News in Brief

Date: 13 August 2021 - 22:02

News ID: ۹۳۳۴۲

BEIJING (Dispatches) - The China’s Foreign Ministry has called on Canada not to interfere in China’s judicial sovereignty following its protests over two crime cases involving two of its citizens. In a public statement, spokesperson Hua Chunying said Canada’s move has seriously violated the spirit of the rule of law and China condemns such act, CGTN reported. A Chinese court on Tuesday upheld a death sentence against Robert Lloyd Schellenberg, a Canadian national convicted of smuggling 222.035 kilograms of methamphetamine in China in 2018.

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ATHENS (Dispatches) - A British-flagged boat, reportedly carrying tourists, has sunk off the Greek island of Milos with a rescue operation involving several vessels and a navy helicopter dispatched to find the 17 passengers, according to reports. Speaking to channel ERT, Spokesman of the Ministry of Shipping Nikos Kokkalas confirmed media reports that a vessel, believed to be a yacht, carrying 17 passengers sank on Thursday morning. All passengers are now safe. According to ERT, Kokkalas added that the passengers themselves had raised a distress signal and had time to put their life jackets on before the vessel sank. A speedboat was first at the scene and collected passengers from the sea.

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WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The United States on Friday unveiled sanctions on two Cuban Interior Ministry officials and a military unit over purported human rights abuses, the U.S. Treasury Department announced. “Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned two Cuban individuals and one Cuban entity pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13818, which builds upon and implements the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act and targets perpetrators of serious human rights abuse and corruption around the world,” the department said.

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LONDON (The Guardian) - America’s white population declined for the first time while U.S. metro areas were responsible for almost all of the country’s population growth, according to groundbreaking new data released on Thursday by the U.S. census bureau. Overall, the white-alone population fell by 8.6% since 2010, the bureau said on Thursday. Non-hispanic whites now account for around 58% of America’s population, a drop from 2010 when they made up 63.7% of the population. It was the first time that the non-Hispanic white population has fallen below 60% since the census began, The Guardian reported.

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PORT-AU-PRINCE (Dispatches) - Haiti will hold a presidential election on November 7, following the assassination of President Jovenel Moise last month, which threw the country into political chaos. Haiti’s provisional electoral council said legislative elections, delayed since 2019, and a constitutional referendum that had been twice postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic would also be held on the same day. The referendum had been previously scheduled for September. According to the new electoral calendar, the second round of the presidential and legislative elections will be held on January 23, 2022, when municipal and local elections delayed for years will also be held.