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Vessel hit by hantavirus outbreak heads to Spain

Washington sues Colorado over firearms policy

LOS ANGELES: The Trump administration sued Colorado on Wednesday seeking to strike down a 13-year-old state ban on large-capacity firearm ammunition magazines, those allowing more than 15 bullets to be fired in rapid succession without the need to reload. The lawsuit claims that Colorado’s restriction on gun magazines, enacted in 2013 in the wake of a mass shooting that killed 12 individuals and wounded 58 others inside an Aurora movie theater, infringes on the right to own and bear arms under the US Constitution’s Second Amendment. President Donald Trump’s Justice Department said the rights of law-abiding gun owners are being violated in Colorado precisely because ammunition-feeding devices that hold more than 15 rounds are standard equipment for the most popular firearms in the US, numbering in the tens of millions. Gun safety advocates counter that such high capacity magazines are what make weapons designed to use them especially deadly in the hands of a mass shooter, enabling the assailant to fire more bullets repeatedly before pausing to reload. Individuals in the line of fire thus have a smaller chance to escape, while law enforcement or bystanders have less time to intervene. An analysis of mass shootings between 1990 and 2017 found that attacks involving large capacity magazines resulted in a 62% higher death toll, according to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health and cited by the Giffords Law Center to prevent gun violence. A federal Appeals Court in 2016 ordered dismissal of a similar case brought by a group of county sheriffs, gun shops, outfitters and shooting ranges challenging the ban on large capacity magazines and a measure requiring universal background checks for gun buyers. In that case, a three-judge panel of the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals found the plaintiffs lacked legal standing to bring their suit because they failed to demonstrate that they would have been personally harmed by the laws. Colorado Attorney-General Phil Weiser issued a statement vowing to defend the state’s gun safety measures, and saying the lawsuit “turns the mission of the DOJ’s civil rights division on its head.” “Large-capacity magazine laws are responsible policies that satisfy Second Amendment protections, decrease impacts of mass shootings and save lives.” – Reuters MEXICO CITY: Eight journalists disappeared or were murdered in Mexico in 2025, the UK-based journalist advocacy group Article 19 said in a report published on Wednesday, which named Mexico as the country in Latin America with the highest rates of censorship and judicial harassment against the press. “In 2025, Mexico recorded one disappearance and seven murders of journalists, once again topping the regional list,“ the organisation said in the report, comparing the tally to four journalists murdered in 2024. The report also highlighted that Mexico saw 53 physical attacks against reporters, surpassing 10 in Honduras and nine in Guatemala. The murders of journalists primarily occurred in states with high levels of violence and a strong presence of criminal organisations, including Durango, the State of Mexico, Guanajuato, Guerrero and the US border state of Sonora. The report also said Mexico also set a record for judicial harassment against the press last year. – Reuters Spike in violence against Mexican journalists

o Three evacuated, over 100 remain on board

MADRID: A luxury cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak and marooned since Sunday off the coast of Cape Verde left for Spain on Wednesday, a Reuters witness said, after three individuals, two of them seriously ill, were evacuated. The MV Hondius , with nearly 150 individuals on board, is expected to dock in Spain’s Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, within three days, Spanish Health Minister Monica Garcia said, adding that those still on board were not presenting any symptoms of the disease. She said once in Tenerife, if they are still healthy, all non-Spanish citizens would be repatriated to their countries. She also said the 14 Spanish passengers will be quarantined in a military hospital in Madrid, adding that the duration of the quarantine would depend on when they potentially had contact with the virus, which has a 45-day incubation period. Three individuals – a Dutch couple and a German national – have died in the outbreak. A total of eight individuals – including a Swiss citizen who has returned home and is being treated in Zurich – are suspected to have contracted the virus, with three of them confirmed by laboratory testing, the World Health Organisation said. Argentina’s health ministry said it will carry out rodent trapping and analyses in the southern city of Ushuaia, the origin point of the cruise ship hit by the outbreak. It added that officials are reconstructing the itinerary of the Dutch citizens, who travelled in Argentina and Chile, and later presented symptoms of hantavirus on the cruise. No associated cases have been found in Argentina. South Africa confirmed it had identified among the victims the Andean strain of the virus that could, in rare cases, spread among humans through very close contact. Argentina’s Health Ministry said it would send Andes virus RNA and guidelines for diagnosis and treatment to laboratories in Spain, Senegal, South Africa, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. “This is the only (hantavirus) strain that is known to cause human-to-human transmission, but such transmission is very rare and only happens due to very close

