Nine of the 17 people who died when a tour boat sank in a Missouri lake on Thursday were from the same family, according to the state’s governor.
Governor Michael Parson said that he spoke to a woman who “lost nine of the 11 members of her family.”
The woman said the boat’s captain had told passengers not to put on life jackets, US media report.
The “duck boat” was carrying 31 people when it overturned on Table Rock Lake, a popular tourist attraction.
Missouri Highway Patrol said the ages of the deceased range from one to 70.
The woman who says she lost nine members of her family has been named as Tia Coleman, according to reports.
“I lost all my children, I lost my husband, I lost my mother-in-law, I lost my father-in-law, I lost my uncle, I lost my sister-in-law – she was my sister – and I lost my nephew, I’m OK, but this is really hard,” she told a TV news station.
“The captain told us ‘Don’t worry about grabbing the life jackets, you won’t need them,’ so nobody grabbed them because we listened to the captain and he told us to stay seated.
“However in doing that, when it was time to grab them it was too late. I believe that a lot of people could have been spared.”
The captain was among those who survived.
He is now in a hospital.
During a press conference on Friday, Sheriff Doug Rader could not say whether passengers were wearing life vests at the time of the capsizing, or if the boat’s windows were open.
Missouri law requires all children under the age of seven to wear life jackets on boats, unless they are in the “cabin area.”
The vessel sank in 40ft (12m) of water before plunging to a final depth of 80ft.
Sheriff Rader said divers have located the sunken boat and will try to recover it.
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Facebook investigates data firm Crimson Hexagon
Facebook has suspended a US-based analytics firm while it investigates concerns about the collection and sharing of user data.
Crimson Hexagon, based in Boston, describes itself as offering “consumer insights” and has contracts with government agencies around the world.
Facebook said it was looking into whether some of these deals were in violation of its policies on surveillance.
The network said it had not found any evidence so far that data had been improperly obtained.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Crimson Hexagon has “contracts to analyse public Facebook data for clients including a Russian nonprofit with ties to the Kremlin and multiple US government agencies.”
In March 2017, Facebook prohibited user data being used for government surveillance following pressure from civil liberties groups concerned about the targeting of dissidents and protesters.
“We don’t allow developers to build surveillance tools using information from Facebook or Instagram,” a Facebook spokesman said in a statement on Friday.
“We take these allegations seriously, and we have suspended these apps while we investigate.”
Crimson Hexagon works with a data set that includes, according to its own website, more than one trillion social media posts taken from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and others.
It boasts of being able to analyse more than 160m photographs posted online every day.
As well as government work, Crimson Hexagon has had deals with commercial companies including Adidas, Samsung and the BBC.
Gathering and sharing “data insights” with businesses is not against Facebook’s policies.
“People can share their information with developers on Facebook and Instagram – just as they can when they download an app on their phone,” said Ime Archibong, Facebook’s head of partnerships.
He said developers were allowed to “use public or aggregated information to produce anonymised insights for business purpose.”
Where Crimson Hexagon would fall foul of Facebook’s rules is if the data was used to create tools for surveillance, though Facebook has never clarified how its policy works in practice.
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Former Farc rebels take seats in Colombia congress
Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos has welcomed former Farc rebels as they took their seats at the opening session of parliament.
He said he was happy to see ex-rebels who fought the state for over five decades now respecting the constitution.
The new members of congress took up their seats on Friday as part of the peace deal reached in 2016.
The president urged his successor, Ivan Duque, to defend peace in Colombia.
“Today we are witnessing a true milestone in our history,” said Mr. Santos, who ends his term in office next month.
The Farc, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, is now a political party known as the Revolutionary Alternative Common Force.
It has five seats in the Senate and five in the House of Representatives.
But rebel commander Ivan Marquez declined to take up his designated seat in protest at the detention of a fellow former rebel leader, Jesus Santrich, who also has a congressional seat reserved for him.
He is wanted by the US on drug trafficking charges.
President-elect Duque wants to prevent former rebels from sitting in congress until they are investigated and pay for crimes they may have committed during the civil war.
The former president, Alvaro Uribe, who heads Mr. Duque’s Democratic Centre Party, condemned their presence in parliament.
In a tweet, he described a “Congress with people convicted of atrocious crimes, without paying reparations, without fulfilling symbolic sanctions.”
Analysts say the former rebels will not be welcomed by many in Congress, but believe that President-elect Duque will find it very difficult to make substantial changes to the peace agreement.
The 2016 deal was ratified by Congress and Mr. Santos was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing it about.
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Polish judges law: MPs back further changes amid row
Poland’s lower house of parliament has approved further laws to reform the judiciary – a move that critics say threatens democracy.
The changes backed by the Sejm make it easier to replace the Supreme Court Chief Justice Malgorzata Gersdorf.
Earlier this month, Prof Gersdorf had refused to step down, rejecting a controversial law forcing senior judges to retire early.
Poland’s Senate is expected to easily back the changes in the coming days.
The proposals then need to be signed by President Andrzej Duda, an ally of the governing conservative Law and Justice party (PiS), to become law.
They allow Prof. Gersdorf’s successor to be chosen when 80 judges are appointed to the 120-member Supreme Court.
Currently, the court’s chief justice is elected by 110 judges.
The governing party is hoping that the amendments will speed up the process.
Other changes will place lower courts under greater political control, one judges’ group says.
Critics also say the governing party is rushing the changes through in case the European Commission decides to bring a case against Poland at the European Court of Justice.
Last December, the commission started an infringement procedure against Poland, saying the measures undermined judicial independence.
Poland’s authorities insist the reforms, some of which have already come into effect, are aimed at updating an inefficient system and replacing judges who date back to a communist era that ended in 1989.
