World News

(Reuters) – Russia has told the United States that bilateral diplomatic ties would be badly damaged and could even be broken off if Russia is declared a state sponsor of terrorism, Tass cited a top official as saying on Friday.

Alexander Darchiyev, head of the North American department at the Russian Foreign Ministry, said that if the U.S. Senate succeeded in passing a law to single out Russia, this would mean Washington had crossed the point of no return, Tass said.

(Reporting by David Ljunggren and Ronald Popeski; Editing by Leslie Adler)

source

(Reuters) -Russia has told the United States that diplomatic ties would be badly damaged and could even be broken off if Russia is declared a “state sponsor of terrorism”, Tass cited a top official as saying on Friday.

Alexander Darchiyev, head of the North American department at the Russian Foreign Ministry, said if the U.S. Senate went through with plans to single out Russia, this would mean Washington had crossed the point of no return, Tass said.

Last month two U.S. senators seeking to pass a law designating Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism visited Kyiv to discuss the bill with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Darchiyev said if this passed, it would cause “the most serious collateral damage for bilateral diplomatic relations, to the point of downgrading and even breaking them off,” Tass quoted him as saying.

“The American side has been warned,” he added.

Latvia’s parliament on Thursday designated Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism over the war in Ukraine and called on Western allies to impose more comprehensive sanctions on Moscow.

(Reporting by David Ljunggren and Ronald Popeski;Editing by Leslie Adler and Grant McCool)

source

PARIS (AP) — Firefighters from across Europe started arriving in France on Friday to help battle several wildfires, including a giant blaze ravaging pine forests in the southwest of the country.

The firefighters’ brigade from the Gironde region said the spread of the forest fire was limited overnight due to little wind but conditions for containing the blaze remained “unfavorable” due to hot, dry weather.

The fire in the Gironde region and neighboring Landes has burned more than 74 square kilometers (29 square miles) since Tuesday and led to the evacuation of at least 10,000 people.

More than 360 firefighters and 100 specialized land vehicles were sent from Germany, Romania, Poland and Austria. They are joining over 1,000 French firefighters already on site. Greece sent two specialized Canadair aircraft.

Sweden deployed two two firefighting Air Tractor planes to to help battle separate wildfires in the Brittany region, in western France.

source

BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s health minister said Friday that European Union drug regulators may authorize the use of vaccines that are each effective against two variants of the coronavirus.

German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said he expected the European Medicines Agency to meet Sept. 1 to consider a vaccine that would provide protection against the original virus and the so-called omicron variant, also known as BA.1.

The EU agency would likely meet again on Sept. 27 to review a combined vaccine against the original virus and the BA.5 variant that is responsible for the latest global surge inCOVID-19 cases, Lauterbach said.

Germany has procured sufficient amounts of both vaccines and would be able to start rolling them out a day after they received authorization, he said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has said that combination vaccines, known as “bivalent” or “multivalent” shots, will allow boosters to retain the proven benefits of original coronavirus vaccines while providing additional protection against new variants.

Such an approach is used with flu shots, which are adjusted each year depending on the variants that are circulating and can protect against four influenza strains.

source

By Marc Frank

HAVANA (Reuters) – Cubans have been left to endure six- to 18-hour blackouts, and search for ever-scarcer gasoline in the wake of a spectacular blaze that destroyed 40% of Cuba’s main fuel depot and shuttered its only supertanker port.

The fire began on Friday when lighting struck a storage tank, spreading to three others before being brought under control on Tuesday. By Thursday the flames were out, but oil residues remained dangerously hot.

The import dependent Caribbean Island nation was already reeling from the impact of tough U.S. sanctions, the pandemic’s impact on tourism and rising international prices for fuel, food and shipping.

Cuba has long relied on the 2.4-million-barrel Matanzas terminal, about 60 miles (130 km) from Havana, for most crude and heavy fuel imports and storage.

