Irish PM says hard Brexit would raise issue of Irish unification - Reuters

GLENTIES, Ireland (Reuters) - The question of the unification of Ireland and British-ruled Northern Ireland will inevitably arise if Britain leaves the European Union without a divorce deal on Oct. 31, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said.

FILE PHOTO: Ireland's Prime Minister (Taoiseach) Leo Varadkar arrives to take part in a European Union leaders summit, in Brussels, Belgium July 2, 2019. Geoffroy Van Der Hasselt/Pool via REUTERS

He also warned that a so-called hard Brexit could undermine Scotland’s place in the United Kingdom.

His comments on Friday prompted a sharp rebuke from Northern Ireland’s largest pro-British party, the Democratic Unionist Party, whose member of parliament Ian Paisley said the Irish government’s language was “unhelpful and unnecessarily aggressive.”

Asked at a politics forum if the Irish government intended to begin to publicly plan for a united Ireland, Varadkar said it did not at present as it would be seen as provocative by pro-British unionists in Northern Ireland.

“But in the event of a hard Brexit, those questions do arise,” he said.

“If Britain takes Northern Ireland out of the European Union against the wishes of the majority of people in Northern Ireland – takes away their European citizenship and undermines the Good Friday Agreement - in doing so, those questions will arise, whether we like it or not,” Varadkar said at the MacGill Summer School conference in the northwest of Ireland.

“We are going to have to be ready for that.”

In the 2016 referendum, 56 percent in Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU.

Over 3,600 people died in three decades of violence between Irish nationalists seeking a united Ireland and the British security forces and pro-British “unionists”.

The 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended the violence, foresees the holding of referendums on both sides of the border on uniting the island if London and Dublin see public support for that. The British government says it does not believe there is sufficient support now.

Varadkar also suggested voters in Scotland, where 62 percent voted to remain in the EU in the 2016 referendum, might make a new push for independence.

“Ironically one of the things that could really undermine the union - the United Kingdom union - is a hard Brexit, both for Northern Ireland and for Scotland. But that is a problem that they are going to have to face,” Varadkar said.

Reporting by Conor Humphries; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Janet Lawrence

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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2019-07-27 08:12:00Z
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South Korea balcony collapse kills 2, injures 16 -- including US water polo athletes - Fox News

At least two people were killed and 16 injured, including three American and other athletes at the world swimming championships, after an internal balcony at a South Korean nightclub collapsed Saturday.

USA Water Polo told the Associated Press that Kaleigh Gilchrist, a female water polo player, suffered a deep left leg laceration that required immediate surgery at a hospital. The other two injured Americans are also water polo players and suffered minor injuries.

Gilchrist, 27, is from Newport Beach, Calif.

“This is an awful tragedy,” said Christopher Ramsey, CEO of USA Water Polo. “Players from our men's and women's teams were celebrating the women's world championship victory when the collapse occurred at a public club. Our hearts go out to the victims of the crash and their families.”

“This is an awful tragedy. ... Our hearts go out to the victims of the crash and their families.”

— Christopher Ramsey, CEO of USA Water Polo

Kaleigh Gilchrist, 27, a water polo player for Team USA, suffered a severe leg injury when a balcony collapsed in a South Korean nightclub on Saturday, officials say. (Team USA photo)

The collapse occurred next to the athletes' village in the southern South Korean city of Gwangju. Hundreds of people were at the club at the time.

CALIFORNIA CASINO ROOF COLLAPSE LEAVES MULTIPLE PEOPLE INJURED, AUTHORITIES SAY

Officials said two South Korean men died while 16 others were injured. Among the injured are 10 foreigners, including eight participating in the swimming championships in the city.

Rescue workers walk to inspect a collapsed internal balcony at a nightclub in Gwangju, South Korea, Saturday, July 27, 2019. Members of the U.S. national water polo team were in a South Korean nightclub on Saturday when an internal balcony collapsed, killing at least one person. (Associated Press)

Among those athletes were the three Americans, plus two New Zealanders, one Dutch, one Italian and one Brazilian, authorities said. Most suffered minor injuries.

