Polish foreign minister resigns
Warsaw: Poland’s foreign minister announced his resignation on Thursday in the fourth high-level departure this week from the country’s right-wing government.
Jacek Czaputowicz had said last month that he was expecting to leave the government as part of a reshuffle following the recent reelection of President Andrzej Duda, who is closely allied with Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s government. Czaputowicz said in July that he wasn’t under pressure to go. His resignation follows the departures this week of the health minister, his deputy and the deputy minister of digitization. (AP)
14 drown as boat sinks in Haiti
Port-au-Prince: At least 14 people drowned and more appeared to be missing after a packed sailboat sank in a channel between mainland Haiti and an outlying island, a Haitian official said.
Jose Rethone, coordinator of the civil protection office in Haiti’s Northwest Department, told The Associated Press that the boat sank around 1 pm on Wednesday as people returned to the le de la Tortue from market day in the town of Saint-Louis-du-Nord, about an hour’s trip across the La Tortue channel. Nine survivors were rescued from the water, but an unknown number remained lost at sea, Rethone said. (AP)
California hit by wildfires
San Francisco: Northern Californians were confronted with multiple threats as wildfires, unhealthy smoky air, extreme heat, the looming possibility of power outages and an ongoing pandemic forced many to weigh the risks of staying indoors or going outside.
Ash sprinkled the ground and smoke from several wildfires cast an eerie glow over the San Francisco Bay Area on Wednesday, creating unhealthy air quality. As ozone pollution reached unhealthy levels in some places, the region’s public health officials urged people to stay inside until the smoke subsided. (AP)
Lanka’s new parl commences
Colombo: Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena, who was sacked for opposing the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord in 1987, has been unanimously appointed as the Speaker of Sri Lanka’s new parliament which met for the first time on Thursday following the August 5 general election.
At the inaugural session of the 9th parliament, Foreign Minister Dinesh Gunawardena proposed Abeywardena for the post. The resolution was seconded by opposition Member of Parliament Ranjith Madduma Bandara. (PTI)
