At least five persons were killed as a fire raced through a dormitory in a Moscow suburb, Russian media reports quoted emergency services as saying early on Saturday.
TASS news agency said an initial investigation showed the fire in the suburb of Balashikha was caused by an electrical fault.Several residents were rescued from the burning two-storeyed building, Reuters reported.TASS quoted emergency services as saying the dormitory housed mainly foreign migrant workers. AGENCIES
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has revealed he and his family were threatened by an accused teenage terrorist.
Albanese said on Friday that he and his family were among those threatened in an extremist manifesto in which 19-year-old Jordan Patten allegedly outlined his intention to kill Members of Parliament from the governing Labour Party, Xinhua news agency reported.
“There is no place for extremism in Australia. That documentation that was made is very concerning, including threats not just to Labor MPs but to others, to my family,” he told reporters in Canberra.
Patten was on Wednesday arrested by the Joint Counter Terrorism Team (JCTT) in the city of Newcastle — nearly 100 km north of Sydney — after allegedly entering the office of Tim Crakanthorp, a Labour MP in the New South Wales state parliament, armed with knives and tactical equipment.
He has been charged with one count of preparing for, or planning, a terrorist act.
Authorities said that following Patten’s arrest, they became aware of the manifesto that expresses anti-immigration, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic views and a list of grievances against the Labour Party and Albanese.
“It’s another reason why families should be off-limits from the media. It’s something that is of concern. I applaud the security agencies and police for the swift action they undertook,” Albanese said.
Under Australian law anyone found guilty of preparing for, or planning, a terrorist act can be sentenced to imprisonment for life. AGENCIES
A Bolivian court sentenced General Juan Jose Zuniga and two other former military chiefs to six-month preventative detention over a failed coup against Bolivian President Luis Arce, said the local authorities.
While the investigation continues, the former commanders, who are charged with crimes of terrorism and armed rebellion, are being held in custody in the maximum security prison of Chonchocoro in the Department of La Paz, Xinhua news agency reported.
The prosecution team on Friday argued that the danger of escape and the possibility that the accused would hinder the investigation were reasons for their detention.
Earlier on Thursday, as many as 17 people, mostly members of the military, were arrested in Bolivia for their role in a failed coup, Government Minister Eduardo Del Castillo has said.
On Wednesday, hundreds of soldiers led by General Juan Jose Zuniga marched on Murillo Square, the epicentre of Bolivia’s political power. They forced their way into the old Government Palace in a failed bid to oust President Luis Arce from office.
Immediate measures by the new army commander, Jose Sanchez, who ordered the troops to return to their units and reaffirmed support for the government, were crucial to stabilising the situation.
Additionally, President Arce on Wednesday denounced the attempted coup, emphasising that “democracy must be respected.” AGENCIES
China on Saturday issued a red alert for rainstorms, the most severe in its four-tier weather warning system. It also warned about possible geological disasters occurring in some rain-hit regions.
Some areas in Anhui, Jiangsu, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi and Guizhou provinces should expect downpours, with some regions likely to experience heavy rain of up to 280 mm within 24 hours until 2 p.m. local time on Sunday, according to the National Meteorological Center forecast.
The national observatory also issued a blue alert, the lowest level in the warning system, for convective weather such as thunder, strong wind and hailstorms, which is expected to hit many regions, including Beijing, Hebei, Inner Mongolia, Hubei, Anhui and Jiangsu during the period, reports Xinhua news agency.On Saturday, the country’s top meteorological authority and the Ministry of Natural Resources jointly issued alerts for geological disasters, warning that there will be a high risk of geological disasters in some regions in Anhui and Hubei on Saturday and Sunday, while parts of Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Henan, Hunan and Guizhou should also guard against possible rain-induced geological disasters. AGENCIES
Four people were killed and another four injured as a heavy truck crashed into four cars early Saturday morning in east China’s Zhejiang Province, local authorities said.
According to the public security bureau of Nanhu District, Jiaxing City, the accident occurred at 6.27 a.m. local time at an intersection, reports Xinhua news agency.
Four cars were waiting to pass when a heavy truck hit them.The truck driver, surnamed Yang, is in police custody.Investigations are underway.A preliminary investigation ruled out any suspicion of Yang’s drunk or drug driving.Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor AGENCIES
Iran’s 14th presidential election on Saturday entered a run-off vote, with former Health Minister Masoud Pezeshkian and former chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili leading in the first round, but no one gets the minimum threshold of 50 per cent of votes, Iran’s Election Headquarters Spokesperson Mohsen Eslami said.
The spokesperson said that the turnout of the voting stands at 40 per cent, reports Xinhua news agency.
