Jan 28 (Reuters) – At least 24 people died in northern Peru after a bus carrying 60 passengers plunged off a cliff in early on Saturday, police told local media.
Peru’s transportation supervisory agency (SUTRAN) confirmed the crash in a statement, without providing a number of fatalities or injuries.
Bodies of victims are transported on the back of a pick-up truck, after a bus carrying 60 passengers plunged off a cliff, in the district of El Alto, Peru January 28, 2023. Piura Government/Handout via REUTERS
The tragedy, involving a bus for the company Q’Orianka Tours Aguila Dorada, occurred in the district of El Alto in the far north of Peru, SUTRAN said.
SUTRAN said early investigations showed the bus appeared to have an up-to-date safety inspection and accident insurance.
Road accidents are relatively common in Peru, with many drivers operating vehicles on precarious roads and without proper training. In 2021, 29 people died when a bus plunged off a highway in the Andes mountains.
Reporting by Brendan O’Boyle; Editing by Cynthia Osterman
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COVENTRY, England, Jan 23 (Reuters) – China’s Geely (0175.HK) is planning a big investment to turn the maker of London’s iconic black taxis into a high-volume, all-electric brand with a range of commercial and passenger vehicles, executives at the unit told Reuters.
London Electric Vehicle Company (LEVC) also aims to expand its suite of services, which include cars arranging their own maintenance and recognising their owner’s interests to help them book activities.
“We need a developed product portfolio. We need to make big investments in terms of the technology and infrastructure,” LEVC Chief Executive Alex Nan said at the taxi maker’s headquarters in Coventry, central England. “Geely will make consistent investments into LEVC because this is a very unique project.”
LEVC builds a hybrid taxi model that starts at around 66,000 pounds ($81,500), which has a battery providing 64 miles (103 km) of range and a petrol range-extender giving it a total range of over 300 miles. The company’s business was hit hard by the pandemic and it laid off 140 staff in October.
Nan said LEVC and Geely would seek to attract other investors to its zero-emission portfolio and would look to partner with other carmakers to develop new technology.
Executives said the size of Geely’s investment would be disclosed later. So far the Chinese group, which took full control of LEVC in 2013, has invested 500 million pounds in it.
“Geely fully supports the new transition strategy laid out by LEVC’s board and executive team,” Geely said in a statement.
In 2021, Geely launched a 2 billion pound investment in another unit, niche British luxury sports carmaker Lotus, to massively expand production of its sports cars and build high-end SUVs and sedans in Britain and China. Geely is following a similar path in its plans to grow LEVC, executives said.
Britain’s EV ambitions were dealt a blow last week when startup Britishvolt, which had planned to build a major battery factory in northeast England, filed for administration.
“We need to make sure the UK environment as a whole is competitive and has its position on the world stage,” said LEVC managing director Chris Allen.
READY TO ACCELERATE
Geely owns multiple brands including Volvo (VOLCARb.ST) and – via a joint venture with Volvo – Polestar . Zeekr, another brand in the group, filed for a U.S. initial public offering last month.
As such, Geely faces a complexity that larger EV makers BYD (002594.SZ) and Tesla (TSLA.O) have avoided.
Allen said LEVC was exploring a range of commercial and passenger car models on a common electric platform. It can lean on other group brands that already have EVs to “move forward in a fast, agile way”.
The company already uses an infotainment system and software developed by Volvo and a steering wheel from the Swedish carmaker, allowing it to cut costs, Allen said.
“There’s nothing we couldn’t deliver in a very short time period if we needed to, but it’s just a question of timing,” he said, adding LEVC could easily have a full range of EVs on the road within five years.
“But in two years time, is the industry going to be ready, is the charging infrastructure going to be there, is consumer confidence going to be there?”
