Day: September 29, 2021

ABOARD GEO BARENTS (AP) — A humanitarian vessel on Wednesday disembarked dozens of African migrants in an Italian coastal town a week after they were rescued in the Mediterranean Sea off conflict-stricken Libya, a charity operating the vessel said.

The Geo Barents, a rescue vessel operated by Doctors Without Borders, docked in the port town of Augusta late Tuesday after Italian authorities gave it permission to offload passengers, the charity, known by its French acronym MSF, said.

There were 60 African migrants, including six women and a seven-week-old child, on board.

Migrants said they were relieved when Barbara Deck, MSF’s project coordinator, announced that Italy had granted the vessel a port of safety. Many cheered and danced while others broke into tears when they saw the shore.

Some still have concerns however.

“We will be fully relieved after we are free,” said Kamal Mezali, a Tunisian migrant. Mezali, who lived and worked in Libya for years, said he plans to bring his two children and wife to establish a “peaceful life” in Italy.

Dr. Andolina Antonio from the Italian health ministry boarded the Geo Barents early Wednesday to oversee rapid COVID-19 testing for the migrants and the vessel’s crew. All tested negative for the coronavirus.

The migrants disembarked at the port where Italian police, representatives of the U.N.’s humanitarian agency, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, were present.

The most youngest migrants and women have been taken for a 10-day quarantine in centers at the port, while the rest would spend their quarantine period aboard a vessel operated by the ICRC.

The migrants were picked up from two separate boats on Sep. 20, a day after they embarked on the risky voyage from the Libyan coastal town of Zawiya.

It was the third rescue mission for the MSF-run Geo Barents this year. The vessel has brought 792 migrants including 43 women to Augusta since June.

The migrants disembarked in Augusta two days after an overcrowded fishing boat with around 700 people on board docked at the island of Lampedusa in what was the single biggest migrant arrival in Italy in years.

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All Times Eastern

NASCAR CUP SERIES

YellaWood 500

Site: Talladega, Alabama.

Schedule: Sunday, race, 2 p.m.

Track: Talladega Superspeedway

Race distance: 188 laps, 500.8 miles.

Last year: Denny Hamlin won from the pole position.

Last race: Hamlin led 137 of 267 laps at Las Vegas and opened the second round of the playoffs the same way he opened the first: by winning.

Fast facts: Hamlin was winless until the playoffs began. … Kyle Larson still leads in the point standings, but three Joe Gibbs Racing drivers are closing in. His lead has shrunk to 14 points over Hamlin, 22 over Kyle Busch and 26 over Martin Truex Jr. Ryan Blaney is fifth, 33 behind. … Eight of the top 10 finishers at Las Vegas are playoff contenders. …. Kevin Harvick had a postrace lug nut violation, which means crew chief Rodney Childers will be fined $20,000 and suspended from the race in Alabama.

Next race: Oct. 10, Concord, North Carolina.

Online: http://www.nascar.com

NASCAR XFINITY SERIES

Sparks 300

Site: Talladega, Alabama.

Schedule: Saturday, race, 4:30 p.m.

Track: Talladega Superspeedway

Race distance: 113 laps, 300.58 miles.

Last year: Justin Haley won after starting eighth.

Last race: Josh Berry, substituting for the injured Michael Annett, led a 1-2-3 finish for JR Motorsports at Las Vegas, his second victory of the season.

Fast facts: Justin Allgaier was second and Noah Gragson third. Gragson’s finish came despite two pit road penalties. … Eight of the 12 drivers in the playoffs finished in the top 10. … Defending series champion Austin Cindric leads A.J. Allmendinger by seven points in the title chase. Allgaier and Gragson are 28 and 29 points behind, respectively, and Daniel Hemric is 32 behind.

Next race: Oct 9, Concord, North Carolina.

Online: http://www.nascar.com

NASCAR TRUCK SERIES

Chevrolet Silverado 250

Site: Talladega, Alabama.

Schedule: Saturday, race, 1 p.m.

