News in Brief

Date: 27 September 2021 - 21:56

News ID: ۹۴۸۲۹

ATHENS (Reuters) -- A strong earthquake measuring 5.8 shook Greece’s largest island Crete on Monday and one person was killed when a church dome collapsed, authorities said. The quake, which sent people out of their homes and public buildings and caused considerable damage, was described by a Greek seismologist, Efthymios Lekkas, as a “thunderbolt” with strong aftershocks. A man died when the dome of a church in the town of Arkalochori caved in during renovation works, a police official said. Civil protection authorities said nine people were injured in the quake, which damaged many buildings. The tremor prompted many people in Crete’s main city Heraklion to rush outdoors. Schoolchildren were told to leave their classrooms, gathering in schoolyards and town squares.

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NEW DELHI (Reuters) -- Indian farmers opposed to reforms they say threaten their livelihoods renewed their push against the changes with nationwide protests on Monday, a year after laws on the liberalization of the sector were introduced. For 10 months, tens of thousands of farmers have camped out on major highways around the capital, New Delhi, to oppose the laws in the longest-running growers’ protest against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. In Noida, a New Delhi satellite town, farmers confronted police and pushed past them to break through barricades. There were no immediate reports of any injuries or arrests. In Gurgaon - another satellite town near the capital’s main airport - farmers thronged onto a road and blocked traffic, while protesters stormed into a railway station in the northern outskirts of New Delhi, a Reuters witness said. Nearly a dozen opposition parties have supported the farmers’ protest to step up pressure on Modi’s administration to repeal the laws.

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LA PALMA, Spain (Reuters) -- Eruption and tremors around the Cumbre Vieja volcano on Spain’s La Palma slowed to a near halt on Monday morning, researchers said, while authorities locked down coastal villages in anticipation of the lava reaching the sea. The apparent lull does not mean the eruption has ended though, Stavros Meteltidis, a volcanologist with Spain’s National Geographic Institute, told the Antena3 television With activity at the eruption site easing, authorities turned their attention to coastal areas where the superheated lava flow is expected to hit the Atlantic Ocean, likely triggering clouds of toxic gas and explosions. People in the coastal areas of San Borondon, Marina Alta and Baja and La Condesa were ordered to lock down. La Palma, with a population of over 83,000, is one of an archipelago making up the Canary Islands.

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ASHINGTON (Reuters) -- U.S. officials are set to tour Latin America this week to scout infrastructure projects as they prepare a counter to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s multi-trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative. A delegation of diplomatic and development officials led by President Joe Biden’s Deputy National Security Adviser Daleep Singh is in Colombia, where they plan to meet President Ivan Duque, before stops later in the week to Ecuador and Panama, U.S. officials said. The group is tasked with turning Build Back Better World (B3W), the international infrastructure investment initiative announced by the Group of Seven richest countries in June, into reality. It’s the first of several planned “listening tours.” In addition to meeting with Duque, Ecuadorean President Guillermo Lasso, and Panamanian officials, the trip will allow U.S. officials to speak with the private sector, civil society and “traditionally marginalized groups,” officials said. The program is focused on areas including climate, health, digital technology and gender equality, officials have said.

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TORONTO (Reuters) -- Canada’s “eyes are wide open” when it comes to normalizing its relationship with China, Foreign Minister Marc Garneau said, three days after the release of a Huawei executive following almost three years of house arrest in Vancouver. Huawei Technologies Co Ltd Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, flew back to China on Friday after reaching an agreement with U.S. prosecutors to end a bank fraud case against her. That resulted in the scrapping of her extradition battle in a Canadian court. Soon after Meng flew to China, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor - two Canadians detained by Chinese authorities just days after Meng’s arrest in Vancouver in December 2018 on a U.S. warrant - were released by Beijing.

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LONDON (Reuters) -- Climate change protesters once again blocked London’s busy M25 orbital motorway on Monday, in defiance of a court injunction against the demonstrations that the government had sought to prevent disruption. Activist group Insulate Britain said that people had defied the injunction, granted by the High Court last Tuesday, and blocked part of the M25. The group has repeatedly blocked the motorway and also targeted the Port of Dover on Friday, leading the government to seek a further court order. The group said that injunctions, which mean protesters may face jail time for repeating the protests, would not deter them. “You can throw as many injunctions at us as you like, but we are going nowhere,” Insulate Britain spokesman Liam Norton said in a statement.