One of the nightclub's co-owners was detained by police. Three other club officials were summoned by the authorities to investigate whether the collapsed balcony was an unauthorized structure.

A collapsed internal balcony is seen at a nightclub in Gwangju, South Korea, Saturday, July 27, 2019. Members of the U.S. national water polo team were in a South Korean nightclub on Saturday when an internal balcony collapsed, killing at least two people. (Associated Press)

100-YEAR-OLD NORTH DAKOTA BRIDGE COLLAPSES UNDER OVERWEIGHT TRUCK CARRYING SEVERAL TONS OF BEANS, POLICE SAY

Members of the New Zealand men's and women's water polo teams were also at the nightclub. Matt Small, the men’s team captain, said the scene was chaotic and his team tried to help people.

“(It was) business as usual and then it literally collapsed beneath our feet,” Small told New Zealand Radio Sport. “None of the boys are hurt or injured though — so that's good. But everyone's a bit shaken up at the moment.”

Police stand at the door to a nightclub in Gwangju, South Korea, Saturday, July 27, 2019. (Associated Press)

“We did what we could but we couldn't really do too much. Some of them were pretty dire cases,” he said. “We were more so just concerned about everyone else, we were trying to do a number count and make sure all the boys were there.”

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The local organizing committee said that at least seven athletes have already returned to the athletes' village after minor treatments at hospitals.

The organizing committee said it won't disclose other personal information about the athletes at the request of their national teams.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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2019-07-27 07:51:03Z
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Hong Kong protesters take their pro-democracy cause to airport - NBCNews.com

HONG KONG — Protesters crowded into one of the world's busiest airports, greeting international visitors to Hong Kong with anti-government chants Friday in an effort to raise awareness of their pro-democracy movement.

More than 1,000 demonstrators dressed in black filled the arrival hall at Hong Kong International Airport, chanting, "There are no riots, there's only tyranny!"

For several weeks, Hong Kong residents have been protesting for democratic reforms and the withdrawal of an extradition bill that has now been suspended. Their demands include direct elections, the dissolution of the current legislature, and an investigation into alleged police brutality.

Andy Ho, one of the protest's organizers, said its main goal "is to let more people around the world know what is actually happening in Hong Kong in recent months."

"Hong Kong doesn't look like how it did before," said Ho, 22.

About two hours after the event started, protesters had filled up arrival hall A in Terminal 1 and were spreading out to arrival hall B.

Ahead of Friday's action, protesters released a tongue-in-cheek video in the style of an airplane landing announcement.

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Hong Kong," the polished voiceover says. "It is a safety requirement that you remain alert and vigilant at all times because the police will no longer answer your calls when you have any needs."

After nearly two months of large-scale protests on streets and around government buildings, clashes with police and other parties have become increasingly violent.

Another march is planned for Saturday in Yuen Long, the neighborhood where a mob of white-clad men brutally attacked people at a rail station last Sunday following a large pro-democracy rally. Dozens were injured and six arrested, with police alleging some had gang ties.

Police have refused to permit the Saturday march, citing the risk of confrontations, but protesters say they will move forward anyway. They have created posters advertising the rally as a nondenominational gathering to mourn Li Peng, a former Chinese premier who died this week. Under Hong Kong's Public Order Ordinance, religious gatherings and funerals do not require police permission.

Li was a hard-liner who announced martial law during the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, which ended in bloodshed. Satirical posters called Saturday's planned march a "memorial gathering" and dubbed Li "Hong Kong's father of democracy."

Last Sunday, after a large but mostly calm march, some protesters vandalized the Liaison Office, which represents China's Communist Party-ruled central government in Hong Kong. They spray-painted the office's surveillance cameras and threw eggs and black paint at the Chinese national emblem on the building. That last move incensed mainland authorities who called it an affront to the "one country, two systems" framework through which the Chinese territory is promised certain freedoms not afforded in the mainland.