LEVC currently has the capacity to build 3,000 taxis a year running on a single shift at its Coventry factory. Allen said that could easily be increased to 20,000 and the plant had room to expand. It could also lean on production in China as Lotus has, Allen said. A major car plant produces on average around 300,000 vehicles per year.
“There’s a huge amount of value in our product that hasn’t ever really been maximised,” Allen said. “This is about growing LEVC into a much more recognizable brand on a global scale and expanding our product offering into as many spaces as we can.”
($1 = 0.8095 pounds)
Reporting by Nick Carey, Additional reporting by Zoey Zhange in Shanghai and Norihiko Shirouzu in Beijing
Editing by Mark Potter
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DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 19 (Reuters) – Greta Thunberg called on the global energy industry and its financiers to end all fossil fuel investments on Thursday at a high-profile meeting in Davos with the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA).
During a round-table discussion with Fatih Birol on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting, activists said they had presented a “cease and desist” letter to CEOs calling for a stop to new oil, gas and coal extraction.
“As long as they can get away with it they will continue to invest in fossil fuels, they will continue to throw people under the bus,” Thunberg warned.
The oil and gas industry, which has been accused by activists of hijacking the climate change debate in the Swiss ski resort, has said that it needs to be part of the energy transition as fossil fuels will continue to play a major role in the energy mix as the world shift to a low-carbon economy.
Thunberg, who was detained by police in Germany earlier this week during a demonstration at a coal mine, joined with fellow activists Helena Gualinga from Ecuador, Vanessa Nakate from Uganda and Luisa Neubauer from Germany to discuss the tackle the big issues with Birol.
Birol, whose agency makes policy recommendations on energy, thanked the activists for meeting him, but insisted that the transition had to include a mix of stakeholders, especially in the face of the global energy security crisis.
The IEA chief, who earlier on Thursday met with some of the biggest names in the oil and gas industry in Davos, said there was no reason to justify investments in new oil fields because of the energy crunch, saying by the time these became operational the climate crisis would be worse.
He also said he was less pessimistic than the climate activists about the shift to clean energy.
“We can have slight legitimate optimism,” he said, adding: “Last year the amount of renewables coming to the market was record high.”
But he admitted that the transition was not happening fast enough and warned that emerging and developing countries risked being left behind if advanced economies did not support the transition.
Youth climate activist Greta Thunberg takes part in a discussion on “Treating the climate crisis like a crisis” with International Energy Agency head Fatih Birol (not pictured) on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland January 19, 2023. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann
‘REAL MONEY’
The United Nation’s climate conference, held in Egypt last year, established a loss and damage fund to compensate countries most impacted by climate change events.
Nakate, who held a solitary protest outside the Ugandan parliament for several months in 2019, said the fund “is still an empty bucket with no money at all.”
“There is a need for real money for loss and damage”.
In 2019, the then 16-year-old Thunberg took part in the main WEF meeting, famously telling leaders that “our house is on fire”. She returned to Davos the following year.
But she refused to participate as an official delegate this year as the event returned to its usual January slot.
Asked why she did not want to advocate for change from the inside, Thunberg said there were already activists doing that.
“I think it should be people on the frontlines and not privileged people like me,” she said. “I don’t think the changes we need are very likely to come from the inside. They are more likely to come from the bottom up.”
The activists later walked together through the snowy streets of Davos, where many of the shops have temporarily been turned into “pavilions” sponsored by companies or countries.
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Writing by Leela de Kretser; Editing by Alexander Smith
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MEXICO CITY, Jan 7 (Reuters) – At least one person was killed and 57 were injured in a train collision on Mexico City’s metro early on Saturday, local authorities said.
The person killed in the morning accident was a young woman, city security head Omar Garcia told local media Grupo Milenio.
Garcia shared an updated list of the injured later on Saturday, and the city’s mayor, Claudia Sheinbaum, said on Twitter that she was at the site.
Four others who were trapped on one wagon on Line 3 were rescued and are in good health, Garcia said earlier.
