Vatican earlier in the day to talk about migration, urging them to welcome migrants
because they "are not dangerous, but in danger.

Gorilla killed after boy falls into zoo enclosure  

A male gorilla in the Cincinnati Zoo was killed by keepers on Saturday after he dragged around a 4-year-old boy who fell into the enclosure, a zoo official said.

The boy crawled through a barrier and fell about 12 feet (3.7-meters) into a moat surrounding the habitat, where Harambe, a 400-pound (181-kg) western lowland gorilla, grabbed him, Cincinnati Zoo Director Thane Maynard told reporters.

The boy was with the 17-year-old gorilla for about 10 minutes and the zoo's dangerous animal response team deemed the situation life-threatening, he said.

"The choice was made to put down, or shoot, Harambe, so he's gone," he said.

Two female gorillas were also in the enclosure at the time of the incident. Maynard said the boy, who was not identified, was not seriously injured in the fall. In a statement, the zoo said the boy was alert when taken to a hospital.

Harambe was born at the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas, and was moved to the Cincinnati Zoo in 2014. Western lowland gorillas are classified as an endangered species, and Maynard said the zoo had hoped to use Harambe for breeding.

Niger says kills 12 Boko Haram fighters in gun battle  

Security forces in Niger killed around 12 fighters of the militant group Boko Haram who launched an attack in the southeastern region of Bosso close to the border with Nigeria, according to an army statement on Saturday.

Three members of the security forces were lightly wounded during Friday's battle and government forces captured machine guns, rocket propelled grenade launchers and mobile telephones from the enemy, said army spokesman Colonel Moustapha Ledru.

"The vigorous reaction of the Defence and Security Forces of Niger put the enemy to flight. Around a dozen terrorists were killed and several dozen others were wounded and carried away by the fleeing attackers," he said on national radio.

It was not possible to verify the casualty figures independently.

Local resident Ibrahim Chetima said townspeople sought shelter in the bush from the fighting, which began at around 5.30 p.m. (1630 GMT) and went on until 8 p.m.

Bosso is part of the Diffa region, which houses many refugees and internally displaced people who have sought to evade Boko Haram violence elsewhere. The region has been targeted numerous times in attacks blamed on the militants.

Boko Haram is headquartered across the border in northeastern Nigeria and seeks to carve out an emirate and impose a strict interpretation of Islamic law.

Once dismissed, shark attacks may hit new record in 2016

NEW YORK: As the summer beach season opens in the United States, at least one expert is predicting an increase in shark attacks around the world this year that will surpass last year's record number.

"We should have more bites this year than last," George Burgess, director of the International Shark Attack File at the University of Florida, said in an interview shortly before the Memorial Day holiday weekend that signals the unofficial start of America's summer vacation - and beach - season.

In 2015, there were 98 shark attacks, including six fatalities, according to Burgess.

Why the increased bloodshed? Shark populations are slowly recovering from historic lows in the 1990s, the world's human population has grown and rising temperatures are leading more people to go swimming, Burgess said.

Still, the university notes that fatal shark attacks, while undeniably graphic, are so infrequent that beachgoers face a higher risk of being killed by sand collapsing as the result of over achieving sand castle builders.

With their fearsome teeth and dorsal fins the inspiration for hit movies, TV series and beach-town souvenirs, it is hard to believe that a century ago American scientists did not believe sharks would fatally attack humans in U.S. temperate waters without provocation.

That changed in July 1916, when four people were killed in attacks near the New Jersey shore, a series of deaths blamed on a sea turtle until a great white shark with human remains in its stomach was captured nearby.

Since those attacks, public opinion of sharks has changed dramatically, with swimmers' fears fanned by fiction, from the 1975 Academy Award-winning film "Jaws," based on Peter Benchley's book about a giant man-eater, to the Discovery Channel's modern "Shark Week" summer television series.

Years before the attacks near the northern Jersey Shore town of Keyport, millionaire businessman Hermann Oelrichs offered a $500 prize in 1891 (more than $13,000 in today's dollars) to anyone who could prove that a shark ever bit a human in nontropical waters. The reward was never claimed.

Well-regarded scientists at the American Museum of Natural History in New York pointed to Oelrichs' wager as proof that no shark would bite a human, according to Michael Capuzzo's 2001 book "Close to Shore."

Even the New York Times in a 1915 editorial titled "Let Us Do Justice to the Sharks" cited Oelrichs' offer and said, "That sharks can properly be called dangerous in this part of the world is apparently untrue."

HUNTER BECOMES THE HUNTED

While those attacks gave oceangoers pause for decades, "Jaws" turned the hunter into the hunted, Burgess said.

"Every red-blooded American man felt obliged to go out and catch sharks, which were readily capturable," said the University of Florida's Burgess, noting that they can be caught offshore and from small boats. "It became the blue-collar marlin."