Track: Talladega Superspeedway

Race distance: 94 laps, 250.04 miles.

Last year: Raphael Lessard won after starting 15th.

Last race: Christian Eckes led a 1-2-3-4 finish for ThorSport Racing at Las Vegas, taking the lead on a restart with four laps remaining for his first career victory.

Fast facts: Ben Rhodes, Matt Crafton and Johnny Sauter followed Eckes across the finish line. … John Hunter Nemechek won his series-best 11th stage, but mechanical problems relegated him to 33rd and cost him the series points lead. Rhodes leads him by six with Stewart Friesen 25 back, three-time champ Crafton 29 behind and defending series champ Sheldon Creed 34 behind.

Next race: Oct. 30, Martinsville, Virginia.

Online: http://www.nascar.com

FORMULA ONE

Last race: Seven-time series champion Lewis Hamilton rallied from seventh place to win in Russia — his 100th career victory — and reclaim the series points lead from runner-up Max Verstappen.

Next race: Oct. 10, Istanbul, Turkey.

Online: http://www.formula1.com

INDYCAR

Last race: Colton Herta won at Long Beach and Alex Palou finished fourth to become the first Spaniard to win IndyCar season championship.

Fast facts: Palou and Herta were the only three-time winners in the 16-race season. Herta won the last two races but finished just fifth in the standings. … Two-time series champion Josef Newgarden finished second in the standings, followed by Pato O’Ward and six-time and defending series champion Scott Dixon. … The 2022 schedule has 17 races.

Next race: Feb. 27, St. Petersburg, Florida.

Online: http://www.indycar.com

NHRA DRAG RACING

Last event: Steve Torrence won in Top Fuel and Matt Hagan won in Funny Car at the NHRA Midwest Nationals in Madison, Illinois.

Next event: Oct. 7-10, Ennis, Texas.

Online: http://www.nhra.com

WORLD OF OUTLAWS

Next events: Oct. 1-2, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.

Online: http://worldofoutlaws.com/sprintcars

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More AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/apf-AutoRacing and https://twitter.com/AP

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MADRID (AP) — Spanish soccer stadiums can be at full capacity again starting this weekend, authorities said Wednesday.

Spain had only allowed 60% of seats to be filled at the start of the season but health officials said pandemic conditions have continued to improve across the country in recent weeks.

Local regions still have the final decision on how many fans will be allowed in stadiums, and Catalonia will keep the restrictions at 60% for now, meaning there won’t be immediate changes for matches hosted by Barcelona.

Defending Spanish league champion Atlético Madrid is expected to fill the Wanda Metropolitano Stadium for its match against Barcelona on Saturday.

Authorities said they will reevaluate the health conditions in a month.

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More AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

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LONDON (AP) — London finally honored the late Princess Diana Wednesday with a blue plaque at the place she called home in the two years before she married Prince Charles and her life in the goldfish bowl began.

For Diana, 60 Coleherne Court, an apartment near London’s fashionable King’s Road, was the start of a new adventure. Settling in the capital on reaching her 18th birthday, Diana shared the apartment with a number of friends from 1979 to 1981. It was there that she first started to court Charles.

One of her roommates then, Virginia Clarke, helped unveil the English Heritage plaque during Wednesday’s ceremony.

“Those were happy days for all of us and the flat was always full of laughter,” she said. “Diana went off to become so much to so many. It’s wonderful that her legacy will be remembered in this way.”

According to Andrew Morton’s 1992 best-selling book “Diana, In Her Own Words,” Diana described her years at the property as “the happiest time” of her life.

Diana, who died in a car crash in Paris in 1997, is the highest profile former member of the monarchy to be bestowed the honor. She was nominated by the London Assembly in 2019 after the body ran a campaign asking Londoners to suggest women worthy of a blue plaque.

“Diana had, and still has, a very special place in the hearts of Londoners and we are thrilled to see her blue plaque formally placed as a monument to her work for others,” said Andrew Boff, chairman of the London Assembly.

The honor comes in the year when she would have celebrated her 60th birthday.