A variety of accidents have taken place on the metro in recent years. The most serious was the May 2021 collapse of a rail overpass on Line 12 that killed 26 people and injured more than 60.
Maintenance shortcomings were identified as one of that accident’s causes.
Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz in Mexico City;
Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb;
Editing by Leslie Adler
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RIO DELL, Calif., Dec 20 (Reuters) – A powerful magnitude 6.4 earthquake jolted the extreme northern coast of California before dawn on Tuesday, damaging homes, roads and water systems and leaving tens of thousands of people without electricity.
At least 11 people were reported injured, and two others died from “medical emergencies” that occurred during or just after the quake, according to the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office.
The tremor, which struck at 2:30 a.m. PST and was followed by about 80 aftershocks, was centered 215 miles (350 km) north of San Francisco offshore of Humboldt County, a largely rural area known for its redwood forests, local seafood, lumber industry and dairy farms.
The region also is known for relatively frequent seismic activity, although the latest quake appeared to cause more disruption than others in recent years.
Tuesday’s temblor set off one structure fire, which was quickly extinguished, and caused two other buildings to collapse, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire).
The department said its dispatchers fielded 70 emergency calls after the quake, including one report of a person left trapped who needed rescuing, spokesperson Tran Beyea said.
Details on quake-related casualties was sketchy, but one surviving victim was a child with a head injury and the other an older person with a broken hip, according to local media reports citing the sheriff’s office.
‘REALLY INTENSE’
Police closed a bridge crossing the Eel River into Ferndale, a picturesque town notable for its gingerbread-style Victorian storefronts and homes, after four large cracks were discovered in the span. The California Highway Patrol also said the roadway foundation there was at risk of sliding.
Authorities reported at least four other roads in Humboldt County closed due to earthquake damage, and a possible gas line rupture under investigation. One section of a roadway was reportedly sinking, the Highway Patrol said.
Ferndale and the adjacent towns of Fortuna and Rio Dell appeared hardest hit, with damage including water main breaks and about two dozen homes “red-tagged” because they were too unstable to be safely inhabited, state emergency services officials said.
[1/7] The collapsed second story porch of a house is seen after a strong 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of northern California, in Rio Dell, California, U.S. December 20, 2022. REUTERS/Fred Greaves
“The shaking was really intense,” said Daniel Holsapple, 33, a resident of nearby Arcata, who recounted grabbing his pet cat and running outside after he was jostled awake in pitch darkness by the motion of the house and an emergency alert from his cellphone.
“There was no seeing what was going on. It was just the sensation and that general low rumbling sound of the foundation of the whole house vibrating,” he said.
Janet Calderon, 32, who lives in the adjacent town of Eureka, said she was already awake and noticed her two cats seemed agitated moments before the quake struck, shaking her second-flood bedroom “really hard.”
“Everything on my desk fell over,” she said.
California’s earthquake early warning system appeared to have worked, sending electronic alerts to the mobile devices of some 3 million northern California residents 10 seconds before the first rumbles were felt, said state emergency chief Mark Ghilarducci.
While earthquakes producing noticeable shaking are routine in California, tremors at a magnitude 6.4 are less common and potentially dangerous, capable of causing partial building collapses or shifting structures off their foundations.
Tuesday’s temblor struck in a seismically active area where several tectonic plates converge on the sea floor about 2 miles offshore, an area that has produced about 40 quakes in the 6.0-7.0 range over the past century, said Cynthia Pridmore, a senior geologist for the California Geological Survey.
“So it is not unusual to have earthquakes of this size in this region,” she told a news conference.
Shaking from Tuesday’s quake, which occurred at the relatively shallow depth of 11.1 miles (17.9 km) was felt as far away as the San Francisco Bay area, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. The biggest aftershock registered a magnitude 4.6.
Some 79,000 homes and businesses were without power in Ferndale and surrounding Humboldt County shortly after the quake, according to the electric grid tracking website PowerOutage.us.
