Month: August 2024

paris — French actor Alain Delon, who melted the hearts of millions of film fans whether playing a murderer, hoodlum or hitman in his postwar heyday, has died, French media reported on Sunday. He was 88. Delon had been in poor health since suffering a stroke in 2019, rarely leaving his estate in Douchy, in France’s Val de Loire region. With his striking blue eyes, Delon was sometimes referred to as the “French Frank Sinatra” for his handsome looks, a comparison Delon disliked. Unlike Sinatra, who always denied connections with the Mafia, Delon openly acknowledged his shady pals in the underworld. …

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moscow — A magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck off the coast of Russia’s far-eastern Kamchatka Peninsula early Sunday morning local time, according to the regional earthquake monitoring service. The local emergencies ministry said tremors were felt along the coast including in the region’s capital Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. “Operational teams of rescuers and firefighters are inspecting buildings,” the regional branch of Russia’s emergencies ministry in the Kamchatka region said on Telegram. The earthquake struck at a depth of nearly 50 kilometers just after 7 a.m. local time, some 90 kilometers east of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, the United States Geological Survey reported. The U.S. National Tsunami Warning Center …

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WARSAW, Poland — Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Saturday reacted to reports that revived questions about who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines in 2022, saying the initiators of the gas pipeline project should “apologize and keep quiet.” That comment came after one of his deputies denied a claim that Warsaw was partly responsible for its damage. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Ukrainian authorities were responsible for blowing up the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in September 2022, a dramatic act of sabotage that cut Germany off from a key source of energy and worsened an energy …

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Istanbul — Wildfires raged across western Turkey for a third straight day Saturday, exacerbated by high winds and warm temperatures, authorities said.  More than 130 fires have erupted across the country in the past week, according to Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Directorate. Most have been brought under control, but eight major fires continued in the provinces of Izmir, Aydin, Manisa, Karabuk and Bolu.  Thousands of firefighters were tackling the blazes on land and from the air, with dozens of aircraft and hundreds of vehicles aiding in the emergency response.  Thousands of people have been evacuated from the affected areas, but …

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LONDON — A fire broke out Saturday at Somerset House, a large arts venue on the River Thames in central London. Smoke billowed from the building and flames could be seen coming from the roof as firefighters on tall ladders showered it with water. The cause of the fire was not yet known, the London Fire Brigade said. Fifteen engines and about 100 firefighters were deployed. Somerset House said all staff and the public were safe and the site was closed. The venue had been scheduled to host a breakdancing event. The neoclassical building, which is nearly 250 years old, houses …

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Helsinki, Finland — Western officials and analysts are suspicious of Beijing’s admission this week that a Chinese container ship damaged the Balticconnector — a vital Baltic Sea gas pipeline linking Estonia and Finland — in October. The South China Morning Post reported August 12 that the Chinese government notified Finland and Estonia 10 months after the incident that it was caused by a Hong Kong-registered ship called Newnew Polar Bear, but blamed a storm for what it called the accident. In an interview August 13 with Estonia’s public radio, ERR, Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said he was skeptical of China’s …

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Stockholm — Health authorities warned Friday that Europe must be ready for more cases of a deadly strain of mpox that has killed hundreds of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The World Health Organization urged pharmaceutical firms to ramp up vaccine production and China said it would screen travelers for the disease after the first cases of the more deadly strain to be recorded outside Africa were announced in Sweden and Pakistan. France’s Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said his country was on the “highest alert” and would implement “new recommendations” for travelers to risk areas. Mpox is caused by …

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LONDON/KYIV, UKRAINE — In the hours before Ukrainian soldiers stormed across Russia’s western border, there was no sign from Moscow that anything was amiss. At midnight at the start of August 6, the Russian Defense Ministry posted good news: More than 2,500 members of the regiment responsible for the capture of a town in eastern Ukraine would receive state awards for heroism. Later that morning, as Ukraine began the biggest invasion of Russia since World War II, the ministry published video showing General Valery Gerasimov, commander of the Russian war effort, visiting a different combat zone, also in Ukraine. He heard …

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