Day: January 22, 2023

The Russian Foreign Ministry said Saturday that Moscow will retaliate against the blocking of bank accounts of the RT television channel in France.

“They (reciprocal measures) will be such that they will be remembered if the French authorities do not stop terrorizing Russian journalists,” it told the state-run RIA news agency.

RT France Editor-in-Chief Ksenia Fyodorova said Friday that French authorities blocked the television channel’s bank accounts and explained the actions as anti-Russian sanctions.

Fyodorova, however, said RT France is not on the sanctions list because of Russia’s war against Ukraine and has a right to work in France.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Edwin Buzz Aldrin, the second person to set foot on the moon, announced on his 93rd birthday that he had married his “longtime love” on Saturday.

“On my 93rd birthday & the day I will also be honored by Living Legends of Aviation I am pleased to announce that my longtime love Dr. Anca Faur & I have tied the knot. We were joined in holy matrimony in a small private ceremony in Los Angeles & are as excited as eloping teenagers,” Aldrin wrote on Twitter.

The former NASA astronaut traveled to the moon with the Apollo 11 space flight July 20, 1969, and was recorded as the first person to set foot on the moon after Neil Armstrong.

Source: Anadolu Agency

At least four people were killed, and another three are feared dead after a fire broke out early Sunday at an apartment in Kobe, western Japan, authorities said.

Firefighters received a call around 1:35 a.m. local time (1635GMT Saturday) from a neighbor who saw smoke emanating from a window on the first floor of the three-story building located in the Hyogo Ward of Kobe, Kyodo News reported citing police and hospital sources.

Four of the men were confirmed dead on the scene, police and hospital sources said.

Three of the other four men taken to the hospital remain unconscious, according to the media outlet.

A man in his 40s was revived, the police said.

All eight people were found on the first floor of the apartment, they said.

The building, which was built in 1963, houses approximately 30 people, the majority of whom live alone and are pension recipients or on welfare.

Source: Anadolu Agency

The outbreak of respiratory diseases in Greece is testing the endurance of the country’s health care system, media reports said Saturday.

The situation is particularly pressing in the public hospital in the Attica region, which includes Athens, according to state-run news agency AMNA, citing a pulmonology specialist at the National University of Athens, Yannis Kalomenidis.

Kalomenidis noted that available beds had become scarce in the emergency room and warned that the picture could get grimmer in February and March with the anticipated spread of new hyper-contagious coronavirus sub-variants.

Arguing that the current bad shape of the health care system is also related to its structure, he said it “could have been avoided if the primary healthcare system was functioning.”

According to the World Health Organization, the primary health care system is a whole-of-society approach to health that aims at ensuring the highest possible level of health and well-being and equitable distribution by focusing on patients’ needs and as early as possible along the continuum from health promotion and disease prevention for treatment, rehabilitation and palliative care, and as close as feasible to people’s everyday environment.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Demonstrators continued Saturday to demand the resignation of Peruvian President Dina Boluarte after six weeks of violent protests that have killed 60 people.

Boluarte accused protestors of “vandalism” in a television address late Thursday after hundreds took to the streets in the nation’s capital of Lima in the so-called “Takeover of Lima” demonstration.

The president said the protesters had “no social agenda” but sought to “break the rule of law, generate chaos and disorder and seize power.”

With the death of another person in Puno, the toll has risen since Dec. 11.

Numerous individuals were hurt on both sides when security officers used tear gas in response to demonstrators throwing stones at them, according to reports,

Police raided the National University of San Marcos in Lima with a tank and detained 200 students.

It was reported that there were clashes between the police and students in the university garden, and students were hauled out by police bus after more than an hour.

The government declared a state of emergency in some regions, which authorizes the army to intervene to maintain order.

The month-long social outburst was triggered by former President Pedro Castillo’s removal from office and his subsequent arrest on accusations of insurrection when he attempted to dissolve Congress and rule by decree to avoid impeachment on allegations of corruption.

The Prosecutor’s Office will open an investigation into Boluarte for civilians who have been killed since protests began Dec. 7.

Source: Anadolu Agency