News in Brief

Date: 01 November 2022 - 21:31

News ID: ۱۰۸۴۸۷

LONDON (AP) — Britain’s interior minister was facing criticism Tuesday for describing migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats as an “invasion.” Home Secretary Suella Braverman used the term while defending conditions at a processing center for new arrivals where some 4,000 people have been held in a facility intended for 1,600. Braverman referred to small-boat crossings on Monday as “the invasion of our southern coast” and said “illegal immigration is out of control.” Manston — a former airfield in southeast England — is supposed to be a temporary processing center where new arrivals spend 24 hours before moving on to longer-term accommodation, but refugee groups say some people have been stuck there for weeks. Some families are sleeping in tents, and there have been cases of diphtheria and scabies. Critics accuse Braverman of deliberately worsening conditions at Manston by refusing to book hotel rooms for asylum seekers. Britain’s government has announced a controversial plan to send people who arrive in small boats on a one-way journey to Rwanda — a plan it says will deter people from crossing the Channel and break the business model of smuggling gangs. Critics say the plan is immoral and impractical, and it is being challenged in the courts.

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MORBI, India (AP) — India’s prime minister was scheduled to visit the site in western India where a newly repaired 143-year-old suspension bridge collapsed into a river, sending hundreds plunging into the water and killing at least 134 in one of the country’s worst accidents in years. Narendra Modi was expected to reach Morbi town in Gujarat state later Tuesday. Gujarat is Modi’s home state and he was already visiting it at the time of the accident. He said he was “deeply saddened by the tragedy” and his office announced compensation for families of the dead. Angered and bereaved families mourned the dead as attention turned to why the pedestrian bridge, built during British colonialism in the late 1800s and touted by the state’s tourism website as an “artistic and technological marvel,” collapsed Sunday evening, and who might be responsible. The bridge had reopened just four days earlier.

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ATHENS, Greece (AP) — A major search and rescue operation was underway Tuesday for dozens of people reported missing after the boat they were on capsized and sank in stormy weather overnight off the coast of an island near the Greek capital. The incident was the latest in a series of recent shipwrecks involving migrant boats in Greek seas that have left dozens of people dead or missing. The coast guard said nine survivors, all men, had been found on an uninhabited islet south of the island of Evia and had been picked up by a coast guard vessel in the early hours of Tuesday. None had been wearing lifejackets, the coast guard said. The survivors told authorities there had been about 68 people on board the sailing boat when it sank, and that they had initially set sail from Izmir on the Turkish coast. The rescue operation was being hampered by particularly rough weather, with gale force winds, the coast guard said. The area where the boat sank, the Kafireas Strait between the islands of Evia and Andros, is notoriously treacherous, with even light winds kicking up rough seas.

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MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Tuesday blamed years of deforestation for a deadly mudslide that buried a mountainside community amid last week’s torrential rains set off by a storm that has left more than 130 people dead across the country. During an aerial inspection of the widespread damage wrought by Tropical Storm Nalgae in southern Maguindanao province, the president said he pointed out to the provincial governor how the mudslides cascaded on denuded slopes of Mount Minandar. The storm’s vast rain clouds swamped a wide swath of the Philippine archipelago, leaving at least 132 people dead and lashing another 2.4 million people, including some who had to be rescued from the roofs of flooded houses. More than 6,500 houses were either damaged, torn down or swept away by flash floods, according to disaster-response officials.

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RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazilian truckers supportive of President Jair Bolsonaro blocked hundreds of roads early Tuesday to protest his election loss to former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Since the leftist da Silva’s’s victory Sunday night, many truck drivers have jammed traffic in areas across the country and said they won’t acknowledge Bolsonaro’s defeat. Bolsonaro hasn’t spoken publicly since official results were released roughly 36 hours ago, nor phoned da Silva to concede. The highway to and from the international airport in Sao Paulo – Brazil’s most populous state and largest economy – was blocked and dozens of flights were canceled. Videos on social media showed travelers rolling their suitcases at night along the highway to the airport. Access was partially reestablished as of 8 a.m. local time.