LONDON, Jun 4 : Emergency fire crews on Thursday continued to battle a blaze at Tata Steel UK’s steelworks at Port Talbot in south Wales, which a workers’ union said had caused “substantial damage”.
The Mid and West Wales Fire Service rushed several firefighters to the site on Wednesday evening and soon confirmed that on-site workers had all been accounted for and safely evacuated.
The company said emergency services remain on site and are working with local teams to completely “extinguish the fire”.
“The incident is not related to the safe and successful demolition of the empty, redundant Gas Holder earlier yesterday (Wednesday) evening,” reads a Tata Steel UK statement.
“We would like to thank local site teams and the emergency services for their prompt and professional action,” it adds.
Unite workers’ union general secretary Sharon Graham confirmed that no one was injured in the fire after workers were evacuated safely.
“The fire did cause substantial damage to a vital production line. Measures must now be put in place to protect jobs both at Tata and down the supply chain during any period of disruption,” said Graham.
“Meanwhile we are asking Tata and the government to ensure that operations are rebuilt as swiftly as possible,” she said.
Unite’s Wales secretary Peter Hughes added that the union is committed to working with the company to “ensure the long-term future of Port Talbot and the entire Tata operation in the UK”.
Residents based near the steelworks, one of the world’s largest, have been advised to keep windows and doors shut though the air quality is not believed to have been severely impacted.
“Large plumes of smoke are visible in the area. Residents are advised to keep windows and doors closed. Please avoid the area and use alternative routes where possible,” South Wales Police said.
In October 2024, Tata Steel ceased ironmaking at its Port Talbot site and temporarily paused steelmaking pending the construction of a 3.2Mtpa Electric Arc Furnace, due to be commissioned late in 2027 or early 2028.
Meanwhile, the business is expected to import slab and hot rolled coil to support manufacturing and distribution operations at sites across Wales, England and Northern Ireland as well as Norway, Sweden, France, Germany and the UAE.
The Mumbai-headquartered Tata Group expects Tata Steel in the UK would produce net-zero steel by 2045, reducing 30 per cent of its CO2 emissions by 2030.
The Tata Steel Group, pitching itself as one of the world’s most geographically diversified steel producers with operations and a commercial presence across the world, recorded a consolidated turnover of around 26 billion dollars in the financial year ending March 2025. (PTI )

COLOMBO, Jun 4 : At least 11 people were killed and seven others injured after a fire broke out at an elderly care home in Sri Lanka, police said on Thursday.
The blaze erupted at around 5:30 pm on Wednesday at the Mawpiya Sevana Elderly Care Home in Anguruwatota, about 65 km southeast of Colombo, in Kalutara district.
Police said 10 residents were found dead at the premises, while another succumbed to injuries after being admitted to the Horana Base Hospital.
A total of 51 residents were rescued from the facility, while seven injured persons remain hospitalised.
The fire was doused with the assistance of residents and police.
A magisterial inquiry has been ordered into the incident.
Initial reports said a gas cylinder exploded during the incident, contributing to the rapid spread of the flames. However, officials said the exact cause of the fire has not yet been determined.
According to newsfirst.lk news portal, the rescued residents have been temporarily accommodated at a nearby school, and arrangements are being made to relocate them to a safer facility. (PTI )