A paramedic in protective clothing stands next to an ambulance during an evacuation operation of suspected hantavirus patients in Praia, Cape Verde. – REUTERSPIC

Vance. The two met Leo a year ago after attending the pope’s inaugural mass. Rubio said at a White House briefing on Tuesday that he expected to discuss Cuba and concerns over religious freedom around the world with Leo. He was flying to Rome without any press accompanying him on his plane, which is unusual for a US secretary of state. The US ambassador to the Holy See, Brian Burch, told journalists on Tuesday that the conversation between the pope and Rubio was likely to be “frank”. Rubio is visiting Rome for two days. He is also due to meet Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has defended the pope from Trump. Meloni’s defence minister has also said the war in Iran puts the US leadership at risk. – Reuters The Dutch ministry said that person was possibly infected with the virus. The ship set off from the southern tip of Argentina on April 1 and travelled to some of the most remote places on earth, including the British island of Saint Helena. The Dutch government said in a letter to parliament that about 40 individuals disembarked at Saint Helena, including the Swiss national who has since developed symptoms. Cape Verde had been intended as the ship’s final destination, but the archipelago nation off West Africa has not allowed the passengers to come ashore because of the outbreak. Since the start of the outbreak, WHO has said the risk to the wider public from a virus usually transmitted by rodents is low and it emphasised on Wednesday that this remained the case. “So, when we say close contact (for human to-human transmission), we mean very close physical contact, whether it’s sharing a bunk room or sharing a cabin, providing medical care, for example, (that is) very different to Covid and very different to influenza,” said WHO director of epidemic and pandemic management Maria Van Kerkhove. She added that WHO was working with countries to follow up with passengers who left the boat at Saint Helena in the south Atlantic, before it reached Cape Verde. – Reuters

contact,” South Africa’s Health Ministry said. Nevertheless, some Tenerife residents said they were worried about the ship docking there. “People are scared,” said Margarita Maria, 62, adding that the boat should go elsewhere in Spain. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on X that the three individuals evacuated from the ship on Wednesday were on their way to the Netherlands. The Dutch Foreign Ministry said the trio included a Dutch, a German and a Briton and that they would be transported to specialised hospitals in Europe. One of the aircraft transporting two patients from Cape Verde to Amsterdam was due to stop in Morocco to refuel, but Morocco refused to allow the aircraft to land, and the plane was instead refuelling at the airport in Gran Canaria, Spain’s Health Ministry said. It added that while in Gran Canaria, the on-board doctor reported a problem with the patient’s life support system, and the patient is now connected to the airport’s system, awaiting the arrival of a new aircraft to continue the journey. Two of those evacuated presented acute symptoms, the ship’s operator Oceanwide Expeditions, said, adding that the third person was closely linked to the German passenger who died on the ship on May 2.

Rubio meets Pope amid Trump tiff VATICAN CITY: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Pope Leo at the Vatican yesterday, as President Donald Trump continues a series of disparaging attacks on the Catholic leader over the Iran war. The visit is the first between the pope and a Trump Cabinet official in nearly a year. Leo told journalists after the latest attack that he was spreading the Christian message of peace. The pope also firmly rejected the idea that he supported nuclear weapons, which the Catholic Church teaches are immoral. “The mission of the Church is to preach the Gospel, to preach peace. The Church has spoken out for years against all nuclear arms, on that there is no doubt.”

Leo, the first US pope, drew Trump’s ire after becoming a firm critic of the US-Israeli war on Iran and the Trump administration’s hardline anti-immigration policies. The president has kept up an unprecedented series of public attacks on the pope in recent weeks, drawing backlash from Christian leaders across the political spectrum. On Monday, Trump falsely suggested the pope believed it was okay for Iran to obtain nuclear weapons and said Leo was“endangering a lot of Catholics” by opposing the war.

Leo, who today marks his first year leading the 1.4-billion-member Church, has grown more outspoken on the world stage in recent weeks. During a four-nation African tour last month, he forcefully decried the direction of global leadership and said the world was “being ravaged by a handful of tyrants”, in comments he later said were not aimed directly at Trump. Rubio is Catholic, as is Vice-President J.D.