PG&E crews were out assessing the utility’s gas and electric system for any damage and hazards, which could take several days, company spokesperson Karly Hernandez said.
Reporting by Nathan Frandino in Rio Dell, Calif.; Writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Daniel Trotta in Calsbad, Calif; Rich McKay in Atlanta, Brendan O’Brien in Chicago, Laila Kearney in New York City and Akriti Sharma in Bengaluru; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Mark Porter, Lisa Shumaker and Richard Chang
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Tesla ships first Semi to PepsiCo five years after unveiling it
No details on orders or capacity for electric truck
Semi uses existing Tesla motors, to feature new Supercharger
Dec 1 (Reuters) – Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) Chief Executive Elon Musk delivered the company’s first heavy-duty Semi on Thursday to PepsiCo (PEP.O) without offering updated forecasts for the truck’s pricing, production plans or how much cargo it could haul.
Musk, who appeared onstage at an event at Tesla’s Nevada plant, said the battery-powered, long-haul truck would reduce highway emissions, outperform existing diesel models on power and safety and spin-off a fast-charging technology Tesla would use in its upcoming Cybertruck pickup.
“If you’re a trucker and you want the most badass rig on the road, this is it,” Musk said, noting that it was five years since Tesla had announced it was developing the all-electric truck. Still, industry experts remain skeptical that battery electric trucks can take the strain of hauling hefty loads for hundreds of miles economically.
At Musk’s first Tesla reveal since taking over Twitter – an acquisition some investors worry has become a distraction – the company did not announce pricing for the Semi, provide details on variants of the truck it had initially projected or supply a forecast for deliveries to PepsiCo or other customers. Tesla said it would begin using the Semi to ship parts to its plant in Fremont, California.
In 2017, Tesla had said the 300-mile range version of the Semi would cost $150,000, and the 500-mile version $180,000, but Tesla’s passenger electric vehicle prices have increased sharply since then.
Robyn Denholm, chair of Tesla, recently said the automaker might produce 100 Semis this year. Musk has said Tesla would aim to produce 50,000 of the trucks in 2024.
PepsiCo, which completed its first cargo run with the Tesla truck to deliver snacks for those attending the Nevada launch event, had ordered 100 trucks in 2017.
Brewer Anheuser-Busch (ABI.BR), United Parcel Service Inc (UPS.N) and Walmart Inc (WMT.N) were among other companies that had reserved the Semi. Tesla did not provide details on orders or deliveries to customers, nor an estimate on what the total cost of ownership for future buyers would be compared to diesel alternatives.
‘NOT IMPRESSIVE’
Musk said the Semi has been doing test runs between Tesla’s Sparks, Nevada factory and its plant in Fremont, California. Tesla said it had completed a 500-mile drive on a single charge, with the Semi and cargo weighing in at 81,000 pounds in total.
Tesla did not disclose the weight of an unloaded Semi, one key specification analysts had hoped to learn and an important consideration for the efficiency of electric trucks.
Musk has spoken in the past about the prospect of fully autonomous trucks. Tesla did not provide details on how Tesla’s driver assistance systems would function in the Semi it unveiled on Thursday or future versions.
[1/5] Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk waves near Tesla Semi electric trucks during a live-streamed unveiling in Nevada, U.S. December 1, 2022, in this still image taken from video. Tesla/Handout via REUTERS
The Semi delivery presentation ended without Musk taking questions, as he often does at Tesla events.
“Not very impressive – moving a cargo of chips (average weight per pack 52 grams) cannot in any way be said to be definitive proof of concept,” said Oliver Dixon, senior analyst at consultancy Guidehouse.
Tesla had initially set a production target for 2019 for the Semi, which was first unveiled in 2017. In the years since, rivals have begun to sell battery-powered trucks of their own.
