Philippines storm capsizes boat; at least 700 missing

June 23, 2008 at 12:00a.m.

MANILA, Philippines — Rescuers battled huge waves and strong winds Sunday to reach a ferry that capsized during a deadly typhoon in the Philippines a day earlier, but found no immediate signs of the more than 740 passengers and crew.

Coast guard frogmen who managed to get to the stricken ship got no response when they rapped on the hull with metal instruments, then had to give up for the night due to the strong waves.

Rescuers hoped to get inside today, likely with U.S. assistance requested by the Philippine Red Cross. Typhoon Fengshen has killed at least 137 people across the sprawling archipelago, setting off landslides and floods, and knocking out electricity.

So far, 10 people from the ferry are known to have made it to land. Six bodies, including those of a man and woman who had bound themselves together, have washed ashore, along with children’s slippers and life jackets.

Charitable giving

NEW YORK — Americans gave to charities last year at about the same rate they did the previous year, holding steady on their donations in the face of a housing-market meltdown and a crisis in credit, a study released today showed.

But soaring gasoline and food prices have been added to the economic worries this year, which may lead to a drop in giving, nonprofit groups and fundraisers say.

Donations by Americans to charities remained at 2.2 percent of gross domestic product in 2007, according to the yearly study from the philanthropy-tracking Giving USA Foundation.

Embassies at risk

WASHINGTON — Despite an intensive $4 billion drive to protect U.S. embassies, at least 150 American missions abroad fall short of security standards, The Associated Press has learned.

It will cost twice that amount to replace or renovate just the most vulnerable ones, according to documents the AP reviewed.

The push to upgrade security began in earnest after bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania a decade ago. The attacks killed 231 people, including 12 Americans. The security effort took on new urgency after strikes of Sept. 11, 2001, which led to government-wide vulnerability reviews.

The results so far suggest there is a long way to go to bring all the roughly 265 embassies and consulates up to standard.

The State Department says it will need about $7.5 billion to construct buildings at around 50 posts and $850 million for “major rehabilitation” at 40 others through 2013.

Suicide mission in Iraq

BAGHDAD — A female suicide bomber concealing explosives beneath her black robe struck outside a government complex northeast of Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 15 people and wounding more than 40, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

It was the 21st suicide mission carried out by a woman in Iraq this year, the U.S. military said.

The blast occurred about 1 p.m. as dozens of people were leaving a walled compound that includes a courthouse and the provincial governor’s office in Baqouba, capital of Diyala province and a former al-Qaida in Iraq stronghold 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.

Wildfires in wine country

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Hundreds of wildfires sparked by lightning flared Sunday across the heart of wine country and remote forests in Northern California, the latest batch of destructive blazes in the bone-dry state. One had spread across nearly 6 square miles by early Sunday after starting the previous afternoon in Napa County and quickly moving into a mostly rural area of Solano County. The fire threatened more than 100 buildings as it fed on grassy woodland about 40 miles southwest of Sacramento, said Roger Archey, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire.

Poking along on Mars

LOS ANGELES — Bizarre microbes flourish in the most punishing environments on Earth from the bone-dry Atacama Desert in Chile to the boiling hot springs of Yellowstone National Park to the sunless sea bottom vents in the Pacific.

Could such exotic life emerge in the frigid arctic plains of Mars?

NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft could soon find out. Since plopping down near the Martian north pole a month ago, the three-legged lander has been busy poking its long arm into the sticky soil and collecting scoopfuls to bake in a test oven and peer at under a microscope.

Associated Press