News in Brief

Date: 27 July 2021 - 21:39

News ID: ۹۲۷۵۹

PARIS (Dispatches) -- The Cuban Embassy in Paris said on Tuesday that its building had been attacked with petrol bombs, causing serious damage but no injuries to diplomatic staff. “We denounce the Molotov cocktail terrorist attack against our Embassy in Paris @EmbaCubaFrancia,” Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez tweeted. He said Havana held “the U.S. government responsible for its continued campaigns against our country that encourage this behavior and for its calls for violence, with impunity, from its territory.” Cuba has blamed the U.S. for provoking unrest in the country. Several days of unrest earlier led to at least one death, dozens of injuries, and more than 100 arrests. The protests erupted against the government of President Miguel Diaz-Canel as Cuba was experiencing its worst economic crisis in 30 years, with shortages of electricity and food exacerbated by the U.S. embargo. Diaz-Canel has held the U.S. embargo responsible for the economic difficulties.

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GENEVA (Reuters) -- At least 57 people drowned on Monday after a boat capsized off the Libyan coast near Khums, the latest tragedy in the Mediterranean where more than 1,100 have perished this year, the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) said. Bodies have not been recovered from the shipwreck, but survivors included migrants from Nigeria, Ghana and Gambia, IOM spokeswoman Safa Msehli told Reuters. “According to survivors brought to shore by fishermen and the coast guard, at least 20 women and two children were among those who drowned,” she said earlier by tweet. The migrants, the majority from West Africa, departed from Khums, presumably to reach Europe, Msehli said. Migrant boat departures to Italy and other parts of Europe from Libya and Tunisia have increased in recent months with better weather. Hundreds of thousands have made the perilous crossing in the last years, many fleeing conflict and poverty in Africa and the Middle East.

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OTTAWA (Reuters) -- Canada installed an indigenous woman as its governor general on Monday, the first such person to hold the post, in an elaborate ceremony that spotlighted the country’s effort to reconcile with its colonial past. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau named Mary Simon - a former journalist, ambassador, and Inuit community advocate - to serve as the representative in Canada of its head of state, Queen Elizabeth, earlier this month. Simon is the first indigenous person to take on the role, created more than 400 years ago to represent the colonial power on North American soil. The change comes as Canada grapples with the legacy of its treatment of indigenous people. Since May, hundreds of unmarked graves of children have been discovered at former “residential schools,” run for indigenous children forcibly separated from their families in what a Truth and Reconciliation Commission has called “cultural genocide.”

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MELBOURNE (Reuters) -- The chief executive of the Aboriginal group whose ancient rock shelters Rio Tinto Ltd detonated for an iron ore mine last year is stepping down from the organization, the group said on Tuesday. Carol Meredith will leave the role in September to spend more time with family overseas and the search for a new chief executive is underway, the PKKP Aboriginal Corporation, which administers the lands of the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people, said in a statement. Rio destroyed the rock shelters in Western Australia that showed some of the earliest evidence of Ice Age human habitation dating back 46,000 years, which ultimately cost the chief executive and a suite of others their jobs. It has pushed firmly into the limelight heritage management practices by Australian states and companies of the world’s oldest continuous culture, with a national inquiry underway and due to report findings towards the end of this year.

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SURFSIDE, Florida July 26 (Reuters) -- Remains of the last person still listed as missing in the collapse of a Florida condominium tower on June 24 have been recovered and identified, bringing the final confirmed death toll to 98, Miami-Dade County officials said. Remains of the latest victim, Estelle Hedaya, 54, were found by search teams on July 20, and medical examiners had been working since then to positively identify her before making Monday’s announcement, authorities said at a news conference. The Miami-Dade fire department’s round-the-clock search for additional victims at the beachfront site of the Champlain Towers South condo, in the Miami suburb of Surfside, was demobilized last Friday.

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PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Cambodian authorities have stopped five large containers of water buffalo meat imported from India after determining the shipment was tainted with the coronavirus, officials said Tuesday. The Health Ministry said the virus was detected in three of the five shipping containers of frozen meat being brought in by a private company. The contents of the three containers were to be destroyed later in the week, the ministry said in a statement. Cambodia temporarily suspended imports from India during its massive surge in coronavirus cases earlier this year, but began allowing them again in recent weeks as the Indian numbers declined.