BEIJING, Jun 4 : Chinese authorities are snuffing out any remembrance of the deadly 1989 military crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, which happened 37 years ago on Thursday, in a further tightening of a yearslong campaign to erase what happened from public memory.
Police told relatives of the victims they would not be allowed to visit a cemetery in Beijing on the anniversary of the crackdown, a person with knowledge of the matter said. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because of fear of retribution.
Relatives of the victims visited the cemetery on the anniversary for more than 30 years to read memorial statements with police keeping watch, Amnesty International said. They belong to a group called Tiananmen Mothers.
Hundreds of people, and possibly thousands, were killed in 1989 as troops advanced through crowds that were trying to stop the military from reaching the protesters in Tiananmen Square, a vast plaza in the centre of the Chinese capital. The decision by the Communist Party leadership to send in the military was a pivotal moment in China’s modern history, determining that the market reform that transformed the country into the world’s second-largest economy would not be coupled with political liberalisation.
In Hong Kong, police stepped up security Thursday to prevent any kind of commemoration at or near a park where a massive candlelight vigil lit up the night on the anniversary every year until a clampdown following major anti-government protests in 2019. On Wednesday, they stopped two performance artists from making symbolic gestures in separate incidents. One briefly held up a question-mark-shaped balloon outside a department store.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who recently accompanied President Donald Trump on a state visit to Beijing, issued a statement marking the anniversary. “No amount of censorship can erase the past,” it said. “Those who sacrificed to uphold their unalienable rights of free expression and peaceful assembly will be vindicated someday.”
Tiananmen Mothers issued an annual appeal for justice ahead of this year’s anniversary. The statement, signed by 107 people, demanded full disclosure of what happened, compensation for the victims and their families and the pursuit of legal accountability for those responsible.
“The sacrifice of our family members is an indelible pain etched in our hearts. Our tears have run dry, grief is buried deep within, what remains is eternal remembrance of our family members and hatred for the crime of massacring the people,” Zhang Xianling, a member of the group, said in a video message posted on Facebook, which is blocked in China.
Amnesty said it is deeply troubling that China’s suppression of the commemoration appears to be escalating. “Banning the relatives of people killed in the Tiananmen crackdown from visiting their loved ones’ graves is a heartless act by the Chinese authorities,” Sarah Brooks, the organisation’s deputy director for Asia, said in a statement.
The Beijing Public Security Bureau did not respond to a faxed request for comment.
Authorities in Hong Kong have banned the vigil since 2020, at first citing the COVID-19 pandemic. Three of the organisers of the vigil have been charged under a 2020 national security law. One pleaded guilty, which may result in a lesser sentence. The other two have been tried and are awaiting a verdict.
One of them, lawyer Chow Hang-tung, said in an online post published last weekend that she would go on a 37-hour hunger strike in prison. “Behind the glitter of power and dictatorship lies the blood and broken dreams of ordinary people. For in amnesia lies the demise of democracy,” she wrote.
Derek Chu, a former district councillor, said on Instagram that he visited Chow on Thursday and told her he would also stop eating for 37 hours to show his support. He added that a shop he runs is giving out LED candles that can be used to remember the victims. (AP)

MELBOURNE, Jun 4 : A Yazidi woman has alleged she shared a bedroom with a woman accused of enslaving her in Syria and was repeatedly raped and beaten by the woman’s father, police told a court on Thursday.
Zeinab Ahmad, 31, applied for bail in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on two slavery charges. The hearing resumes Friday.
She and her mother Kawsar Ahmad, 53, also known as Kawsar Abbas, have been in custody since they returned to Australia from a Syrian refugee camp last month with a group of Australian women and children linked to the Islamic State group.
The Iraqi-born Yazidi witness, who cannot be named, said in a police statement that Mohammed Ahmad, Zeinab’s father and Kawsar’s husband, bought her for USD 10,000 in 2017 in the then-IS stronghold of Raqqa, Syria, Detective Senior Constable Mark Clendenning told the court.
Clendenning alleged Kawsar was involved in buying the teen as a slave, which was a rare role for a woman in the IS so-called caliphate.
“Mohammed and Kawsar had status and privileges within Islamic State usually not afforded to others that allowed exceptions to their usual practices,” Clendenning said.
The witness was brought into a house that the couple shared with their five daughters, including Zeinab, with whom the witness shared a room, Clendenning alleged.
Mohammed told the witness, “I bought you for the purpose of raping and at the same time serving the home,” according to Clendenning. He added that Mohammed introduced her to the family and told them, “I bought her for sex and to do housework.”
Zeinab’s first husband was killed in a drone attack in 2016, and she had remarried an Egyptian IS fighter, who had lost an arm in combat, police said.
Zeinab had been present when her father hit the witness and dragged her by the hair down two flights of stairs inside the house, police alleged. They said Mohammed, who is now in an Iraq prison, beat the witness two or three times a month while the family was present.
The witness said Mohammed sexually assaulted her “many times” despite her resisting, police said. The witness said Zeinab “did not physically hurt her, although she did threaten her very badly and ordered her to do things around the house,” Clendenning alleged.
Mohammed sold the witness for USD 10,000 in 2018, 16 months after she was bought, police said. Mohammed told the witness she was “bad” and did not do as she was told, according to police.
IS persecute the Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking ethno-religious minority mostly found in Syria, Iraq and Turkiye.
The witness said she was 15 years old when she was among 6,800 Yazidi women and children enslaved and was traded between IS members 17 times over five years before she was freed by Kurdish forces in 2019.
Three generations of the Ahmad family moved from Melbourne to Syria via Turkiye in 2013 and 2014. Zeinab flew there with her husband in 2014, police alleged.
Clendenning said releasing Zeinab from custody would pose an unacceptable risk of endangering the safety and welfare of the public.
She had married multiple men involved with IS and was currently married to an Egyptian IS member, whose whereabouts were unknown, he said.
“The accused has never explicitly renounced or stated that she no longer supports Islamic State since her surrender to Kurdish forces,” Clendenning said.
She is charged with two crimes against humanity: enslavement and use a slave. Each carries a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison. (AP)