Harris or Trump? Millions vote in tense, tight US election

Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump (L) speaks during his final campaign rally at Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, Michigan in the early hours of November 5, 2024, and US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris (R) speaks during a campaign rally on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on November 4, 2024. Jeff Kowalsky and Andrew Caballero-Reynolds, AFP  

The volatile, dramatic US presidential race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump headed to an unpredictable finish Tuesday, with millions of Americans casting their votes in one of the tightest elections of modern times.

The result -- which may be known overnight or not for days -- carries major consequences, either making Harris the first woman in arguably the world's most powerful job or handing power back to Trump and his nationalist "America First" agenda.

As voters formed long lines across the country, several bomb threats were reported at polling stations, while police at the US Capitol -- where Trump's supporters rampaged following his 2020 defeat -- arrested a man who smelled like fuel and was carrying a flare gun.

Both the FBI and Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger said the bomb threats, while not credible, appeared to originate from Russia.

Polls show one of the tightest races in modern times between Democratic Vice President Harris, 60, and Republican Trump, 78, who would be the first felon president, the oldest ever to take office and only the second to serve non-consecutive terms.

Harris made a late, dramatic entrance into the race when President Joe Biden dropped out in July, while Trump has ridden out two assassination attempts and a criminal conviction.

Tens of millions of voters were expected to cast their ballots Tuesday, on top of the 83 million who have already voted early, and both candidates put in a final word to try to sway the last undecided voters.

After criss-crossing the country, Harris returned to Washington where she called in to radio stations in swing states and took a few calls personally at a phone bank for voters.

"We've got to get it done. Today is voting day, and people need to get out and be active," Harris told Atlanta station WVEE-FM.

She described her opponent as "full of vengeance. He's full of grievance. It's all about himself."

'IF IT'S A FAIR ELECTION'

Trump voted in Florida near his Mar-a-Lago residence, saying he felt "very confident" and that he wanted to be "very inclusive."

But he aired concerns about the vote count -- heightening fears he will reject the result and cite fraud if he loses.

"If it's a fair election, I would be the first one to acknowledge it," he said.

Trump has repeated baseless claims of election fraud while saying he should "never have left" the White House in 2021.

Casting a ballot in Arizona, Trump backer Camille Kroskey, 62, said she was voting in person due to concerns about voting fraud.

"I want to make sure I drop my ballot where it's going to actually land somewhere," she told AFP.

"Now, will it get counted?" she asked. "I don't know."

US stance on West PH Sea won’t change even with new president — analyst

In perhaps the most crucial battleground state, Pennsylvania, Harris voter Marchelle Beason, 46, said the lines were "way, way, way more" than in the last election.

"We're so divided right now, and she's about peace. And everything that her opponent has to say is really negative," she added.

MAJOR CONSEQUENCES

At the same school, 56-year-old Darlene Taylor, wearing a homemade Trump shirt, said her main issue is to "close the border."

Trump has vowed an unprecedented deportation campaign of millions of undocumented immigrants if elected.

The election is being watched closely around the world including in the war zones of Ukraine and the Middle East.

Harris has vowed to keep up support for Ukraine against Russia's invasion and to put a greater effort in ending the Gaza war, although she has also voiced support for Israel.

Trump has promised a quick end to the Ukraine war, likely by pressing Kyiv into concessions, and has made clear he will give freer rein to Israel, which relies on US support.

"We can fix every single problem our country faces and lead America -- indeed, the world -- to new heights of glory," Trump told his closing rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Harris hammered home her opposition to Trump-backed abortion bans in multiple states -- a vote-winning position with crucial women voters.

Control of Congress is also at stake, with Republicans widely expected to win back control of the Senate.

US election: When will we know who won?

Agence France-Presse

China urges citizens in Israel to leave 'as soon as possible'

China has urged its citizens in Israel to leave "as soon as possible", as tensions between Israel and Lebanon's Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah escalate.

"Currently, the situation along the Israel-Lebanon border is extremely tense, with frequent military conflicts," China's embassy in Israel said in a statement on Sunday.

"The security situation in Israel remains severe, complex, and unpredictable," the statement added.

The embassy urged Chinese citizens in Israel to "return home or relocate to safer areas as soon as possible".

Israel and Hezbollah threatened on Sunday to escalate their cross-border attacks despite international calls for both sides to step back from the brink of all-out war.

