UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - World leaders are gathering at the UN headquarters in New York this week to address pressing global issues like wars, poverty and climate change. Representatives from UN member states, including some 150 heads of state and government, are in New York for the High-level Week of the 80th session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA). They will attend a series of high-level conferences and hold bilateral meetings. The 80th UNGA session, under the theme “Better together: 80 years and more for peace, development and human rights,” comes at a pivotal moment to renew global commitment to multilateralism, solidarity and shared action for people and planet. This year’s High-level Week highlights the urgency of delivering on the promise of the Sustainable Development Goals and reinvigorating global cooperation.

 

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The White House on Monday dismissed a request by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro for talks with counterpart Donald Trump to de-escalate tensions between the two arch-foes. The brush-off came as two Venezuelan opposition leaders backed a US naval build-up near the South American country, calling it critical for the restoration of democracy. Trump has dispatched eight warships and a submarine to the southern Caribbean in an anti-drug operation Venezuela fears could be the preamble to an invasion. US forces have destroyed at least three suspected Venezuelan drug boats in recent weeks, killing over a dozen people.

 

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MOSCOW - Russia continues to lead the world in uranium enrichment for nuclear power plants, a position that the West has been unable to alter, Kirill Komarov, a senior official of Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom, said on Monday. As First Deputy CEO for Corporate Development and International Business of Rosatom, Komarov stated that 25 percent of U.S. nuclear power plants rely on Russian uranium supplies. “We remain the world’s leader in uranium enrichment,” Komarov said. “And no matter how much some of our Western partners may want to change that, they have not been very successful so far. Our share of the global uranium enrichment market stands at nearly 40 percent.” He added that the United States operates the largest fleet of nuclear power plants, with a total installed capacity of nearly 100 gigawatts. 

 

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TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan’s fire department said on Tuesday that 30 people were missing and two people had died in the eastern county of Hualien, where a barrier lake in the mountains burst its banks in a typhoon. Taiwan has since Monday been lashed by the outer rim of Super Typhoon Ragasa, which is now on its way to the southern Chinese coast. The barrier lake, formed by landslides triggered by earlier heavy rain in the sparsely populated east of Taiwan, burst its banks mid-afternoon on Tuesday, sending a wall of water into Guangfu township. The fire department put the number of missing in Hualien following the flood at 30, with two deaths reported in Guangfu.

 

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Windhoek (AFP) – At least 90 buffaloes died while fleeing lions Tuesday after trampling on each other and falling off a cliff in Namibia’s far east, wildlife officials said. The stampede happened around 5:00 am (0300 GMT) along the Chobe River, in the Zambezi conservation area, a unique wildlife-rich zone of waterfalls, forests and marshes. The lions had chased the buffaloes from neighbouring Botswana, spokesperson for the tourism ministry Ndeshipanda Hamunyela told AFP. “It is an unfortunate incident. The animals fell from a deep cliff down into the river and some tumbled over each other,” she said. Footage posted on social media by state broadcaster Namibia Broadcasting Corporation showed about a dozen men with axes chopping up the buffalo carcasses and loading the meat onto pickup trucks.