News in Brief

Date: 13 August 2019 - 21:25

News ID: ۶۹۲۵۹

LONDON (Reuters) -- A majority of Britons believe Prime Minister Boris Johnson must take Britain out of the European Union "by any means”, even if that involves suspending parliament, an opinion poll conducted for the Daily Telegraph said on Monday.
Johnson has promised to lead Britain out of the EU on Oct. 31 regardless of whether he manages to secure an exit deal with Brussels, despite many in parliament being opposed to leaving without a deal.
A ComRes opinion poll showed 54% of respondents said they agreed with the statement: "Boris (Johnson) needs to deliver Brexit by any means, including suspending parliament if necessary, in order to prevent MPs (Members of Parliament) from stopping it.”
Johnson is seeking a deal with the EU but has not ruled out suspending parliament to prevent lawmakers’ attempts to block a no-deal exit.

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MOSCOW (Dispatches) — The Kremlin on Tuesday said President Vladimir Putin does not see a series of recent protests in Moscow as anything significant.
The Russian capital has been gripped by three consecutive weekends of opposition protests, with police arresting and detaining more than 1,000 people.
Giving the Kremlin’s first official comments on the protests in Moscow, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that Putin has not spoken out about the demonstrations because he does not think there is anything "exceptional” about them.
"Protests happen in many countries,” he said, adding that there are more important events in Russia for the president to care about.
Peskov rejected suggestions that the protests have plunged the Kremlin into a political crisis and defended police response at the three weekends of protests.
"We believe that a disproportionate use of force by law enforcement officers is absolutely unacceptable but we think that the police response in clamping down on rioting was totally justified,” Peskov told reporters.

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KIEV (Reuters) -- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy signed a decree on Tuesday offering citizenship to Russians suffering political persecution, and also to foreigners who fought on Kiev’s side in the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Zelenskiy had announced such a move last month in response to a Russian decree expanding the number of Ukrainians who can apply for fast-track Russian passports.
Separately Ukraine’s state security service declared a Russian consular officer in the western city of Lviv as persona non grata, accusing him of spying. The officer had already left the country, a statement said.
Relations between Kiev and Moscow plunged after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its support for fighters in the eastern Donbass region in a conflict that has killed 13,000 people despite a notional ceasefire.
Zelenskiy has prioritized achieving peace in the Donbass region, but days after his election victory in April Russian President Vladimir Putin eased rules for residents of rebel-controlled parts of Donbass to receive passports. In July he extended the offer to government-held areas.

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BRUSSELS (AP) — The United Nations refugee agency urgently appealed to European governments Tuesday to let two migrant rescue ships disembark more than 500 passengers who remain stranded at sea as countries bicker over who should take responsibility for them.
The people rescued while attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa are on ships chartered by humanitarian aid groups, which the Italian government has banned from its territory. The archipelago nation of Malta has refused to let the ships into the country’s ports.
It’s unclear where they might find safe harbor, even though the Italian island of Lampedusa appears closest. About 150 of the rescued passengers have been on the Spanish-flagged charity ship, the Open Arms, since they were plucked from the Mediterranean 13 days ago.

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BISHKEK (Reuters) -- The head of Kyrgyzstan’s security forces on Tuesday accused ex-president Almazbek Atambayev on Tuesday of planning to stage a coup, state news agency Kabar said, following a deadly clash last week with police sent to his house to arrest him.
Atambayev surrendered on Thursday when police raided his home and detained him for questioning over a corruption case, laying bare a power struggle with his successor Sooronbai Jeenbekov that has pushed the Central Asian nation to the brink of political crisis.
Atambayev’s supporters had repulsed a similar raid the previous day in which a deputy commander of a special forces unit was killed.
In an indictment related to the botched raid, prosecutors on Tuesday charged him with murder, hostage-taking and causing mass unrest, Kabar said. Atambayev has dismissed criminal investigations against him as politically motivated and illegal.

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KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) -- A naked body believed to be that of a Franco-Irish teen who disappeared from a Malaysian resort was found in a jungle ravine Tuesday after a 10-day search involving a massive team.
A helicopter winched the body out of the rainforest and transported it to hospital, where the parents of missing 15-year-old Nora Quoirin were headed to identify it.
She disappeared from the Dusun Resort, not far from Kuala Lumpur, on August 4, a day after checking in for a holiday with her London-based family.
Her family believed she had been abducted but police originally classified it as a missing person case.
The body was found in a small stream in a ravine about 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) from the resort, Malaysia's deputy national police chief Mazlan Mansor told a press conference.