News in Brief

Date: 13 August 2022 - 21:17

News ID: ۱۰۵۶۸۰

NAIROBI (Dispatches) – As Kenya’s election count has dragged into its fifth day, official election results show that opposition leader and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga is leading the presidential race against his main challenger Deputy President William Ruto. According to results provided by Kenya’s election commission and displayed on a large screen at a national tallying center in the capital, Nairobi, on Saturday, Odinga had 54 percent and Ruto had 45 percent with just over 26 percent of votes counted. People in Kenya voted to elect their fifth president since independence on Tuesday, amid harsh economic conditions. More than 22 million Kenyans had registered to vote in the seventh general elections, which also included parliamentary and local polls, since multiparty democracy was established in the country of 53 million in 1992. Official results will be announced within a week. The candidates need more than half of all votes, as well as more than 25 percent of the votes in over half of the country’s 47 counties, to avoid a runoff. However, official vote tallying has been proceeding slowly, fueling public anxiety.

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MADRID (Xinhua) – One person has died and another 40 were injured early Saturday morning after strong gusts of wind led to the collapse of several structures and parts of the stage at a music festival in the Spanish coastal town of Cullera. The festival was being held in Cullara Valencia when sudden strong winds hit the area at around 4:20 a.m., and videos showed dust and debris being blown through the air. The person who died has been described as a 28-year-old man, with at least three of those injured suffered fractures, while the others have cuts and bruises of varying degrees and were evacuated to hospital in Valencia by emergency services. The festival organizers have issued a statement saying the festival site has been evacuated and “temporarily suspended.” The Civil Guard has opened an investigation to determine the causes of the young man’s death.

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CAIRO (AP) — Libyan authorities said Saturday they found at least 15 migrants dead in the desert on the borders with Sudan, the latest tragedy involving migrants seeking a better life in Europe via perilous journeys through the conflict-wrecked nation. The Department for Combating Irregular Migration in the southeastern city of Kufra said the migrants were on their way from Sudan to Libya when their vehicle broke down due to lack of fuel. The agency said nine other migrants survived while two remain missing in the desert. There were women and children among the migrants, but the agency did not elaborate on how many. It also did not reveal causes of the migrants’ death, but said they did not have enough food and water.

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HAVANA (AFP) – Colombia’s government has given the green light to resume peace talks with the country’s largest remaining rebel force, a key electoral promise that brought leftist President Gustavo Petro to power earlier this week. Colombian government officials on Friday met with members of the National Liberation Army (ELN) in Havana, where they have been based since 2018, with Bogota saying it officially recognizes the “legitimacy of dialogue... in the search for peace.” “Both parties agree on the need to restart a dialogue process with facts that show Colombian society and the world that this will is real,” High Commissioner for Peace Danilo Rueda said. Present at the meeting were officials from Norway and Cuba, the guarantors of the talks, as well as representatives of the UN secretary-general and the Colombian Episcopal Conference. Petro, a former guerilla who has vowed to pursue negotiations with the rebels, has said that he wants to strike new peace agreements with the ELN and other armed organizations, as well as end the government’s “war on drugs,” which he considers a failure.

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MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Hundreds of Mexican soldiers were sent to the border city of Juarez Friday after a prison face-off between members of two rival cartels caused a riot and shootouts that killed 11 people, most of them civilians, authorities said. Los Chapos, members of the infamous Sinaloa Cartel formerly led by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, and local group Los Mexicles clashed in a prison, Deputy Security Minister Ricardo Mejia said. A riot then broke out, leaving two shot to death and four injured with bullet wounds, Mejia said, speaking alongside Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador at a regular news conference. Another 16 were injured in the fighting, he said. Officials did not say what caused the clash. Following the riot, the Mexicles rampaged in the city, authorities said, killing nine civilians. Among them were four employees of a radio station, including one announcer, Mejia said. Across town, convenience stores were shot at and set on fire. FEMSA, the parent company of the Oxxo chain, said in a statement that one of its employees and a woman who was applying for a job were killed in the violence.

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TOKYO (Al Jazeera) – Japan’s new industry minister, Yasutoshi Nishimura, has become the first member of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s cabinet to visit the controversial Yasukuni Shrine for war dead in Tokyo, local media reported. Nishimura, who was appointed to his ministerial post on Wednesday following a cabinet reshuffle, visited the shrine on Saturday, Kyodo News reported. Yasukuni is seen in China and South Korea as a symbol of Japanese former military aggression because it honors, among some 2.5 million war dead, 14 Japanese World War II leaders convicted as war criminals by an allied tribunal. “I resolved to make utmost efforts for the peace and development of Japan, also thinking of the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe,” Nishimura told reporters, according to Kyodo News, and referencing the former Japanese premier killed last month. Abe was engulfed in controversy when he visited the shrine in December 2013, shortly after taking office. He refrained from visiting Yasukuni for the rest of his tenure as prime minister to avoid angering China and South Korea.