Breaking News, Latest Philippines Headlines, World, Entertainment, Politics, Weather & Video News
NEW YORK, June 20, 2023 (AFP) – Four people have died after lithium batteries for e-bikes sparked a fire in a New York building, officials said Tuesday, sounding the alarm over the skyrocketing number of such incidents. The fire broke out overnight in a maintenance shop for electric bicycles and scooters, on the ground floor of a building in Chinatown. A large pile of blackened two-wheelers was seen strewn outside the charred facility on Tuesday, […]
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AFP) — Dozens of people were injured in northern Argentina on Tuesday as protesters clashed with police in Jujuy province over a proposed ban on certain forms of demonstration. For several hours, hundreds engaged the police in running battles in the streets of the provincial capital San Salvador de Jujuy, burning cars and throwing rocks, according to TV images. Police responded with rubber bullets and tear gas. One channel showed a demonstrator […]
UNITED NATIONS, United States (AFP) — The conflict in Sudan, which has shown how quickly “hard-won peace gains” can unravel, should not distract attention from the risks facing neighboring South Sudan, the UN envoy to the country warned Tuesday. After gaining independence from Sudan in 2011, South Sudan descended into a civil war that left nearly 400,000 people dead and millions displaced between 2013 and 2018. A peace agreement signed in 2018 provided a power-sharing […]
GENEVA, June 20, 2023 (AFP) – The United Nations sounded the alarm Tuesday over the worsening hunger situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, saying time, money and resources to help were all running short. The UN’s World Food Programme said around 25.8 million people will face acute food insecurity this year in the DR Congo — roughly a quarter of the vast central African nation’s population, and the highest number of food insecure people […]
BEIJING, June 20, 2023 (AFP) – Chinese imports of Russian oil last month hit their highest level since Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, customs data showed Tuesday, as Beijing offers an economic lifeline to an increasingly isolated Kremlin. China is Russia’s largest economic partner, with trade between them reaching a record $190 billion last year. In May, China imported 9.71 million tonnes of oil from Russia, Beijing said, more than double the amount from […]
BUCHAREST, June 20, 2023 (AFP) – Online influencer Andrew Tate, his brother and two Romanian women were indicted in Romania on human trafficking and rape charges, prosecutors said Tuesday, six months after they were detained. The anti-organised crime prosecution’s unit (DIICOT) “ordered the indictment” of the four defendants for offences including “setting up an organised criminal group… trafficking in persons… rape”, they said. Romanian police arrested Tate, 36, and his brother Tristan, 34, and two […]
HELSINKI, June 20, 2023 (AFP) – Finland’s parliament on Tuesday elected conservative Petteri Orpo as prime minister at the head of a four-party coalition including the far-right Finns Party which plans a major crackdown on immigration. Parliament voted in favour of Orpo, who won April elections and has been in thorny negotiations to build a coalition since then, by 107 in favour, 81 opposed and 11 absent. Orpo was to be formally appointed as prime […]
JAKARTA, June 20, 2023 (AFP) – The Association of Southeast Asian Nations has moved its first-ever joint drills, Indonesia’s military said Tuesday, edging them away from waters disputed by China. The bloc’s joint exercises were initially slated for the North Natuna Sea, which Indonesia claims as its exclusive economic zone but where Beijing’s ships occasionally patrol. When confronted by Jakarta, China has invoked the so-called nine-dash line, which demarcates an area it claims to have […]
PARIS, June 19, 2023 (AFP) – Europe should brace for more deadly heatwaves driven by climate change, said a sweeping report on Monday, noting the world’s fastest-warming continent was some 2.3 degrees Celsius hotter last year than in pre-industrial times. Crop-withering drought, record sea-surface temperatures and unprecedented glacier melt are among the consequences laid out in a report by the World Meteorological Organization and the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. The continent, which has […]
BERLIN, June 20, 2023 (AFP) – Chancellor Olaf Scholz hosted Premier Li Qiang for talks on Tuesday, seeking to recalibrate cooperation between Germany and China after Berlin branded Beijing a “systemic rival”. Li is on his first trip abroad since he was named premier in March and tasked with shoring up China’s sputtering post-Covid economy. But unlike previous visits by Chinese dignitaries, when pragmatic German leaders eager to expand business ties with the Asian giant […]
By John HADOULIS Agence France-Presse ATHENS, June 20, 2023 (AFP) — Wildfires, floods and climate change have failed to budge Greeks towards voting Green for over a decade, but a new coalition hopes to break through deep-rooted skepticism in Sunday’s national elections. While environmental parties surge elsewhere in Europe, Greeks “view the environment as a little bit of a luxury,” says Vasiliki Grammatikogianni, a co-chair of the Green and Purple alliance. A ‘Green wave’ that […]
GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador, June 20, 2023 (AFP) — Six people were killed and eight wounded Monday in an apparent gang shootout in Guayaquil, a port city in Ecuador terrorized by a wave of violence blamed on a spiraling drug war, authorities said. Police Colonel Marcelo Castillo told AFP that six people had died in Guayaquil’s second mass shooting this month, which appeared to have been a settling of scores between rival gangs. The prosecutor’s office later […]
