News in Brief

Date: 23 July 2023 - 21:58

News ID: ۱۱۷۵۴۳

ATHENS (Reuters) – Nine people were killed and injured following a bridge collapse in Patras, Greece. Part of a bridge collapsed on Sunday along a ring road in Patras, Greece’s third-largest city, killing one person and injuring eight, the fire brigade said. Fire brigade rescuers were on the scene to pull out any people trapped, fire brigade spokesman Ioannis Artopoios said. Part of the bridge was reduced to a mass of broken concrete slabs and iron rods and dozens of rescuers were working at the spot, footage from Greek media showed. Another fire brigade official said that the bridge had been closed last week due to reconstruction works.

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MADRID (Xinhua) – Voters went to the polls in Spain on Sunday for a snap general election, and 37.4 million Spaniards were eligible to vote. The snap election was called by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez following the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party’s (PSOE) disappointing display in the local and regional elections held at the end of May. Polls opened at 09:00 local time and remained open until 20:00 local time. The latest opinion polls gave a slim margin of victory to the right-wing People’s Party (PP) who could possibly form a coalition government with the far-right Vox party. In his speech at the PSOE’s end of campaign rally on Friday, Sanchez said the party was “coming back” into the race, stressing the possibility of victory to allow the PSOE to continue its progressive policies together with the left-wing Sumar coalition. Sanchez cast his vote in Madrid, less than 10 minutes after the polls opened and made a call for “all I can do is ask the biggest possible mobilization of voters, to give Spain a strong government that can continue to advance.” “The general elections are not only important for us, but also for the world and Europe,” said Sanchez.

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KINSHASA (Reuters) – At least 13 people were killed when a soldier in the east Democratic Republic of Congo opened fire on people gathered to mourn his deceased child on Saturday night, the army and a local official said on Sunday. The shooting occurred in the village of Nyakova on the banks of Lake Albert in Congo’s eastern Ituri province. “The soldier opened fire on all those around him. A dozen people died,” Ituri army spokesman Jules Ngongo said via telephone. Search teams are looking for the soldier, a member of Congo’s navy, and an investigation into the incident has been opened, he said. Village chief Oscar Baraka Muguwa said 13 people were killed, including nine children. It was unclear what led the soldier to begin shooting. According to Muguwa, the soldier was concerned his child would be buried without him there.

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SYDNEY (Xinhua) – Police in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) announced that three people were injured in a public place shooting in Greenacre, a suburb in Southwestern Sydney, on Sunday morning. A man, aged 25, was found injured in one parked vehicle, as well as a man, aged 22, and a woman, aged 19, in a separate parked vehicle. All three people had been taken to hospital. Among them, the two men were in critical condition, according to the police. Detective Superintendent Simon Glasser told local media that the investigation is in its infancy, but the police believe it is a targeted attack.

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PHNOM PENH (AP) – The party of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen declared a landslide victory in a general election on Sunday, a vote that critics widely dismissed as a sham aimed at cementing the party’s rule before an expected transfer of power to his eldest son. The contest was effectively a one-horse race, with Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), a political behemoth with a vast war chest, facing no viable opponent. Polls closed with a turnout of 84% according to the election committee, with 8.1 million people voting in a much-criticized contest between CPP and 17 mostly obscure parties, none of which won seats in the last election in 2018. The only opponent with any real clout was disqualified from running. “We’ve won in a landslide ... but we can’t calculate the number of seats yet,” said CPP spokesperson Sok Eysan.

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TOKYO (Reuters) – Top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi proposed high-level talks between China, Japan and South Korea in a meeting with the Japanese foreign minister in Indonesia this month, Kyodo news agency reported on Sunday. The proposal is seen as signaling a willingness to resume talks among the three countries and Japan would accelerate preparations to make it happen by the end of the year, Kyodo reported, citing unidentified diplomatic sources. U.S. allies Japan and South Korea are wary of China’s increasing military assertiveness and of growing tensions between China and the U.S. over a range of issues including trade and Taiwan. China’s foreign ministry did not immediately comment and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tokyo could not be reached for comment on Sunday, outside business hours. Wang and Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi met on the sidelines of an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting in Indonesia on July 14.