News in Brief

Date: 22 April 2019 - 22:12

News ID: ۶۵۰۹۲

MANILA (Reuters) -- A magnitude 6.3 earthquake has struck the Philippines main island of Luzon and several people have been killed in collapsed buildings, media reports.
The quake struck 60 km (37 miles) northwest of the capital, Manila, at a depth of 40 km (25 miles), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said.
The governor of Pampanga province told a radio station that several people had been killed. Media reported some structures had collapsed and the Clark International Airport, a former U.S. military base, had suffered some damage and had closed.
Tall buildings swayed in Manila's main business district and some people evacuated their offices.
The Philippines is on the seismically active Pacific "Ring of Fire," a horse-shoe shaped band of volcanoes and fault lines circling the edges of the Pacific Ocean.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday sued to block a subpoena issued by the Democratic chairman of the U.S. House Oversight Committee that sought information about his personal and business finances.
The subpoena sought eight years of documents from Trump and several of his businesses, lawyers for Trump and the Trump Organization said in a court filing.
Elijah Cummings, the House Oversight Committee chairman, issued the subpoena to the president’s accountant after Trump’s former lawyer testified that Trump had inflated assets.
"Chairman Cummings’ subpoena is invalid and unenforceable because it has no legitimate legislative purpose,” the lawyers wrote.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and the U.S. House Oversight Committee did not immediately have a response.

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PARIS (AP) — Dozens of public housing advocates protested outside the gutted Notre Dame in Paris to demand that France’s poorest be remembered after donors pledged $1 billion to rebuild the cathedral and its destroyed roof.
Around 50 people from a French homeless association gathered Monday with placards reading "1 billion in 24 hours.” They chanted slogans directed at Bernard Arnault, the CEO of luxury group LVMH, who last week pledged 200 million euros ($226 million). Some chanted "Notre Dame needs a roof, we need a roof too!”
Paris police monitored the peaceful protest but didn’t intervene.
In addition to Arnault’s pledge, another billionaire, Francois Pinault, and his son pledged 100 million euros for the reconstruction effort from their company, which owns the Christie’s auction house and is the main shareholder for Gucci.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) -- Russia’ President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un are on track to meet by the end of April, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday.
Last week the Kremlin said that Kim Jong Un would travel to Russia this month, announcing the first Russia-North Korea summit since Kim came to power in 2011.

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TOKYO (Reuters) -- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling bloc suffered two rare losses in by-elections in an apparent warning from voters not to get complacent ahead of a national election for parliament’s upper house later this year.
The defeats in a lower house by-election in Osaka, western Japan, and another on the southern island of Okinawa - host to the bulk of U.S. military in the country - were the first such losses since Abe returned to office in December 2012, except for one uncontested poll.
"Each individual (ruling) Liberal Democratic Party member must take the results to heart and buckle down,” Abe told reporters on Monday morning.
The defeats in the Sunday polls come after Japan’s Olympics minister, Yoshitaka Sakurada, resigned a year before the Tokyo Games for remarks that offended people affected by the massive earthquake and tsunami that triggered nuclear meltdowns in 2011. A vice transport minister also quit over a separate gaffe.

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SKOPJE (Reuters) -- Macedonia’s pro-Western candidate, Stevo Pendarovski, and his main rival Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova emerged tied in the first round of presidential vote dominated by deep divisions over a change of the country’s name to North Macedonia under a deal with Greece.
The change, which Greece demanded to end what it called an implied territorial claim on its northern province also called Macedonia, resolves a decades-old dispute and opens the door to Macedonian membership of NATO and the European Union.
But the accord continues to divide Macedonians and has eclipsed all other issues during campaigning for Sunday’s election, in which about 1.8 million voters were able to chose among three candidates.
Results on the State Election Commission website based on 98 percent of the votes counted showed Pendarovski got 42.7 of the votes, while Siljanovska-Davkova had 42.5 percent of the votes.
The two will face a run-off on May 5, reflecting differences over the deal pushed through by the pro-Western government of Prime Minister Zoran Zaev.
Blerim Reka, candidate of the second largest Albanian party came third with 10.4 percent of the votes.

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BERLIN (AP) -- Swiss police said two incendiary devices have been thrown at the Turkish consulate general in Zurich and that three men have been arrested.
Zurich police say officers patrolling the area noticed the incident, in which a hedge outside the building caught fire, shortly before 3 a.m. Monday.
They were able to extinguish the blaze immediately.
They arrested three men aged 17, 18 and 19 who tried to flee the scene when they saw police arrive. Police appealed for witnesses who may have noticed any suspicious activity to come forward.