Voting for Iran’s 14th presidential election took place on Friday, after President Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash last month.
The voting was held at close to 59,000 polling stations in more than 95 states, and over 61 million people are eligible to vote in the election, according to authorities.
Iran’s 14th presidential election, initially set for 2025, was rescheduled following Raisi’s unexpected death.
Initially, six candidates — Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi, the current Vice President; Alireza Zakani, the Mayor of Tehran; Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the Parliamentary Speaker; Saeed Jalili, the former top negotiator for nuclear talks; Mostafa Pourmohammadi, a former Interior Minister and Justice Minister; and Masoud Pezeshkian, a former Health Minister — were qualified to enter the race.
Later, Hashemi and Zakani, two principlist candidates, withdrew from the race in favour of Qalibaf and Jalili, who were also in the principlists’ camp. AGENCIES
Public prosecutors in Japan’s southernmost prefecture of Okinawa have indicted a 21-year-old US Marine on charges of yet another non-consensual sexual intercourse resulting in injury.
On Friday, the Naha District Public Prosecutors Office said that they filed charges against Lance Corporal Jamel Clayton on June 17, reports Xinhua news agency.
According to the indictment, Clayton tightened a woman’s head with sexual intent in the village of Yomitan on May 26, causing subconjunctival haemorrhage and other injuries that required about two weeks to heal.
The news follows the revelation earlier this week that a US Air Force member has been indicted for allegedly kidnapping a girl under the age of 16 and committing non-consensual sexual intercourse.
Okinawa hosts 70 per cent of all the US military bases in Japan while accounting for only 0.6 per cent of the country’s total land area. Crimes committed by US service members and non-military personnel have been a constant source of grievance for locals.
The latest incident is expected to further inflame local opposition to the US military presence in the prefecture. AGENCIES
Mongolia’s ruling party, the Mongolian People’s Party (MPP), declared victory in the parliamentary elections held after provisional results from the General Election Commission (GEC) showed that the party had won a majority. “I would like to thank all the voters who actively participated and voted in the ninth parliamentary elections. According to preliminary results, the MPP won at least 68 seats,” Luvsannamsrai Oyun-Erdene, chairman of the MPP, told media early Saturday.
A total of 1,341 candidates from 19 political parties and two coalitions, along with 42 independents, competed for 126 seats in the State Great Khural, the country’s Parliament reported by Xinhua news agency.
Official results of the parliamentary elections are expected to be announced after all paper ballots are counted by hand to prevent misrepresentations and disputes associated with voting machines.
In May 2023, the State Great Khural passed amendments increasing the number of legislators from 76 to 126.
The elections was conducted under a mixed electoral system, with 78 legislators elected through majority representation and 48 through proportional representation.
The Asian country’s Parliament operates under a unicameral system with a four-year term. AGENCIES
Russia needs to start the production of intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) strike systems in response to the actions of the US, Russian President Vladimir Putin said.
“In 2019, we announced that we would not produce these missiles, and we would not deploy them until the US completes the deployment of these systems in some regions of the world,” Putin said on Friday at a meeting of the Russian Security Council as reported by Xinhua news agency.
However, the US now not only produces these missile systems, but has already brought them to Europe for military exercises, he added.
“Apparently, we need to start manufacturing these systems and then, based on the actual situation, make decisions about where, if necessary to ensure our safety, to deploy them,” Putin stressed.
The US and the Soviet Union signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987, which prohibited possessing, developing and testing ground-based ballistic missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 km.The US officially announced its withdrawal from the INF treaty in 2019. AGENCIES
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Saturday said his social media platform X saw record usage as US President Joe Biden and his challenger, former President Donald Trump, attended their first presidential debate on TV. According to X, the minute-by-minute conversation, about the US presidential debate spiked by “19 times from the start of the broadcast to its peak 90 minutes in.”
The company said the scale of the global conversation on X was staggering during the debate.
“We’ve tracked over 2 billion impressions with over 242 million video views and 2 million posts,” said the social media platform.
The tech billionaire stated that there was a “record usage of X during the US presidential debate.”
A user posted, “X was going crazy during the debate. X live streams during the debate also had huge audiences.”
“Amazing result of allowing people to speak about it freely, without the ban hammer of the ‘Censorship Complex’ hovering over them,” another X user commented.
Meanwhile, President Biden said he “did well” at the debate with ex-President Trump and dismissed the likelihood of him stepping aside, as being demanded by some Democrats disappointed by his performance.
“I think we did well,” President Biden told a reporter. Many Democrats, however, were concerned President Biden may not be able to beat former President Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee. AGENCIES