Family members of passengers of a sunken cruise ship cry after marching toward the site of the sunken ship in the Jianli section of Yangtze River, Hubei province, China, June 4, 2015. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

By John Ruwitch and Megha Rajagopalan

JIANLI, China (Reuters) - China has pledged that there would be "no cover-up" of an investigation into the sinking of a cruise ship on the Yangtze River, which has left 75 people dead and over 370 missing, as angry families gathered near the rescue site to demand answers.

President Xi Jinping convened a special meeting of the ruling Communist Party's Politburo Standing Committee, the apex of power in the country, on Thursday to discuss the disaster, state news agency Xinhua said.

Authorities are investigating the crew members who were rescued from the Eastern Star, which capsized in a freak tornado on Monday night, and were "gathering evidence", Xu Chengguang, the spokesman for the Ministry of Transport, said.

"We will never shield mistakes and we'll absolutely not cover up (anything)," Xu told a news conference on Wednesday night, adding a preliminary investigation had begun.

The Politburo Standing Committee called on rescuers to "take all possible measures" to save the injured and urged a "serious investigation into the cause of the incident", Xinhua said.

View gallery

Family members of passengers of a sunken cruise ship cry after marching toward the site of the sunke …

They also stressed that "the work of appeasing the families is very important" and called on local authorities to "understand the families' grief, carry out appeasement efforts and earnestly safeguard social stability".

Only 14 survivors, including the captain and chief engineer, have been found since the ship carrying 456 people capsized.

Police have detained the captain and chief engineer for questioning. An initial investigation found the ship was not overloaded and had enough life vests on board.

ANGRY RELATIVES

The announcement of the investigation came hours before dozens of relatives broke through a police cordon in bid to reach the disaster site.

View gallery

Family members of passengers of a sunken cruise ship push a cordon of paramilitary police as they ma …

Frustrated by the scarcity of information from local authorities, about 50 family members hired a bus to take them from Nanjing to Jianli county in Hubei, an eight-hour journey.

The ship had been on an 11-day voyage upstream from Nanjing, near Shanghai, to Chongqing.

Taxi drivers in Jianli were instructed on Thursday not to take family members to the local crematorium where the dead were transported.

A taxi driver showed a Reuters reporter a message on his mobile phone which instructed drivers to say they were unable to take them there because of "traffic control measures".

An official from the Jianli vehicle management office, surnamed Liao, told Reuters by telephone, however, that there was a mistake with the text message and that it was meant to say the "rescue site".

View gallery

Family members of passengers of a sunken cruise ship push a cordon of paramilitary police as they ma …

Several family members managed to reach the crematorim and entered inside, said a shopkeeper who worked nearby.

Relatives have asked the government to release the names of survivors and the dead, and questioned why most of those rescued were crew members. Some have also demanded to know why the boat did not dock in the storm, and why the rescued captain and crew members had time to put on life vests but did not sound any alarm.

There was a heavy security presence outside one of the hotels where some family members were staying.

"Right now the government has an attitude of complete apathy towards us," said Cao Feng, 40, whose parents were on board. "We just want to be closer to our relatives."

June 4 marks the anniversary of the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators around Beijing's Tiananmen Square, and protests are usually quickly halted in China.

Rescuers are not giving up their search of the ship, which was carrying many elderly Chinese tourists, despite the fading hopes of relatives.

They have begun cutting small holes through the Eastern Star's upturned hull to get better access, although no more survivors have been found, state media reported.

(Additional reporting by Joseph Campbell and Engen Tham; Writing by Ben Blanchard, Kazunori Takada and Sui-Lee Wee; Editing by Paul Tait and Jeremy Laurence)

A pro-life activist holds a doll and banner while advocating his stance on abortion near the site of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina on September 4, 2012. REUTERS/Adrees Latif

By Marti Maguire

RALEIGH, N.C. (Reuters) - North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory said on Wednesday he will sign a law requiring pregnant women to wait three days between consulting a doctor and having an abortion, among the longest waiting periods in the nation.

McCrory, a Republican, faced intense lobbying from pro-choice advocates who hoped he would veto the measure, citing his campaign promise not to sign any further restrictions on abortion.

But in a statement released late Wednesday, McCrory said that the final version of the bill met his approval. He noted that he had worked with legislators to ensure that initial contact made with a health care provider could be a phone call, so the law would not require separate office visits.

“Some very positive progress was made during the last several days to protect women’s health,” McCrory said. “Therefore, I will sign this bill.”

Once the measure becomes law, North Carolina will join Missouri, South Dakota and Utah in requiring a 72-hour waiting period. Last month, Oklahoma also adopted a 72-hour waiting period. A total of 24 states require some waiting period before an abortion can be performed, and several are considering new or longer restrictions this year.

