Month: June 2023

Tour de France organizers have set up an anti-COVID protocol for this year’s race, with riders and team staff banned from signing autographs and eating out of their hotels, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters Saturday.  Riders and staff members were allowed out of their hotels last year. Access to the paddock at the start of the stages was open to reporters until midway through the race, when organizers decided to close it to “fight against the propagation of COVID-19.”  Access to the paddock will be allowed when the Tour starts in Bilbao, Spain, on June …

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Latest developments: A 2-year-old girl was killed and 22 other injured, five of them children, from a Russian missile strike near the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, the regional governor, Serhiy Lysak, said Sunday. “Overnight, the body of a girl who had just turned two was pulled from under the rubble of a house,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging channel. Reuters could not independently verify the report. There was no immediate response from Moscow. Saudi Arabia plans new oil production cuts in 2024 as part of a broader OPEC+ deal to curb output as the group faces flagging oil …

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A fire at a refugee shelter in eastern Germany killed one person and injured 10 others early Sunday, according to local police.  Police in the German state of Thuringia said the fire broke out around 5 a.m. local time at a facility in the city of Apolda and that one body was recovered from the burned building.  A 9-year-old child was reported missing, police said. They did not say if the recovered body belonged to a child.  Writing on Twitter, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser called the incident “terrible news.” She confirmed an investigation was under way to determine the …

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Turkey, Sweden and Finland will meet later this month to try to overcome objections that have delayed Sweden’s NATO membership bid, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Sunday after meeting Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey in March ratified Finland’s bid for membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, but still objects to Sweden joining the alliance, as does Hungary. Turkey has said Stockholm harbors members of militant groups it considers to be terrorists. “Sweden has taken significant concrete steps to meet Turkey’s concerns,” Stoltenberg told reporters, referring to a constitutional change by Sweden and its stepping up of counter-terrorism cooperation …

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Thousands gathered in Warsaw on Sunday, the 34th anniversary of Poland’s first postwar democratic election, for a protest march the liberal opposition has billed as a test of its ability to end nearly eight years of nationalist rule later this year. Opinion polls show an election due after the summer will be closely fought, with Russia’s war in neighboring Ukraine giving a boost to the Law and Justice (PiS) government which has emerged as a leading voice against the Kremlin in Europe. The opposition has struggled to galvanize support despite widespread criticism at home and abroad of the PiS, which …

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President Tayyip Erdogan signaled Saturday his newly elected government would return to more orthodox economic policies when he named Mehmet Simsek to his Cabinet to tackle Turkey’s cost-of-living crisis and other strains. Simsek’s appointment as treasury and finance minister could set the stage for interest rate hikes in the coming months, analysts said, a marked turnaround from Erdogan’s longstanding policy of slashing rates despite soaring inflation. After winning a runoff election last weekend, Erdogan, 69, who has ruled for more than two decades, began his new five-year term by calling on Turks to set aside differences and focus on the …

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Kaija Saariaho, who wrote acclaimed works that made her the among the most prominent composers of the 21st century, died Friday. She was 70.  Saariaho died at her apartment in Paris, her family said in a statement posted on her Facebook page. She had been diagnosed in February 2021 with glioblastoma, an aggressive and incurable brain tumor.  “The multiplying tumors did not affect her cognitive facilities until the terminal phase of her illness,” the statement said. Her family said Saariaho had undergone experimental treatment at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris.  “Kaija’s appearance in a wheelchair or walking with a cane have …

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Green and other groups have given mixed reviews to the sometimes-rocky talks on eradicating plastic pollution, which ended Saturday in Paris with an agreement to write the first draft of a groundbreaking global treaty. The deal reached after five days of negotiations in the French capital sees a rough-cut “zero draft” produced before representatives of 175 countries next meet in Nairobi in November — with goals for a legally binding ban in force by 2025. “It will happen, it must happen, because we all don’t want plastic pollution in our territories, or in the oceans or anywhere,” Jyoti Mathur-Filipp, executive …

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