“Diana was one of the world’s most famous women and she used her fame and influence to raise awareness of issues such as homelessness and landmines,” said Anna Eavis, the curatorial director at English Heritage.

“It is fitting that our blue plaque remembers her at this place where her life in the public eye first began,” she added.

The renowned London blue plaque program began more than 150 years ago. The plaques commemorate people who achieved something worthwhile in their lives and who made London their home at some point. There are more than 900 official plaques in the capital.

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BRIGHTON, England (AP) — The leader of Britain’s opposition Labour Party took aim Wednesday at a Conservative government that has presided over empty gas pumps and one of Europe’s worst coronavirus death tolls — but still holds a lead over Labour in most opinion polls.

That sums up the dilemma for Labour leader Keir Starmer, who has struggled to break through to a largely indifferent public despite the many problems besetting Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s administration.

Starmer sought to change that with a speech Wednesday at the party’s annual conference, arguing that Labour is “back in business” after a decade of election disappointments. He argued that his personal story — a working-class lad who went to law school and became a public prosecutor — made him a better leader than posh, blustering Johnson, whom he dismissed as “a trickster who has performed his one trick.”

“I don’t think Boris Johnson is a bad man,” Starmer said. “I think he is a trivial man. I think he’s a showman with nothing left to show.”

Labour has been out of office since 2010, a decade that has brought the country three Conservative prime ministers — David Cameron, Theresa May and Johnson.

Johnson’s Conservatives won a thumping 80-seat majority in Parliament in December 2019 by winning over voters in post-industrial northern England towns that had voted Labour for decades but feel neglected by successive governments.

Starmer wants to win them back. In his speech, he tackled many voters’ biggest concern about Labour — that the social democratic party will hike taxes and hobble the economy.

“Too often in the history of this party, our dream of the good society falls foul of the belief that we will not run a strong economy,” he said. “But you don’t get one without the other.”

He promised to improve workers’ conditions and the economy with “the blessing of British business,” in a step back from the class-conflict rhetoric of the party’s left wing.

A former national chief prosecutor, Starmer was elected Labour leader in April 2020 to replace hard-left leader Jeremy Corbyn, who had led the party to two heavy election defeats in 2017 and 2019 — the latter its worst result since 1935.

Yet Starmer has struggled to make an impact while the country’s attention was consumed by the coronavirus pandemic, which has left at least 135,000 people in Britain dead — the highest death toll in Europe after Russia. In recent days a fuel-supply crisis triggered by a truck-driver shortage has shut down thousands of gas stations and led to long lines of frustrated motorists around the country.

He also leads a party that is deeply divided after a decade out of power and was tarred by allegations of anti-Semitism under Corbyn.

Starmer is caught between two wings of the fractious party. Many Labour members think the party must veer to the center to win, as it did under former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who won three successive election victories. Yet Corbyn’s still-numerous supporters loathe Blair and want Starmer to stick to his predecessor’s socialist policies of nationalization and spending hikes.

The splits were clear as Starmer was sporadically heckled during a speech that lasted well over an hour. Starmer spoke beyond the room to the wider British public, taking aim at both the Conservative government and his own party.

He depicted Johnson’s administration as a chumocracy that awarded its friends with contracts while inequality in British society grew — something he linked to the country’s high coronavirus toll.

“There were cracks in British society and COVID seeped into them,” Starmer said.

He took on his hecklers by asking delegates whether they preferred “shouting slogans or changing lives.” Starmer set out a series of election-style promises to improve social care, education, working conditions and innovation.

Conference leaders’ televised speeches are one of the few chances politicians other than the prime minister have to address the public directly outside of election campaigns. Britain is not scheduled to hold a national election until 2024, though many expect Johnson to call one at least a year earlier than that.

Party conferences are an annual fixture of British politics, though they were curtailed in 2020 by the pandemic. This year, it’s back to business.

Labour’s conference ends Wednesday in the English southern seaside city of Brighton. The governing Tories hold their own four-day shindig in Manchester starting Sunday.

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