Some protesters called on foreign consulates to issue a travel warning for the city after the Yuen Long attacks.

Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the move is "an attempt to incite external forces to intervene in Hong Kong affairs."

"I advise those who invite a wolf into the room to learn from history," she said at a regular briefing Friday. "Has anyone in history met a good end after colluding with external forces and blaming their own country and people?"

Hua also addressed concerns that China's People's Liberation Army will get involved. A Defense Ministry official this week cited an article in Hong Kong's Garrison Law which allows army troops stationed in the city to help with public order maintenance at the Hong Kong government's request.

The army troops based in Hong Kong have become essential to "Hong Kong's long-term prosperity and stability," she said.

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2019-07-26 13:17:00Z
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Armed robbers steal at least $30 million of gold and precious metals in Sao Paulo airport heist - CNN

Eight men targeted a cargo terminal at Sao Paulo-Guarulhos International Airport, driving two trucks that resembled those driven by Brazilian federal police, the agency said. At the terminal, four men exited the truck wearing face coverings, Reuters reported, saying that at least one carried a rifle.

The armed men took two airport workers hostage, Reuters said. One was the airport's logistics supervisor, according to Agencia Brasil, which said the hostages were released unharmed.

The gunmen left the airport with approximately 750 kilograms (1,653 pounds) of gold and other metals due for shipment to Zurich and New York. No shots were fired and no one was injured during the robbery, the state news agency said.

According to Brazil's Federal Highway Police, the thieves may have had access to internal information about airport operations.

In April this year, armed robbers stole a large cash haul from Albania's Tirana International Airport, seizing money destined for Vienna from an Austrian Airlines plane. One of the gunmen was shot to death during a police chase, while a further four were arrested.

CNN's AJ Davis and Daniel Silva Fernandez contributed to this report.

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2019-07-26 14:03:00Z
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Armed men disguised as cops take $40M in gold, precious metals and hostages in Brazilian airport heist - Fox News

Several armed gunman in federal police cars entered one of Brazil’s busiest airports Thursday and made off with $40 million worth of gold and precious metals, taking two hostages with them during the heist.

Four suspects were captured on surveillance tape entering the Sao Paulo International Airport in Guarulhos in a black pickup truck that appeared to have the markings of Brazil’s federal police, Reuters reported.

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The four men exited the vehicle, at least one armed with a rifle, and confronted airport employees. Security footage then shows the workers loading cargo into the vehicle.

A fake police truck that was used in robbery is transported on a flat-bed truck in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Thursday, July 25, 2019. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano)

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According to a police report, the thieves made off with about 1,650 pounds of gold and other precious metals worth $40 million. They also took with them two airport workers as hostages.

A spokeswoman for the airport confirmed the heist to Reuters but did not comment on a hostage situation. She said no one was hurt during the robbery.

Early reports suggested that there were as many as eight suspects and that they kidnapped a senior airport official Wednesday and held him for 12 hours to gain information about the valuable cargo which was set to ship to New York and Zurich, the Evening Standard reported.

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Four children related to the official were also said to be kidnapped in an attempt to gather information.

A local broadcaster said that the cars used during the heist were found abandoned in a neighborhood about 12 miles from the airport. The suspects remain at large.

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2019-07-26 13:06:41Z
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Armed robbers steal at least $30 million of gold and precious metals in Sao Paulo airport heist - CNN

Eight men targeted a cargo terminal at Sao Paulo-Guarulhos International Airport, driving two trucks that resembled those driven by Brazilian federal police, the agency said. At the terminal, four men exited the truck wearing face coverings, Reuters reported, saying that at least one carried a rifle.

The armed men took two airport workers hostage, Reuters said. One was the airport's logistics supervisor, according to Agencia Brasil, which said the hostages were released unharmed.

The gunmen left the airport with approximately 750 kilograms (1,653 pounds) of gold and other metals due for shipment to Zurich and New York. No shots were fired and no one was injured during the robbery, the state news agency said.