An Israeli air strike in a densely populated Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut Friday killed the head of Hezbollah's elite Radwan Force, Ibrahim Aqil.

It came after a series of coordinated communications device blasts on Tuesday and Wednesday across Lebanon that killed 39 people and wounded almost 3,000, and which were blamed on Israel.

China last month asked its citizens in Lebanon to leave after an Israeli strike in the country killed a senior Palestinian militant.

Agence France-Presse

Trump launches new crypto platform with scant detail

NEW YORK, United States - Former US president Donald Trump along with his sons and entrepreneurs late Monday launched a cryptocurrency platform but provided few details.

Little was revealed about the Trump family crypto project during a two-hour online presentation other than an offer to let people buy digital "tokens" giving them a vote in platform decisions. The event went ahead as planned despite an apparent assassination attempt against Trump on Sunday at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida.

World Liberty Financial intends to offer services based on so-called decentralized finance, a mechanism that eliminates the need for an intermediary such as a bank to carry out transactions with a third party, the politics-laced discussion indicated.

The former president's son Donald Trump Jr. touted this as "the start of a financial revolution," during a session streamed on X, formerly Twitter. Zachary Folkman and Chase Herro, the linchpins of the project and established cryptocurrency entrepreneurs, said the platform would primarily use "stablecoins", which are backed by a traditional currency, most often the dollar.

As a result, they are free from the sometimes brutal fluctuations experienced by digital currencies untethered to real-world money. World Liberty Financial wants to attract the masses to cryptocurrencies, creating a platform easily accessible to people, Folkman said.

Project leaders said they would sell tokens that give owners the right to take part in governance of the platform, with 63 percent of them offered to the public, 20 percent going to the founding team and the rest set aside as rewards for users.

No timetable for the project was disclosed.

During his presidency Trump referred to cryptocurrencies as a scam, but has since radically changed his position, presenting himself as a "pro-bitcoin president" if elected in November. In so doing, he is standing in opposition to the Biden administration, which is seen as a proponent of regulating the sector.

Agence France-Presse

Violence, threats hang over Trump-Harris race after turbulent weekend

WASHINGTON -- Kamala Harris and Donald Trump on Monday head into a newly intense phase of the US presidential campaign, with tensions heightened after a second apparent assassination attempt against the Republican former president.

The Sunday arrest of a gunman on Donald Trump's golf course came the same day as more bomb threats poured into Springfield, Ohio, a small Midwestern city at the center of Republican-led conspiracies against immigrants.

But the dueling campaigns are set to march on with little interruption, a day after the Secret Service confirmed one or more of its agents "opened fire on a gunman" located near the boundary of Trump's Florida golf course, and that an "AK-47 style rifle" with a scope was recovered along with a GoPro video camera.

The FBI said it was "investigating what appears to be an attempted assassination of former President Trump."

US media named the suspect as Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, who had expressed support for Ukraine and had a lengthy arrest record.

Authorities said they had not identified a specific motive or political ideology for the shooter behind the previous bid on Trump's life, at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

Trump was wounded in the ear in the July 13 shooting.

Authorities on Sunday said it wasn't clear whether a gunman actually fired a weapon in the direction of the former president before the Secret Service engaged the shooter.

Harris and President Joe Biden both denounced the attack on Trump, with Biden saying "There is no place for political violence or for any violence ever in our country."

Vice President Harris, the Democratic nominee who will face ex-president Trump at the polls November 5, said in a statement Sunday she was "disturbed by the possible assassination attempt" and "thankful that former president Trump is safe."

The same day, Clark State College, in Springfield, announced it would hold classes virtually this week, after receiving bomb and shooting threats over the weekend.

- Bomb threats -

The move comes on the fourth consecutive day of threats of bombings and other violence that have targeted the local city hall, public schools and nearby college Wittenberg University, following racist rumors about local Haitian immigrants pushed by Republicans including Trump.

What started as municipal growing pains in a rapidly growing city have morphed into allegations of an "invasion" by "illegal" Haitian newcomers, baselessly accused of stealing and eating people's pets and causing a crime wave.

Threats have hit hospitals, schools and municipal buildings since Trump declared the immigrants were stealing and eating resident's pets at Tuesday's presidential debate.

Some Haitians living in the city have told AFP they are scared for their lives.

- 'Hate' for Taylor Swift -

Adding to the country's acrimonious political atmosphere, Trump posted on his Truth Social website that "I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!"

