Day: April 9, 2023

Firefighters and rescuers continued to search Saturday for a worker in the rubble of a collapsed wall at a thermoelectric power plant in western Cuba, where at least one person died and two others were injured, Trend reports citing Xinhua.

The accident occurred on Friday as four workers were cleaning a chimney at the Antonio Guiteras Thermoelectric Power Plant, some 100 km east of Havana, when a seven-meter-tall refractory brick wall fell on them.

Relief brigades were searching for the last of the workers, who was still trapped under the rubble.

"We are aware of the accident and are in constant communication with local authorities," Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel wrote on his Twitter account, adding that everything has been provided for the workers' rescue.

Source: Trend News Agency

The Treasury and Finance Ministry has said it raised $2.5 billion in a green bond issuance maturing in 2030, Trend reports citing Hurriyet Daily News.

The ministry earlier this week mandated Bank of America, ING, J.P. Morgan, and Standard Chartered for the U.S. dollar-denominated green bond.

“The transaction was finalized with a nominal amount of $2.5 billion. The proceeds of the issue will be transferred to the Treasury accounts on April 13,” the Treasury said in a statement.

The seven-year green bond has a coupon rate of 9.125 percent and a yield of 9.30 percent to investors.

The offering attracted an order book of more than three times the actual issue size from approximately 200 accounts, the statement said.

“Some 31 percent of the issue has been sold to investors in the U.K, 19 percent in Türkiye, 18 percent in the U.S., 16 percent in the Middle East, 15 percent in other European countries, and 1 percent in other countries.”

This green bond is the Turkish Treasury’s first environmental, social and governance (ESG) bond issuance in the international capital markets.

With this transaction, the amount of funds raised from the international capital markets in 2023 has reached $7.5 billion, the Treasury said.

Source: Trend News Agency

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will meet Joe Biden in Northern Ireland next week when the U.S. president flies in to take part in events to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday peace accord, Trend reports citing Reuters.

Sunak will greet Biden on Tuesday evening when Air Force One lands for what will be a closely watched visit to both sides of the Irish border at a time of heightened political uncertainty in Northern Ireland.

Sunak hosts a gala dinner on Wednesday to commemorate the anniversary, his office said in a statement setting out some details of his itinerary.

Biden, who often speaks proudly of his Irish roots, will also spend time in the Irish Republic, where he will visit Dublin and his two ancestral homes.

The Good Friday Agreement - signed on April 10, 1998 - largely ended three decades of sectarian bloodshed that had convulsed Northern Ireland since the late 1960s.

Source: Trend News Agency

At least 1,800 people in Tanzania's southern region of Mtwara have been left homeless after their houses were submerged by flash floods caused by the ongoing heavy rains, an official said Saturday, Trend reports citing Xinhua.

Ahmed Abbas, the Mtwara regional commissioner, said the flash floods occurred in the past week after the Ruvuma River overflew following heavy rains upstream.

"The flash floods submerged over 150 houses in Maurunga and Kilambo wards in Mtwara district leaving 528 households with 1,800 people homeless," Abbas said.

The homeless victims have been sheltered in primary schools as the regional authorities were organizing relief supplies, including tents and food, for the victims, he said.

He said the flash floods also destroyed more than 100 hectares of farm crops, including maize and potatoes, in the affected areas.

Source: Trend News Agency

Israel’s military said its artillery was striking Syria after three rockets were launched toward Israeli territory in the early hours of Sunday, Trend reports citing Al Arabiya.

Three rockets were fired from Syria toward the Golan Heights on Sunday, one of which crossed into Israeli-controlled territory and landed in open ground, the Israeli military said, without giving details.

Earlier it said a rocket alert was sounded in the area.

Source: Trend News Agency

At least six people were killed and eight others wounded on Saturday as a microbus collided with a farming tractor in Egypt's Giza province adjacent to the capital Cairo, an Egyptian Health Ministry official said, Trend reports citing Xinhua.

"The accident took place early in the morning as the microbus crashed into the tractor near an exit on Al-Kurimat Road in Giza," Hossam Abdel-Ghaffar, spokesman of the Health Ministry, told Xinhua, noting the injured people were taken to a nearby hospital.

Egyptian local media said that most victims were passengers of the microbus that was severely damaged.

Road accidents claim thousands of lives in the most populous Arab country every year. Most of the accidents are caused by human errors including speeding and negligence of traffic rules, as well as poor maintenance of roads.

Source: Trend News Agency

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that he reached an agreement with Poland on the delivery of 200 Rosomak armored vehicles, Trend reports citing TASS.

"There are new agreements on armored personnel carriers - over 100 vehicles. As for the armored vehicles - 200 Rosomak vehicles. One hundred now and one hundred later," he said during his evening address.

Additionally, Ukraine’s Ukroboronprom state concern reported that the Bumar-Labedi arms manufacturer in Poland’s Gliwice would repair and service Ukrainian T-64 tanks, citing an agreement concluded between the two parties.

Source: Trend News Agency

Benjamin Ferencz, the last surviving prosecutor from the Nuremberg trials in Germany that brought Nazi war criminals to justice after World War Two and a longtime apostle of international criminal law, died on Friday at age 103, NBC News reported, citing his son, Trend reports citing Reuters.

Ferencz, a Harvard-educated lawyer, secured convictions of numerous German officers who led roving death squads during the war. Circumstances of his death were not immediately disclosed. The New York Times reported that Ferencz died at an assisted living facility in Boynton Beach, Florida.

He was just 27 years old when he served as a prosecutor in 1947 at Nuremberg, where Nazi defendants including Hermann Göring faced a series of trials for crimes against humanity including the genocide known as the Holocaust in which six million Jewish people and millions of others were systematically killed.

Ferencz then advocated for decades for the creation of an international criminal court, a goal realized with the establishment of an international tribunal that sits in The Hague, Netherlands. Ferencz also was a significant donor to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum established in Washington.

Source: Trend News Agency

Hungary has decided to toughen controls of the transit of Ukrainian grain via its territory to make sure that supplies get to the countries of destination rather than remain on Central European markets, Hungarian Agriculture Minister Istvan Nagy said on Saturday, Trend reports citing TASS.

Nagy, who also made a proposal to reinstate customs fees and quotas on Ukrainian grain, said the measures were needed to protect the interests of European farmers who suffer losses amid Ukrainian food being supplied to EU markets at dumping prices.

"The European Commission said no to the general reinstatement of customs duties on Ukrainian agricultural products," so Hungary is taking the initiative "to re-introduce customs duties and quantitative limits on a group of products, imports of Ukrainian grain and oilseeds, at least temporarily," he said.

Also, Hungary will "continue to strengthen the inspection of imports, paying special attention to transit shipments in order to ensure that shipments designated for transit actually leave the country," Nagy said in a written statement circulated by his ministry.

Source: Trend News Agency