According to Brazil's Federal Highway Police, the thieves may have had access to internal information about airport operations.

In April this year, armed robbers stole a large cash haul from Albania's Tirana International Airport, seizing money destined for Vienna from an Austrian Airlines plane. One of the gunmen was shot to death during a police chase, while a further four were arrested.

CNN's AJ Davis and Daniel Silva Fernandez contributed to this report.

CNN's AJ Davis and Daniel Silva Fernandez contributed to this report.

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https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/26/americas/brazil-sao-paulo-airport-heist-scli-intl/index.html

2019-07-26 11:01:00Z
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Record-breaking heat wave in Europe sparks demands to combat climate crisis - Salon

Following days of warnings from meteorologists, temperatures soared to historic highs throughout Western Europe Thursday, eliciting impassioned demands for governments to take more ambitious action to combat the climate crisis.

Heat records were shattered Thursday in regions of Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

That came after, as the New York Times reported, "officials sounded high-temperature health alarms on Wednesday, mindful that some previous heat waves have claimed thousands of lives across a region where people are not used to such weather, structures are not built for it and few homes have air conditioning."

Peter Stott of the U.K.'s national weather service, the Met Office, explained on BBC Radio 5 Live that the current heat wave is the result of "weather and climate acting in concert."

"What we have at the moment is this very warm stream of air, coming up from northern Africa, bringing with it unusually warm weather," he said. "But without climate change we wouldn't have hit the peaks that we're hitting right now."

Karsten Haustein, a climate scientist and meteorologist at the University of Oxford, tweeted: "This. Is. Climate. Change."

In a statement Thursday, Johannes Cullmann, director of the Climate and Water Department at the World Meteorological Organization, also connected the scorching temperatures that Europeans are enduring this week to the broader trend of anthropogenic global warming.

"Such intense and widespread heatwaves carry the signature of man-made climate change. This is consistent with the scientific finding showing evidence of more frequent, drawn out, and intense heat events as greenhouse gas concentrations lead to a rise in global temperatures," Cullmann said. "WMO expects that 2019 will be in the five top warmest years on record, and that 2015-2019 is to be the warmest of any equivalent five-year period on record."

Meteorologist Eric Holthaus took to Twitter to track various record-smashing measurements. In his tweets about Europe's life-threatening heat wave, Holthaus repeatedly declared, "We are in a climate emergency."

As the temperature in Paris continued to rise Thusrday, Holthaus continued to post updates. When it hit 108.7°F (42.6°C) in the late afternoon, he noted that "this breaks the previous all-time heat record by 4°F — a shocking amount for a city with such a long history."

Responding to the updates out of Paris, Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg wrote on Twitter, "The heat records are not just being broken all over the place... they are being smashed."

Tweeting with the hashtag #HottestDayOnRecord, Greenpeace U.K. called out global governments for their failure to adequately address the climate emergency.

The British arm of the advocacy group Friends of the Earth warned that "days like this will become the new normal unless governments unite to take real climate action."

"This is not normal," scientist and writer Andrew Steele tweeted about the new temperature records. "The climate is changing. Use your voice, wallet and votes to fight it."

This is the second heat wave to hit Europe this summer, following one last month — which, on a global scale, was the hottest June ever recorded, according to multiple analyses.

Looking ahead, Bob Henson wrote forWeather Underground Wednesday that "toward the weekend, the intense heat will translate northward and eastward into parts of Scandinavia, where monthly and all-time records may fall. By early next week, upper-level high pressure — perhaps stronger than anything ever recorded at these latitudes — will extend from northern Scandinavia to the North Pole. This pattern may cause Arctic sea ice, which was already at a record low extent for the date on Wednesday, to diminish at a rapid rate into early August."

The dangerous temperatures across the continent — as well as in parts of the United States and Asia — come as new research reveals that the planet is warming at a rate not seen in the past 2,000 years.

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2019-07-26 09:00:00Z
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