11/05/2026

MONDAY | MAY 11, 2026

FOLLOW

ON TWITTER Malaysian Paper

8

@thesundaily

Passengers leave hantavirus-hit ship

TENERIFE: Spain said it had begun bringing Spanish passengers ashore from the cruise ship hit by a hantavirus outbreak which anchored near Tenerife yesterday, with groups of nationals from other countries to follow. Spanish nationals were the first to disembark on small boats in groups of five and taken to shore, where they were transferred onto buses and taken to the local airport. The passengers, who are not showing any symptoms of the virus, will board a flight back to Madrid on a Spanish military plane and taken to a hospital to be quarantined, officials said, emphasising that they will have no contact with members of the public. The luxury cruise ship left for Spain on Wednesday from the coast of Cape Verde after the World Health Organisation (WHO) and European Union asked the country to manage the evacuation of passengers after the hantavirus outbreak was detected. Countries including Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, the US, UK and the Netherlands confirmed on Saturday they had sent planes to evacuate their citizens, although local government officials in the Canaries said not all planes had arrived by yesterday morning. WHO said in an update on Friday that eight people no longer on the ship had fallen ill, including three who died – a Dutch couple and a German national. Of the eight, six are confirmed to have contracted the virus, with another two suspected cases. All passengers on the MV Hondius are considered high-risk contacts as a precautionary measure, Europe’s public health agency said on Saturday as part of its rapid scientific advice, adding that the risk to the general population remains low. WHO has recommended a 42-day quarantine period for passengers aboard the ship. Spain’s Health Ministry said in a report the ship had passed appropriate health checks, saying: “There are more than 500 cruise ships a year that come from o WHO recommends 42-day quarantine

A worker wearing personal protective equipment transferring packages to the cruise ship yesterday. – REUTERSPIC

Urgent airborne op to aid patient LONDON: British military personnel carried out an airborne operation to deliver urgent medical support for a suspected hantavirus patient on a South Atlantic island, ministers said yesterday. An army specialist team Air Assault Brigade, descended from a Royal Air Force A400M transport aircraft “in a daring parachute drop”, the statement said. Vital oxygen supplies and other medical aid were air-dropped almost simultaneously.

Using two arms, the robots can perform delicate tasks such as transferring reagents and opening the doors of temperature-controlled equipment to place and remove items. Cell cultivation, which has already been programmed, can also be carried out automatically. The university plans to expand the number of robots to around 2,000 by 2040, carrying out almost all research tasks from generating hypotheses to experimental verification. “We want to make Japan’s science the best in the world,” said Keiichi Nakayama, head of the centre. – Bernama Argentina and Chile, which is home to the virus, and yet an outbreak of this illness has never happened in European territory, so the possibility it happens in relation to this ship is remote.” Hantavirus is spread by rodents but can in rare cases be transmitted person-to-person. “According to the information provided by experts who boarded the ship, the hygiene and environmental conditions are appropriate and they have not detected rodents, so transmission by exposure to rodents on board is not likely,” the report stated. Passengers will not leave the boat until their allocated evacuation plane has arrived, Spanish officials said. – Reuters

was the only viable option to deliver care in time and support the island’s two-person medical team. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper paid tribute to the Armed Forces for an “extraordinary operation”. The drop involved a long-range flight of nearly 6,800km from RAF Brize Norton in central England to Ascension Island, followed by a further 3,000km flight to Tristan da Cunha, the statement said.

The urgent response came after confirmation by the UK Health Security Agency on Friday of a suspected infection in a British national on the island. Tristan da Cunha, a group of volcanic islands with a population of around 220 has no airstrip and is accessible only by boat. With oxygen supplies at critically low levels, officials said an airdrop 39% of the vote in the rural New South Wales seat of Farrer, snatching the seat at a time of rising prices, unaffordable housing and concern over issues like immigration. His nearest rival, an independent candidate, secured 28% of the vote while the conservative Liberal Party’s contender received 12%, and the rural-based National Party 10%, official results showed. “This wasn’t a by-election, it was a bloodbath for the coalition,” Treasurer Jim Chalmers told Sky News Australia, referring to a Liberal-National party alliance that

parachuted onto the island of Tristan da Cunha, Britain’s most remote overseas territory, a Defence Ministry statement said. One of three British nationals diagnosed with suspected hantavirus linked to the outbreak on the MV Hondius cruise ship is on the island. The team of six paratroopers and two military clinicians, all from the 16

Armed Forces Minister Al Carns said the operation had been carried out in “incredibly challenging circumstances” with the utmost professionalism and composure under pressure”. – AFP Australian Liberal Party reels from by-election loss SYDNEY: Australia’s leading

Tokyo unmanned lab opens TOKYO: A university here has opened a laboratory at which robots are carrying out experiments once handled by human researchers, as it aims to automate nearly the entire research process, Kyodo News Agency reported.

has governed Australia for much of the postwar period. “What it shows is that the coalition can’t beat One Nation. They’ll have to join them. There’s no future coalition government, I think, without One Nation in it,” Chalmers said. Until the weekend, traditional conservative Liberal and National parties had held the seat of Farrer since 1949. Senior Liberal Party lawmaker Tim Wilson refused to rule out forming a minority government with One Nation’s support in the future. – AFP

opposition Liberal Party may have to work with a far-right party that defeated it in a “bloodbath” by-election, a senior government minister said yesterday. One Nation, whose leader Pauline Hanson wants to slash immigration and has repeatedly made racist remarks, won its first lower house federal election battle on Saturday. “We are coming after those other seats. You are not going to be the forgotten people any more,” Hanson vowed after the win. One Nation’s David Farley took

The facility at the Institute of Science Tokyo Yushima campus, known as the Robotics Innovation Centre, features 10 robots, including a humanoid model called Maholo LabDroid, and no human staff. The university plans to increase the number of automatons in the long run, integrating automation systems with artificial intelligence.