Daimler’s (MBGn.DE) Freightliner, Volvo (VOLVb.ST), startup Nikola (NKLA.O) and Renault (RENA.PA) are among Tesla’s competitors in developing alternatives to combustion-engine trucks.
Walmart (WMT.N), for instance, has said it has been testing Freightliner’s eCascadia and Nikola’s Tre BEV trucks in California.
‘LIKE A CHEETAH’
The Semi is capable of charging at 1 megawatt and has liquid-cooling technology in the charging cable in an updated version of Tesla’s Supercharger that will be made available to the Cybertruck, Musk said. The Cybertruck is scheduled to go into production in 2023.
Trucks in Semi’s category represent just 1% of U.S. vehicle sales but 20% of overall vehicle emissions, Tesla said.
Tesla said other, future vehicles would use powertrain technology developed for the Semi without providing details. The Semi uses three electric motors developed for Tesla’s performance version of its Model S, with only one of them engaged at highway speed and two in reserve for when the truck needs to accelerate, a feature that makes the truck more energy-efficient, Musk said.
“This thing has crazy power relative to a diesel truck,” Musk said. “Basically it’s like an elephant moving like a cheetah.”
In a slide displayed as part of Musk’s presentation, Tesla showed an image of a future “robotaxi” in development with a mock-up of the future car covered under a tarp.
The presentation took place after Tesla shares closed at $194.70. The stock has fallen about 45% so far this year, losing about $500 billion in market capitalisation, down to about $615 billion.
Among factors cited by investors have been Musk’s sales of Tesla shares to finance his takeover of Twitter, signs that a slowing global economy has started to cut into demand for Tesla’s premium-priced cars, and a warning by the company that it might not meet its target to grow deliveries by 50% this year.
Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru and Hyunjoo Jin in San Francisco; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell
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WASHINGTON/LOS ANGELES, Nov 29 (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives was set to vote Wednesday to block a rail strike that could potentially happen as early as Dec. 9, after President Joe Biden warned of dire economic consequences and massive job losses.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said lawmakers will vote Wednesday to impose a tentative contract deal struck in September on a dozen unions representing 115,000 workers.
Pelosi said the House would vote separately on Wednesday on a proposal to give seven days of paid sick leave to railroad employees.
“I don’t like going against the ability of unions to strike but weighing the equities, we must avoid a strike,” she said Tuesday after a meeting with Biden.
Biden had warned Monday of a catastrophic economic impact if railroad service ground to a halt, saying up to 765,000 Americans could lose their jobs in the first two weeks of a strike.
“Congress, I think, has to act to prevent it. It’s not an easy call, but I think we have to do it. The economy is at risk,” Biden said.
Despite the close ties between unions and the Democratic Party, several labor leaders criticized Biden asking Congress to impose a contract that workers in four out of 12 unions rejected over its lack of paid sick leave.
The Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes, one of four unions that voted against the contract, objected to Biden’s call to Congress to intervene, saying “the railroad is not a place to work while you’re sick. It’s dangerous…. it is unreasonable and unjust to insist a person perform critical work when they are unwell.”
There are no paid sick days under the tentative deal after unions asked for 15 and railroads settled on one personal day.
[1/2] U.S. President Joe Biden meets with congressional leaders including House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell at the White House in Washington, U.S., November 29, 2022. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
The union push for paid sick time won support on Capitol Hill, where Senator Bernie Sanders threatened to delay the railroad bill unless he got a vote on the sick time issue.
“Guaranteeing 7 paid sick days to rail workers would cost the rail industry a grand total of $321 million a year – less than 2% of its profits,” Sanders said. “Please don’t tell me the rail industry can’t afford it. Rail companies spent $25.5 billion on stock buybacks and dividends this year.”
Regulators and shippers have accused railroads of cutting staff to improve profitability. The railroads oppose giving their workers paid sick time because they would have to hire more staff. The carriers involved include Union Pacific Corp (UNP.N), Berkshire Hathaway Inc’s (BRKa.N) BNSF, CSX Corp (CSX.O), Norfolk Southern Corp (NSC.N) and Kansas City Southern.
