Kuwait’s new ruler to seek stability among fractious, powerful neighbours

Air leaking from International Space Station but no danger to crew – Roscosmos agency

MOSCOW (Reuters) – The International Space Station is leaking air in above-normal volumes, but the leak presents no danger to the Russian-American crew, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said on Tuesday. The leak has been localised to one section of a service module and the crew, made up of U.S. astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian...

Amnesty halts India operations, saying it is being silenced

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – The human rights group Amnesty International halted work in India on Tuesday, accusing the government of having frozen its bank accounts as punishment for speaking out about alleged rights abuses. Amnesty said Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government had blocked its accounts on Sept. 10, forcing it to lay off its India...

TikTok launches U.S. elections guide to combat misinformation

(Reuters) – TikTok is launching an elections guide in the video-sharing app to give users information about the 2020 U.S. elections to help protect against misinformation, the company said in a Tuesday blog post. TikTok said the guide will give users access to information about federal, state and local candidates from BallotReady, and about how...

Britain imposes sanctions on Belarus leader and aides

SEOUL (Reuters) – Britain has imposed sanctions on Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and seven other officials over election fraud and violence against protesters, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told Reuters on Tuesday. Lukashenko’s national security adviser and chief of staff are also among the sanctioned officials, Raab said in an interview during a visit to the...

Paris knife attacker wanted to set Charlie Hebdo offices on fire, says prosecutor

PARIS (Reuters) – The Pakistani man who wounded two people with a knife in front of the former offices of Charlie Hebdo last week did not know that the satirical magazine had moved and wanted to set its offices on fire, the Paris prosecutor said on Tuesday. Prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard told a news conference the...

Indian rape victim dies weeks after assault, hundreds protest at hospital

LUCKNOW/NEW DELHI, India (Reuters) – A woman from the lowest rung of India’s caste system died on Tuesday weeks after authorities said she was raped by a group of men, triggering protests in New Delhi with hundreds gathering at the hospital where her body lay. Her case was the latest in a string of gruesome...

Moscow extends school holiday as coronavirus cases rise

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin on Tuesday extended an upcoming school holiday by a week to limit the spread of the coronavirus, days after sources told Reuters that the capital’s hospitals had been told to free up hundreds of beds. COVID-19 infections have been rising across Europe in the weeks since the start...

Fiji Airways to operate freighter services to and from Singapore

Fiji’s national airline Fiji Airways has scheduled two freighter services between Fiji and Singapore in October. The airline says the Fiji-Singapore freighter service will operate on October 7 and 21; and the Singapore-Fiji service will operate on October 8 and 22. In a statement issued this afternoon, Fiji Airways stated while it did not have...

France to ban use of wild animals in circuses

PARIS (Reuters) – France will gradually ban the use of wild animals in circuses, phase out orca and dolphin shows and will ban mink farming for fur, the environment minister said on Tuesday. The transition will take several years and existing animal shows will receive government support to switch to a new model, Environment Minister...

German doctor admits to years of blood doping

MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) – A German sports doctor on trial for masterminding an international doping network for athletes admitted on Tuesday to helping athletes with blood doping for years but said he made no profit. The defendant, identified in Germany only as Mark S., is on trial, facing multiple charges in relation to helping at...

Puzzled scientists seek reasons behind Africa’s low fatality rates from pandemic

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Africa’s overburdened public health systems, dearth of testing facilities and overcrowded slums had experts predicting a disaster when COVID-19 hit the continent in February. The new coronavirus was already wreaking havoc in wealthy Asian and European nations, and a United Nations agency said in April that, even with social-distancing measures, the virus...

India’s Serum Institute to boost production of COVID-19 vaccine doses to 200 million

BENGALURU (Reuters) – Serum Institute of India will make up to 200 million COVID-19 vaccine doses for poorer countries, including India, next year, as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and GAVI vaccines alliance have doubled their funding, the company said on Tuesday. The extra funds will help Serum boost manufacturing of the vaccine candidates...

New fuel and LPG prices effective from tomorrow

Consumers are expected to dig just a little deeper into their pockets come October 1, 2020, when new prices of fuel and LPG prices come into effect. The Fiji Competition and Consumer Commission (FCCC) has determined the new regulated prices of the fuel and liquefied petroleum products and made the announcement in a statement this...

Taiwan defence chief says no signs China is preparing for war

TAIPEI (Reuters) – There are no signs that China is preparing for all-out war with Taiwan, such as massing troops along its eastern coast, Taiwan’s defence chief said on Tuesday, after repeated Chinese drills near the island that China claims as its own. Democratic Taiwan has denounced China’s manoeuvres, including flying fighter jets over the...

Fiji’s kava export market growing; U.S largest market

Fiji’s kava export market is growing with the United States being one of the largest, earning the country about FJ$32million from kava exports last year. United States Ambassador to Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Tonga and Tuvalu Joseph Cella said the interest of kava beverages was growing in the USA, especially as most of the drinkers were...