“We have to do a survey (and) see what is the availability of our refineries … and with this the relationship of ports to refineries,” Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said at a planning meeting, parts of which were broadcast by state media late on Wednesday.

“We have to be able to process the fuels that are entering the country in the shortest possible time,” he said.

The communist-run country imports 60% of the fuel it consumes.

Cubans were already suffering through chronic power outages, fuel, food and medicine shortages and lining up for hours to purchase basic goods.

The accident has aggravated the energy crisis due to an obsolete power grid and poor maintenance, said Jorge Pinon, director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Latin America and Caribbean Energy and Environment.

“Now there is a lack of logistics to supply these plants, an extreme situation, a difficult situation for the Cuban people that unfortunately has no short-term solution,” he said.

Just over a year ago, unrest swept the country and this year there have been scattered small protests, mainly over blackouts.

In the city of Camaguey, in central Cuba, retired nurse Aneida Gonzalez said she was now worried food would spoil in the fridge.

“Before the Matanzas accident, the blackouts were six to eight hours a day and now they are 12 hours to 18 hours a day, sometimes split into two parts,” she said in a telephone interview.

In Eastern Holguin province housewife Edilma Lezcano said by phone that daily power outages were now lasting 12 hours, and gasoline “very scarce, not just because there are no supplies, but no electricity to keep the service stations open.”

Since 2020 Cuban imports have fallen 40% and its gross domestic product by 10%. Inflation soared 77% last year and 28% so far in 2022, according to the government, though most independent analysts put price increases in the triple digits.

Havana, home to 20% of the country’s 11.2 million inhabitants, had been spared the worst of the energy crisis until this month, when rolling four-hour blackouts every three days began and diesel fuel vanished. Since the oil depot blaze power outages are more frequent, longer and less predictable.

“Now we are more affected … We are going from blackout to blackout,” 67-year-old Daniel Duarte said in central Havana.

Nearby, Raudel Machado, a young man, was waiting in line for gas.

“The queues are quite long and sometimes you have to go from station to station and when you find it you have to wait for hours,” he said.

(Reporting by Marc Frank; additional reporting by Nelson Acosta and Reuters television; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

source

LONDON (Reuters) – Rishi Sunak, the underdog in the race to become Britain’s next prime minister, said scrapping the Bank of England’s independence would be a mistake that would scare off international investors.

Asked about comments from leadership front-runner Liz Truss’s team suggesting that the central bank’s rate-setting independence should be reviewed, Sunak said: “That would be a massive mistake for our country, and international investors would really not look very kindly on it at all.”

Sunak was speaking at an event for Conservative Party members who are voting over the next few weeks to decide the country’s next leader.

(Reporting by William James; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

source

By Augustas Stankevicius

VILNIUS (Reuters) -Latvia and Estonia withdrew from a cooperation group between China and over a dozen Central and Eastern European countries on Thursday, following in the footsteps of Baltic neighbour Lithuania which withdrew last year.

The move comes amid Western criticism towards China over escalating military pressure on democratically ruled Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, and Beijing’s strengthening of ties with Russia during the invasion of Ukraine.

Relations between Lithuania and China worsened after the former allowed Taiwan to open a de facto embassy late last year.

Latvia’s Foreign Ministry said the country’s continued participation in the China group was “no longer in line with our strategic objectives in the current international environment.”

In statements published Thursday, both Latvia and Estonia said they would continue to work towards “constructive and pragmatic relations with China” while respecting the rules-based international order and human rights.

Estonia’s Foreign Ministry was not immediately available for further comment.

The Chinese embassies in Riga, Latvia and Tallinn, Estonia did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia are among countries that remain in the cooperation format.

The Czech Republic’s foreign ministry said in May the promise of large Chinese investments and mutually beneficial trade were not being fulfilled, following calls within the country’s parliament to quit the group.