The measure needs a simple majority to pass the House. The bill would require a supermajority of 60 out of 100 votes to pass the Senate.
“I can’t in good conscience vote for a bill that doesn’t give rail workers the paid leave they deserve,” Representative Jamaal Bowman, a Democrat, said on Twitter.
Biden on Monday praised the proposed contract for including a 24% wage increase over five years and five annual $1,000 lump-sum payments.
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy also criticized the effort but said “I think it will pass, but it’s unfortunate that this is how we’re running our economy today.”
A rail traffic stoppage could freeze almost 30% of U.S. cargo shipments by weight, stoke already surging inflation and cost the American economy as much as $2 billion per day.
Brian Dodge, president of the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), said the idea of a rail shutdown “is just absolutely catastrophic” after companies spent the last year and a half trying to untangle gridlock in the supply chain. “We’d be setting ourselves back down that same path and it would take just as long to untangle the next time,” he said.
The U.S. Congress has passed laws to delay or prohibit railway and airline strikes multiple times in recent decades.
Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington and Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles Steve Holland and Doina Chiacu; Writing by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Jonathan Oatis, Heather Timmons, Lisa Shumaker and Simon Cameron-Moore
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OAKLAND, Calif., Nov 11 (Reuters) – Facebook owner Meta Platforms (META.O) told employees on Friday that it would stop developing smart displays and smartwatches and that nearly half of the 11,000 jobs it eliminated this week in an unprecedented cost-cutting move were technology roles.
Speaking during an employee townhall meeting heard by Reuters, Meta executives also said they were reorganizing parts of the company, combining a voice and video calling unit with other messaging teams and setting up a new division, Family Foundations, focused on tough engineering problems.
The executives said that the first mass layoff in the social media company’s 18-year history affected staffers at every level and on every team, including individuals with high performance ratings.
Overall, 54% of those laid off were in business positions and the rest were in technology roles, Meta human resources chief Lori Goler said. Meta’s recruiting team was cut nearly in half, she said.
The executives said further rounds of job cuts were not expected. But other expenses would have to be cut, they said, noting reviews underway about contractors, real estate, computing infrastructure and various products.
SMART DEVICES CUT
Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth, who runs the metaverse-oriented Reality Labs division, told staffers Meta would end its work on Portal smart display devices and on its smartwatches.
Meta had decided earlier this year to stop marketing Portal devices, known for their video calling capabilities, to consumers and focus instead on business sales, Bosworth said.
As the economy declined, executives decided more recently to make “bigger changes,” he said.
“It was just going to take so long, and take so much investment to get into the enterprise segment, it felt like the wrong way to invest your time and money,” said Bosworth.
Portal had not been a major revenue generator and drew privacy concerns from potential users. Meta had yet to unveil any smartwatches.
Bosworth said the smartwatch unit would focus instead on augmented reality glasses. More than half of the total investment in Reality Labs was going to augmented reality, he added.
Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg on Friday reiterated his apology from Wednesday about having to cut 13% of the workforce, telling employees he had failed to forecast Meta’s first dropoff in revenue.
Meta aggressively hired during the pandemic amid a surge in social media usage by stuck-at-home consumers. But business suffered this year as advertisers and consumers pulled the plug on spending in the face of soaring costs and rapidly rising interest rates.
The company also faced increased competition from TikTok and lost access to valuable user data that powered its ad targeting systems after Apple made privacy-oriented changes to its operating system.
“Revenue trends are just a lot lower than what I predicted. Again, I got this wrong. It was a big mistake in planning for the company. I take responsibility for it,” Zuckerberg said.
Going forward, he added, he was not planning to “massively” grow headcount of the Reality Labs unit.
Meta shares closed up 1% at $113.02.