Sharks were being killed by sportfishing fleets as well as commercial fishermen seeking steaks for U.S. grocery stores and Asian markets for shark fin soup, regarded as an aphrodisiac in some cultures.

By the late 1980s, shark populations were crashing, and scientists sounded the alarm. The first law protecting sharks was passed in the 1990s in Florida - the home to the largest shark population of any U.S. state - and limited the daily catch to one shark per person, according to Burgess.

Federal safeguards followed, as well as more state efforts like the shark fin ban that has gone into effect in 10 states and is under consideration in Rhode Island.

Conservation efforts have introduced the public to another side of sharks: their vital link to the ocean ecosystem, their typically curious and shy nature, even the human-like birth of their offspring rather than laying eggs like other fish.

The public is clearly hooked. Aquariums from San Francisco to Brooklyn say sharks are among the most popular attractions, and some people are willing to pay hundreds of dollars to swim close to them.

Mario Caruso, 42, a Brooklyn father of two, said it was well worth the $250 he paid to spend an hour submerged in the Atlantic Ocean inside a metal cage with sharks prowling around him off Montauk, New York.

"The first time, you get that rush of adrenaline and then, 'Oh, boy - he's got teeth!'," he said.

• 11 people struck by lightning in Paris, six seriously hurt  

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• Eleven people were struck by a bolt of lightning in a park in Paris on Saturday and six of them were seriously hurt, the French interior ministry said.

  Eight of the injured were children, the ministry said in a statement. The incident occurred in the Monceau park in a north-western district of the French capital.

  The children, aged between seven and 14, had been attending a birthday party in the park at the time, Itele TV channel quoted local officials as saying.

  Eric Moulin, a spokesman for the French fire-fighting service, said the situation would have been worse if an off-duty fire officer had not been at hand to quickly provide first aid.

• Xi says China should invest more in the elderly  

• 
• BEIJING: China should increase investment in care for the elderly, President Xi Jinping told a meeting of the country's top leaders on its ageing population, official Xinhua news agency reported.

  "Our policies measures, work base, institutional mechanisms, and so forth are still deficient leading to a fairly large gap with the hope of the elderly to enjoy happiness later in life," it quoted Xi as saying on Friday.

  For the first time in decades China's working age population fell in 2012 and the world's most populous nation could be the first country in the world to get old before it gets rich.

  China's population is set to peak at about 1.45 billion by 2050 when one in every three people is expected to be more than 60 years old, with a shrinking proportion of working adults to support them.

  With the world's largest elderly population and the fastest ageing population, facing the problems was an "important responsibility", Xi told the Communist Party's powerful Politburo.

  "Meeting the various needs of the huge elderly population and properly solving the social problems that an ageing population brings are matters relating to the overall development of the country and welfare of the people," Xinhua quoted Xi as saying.

  China's ageing population is one of a handful of factors many analysts cite as underpinning expectations of a lower medium-term economic growth outlook.

  In October, China announced the further relaxation of its "one-child policy" in an effort to alleviate demographic strains on the economy.

• Pope meets children, says migrants "not dangerous, but in danger"

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• VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis held an emotional meeting with hundreds of children on Saturday, including a Nigerian boy whose parents drowned in a shipwreck, and told them migrants "are not dangerous, but in danger".

  The meeting followed a surge in migrant traffic this week between Libya and Italy, with more than 14,000 saved from overcrowded boats since Monday and three consecutive days of shipwrecks in which hundreds may have died.

  Three infants were among 45 bodies recovered at sea on Friday, UNICEF Italy said. Meeting the mostly Italian children who took a special train from southern Italy to the Vatican´s own railway station, Francis hugged the Nigerian boy, Osayande, who has been taken in by an Italian family.

  He showed them an orange life jacket he was given by a Spanish rescuer working to save lives in the Mediterranean. "He brought me this life jacket and, crying a little bit, he said: ´Father, I failed.

  There was a little girl in the sea and I wasn´t able to save her. All I could reach was her life jacket´" the pope said. "What was her name? I don´t know - a little girl without a name ...She´s in heaven and watching us.

  Let´s close our eyes, think about her and give her a name. "The influx of migrants and refugees into Europe in recent 
  years has fanned popular fears of foreigners and prompted politicians to tighten border controls and limit the number of
  newcomers allowed to stay.

  The pope has repeatedly sought to underscore the plight of these people, especially the hundreds of thousands who have
  risked their lives to come to Europe in flimsy boats.

  He visited the Greek island of Lesbos last month, bringing 12 refugees back on his plane to set an example of how other
  people and countries should welcome refugees.

  In southern Italy on Saturday, about 4,000 migrants made it to dry land, many of them exhausted and dehydrated. "The number of minors who make the journey on their own and arrive in Europe is much higher than what we saw last year,"

  Save the Children spokeswoman Giovanna Di Benedetto said. "But we are increasingly coming across much younger children, children of nine or ten years of age, who have made the journey alone or who have lost their parents or family members with whom they were travelling," she said.
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