(Reporting by Augustas Stankevicius and Terje Solsvik; Additional reporting by Michael Martina and Simon Lewis in Washington; Writing by Joanna Plucinska; Editing by Josie Kao and John Stonestreet)

source

By Pavel Polityuk

KYIV (Reuters) -Heavy fighting raged around the eastern Ukrainian town of Pisky on Thursday as Russia pressed its campaign to seize all of the industrialised Donbas region, while to the west Kyiv accused Moscow of using a nuclear plant to shield its artillery.

An official with the Russia-backed Donetsk People’s Republic said Pisky, on the frontlines just 10 km (6 miles) northwest of provincial capital Donetsk, was under control of Russian and separatist forces.

“It’s hot in Pisky. The town is ours but there remain scattered pockets of resistance in its north and west,” the official, Danil Bezsonov, said on Telegram.

Ukrainian officials denied that the heavily fortified town, a key to the defence of Donetsk, had fallen. Reuters was unable to verify the battlefield accounts.

The Donbas region comprised of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces became Moscow’s main objective after it failed to seize the capital Kyiv at the start of the war in February. Luhansk is now almost completely under Russian control but Donetsk is still holding out.

Oleksiy Arestovych, a Ukrainian presidential adviser, said in an interview posted on YouTube that Russian “movement into Pisky” had been “without success”.

Luhansk regional Governor Serhiy Gaidai, interviewed on Ukrainian TV, said Russia had sent increasing numbers of mercenaries into the region, including from the Wagner private security firm.

“We once had peaceful Ukrainian towns. Now we have been thrust into the Middle Ages … People are now leaving because they are afraid of freezing in the coming winter,” he said.

NUCLEAR PLANT

Ukraine accused Russia on Wednesday of killing at least 13 people and wounding 10 with rockets fired from around a captured nuclear power plant in the centre of the country, in the knowledge it would be risky for Ukraine to return fire.

“The cowardly Russians can’t do anything more so they strike towns ignobly hiding at the Zaporizhzhia atomic power station,” Andriy Yermak, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, said on social media on Wednesday.

Ukraine says around 500 Russian troops with heavy vehicles and weapons are at the plant, where Ukrainian technicians continue to work.

The town Ukraine says Russia targeted – Marhanets – is one Moscow says its foes have used in the past to shell Russian soldiers at the Zaporizhzhia plant, which they seized in March.

Ukraine’s military said Russia also bombarded several other areas in the Zaporizhzhia region. Russia has not commented on the Ukrainian allegations and Reuters could not independently verify Kyiv’s version.

Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of imperilling the plant, Europe’s largest nuclear complex, with attacks nearby.

The Group of Seven leading industrialised countries on Wednesday told Russia to hand back the plant to Ukraine, after the United Nations atomic energy watchdog sounded the alarm over a potential nuclear disaster.

CHINA BACKS RUSSIA

Russia on Wednesday received powerful endorsement from China of its rationale for the Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine.

Beijing’s ambassador to Moscow, Zhang Hanhui, accused Washington of pushing Russia into a corner with repeated expansions of the NATO military alliance and support for Ukraine’s alignment with the European Union.

Washington’s “ultimate goal is to exhaust and crush Russia with a protracted war and the cudgel of sanctions,” Zhang was quoted as saying.

Ukraine’s military reported Russian forces shelled some 28 towns in the northeast, southwest and south including the Kharkiv, Donetsk and Kherson regions on Wednesday. Ukraine’s general staff said counterattacks forced Russian troops to retreat in most of them.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Arestovych said dozens of civilians had been killed by Russian shelling on Wednesday.

Moscow says it does not deliberately target civilians in what it calls its “special military operation” aimed at safeguarding its security against NATO expansion.

Ukraine and the West accuse Moscow of waging an unprovoked imperial-style war of aggression.

The war has crushed Ukraine’s economy, but there was some relief on Wednesday when overseas creditors backed Kyiv’s request for a two-year freeze on payments on almost $20 billion in international bonds. That should avert a messy default.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said the deal would save his country almost $6 billion.

(Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Stephen Coates; Editing by Michael Perry)

source

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea’s presidential office said on Thursday the U.S. THAAD missile defence system stationed in the country is a means of self-defence, News1 reported, after Beijing demanded Seoul not deploy additional batteries and limit the use of the existing ones.

The THAAD missile defence system has for years been a source of contention as Beijing argues the equipment’s powerful radar could peer into its airspace and sharply cut trade and cultural imports after Seoul announced its deployment in 2016, dealing a major blow to relations.

(Reporting by Soo-hyang Choi; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)

source

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Antarctica’s coastal glaciers are shedding icebergs more rapidly than nature can replenish the crumbling ice, doubling previous estimates of losses from the world’s largest ice sheet over the past 25 years, a satellite analysis showed on Wednesday.

The first-of-its-kind study, led by researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles and published in the journal Nature, raises new concern about how fast climate change is weakening Antarctica’s floating ice shelves and accelerating the rise of global sea levels.

The study’s key finding was that the net loss of Antarctic ice from coastal glacier chunks “calving” off into the ocean is nearly as great as the net amount of ice that scientists already knew was being lost due to thinning caused by the melting of ice shelves from below by warming seas.

Taken together, thinning and calving have reduced the mass of Antarctica’s ice shelves by 12 trillion tons since 1997, double the previous estimate, the analysis concluded.

The net loss of the continent’s ice sheet from calving alone in the past quarter-century spans nearly 37,000 sq km (14,300 sq miles), an area almost the size of Switzerland, according to JPL scientist Chad Greene, the study’s lead author.

“Antarctica is crumbling at its edges,” Greene said in a NASA announcement of the findings. “And when ice shelves dwindle and weaken, the continent’s massive glaciers tend to speed up and increase the rate of global sea level rise.”

The consequences could be enormous. Antarctica holds 88% of the sea level potential of all the world’s ice, he said.

Ice shelves, permanent floating sheets of frozen freshwater attached to land, take thousands of years to form and act like buttresses holding back glaciers that would otherwise easily slide off into the ocean, causing seas to rise.

When ice shelves are stable, the long-term natural cycle of calving and re-growth keeps their size fairly constant.

In recent decades, though, warming oceans have weakened the shelves from underneath, a phenomenon previously documented by satellite altimeters measuring the changing height of the ice and showing losses averaging 149 million tons a year from 2002 to 2020, according to NASA.

IMAGERY FROM SPACE

For their analysis, Greene’s team synthesized satellite imagery from visible, thermal-infrared and radar wavelengths to chart glacial flow and calving since 1997 more accurately than ever over 30,000 miles (50,000 km) of Antarctic coastline.

The losses measured from calving outpaced natural ice shelf replenishment so greatly that researchers found it unlikely Antarctica can return to pre-2000 glacier levels by the end of this century.

The accelerated glacial calving, like ice thinning, was most pronounced in West Antarctica, an area hit harder by warming ocean currents. But even in East Antarctica, a region whose ice shelves were long considered less vulnerable, “we’re seeing more losses than gains,” Greene said.

One East Antarctic calving event that took the world by surprise was the collapse and disintegration of the massive Conger-Glenzer ice shelf in March, possibly a sign of greater weakening to come, Greene said.

Eric Wolff, a Royal Society research professor at the University of Cambridge, pointed to the study’s analysis of how the East Antarctic ice sheet behaved during warm periods of the past and models for what may happen in the future.

“The good news is that if we keep to the 2 degrees of global warming that the Paris agreement promises, the sea level rise due to the East Antarctic ice sheet should be modest,” Wolff wrote in a commentary on the JPL study.

Failure to curb greenhouse gas emissions, however, would risk contributing “many meters of sea level rise over the next few centuries,” he said.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Tom Hogue)

source