Reporting by Paresh Dave in Oakland, California, Katie Paul in Palo Alto, California, Chavi Mehta in Bengaluru; Editing by Aurora Ellis
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Paresh Dave
Thomson Reuters
San Francisco Bay Area-based tech reporter covering Google and the rest of Alphabet Inc. Joined Reuters in 2017 after four years at the Los Angeles Times focused on the local tech industry.
BRASILIA/SAO PAULO, Nov 1 (Reuters) – Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday avoided conceding defeat in his first public remarks since losing Sunday’s election, saying protests since then were the fruit of “indignation and a sense of injustice” over the vote.
His chief of staff, Ciro Nogueira, speaking after Bolsonaro’s brief public address, said Bolsonaro had authorized him to begin the transition process with representatives of leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
It took Bolsonaro more than 44 hours to make his first public remarks since the election was decided by electoral authorities, making him the first Brazilian president to lose a re-election bid. He has still not spoken with Lula.
Amid his silence, supporters blocked highways to protest his defeat, with some calling for a military coup to stop former President Lula from returning to power. Bolsonaro’s delay in recognizing Lula’s election raised fear that he would contest the narrow result of the election.
In a national address on Tuesday that lasted just a few minutes, Bolsonaro thanked Brazilians who voted for him and reiterated that he would follow the country’s constitution, which stipulates a transition of power on Jan. 1.
He referred to the demonstrations as a “popular movement” and said they should avoid destroying property or “impeding the right to come and go.”
[1/13] Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro gives a press statement at the Alvorada Palace in Brasilia, Brazil November 1, 2022. REUTERS/Adriano Machado
That may not be enough to defuse the protests across Brazil by small groups of his supporters, which have begun to cause economic disruptions draw calls from farm and retail groups for Bolsonaro to begin a transition.
Close political allies, including his chief of staff and Vice President Hamilton Mourao, have begun to make contact with the Lula camp to discuss a transition. Others, including the speaker of the lower house of Congress, called on the Bolsonaro government to respect the election result.
The powerful agricultural lobby CNA, representing farmers who were important campaign donors for Bolsonaro, said it was ready for conversations with the incoming government, which will take office on Jan. 1.
Before Sunday’s vote, Bolsonaro repeatedly made baseless claims the electoral system was open to fraud and accused electoral authorities of favoring his leftist adversary.
Lula’s victory represents a stunning comeback for the 77-year-old former metalworker, spent 19 months in jail for corruption convictions before they were annulled last year.
Lula has vowed to overturn many of Bolsonaro’s policies, including pro-gun measures and weak protection of the Amazon rainforest.
Reporting by Ricardo Brito, Marcela Ayres and Anthony Boadle in Brasilia, Brian Ellsworth, Nayara Figuereido and Gabriel Araujo in Sao Paulo; Editing by Brad Haynes, Paul Simao and Alistair Bell
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Expected to review Kyiv’s request for air defence systems
May also warn Belarus against closer involvement
Russia says it will respond to greater Western aid
KYIV, Oct 11 (Reuters) – President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will ask the leaders of the G7 group of nations to urgently supply Ukraine with air defence weapons, after Russia rained down cruise missiles in its latest escalation of its unravelling invasion.
Ukrainians woke up to the wailing of new air raid sirens on Tuesday, with parts of the country left without power. Officials said 19 were killed on Monday in cruise missile strikes across the country, the biggest air raids since the start of the war.
President Vladimir Putin, under domestic pressure to ramp up the conflict as his forces have lost ground since the start of September, said he ordered the strikes as revenge for an explosion that damaged Russia’s bridge to annexed Crimea.
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Kyiv and its allies condemned Russia’s strikes, which mainly hit civil infrastructure such as power stations. Missiles also landed in parks, tourist sites and busy rush hour streets.