EU and Britain far apart as key week of Brexit talks begins

BRUSSELS/LONDON (Reuters) – The European Union and Britain both said a post-Brexit deal was still some way off and differences persisted on Monday over putting in place their earlier divorce deal as they began a decisive week of talks in Brussels. Britain left the EU last January and is locked in negotiations on a new...

California wine country wildfire forces evacuation of hospital, hundreds of homes

ST. HELENA, Calif. (Reuters) – A wind-driven wildfire erupted on Sunday in the heart of northern California’s Napa Valley wine country to spread across nearly 2,000 acres (809 hectares), forcing the evacuation of a hospital and hundreds of homes, authorities said. Fire crews were out in force, scrambling to fend off flames threatening neighborhoods and...

Mexican women demanding legalization of abortion clash with police

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Women charged police lines and threw Molotov cocktails at officers in Mexico City on Monday during protests demanding the legalization of abortion in the majority Roman Catholic country. The protesters, clad in the green bandanas that have become the symbol of the pro-choice movement in Latin America, gathered in Mexico’s capital...

Woman charged with sending ricin letter to Trump to remain in U.S. custody

(Reuters) – A U.S. federal judge on Monday declared a Canadian woman arrested on suspicion of mailing ricin-filled letters to President Donald Trump “a continuing danger” to Trump and ordered her detained and transferred to Washington, D.C., where she was indicted. H. Kenneth Schroeder Jr., a magistrate judge in Buffalo, New York, said that Pascale...

UK government warns museums not to remove statues over protests

LONDON (Reuters) – The British government has warned a number of cultural institutions that their public funding could be called into question should they remove statues or other objects that have become the focus of protests or complaints. The issue of how Britain should deal with the legacies of its past, especially its role in...

Former Louisville detective pleads not guilty in Breonna Taylor case

(Reuters) – The only police officer indicted after the killing of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, during a botched raid pleaded not guilty on Monday on three counts of wanton endangerment of Taylor’s neighbors, local media reported. Former detective Brett Hankison was indicted by a grand jury last Wednesday and charged with endangering Taylor’s neighbors...

U.S. pension funds sue Allianz after $4 billion in coronavirus losses

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Pension funds for truckers, teachers and subway workers have lodged lawsuits in the United States against Germany’s Allianz, one of the world’s top asset managers, for failing to safeguard their investments during the coronavirus market meltdown. Market panic around the virus that resulted in billions in losses earlier this year scarred many...

Northern California wildfires kill 3, force evacuation of thousands

SANTA ROSA, Calif. (Reuters) – Three people died in a northern California wildfire raging in the Shasta County foothills of the Cascade range, officials said on Monday, as a separate blaze devastated the famed wine-producing region of Napa and Sonoma counties. The three fatalities in the so-called Zogg Fire in Shasta County, which erupted on...

Threat to evacuate U.S. diplomats from Iraq raises fear of war

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Washington has made preparations to withdraw diplomats from Iraq after warning Baghdad it could shut its embassy, two Iraqi officials and two Western diplomats said, a step Iraqis fear could turn their country into a battle zone. Any move by the United States to reduce its diplomatic presence in a country where...

United Airlines pilots avert layoffs, other workers hope for bailout

CHICAGO (Reuters) – United Airlines’ pilots voted on Monday to accept a deal that would avert 2,850 furloughs set for Thursday, while thousands of other U.S. airline employees are hoping Congress will extend federal aid to save their jobs. An initial $25 billion government bailout that covered airlines’ payrolls and protected jobs for six months...

Rabuka: Fijian people are persevering

Opposition Leader Sitiveni Rabuka says Government would be in a better position to respond to grassroots people’s issues, if they went out and listened to them. He made the comment at the Parliamentary Opposition Leaders’ Listening Tour of the Western Division which began in Sigatoka yesterday. Mr Rabuka said meeting grassroots people was important because...

Poorer countries to get 120 million $5 coronavirus tests, WHO says

GENEVA/LONDON (Reuters) – Some 120 million rapid diagnostic tests for coronavirus will be made available to low- and middle-income countries at a maximum of $5 each, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday. The wider availability of quick, reliable and inexpensive testing will help 133 countries to track infections and contain the spread, closing...

Citigroup is fined $4.5 million by U.S. CFTC for deleting subpoenaed audio recordings

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A U.S. regulator on Monday fined Citigroup Inc <C.N> $4.5 million for deleting millions of audio files, including recordings it had subpoenaed, after failing to fix a known design flaw in its audio preservation system. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission said the Nov. 2018 deletion of 2.77 million audio files...

USP to run on contingency funds

The Fijian Government’s decision to withhold its grant contribution to the University of the South Pacific will not have an immediate impact on the institution’s operations. USP’s executive director finance Kolinio Boila said even though the money was not forthcoming, the university could run on its contingency funds. He said Fiji was the first of...

Regional