Earlier this week, the superstar singer/songwriter posted a message on Instagram saying she would be voting for Harris, calling her a "steady-handed, gifted leader."

Celebrity endorsements rarely carry enormous weight, but the hugely popular Swift is seen as being in a class of her own, with more than 400 million followers on Instagram, TikTok and other social media platforms -- 10 million of whom "liked" her Instagram post.

It was not clear what Trump hoped to gain by attacking Swift, though he may calculate that any publicity is better than none.

He has been criticized, even by fellow Republicans, for his recent association with conspiracy-minded right-wing influencer Laura Loomer, who has at times joined him on his campaign plane.

The 31-year-old Loomer -- who has called the September 11 terror attacks an "inside job" and said some of the country's recent mass shootings were staged by Democrats -- recently suggested that Swift had entered an "arranged relationship" with football star Travis Kelce "to influence the 2024 election."

There is no evidence to support any of those claims.

The race between Trump and Harris remains tight across the battleground states that will decide the election.

Agence France-Presse

World leaders plan new agreement on AI

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — World leaders are expected to adopt a new agreement on artificial intelligence when they gather virtually Tuesday to discuss AI’s potential risks but also ways to promote its benefits and innovation.

The AI Seoul Summit is a follow-up to November’s inaugural AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in the United Kingdom, where participating countries agreed to work together to contain the potentially “catastrophic” risks posed by galloping advances in AI.

The two-day meeting -- co-hosted by the South Korean and U.K. governments -- also comes as major tech companies like Meta, OpenAI and Google roll out the latest versions of their AI models.

On Tuesday evening, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak are to meet other world leaders, industry leaders and heads of international organizations for a virtual conference. The online summit will be followed by an in-person meeting of digital ministers, experts and others on Wednesday, according to organizers.

“It is just six months since world leaders met at Bletchley, but even in this short space of time, the landscape of AI has changed dramatically,” Yoon and Sunak said in a joint article published in South Korea’s JoongAng Ilbo newspaper and the U.K.’s online inews site on Monday. “The pace of change will only continue to accelerate, so our work must accelerate too.”

While the U.K. meeting centered on AI safety issues, the agenda for this week’s gathering was expanded to also include “innovation and inclusivity,” Wang Yun-jong, a deputy director of national security in South Korea, told reporters Monday.

Wang said participants will subsequently “discuss not only the risks posed by AI but also its positive aspects and how it can contribute to humanity in a balanced manner."

The AI agreement will include the outcomes of discussions on safety, innovation and inclusivity. according to Park Sang-wook, senior presidential adviser for science and technology for President Yoon.

The leaders of the Group of Seven wealthy democracies -- the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Britain – were invited to the virtual summit, along with leaders of Australia and Singapore and representatives from the U.N., the EU, OpenAI, Google, Meta, Amazon and Samsung, according to South Korea’s presidential office.

China doesn’t plan to participate in the virtual summit though it will send a representative to Wednesday's in-person meeting, the South Korean presidential office said. China took part in the U.K. summit.

In their article, Yoon and Sunak said they plan to ask companies to do more to show how they assess and respond to risks within their organizations.

“We know that, as with any new technology, AI brings new risks, including deliberate misuse from those who mean to do us harm,” they said. “However, with new models being released almost every week, we are still learning where these risks may emerge, and the best ways to manage them proportionately.”

The Seoul meeting has been billed as a mini virtual summit, serving as an interim meeting until a full-fledged in-person edition that France has pledged to hold.

Governments around the world have been scrambling to formulate regulations for AI even as the technology makes rapid advances and is poised to transform many aspects of daily life, from education and the workplace to copyrights and privacy. There are concerns that advances in AI could take away jobs, trick people and spread disinformation.

Developers of the most powerful AI systems are also banding together to set their own shared approach to setting AI safety standards. Facebook parent company Meta Platforms and Amazon announced Monday they’re joining the Frontier Model Forum, a group founded last year by Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI.

In March, the U.N. General Assembly approved its first resolution on the safe use of AI systems. Earlier in May, the U.S. and China held their first high-level talks on artificial intelligence in Geneva to discuss how to address the risks of the fast-evolving technology and set shared standards to manage it.

-Associated Press-

Vietnam court jails soft drinks tycoon in $40 million scam case

Vietnam's top soft drinks tycoon was jailed for eight years on Thursday in a $40 million fraud case -- the latest high-profile business figure snared in the country's sweeping crackdown on corruption.

