News in Brief

Date: 19 September 2022 - 21:29

News ID: ۱۰۷۰۶۷

LONDON (Reuters) -- The presence of Spain’s disgraced former King Juan Carlos at the state funeral of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth has prompted criticism at home, with one political party calling him a “criminal on the run”. Spain’s official delegation is led by King Felipe and his wife Queen Letizia. Felipe came to the throne when his father abdicated in 2014 amid a series of scandals. But Juan Carlos, who was related to the late Queen Elizabeth, received a private invitation to attend, a British government source confirmed. His attendance alongside Spain’s official delegation has raised eyebrows since he now lives in exile in Abu Dhabi. The leftist Unidas Podemos, the junior party in Spain’s coalition government, criticized the presence of the former king at the funeral. “Inviting an on-the-run criminal to a state funeral shows you just what the monarchy is in the United Kingdom and in Spain,” Podemos spokesman Pablo Echenique told a news conference last week.

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TOKYO (AP) — A tropical storm slammed southwestern Japan with rainfall and winds Monday, leaving one person dead and another missing, as it swerved north toward Tokyo. Residential streets were flooded with muddy water from rivers, and swathes of homes lost power after Typhoon Nanmadol made landfall in the Kyushu region Sunday then weakened to a tropical storm. A man was found dead early Monday in his car that was sunk in water on a farm, said Yoshiharu Maeda, a city hall official in charge of disasters at Miyakonojo, Miyazaki prefecture. Separately, one person was missing after a cottage was caught in a landslide, according to a Miyazaki prefectural official. Nanmadol has sustained winds blowing at 108 kilometers per hour (67 mph) and gusts up to 162 kilometers (100 miles) per hour, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency. Tens of thousands of people spent the night at gymnasiums and other facilities in a precautionary evacuation of vulnerable homes.

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HAVANA (AP) — Hurricane Fiona bore down on the Dominican Republic Monday after knocking out the power grid and unleashing floods and landslides in Puerto Rico, where the governor said the damage was “catastrophic.” No deaths have been reported, but authorities in the U.S. territory said it was too early to estimate the damage from a storm that was still forecast to unleash torrential rain across Puerto Rico on Monday. Up to 30 inches (76 centimeters) was forecast for Puerto Rico’s southern region. Ernesto Morales, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in San Juan, said flooding reached “historic levels,” with authorities evacuating or rescuing hundreds of people across the island. “The damages that we are seeing are catastrophic,” said Gov. Pedro Pierluisi. Before dawn on Monday, authorities in a boat traveled through the flooded streets of the north coastal town of Catano and used a megaphone to alert people that the pumps had collapsed and urged them to evacuate as soon as possible.

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GENEVA (AP) — Switzerland’s federal criminal court on Monday convicted a Swiss-Italian woman of attempted murder and ties to the banned takfiri group Daesh over the stabbing of two women in a department store. She was handed a nine-year prison sentence. The attacker, who is in her late 20s but was not identified by name, was also convicted Monday by the court in the town of Bellinzona of “repeated illegal practice of prostitution,” the court said. Regulated prostitution is allowed in Switzerland. The verdict follows a four-day trial in late August and early September over the Nov. 24, 2020, attack in the Manor chain department store in the southern Swiss city of Lugano. The suspect was quickly detained and the two women who were attacked — seemingly at random — survived. Regional police said at the time that one had sustained serious but not life-threatening injuries, and the other had minor injuries.

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STANBUL (Reuters) -- Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay said on Monday that U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “biased” statements regarding the clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan “sabotage diplomacy efforts” and were unacceptable. Pelosi visited Armenia this weekend, in an unprecedented show of U.S. support for the country, which has for over three decades been locked in conflict with its neighbor Azerbaijan over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh. On Twitter, Oktay also called on Washington to clarify whether Pelosi’s statements reflect the official U.S. position.

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BISHKEK (Reuters) -- Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov urged his country on Monday to have trust in its army and strategic partners, and said there was no need for volunteer forces at the border with Tajikistan after deadly clashes there last week. At least 94 people were killed between Sept. 14 and 16 in fighting involving the use of tanks, aviation and rocket artillery on a disputed section of the border in Kyrgyzstan’s Batken province. Japarov also asked Kyrgyz not to trust “provocateurs who slander our strategic partners, friendly nations and peoples who share our position”. Tajikistan’s foreign ministry also said the key to resolving the conflict lay in negotiations, but it reiterated its position that it was Kyrgyzstan which started the conflict. Deputy Foreign Minister Sodik Emomi told a briefing that ethnic Tajiks who were not Tajik citizens were being detained in Kyrgyzstan and that Kyrgyz drones had been spotted flying into Tajik territory overnight. Former Soviet republics Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are both allied to Moscow and host Russian military bases. Russia has avoided taking sides in the conflict and urged the sides to resolve it peacefully.