World News
War in Ukraine: the Russian truce is over, the hostilities have not stopped
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Sylvie Claire / January 8, 2023
Ukrainians celebrated Orthodox Christmas on Saturday in the middle of the war, sometimes even in underground shelters, and the 36-hour truce announced unconvincingly by Vladimir Putin ended without the hostilities really having ceased.
The world has seen once again today how untrue are all the words spoken up to the highest level in Moscow,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video message published in the evening. “They talked about a so-called ceasefire … but the reality is that Russian shells continued to hit Bakhmut (east, ed.) and other Ukrainian positions,” he added, hammering that the only solution was “the expulsion of Russian occupiers from Ukrainian lands. »
The ceasefire, decreed by Moscow from Friday midday, ended at midnight Saturday, Ukraine accusing the Russian army of not having respected it, and Russia accusing in return the Ukrainians of having prevented its application by forcing it to retaliate. Kiev had rejected the Kremlin’s announcement from the outset, still described as “fake” on Saturday by the Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhaïlo Podoliak, claiming that it was a ruse to gain time. Washington, Paris, London, Berlin and the EU have also denounced Moscow’s “hypocrisy ».
Journalists in Chassiv Iar, in eastern Ukraine, have in fact seen sustained shelling throughout the morning. In Bakhmut, the epicenter of the fighting located further north, AFP had already heard Friday artillery fire from both sides of the front, in the hours following the establishment of the unilateral ceasefire by Russia.
The shooting was at most of lower intensity than in previous days. According to the Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office, two people were killed and 13 wounded in Bakhmut during the course of Friday, in a town largely destroyed by fighting and where both sides are facing heavy losses. According to Ukrainian authorities, Russian troops also shelled the southern region of Kherson on Friday, killing one rescue worker and wounding seven others.
In the region of Zaporijjia (south-east), according to the local administration, a UN mission distributing humanitarian aid in Orikhiv was “caught under fire” by the enemy. The two countries, at war since February 2022, were celebrating on Saturday the Orthodox Christmas, the majority religion in Russia as in Ukraine.
The 7th of January of the civil calendar (Gregorian) corresponds to the 25th of December of the old Julian calendar that the Orthodox Church continues to follow, out of step with the Catholics since the 16th century. On the Russian side, Vladimir Putin attended alone a religious service in a church in the Kremlin on Friday at midnight, deviating from his habit of attending the liturgy in public, in the provinces or on the outskirts of Moscow. In a message broadcast on Saturday by the Kremlin, he addressed his congratulations to Orthodox Christians.
Church organizations “support our soldiers” fighting in Ukraine, the Russian president said. On the Ukrainian side, hundreds of faithful attended a historic liturgy on Saturday in the famous monastery of the Caves of Kiev, formerly under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate but passed in December into the fold of the independent Ukrainian Church.
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World News
At least 25 dead in a bus accident in Peru

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Sylvie Claire / September 23, 2023
At least 25 people, including two children, died when a bus crashed into a ravine in the Andean region of Huancavelica, in southern Peru, the authorities announced in a revised death toll on Monday evening.
An initial police report put the death toll at 20, with a further 35 injured. A statement from the Ministry of Health later that morning put the death toll at 24. Finally, at the end of the day on Monday, the death toll stood at “25 dead and 34 wounded”, according to the Ministry of Defense.
The accident occurred on Sunday night, when the bus carrying over 50 passengers from Huanta in Ayacucho to Huancayo in the Junin region ran off the road.
Images show the damaged bus lying on its side near a river below the ravine, debris and personal belongings strewn all around.
Peruvian President Dina Boluarte expressed her “condolences to the families” from New York, where she will be attending the 78th General Assembly of the United Nations. The Peruvian Episcopal Conference, for its part, urged the government to “carry out a serious investigation” to prevent such accidents from happening again.
On August 13, another accident in the same region left 13 people dead and 5 seriously injured.
Road accidents are frequent in Peru, mainly due to speeding and poor road maintenance, especially in mountainous areas.
World News
Japan is the country with the most centenarians, with over 92,000.

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Sylvie Claire / September 17, 2023
In Japan, the number of people aged 100 has reached a record level: the world’s third-largest economy now has 92,139 people aged 100 or over. That’s 1,613 more than a year ago, reported the Ministry of Health in Tokyo on Friday.
For over half a century, the number of people aged 100 has been rising every year. Due to a low birth rate and almost non-existent immigration, no other industrial state is aging as fast as this East Asian country.
Japan’s population is also shrinking at a record pace. Last year, the number of Japanese fell by 801,000, the biggest drop since comparable data have been recorded. There are now 122.4 million.
When the Japanese Ministry of Health began compiling statistics in 1963, there were 153 centenarians. Twenty-five years later, there were over 10,000. According to the latest figures, around 88% of centenarians are women. Japan has the longest life expectancy in the world. Life expectancy for women is around 87 years, and 81 for men.
World News
Morocco earthquake: death toll now stands at 2,946

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Steph Deschamps / September 17, 2023
The death toll from the earthquake in Morocco has risen to 2,946, the Moroccan Ministry of the Interior announced on Wednesday evening. A further 5,674 people were injured.
The previous death toll was 2,901. The death toll is expected to rise further. Hopes of finding survivors are now very slim. Rescue workers have not yet been able to reach all the villages affected in the Atlas Mountains.
A magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck the country on Friday night. The epicenter was located some 80 kilometers southwest of Marrakech. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over 300,000 people in and around Marrakech were affected by the disaster.