North Carolina's bill triples the state's current 24-hour waiting period. McCrory's vow to sign it came after the state House of Representatives gave its final approval, agreeing to slightly modified form that passed the Senate on Monday. The house initially approved the bill in April. All three votes fell largely along party lines.

Protesters rallied on Wednesday in Raleigh and in Charlotte, where McCrory was once mayor, to urge a veto. At one rally, the side of a truck bore McCrory's image alongside his campaign promise.

Critics noted that McCrory signed into law a previous measure tightening regulation of abortion clinics. In a statement urging McCrory to veto the waiting period bill, Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said he was being given "a second chance to make good on his promise not to interfere with women’s access to safe, legal, essential health care.”

“No one should be forced to delay health care because politicians have the audacity to presume to know what is best for a woman and her family,” said Northup, whose organization advocates for abortion rights, in a statement.

(Editing by Barbara Goldberg; Editing by Michael Perry)

Kirkuk (Iraq) (AFP) - An air strike in the Iraqi town of Hawijah completely levelled one of the Islamic State group's largest car bomb factories, causing heavy casualties and extensive destruction, officials said.

The blast caused by the strike and the destruction of explosive material was heard as far as Kirkuk, a city under Kurdish control that lies 55 kilometres (34 miles) away.

Iraqi officials said the strike was carried out by a US-led coalition, which has defended its 10-month air campaign against IS despite a number of recent advances by the jihadists in Iraq and Syria.

The facility, which included tanks, Humvees and large quantities of explosives, was "the biggest factory in Iraq and Syria", an Iraqi colonel said.

Mohammed Khalil al-Juburi, the deputy head of the Kirkuk province security committee, confirmed details of the attack, which took place early on Wednesday.

Both said a large number of IS militants and civilians were killed and wounded in the strike on the edge of Hawijah but neither gave exact figures.

The coalition issued a statement listing its air strikes in Iraq and Syria over a period of 24 hours straddling Tuesday and Wednesday.

View gallery

Iraqi Sunni fighters battling Islamic State (IS) group jihadists alongside government forces fire th …

It mentions that a "VBIED (vehicle-born improvised explosive device) facility" was struck in the Hawijah area but does not provide any details.

Mobile phone photos obtained by AFP that were said to show the site of the explosion picture damage on a massive scale.

They show a huge field of debris -- cinderblocks, metal roofing, the twisted remains of vehicles -- that stretches as far as the eye can see.

IS has made vehicle bombs, in some cases huge trucks packed with explosives, a central feature of its military tactics

Hawijah, located 225 kilometres (140 miles) north of Baghdad, is an IS stronghold that lies at the crossroads of several fronts in Iraq.

Iraqi government and allied forces have been involved in a vast operation aimed at cutting off supply lines between the provinces of IS' self-proclaimed caliphate.

View gallery

Iraqi Shiite fighters from the Popular Mobilization units hold a position on the Tharthar frontline …

- 'Water war' -

One of the immediate goals is to isolate jihadists in Anbar, a vast western province whose capital Ramadi government forces lost on May 17 in a bruising setback.

Since taking the city, IS has closed one section of a diversion dam in a move officials warned would lower water levels in one branch of the Euphrates and make it easier for the jihadists to manoeuver and launch attacks.

"Daesh is now waging a filthy water war," said Sabah Karhout, the head of Anbar's provincial council, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

"Cutting the water is the worst crime they could commit. It will force children, women and elderly people to flee and allow them to move in to launch attacks," he said.

Arkan Khalaf al-Tarmuz, another provincial council member, said: "Daesh may not have enough fighters to face us in a conventional battle right now.

"So they are using water as a weapon to weaken areas where there are military bases."

US Deputy Security of State Anthony Blinken told France Inter radio that 10,000 IS members had been killed since the start of a nine-month-old US-led air campaign in Iraq and Syria.

IS has repeatedly sought to control Iraq's dams, in some cases reducing the water flow to areas under government control or flooding land to impede military operations.

"In the arid lands where the Islamic State fights, control of water is the ultimate weapon of terror," the Soufan Group intelligence consultancy said in a briefing note Wednesday.

At a Paris meeting that ended on Tuesday, Western powers and other members of the 60-nation coalition vowed more support for Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's efforts.

Abadi had said that IS's regained momentum was a sign of the international community's "failure" to provide adequate support.

But Washington, which continues to refuse to send combat troops back to Iraq, and the coalition insisted they had a "winning strategy" of air strikes combined with thousands of forces training and advising Iraqi forces.

"In Iraq right now we have the right strategy, a combination of air strikes, training and effective global partners," Blinken said at the meeting.