News in Brief

Date: 19 July 2021 - 21:44

News ID: ۹۲۶۲۲

MUMBAI (Reuters) -- India’s capital New Delhi and the main financial centre of Mumbai were drenched with heavy rain on Monday, a day after at least 35 people were killed across the country in landslides and house collapses triggered by downpours.
The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) has predicted heavy to very heavy rain in north India, including New Delhi, over the next two days. In Mumbai, the IMD has issued a heavy rain and thunderstorm alert for the city and surrounding districts. At least 30 people were killed on Sunday in three Mumbai suburbs when several houses collapsed in landslides after rain. At least three people were also killed when a house collapsed in the northern state of Uttarakhand after a downpour, Reuters partner agency ANI reported. In a separate incident on Sunday evening, a three-storey building collapsed in the city of Gurugram, bordering Delhi. Two people were killed and rescue operations were still underway.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- President Joe Biden’s administration said on Monday that it had transferred its first detainee from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, a Moroccan man who had been imprisoned since 2002, lowering the population at the facility to 39. While former President Donald Trump kept the prison open during his four years in the White House, Biden has vowed to close it. Abdul Latif Nasir, 56, was repatriated to Morocco. He had been cleared for release in 2016. Morocco’s general prosecutor said in a statement that Nasser would be investigated for suspected involvement in terrorist acts, and a police source said he had been taken into custody in Casablanca.

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BRUSSELS/LONDON (Reuters) -- Britain will threaten this week to deviate from the Brexit deal unless the European Union shows more flexibility over Northern Ireland, one UK and three EU sources told Reuters, a move that could thrust the five-year Brexit divorce into tumult. Deviating from the deal’s so-called Northern Ireland Protocol is a risky step: its aim was to prevent Brexit from disrupting the delicate peace brought to Northern Ireland by the U.S.-brokered 1998 peace deal that ended three decades of sectarian conflict. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who signed the 2020 Brexit deal, has been dismayed by the protocol which has imposed paperwork and checks that London says could prevent British food staples such as sausages going to Northern Ireland. David Frost, the British minister who leads Brexit negotiations, is preparing to announce a significant potential change on the protocol that could have far-reaching consequences for the relationship with the EU, one of the sources said.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Claude Joseph, who has nominally led Haiti as acting prime minister since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, said in a Washington Post interview that he has agreed to step down, handing over power to a challenger backed by the international community. The announcement, made an in an exclusive interview with the U.S. newspaper, ends a power struggle between Joseph and Ariel Henry, the 71-year old neurosurgeon who was appointed prime minister by Moïse two days before the killing.

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SEOUL/TOKYO (Reuters) -- South Korean President Moon Jae-in will not visit Tokyo for the upcoming Olympics, his office said on Monday, scrapping plans for what would have been his first summit with Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga. The announcement came after Seoul lodged a protest over a news report on Friday that a senior diplomat at Japan’s embassy in Seoul had said Moon was “masturbating” when describing his efforts to improve relations between the two countries. “President Moon has decided not to visit Japan,” Moon’s press secretary Park Soo-hyun told a briefing, adding both sides had explored ways to tackle rows over history and boost cooperation but failed to reach agreement. “The discussions were held amicably and made considerable progress, but it still fell short of being considered as a summit result, and we took other circumstances into account,” Park said, without elaborating. Suga declined to comment on Moon’s decision, but described the Japanese diplomat’s remarks as “inappropriate.”

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SYDNEY (Reuters) -- Australian authorities said Victoria state would extend a COVID-19 lockdown beyond Tuesday to slow the spread of the highly infectious Delta variant, despite a slight drop in new infections in the state and nationwide. Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews said lockdown rules would not be lifted as cases were still being detected in the community, promising more details would be provided on Tuesday, when the lockdown had been due to end. “It would be perhaps a few days of sunshine and then there is a very high chance that we’d be back in lockdown again. That’s what I’m trying to avoid,” Andrews told a news conference in Melbourne, the state capital. Victoria, the country’s second most populous state, on Monday reported 13 locally acquired cases, down from 16 a day earlier. All new local cases are linked. Nearly half of Australia’s 25 million people are living under lockdowns imposed to quell an outbreak fuelled by the highly transmissable Delta variant, which has become the worst this year.