News in Brief

Date: 21 June 2026 - 23:05

News ID: ۱۵۱۱۶۲

ATHENS (Reuters) - Greek authorities have ordered the evacuation of two settlements on Evia Island and deployed dozens of firefighters, planes and helicopters to battle a major wildfire there. In a statement on Saturday, ‌the country’s ‌firefighting department said 88 ‌firefighters and volunteers were working to extinguish the blaze. Eight firefighting aircraft and six helicopters have also been deployed to help the effort. Authorities said ‌they ‌have asked residents of ‌two endangered communities to evacuate. Strong ‌northerly winds were causing new fires, the firefighting department said. Greece and other ‌Mediterranean countries are in an area considered a wildfire hotspot by scientists, with blazes common during hot and dry summers.

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TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan’s military will hold a five-day combat readiness drill this week, the defense ‌ministry said on Sunday, as part of modernization plans to shift its training focus to more realistic exercises simulating war, away from setpiece events. The “Immediate Combat Readiness Exercise” would start on Monday and run until Friday, the defense ministry said in a statement, describing the drill as part of annual training plans in joint operations for the armed forces. “The main objective is to train units at all levels to become familiar with combat practices and the battlefield environment during the readiness deployment phase,” it said.

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NOVI SAD (Reuters) - Thousands protested in Serbia’s northern city of Novi Sad on Saturday to mark the 2024 deaths of 16 people after a railway station awning collapsed and demand snap general elections. Student-led anti-government protests that turned ‌violent at times spread across Serbia following the disaster, rattling the 13-year rule of populist Aleksandar Vucic and his Serbian Progressive Party. The Reuters Daily  Protesters, opposition and rights groups allege the railway station disaster was a sign of broader government mismanagement of construction projects and corruption. In Novi Sad, Serbia’s second-largest city, thousands of protesters stood in temperatures of around 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) chanting “Victory” and jeering Vucic and SNS. Many carried banners and wore t-shirts reading “Students are winning.”

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SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has maintained his lead over opposition right-wing Senator ‌Flavio Bolsonaro in the race for the October presidential election, a new poll by Datafolha showed on Saturday. Lula, of the left-wing Workers’ Party, would win a potential second-round runoff against the senator by 47% to 43%, repeating last month’s results, Datafolha said. The Reuters Inside  In the most likely first-round scenario, the incumbent polled at 41% compared to 31% for Bolsonaro. The new Datafolha survey suggests that the senator may have stemmed the ‌electoral damage caused by the revelation that he asked a now jailed banker to finance a film about his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, who has been convicted of plotting a coup against the democratic order.

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LONDON (Reuters) - Scottish police said on Sunday they had charged a 36-year-old man after a series of attacks in Edinburgh on Friday, which Prime Minister Keir Starmer said appeared to have an anti-Muslim motive. Five men sustained injuries in the attacks ‌and three required hospital treatment for non-life-threatening injuries, police had previously said. Videos on social media showed a half-naked, tattooed, white man who appeared to be carrying a large weapon chasing an Asian man and then attempting to break his way into a restaurant, before later being handcuffed on the ground by police.