U.S. President Joe Biden and other Group of Seven leaders will convene virtually later on Tuesday to discuss what more they can do to support Ukraine and to listen to Zelenskiy, who has called air defence systems his “number 1 priority”. Biden has already promised more air defences.
The broad avenues of the capital Kyiv were largely deserted after air raid sirens resounded as the morning rush hour was beginning – the same time that Russian missiles struck the day before. Residents took cover again deep in the underground Metro, where trains were still running.
Viktoriya Moshkivski, 35, her husband and their two sons were among hundreds of people waiting for the all-clear in the Zolotye Vorota station, one of the deepest, near the downtown park where a missile ripped a crater next to a playground on Monday.
“We live on the other side of the street, and they got scared by the siren. So, we brought them down here,” Moshkiviski said as her sons, Timur, 5, and Rinat, 3, sat by her side on a sleeping bag, the younger playing with a King Kong action figure.
Putin “thinks that if he scares the population, he can ask for concessions, but he is not scaring us,” she said. “He is pissing us off.”
MORE STRIKES
Ukrainian officials reported more strikes on Tuesday, including one on the southeastern town of Zaporizhzhia which killed at least one person, although there did not appear to be a repeat of Monday’s nationwide attacks.
Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine’s sixth largest city, has remained under Ukrainian control throughout the war, despite Russia occupying most of the surrounding province, among four partially occupied regions that Moscow claims to have annexed this month.
Apartment blocks there have been struck overnight at least three times in the past week, killing civilians while they slept. Moscow has denied intentionally targetting them.
In an overnight video address from the scene of one of the attacks in Kyiv, Zelenskiy promised that Ukraine would keep fighting.
People shelter inside a subway station during a Russian missile attack in Kyiv, Ukraine October 11, 2022. REUTERS/Viacheslav Ratynskyi
“We will do everything to strengthen our armed forces. We will make the battlefield more painful for the enemy.”
As many as 301 settlements in the regions of Kyiv, Lviv, Sumy, Ternopil and Khmelnytsky remained without electricity on Tuesday morning.
Faced with blackouts, Ukraine has halted electricity exports to neighbouring Moldova and the European Union, at a time when the continent already faces surging power prices that have stoked inflation and hampered industrial activity.
BELARUS FEARS
G7 leaders are also expected to issue a warning Belarus, Moscow’s closest ally, against deeper involvement in the war, after Minsk said on Monday it was deploying soldiers with Russian forces near Ukraine in response to what it called a threat from Kyiv and its Western allies.
Belarus has allowed its territory to be used as a staging ground for Russian forces during the war, but has so far stopped short of sending troops to fight.
French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna told France Inter radio on Tuesday that G7 heads of state would probably warn Belarus to stay out of the conflict.
“Russia has crossed another line with a tactic that doesn’t involve fighting on the battlefield but carrying out indiscriminate bombings and since yesterday deliberately hitting civilian targets on all Ukrainian territory,” said Colonna.
“That is a violation of the rules of war and international law.”
Moscow has accused the West of escalating the conflict by supporting Ukraine.
“We warn and hope that they realise the danger of uncontrolled escalation in Washington and other Western capitals,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as saying by RIA news agency on Tuesday.
Since Ukrainian forces broke through Russia’s front lines in September, Putin has not only announced the annexation of Ukrainian territory but also called up hundreds of thousands of reservists and repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons.
Russia suffered a diplomatic setback on Monday, as the U.N. General Assembly voted to reject its call for the 193-member body to allow a secret ballot this week in a debate over whether to condemn Moscow’s annexations of Ukrainian regions. read more
The president of the United Arab Emirates, a member of the group of oil producers known as OPEC+ that rebuffed the United States last week by announcing steep production cuts, will travel to Russia on Tuesday to meet Putin and push for “military de-escalation”, UAE state news agency WAM reported.
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Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Stephen Coates, Andrew Osborn, Peter Graff; Editing by Philippa Fletcher
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