The communist nation's wide-ranging campaign to wipe out endemic graft has seen more than 4,400 people charged with criminal offences, including officials and senior business figures.

A court in Ho Chi Minh City found Tran Qui Thanh and his two daughters guilty of scamming investors over loans issued in 2019 and 2020.

Thanh, the 71-year-old chairman of beverage group Tan Hiep Phat, was ruled to have masterminded scams to appropriate assets put up as collateral against loans, state media reported.

Even when the borrowers paid back the money with interest, Thanh would refuse to give back the assets on various pretexts, including claiming they had forfeited their repurchase rights due to contract breaches.

The court sentenced Thanh's 43-year-old daughter Tran Uyen Phuong, the company's deputy CEO, to four years in jail.

Younger daughter Tran Ngoc Bich, 40, was given a suspended three-year jail sentence.

Tan Hiep Phat is one of Vietnam's biggest beverage companies, known for its range of bottled tea and energy drinks.

In his final words before court, Thanh said he regretted what happened and was ready to take responsibility.

"I would like to be given leniency, handing me the chance to come back to society soon for my continued work and devotion," Thanh was quoted as saying.

Some of Vietnam's most successful business leaders have been snared in the graft purge.

In one of the biggest fraud cases in history, property tycoon Truong My Lan was sentenced to death earlier this month for masterminding a swindle that has caused losses estimated at $27 billion.

Facing justice with Lan were 85 others, including senior banking officials, being sentenced on charges ranging from bribery and power abuse to appropriation and violations of banking law.

In March, a Hanoi court gave luxury property tycoon Do Anh Dung eight years in prison for cheating thousands of investors in a $355 million bond scam.

State media reported that Dung and his son, who was jailed for three years, have already repaid the $355 million.

Vietnam tycoon sentenced to death in $12.5-B fraud case

Agence France-Presse

Biden's son Hunter indicted on gun charges

WASHINGTON — US President Joe Biden's son Hunter was indicted Thursday for illegally buying a gun when he was using drugs, casting a new shadow over his father's campaign for reelection next year.

Hunter Biden, 53, was charged with two counts of making false statements when claiming on forms required for the 2018 gun purchase that he was not using drugs illegally at the time.

A third charge said that, based on the false statements, he illegally possessed the gun during an 11-day period in October that year.

If convicted on all three felony charges, Biden could in theory face 25 years in prison, though in practice they are seldom punished by any jail time.

In attesting that he was not an unlawful user of drugs when he bought the Colt Cobra revolver, Biden "knew that statement was false," the Justice Department said.

The indictment came two days after Republicans in Congress opened an impeachment probe against Democrat Joe Biden, alleging that when he was vice president he benefitted financially from his son's foreign business dealings. 

The legal troubles of Hunter Biden present a target for political rivals of his father, who is bidding for a second term in the White House.

Hunter is a Yale-trained lawyer and lobbyist-turned-artist, but his life has been marred by alcoholism and crack cocaine addiction.

Without offering any evidence, Republicans have accused Biden's Justice Department of protecting his son and have accused Weiss, a Republican appointee, of going easy on Hunter.

Representative James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky who will be leading the impeachment inquiry, welcomed the filing of the gun charges, calling it a "very small start."

"Mountains of evidence reveals that Hunter Biden likely committed several felonies and Americans expect the Justice Department to apply the law equally," Comer said.

Twice-impeached former president Donald Trump reacted on his Truth Social platform.

"This, the gun charge, is the only crime that Hunter Biden committed that does not implicate Crooked Joe Biden," he said.

PLEA DEAL COLLAPSED 

But a leading Democrat, Keisha Lance Bottoms, ex-mayor of Atlanta and a former senior adviser to Joe Biden, questioned why Hunter had been charged.

"Can anyone tell me how many people have been federally indicted for purchasing a gun while dealing with substance abuse issues?" Bottoms said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

"I don't know the answer, but in my over 29 years as an attorney, I have never heard of it."

The gun charges were filed by Justice Department special counsel David Weiss, who has been investigating Hunter Biden since 2018 over various allegations, mostly related to his overseas business deals.

Two months ago a plea deal between Biden and Weiss, covering the gun charge as well as alleged tax violations, went sour.

Biden agreed to plead guilty in federal court in Delaware to two minor tax charges. In exchange he was offered probation, as he had already paid what he owed the government along with penalties.

Weiss agreed to suspend the felony gun charge if Biden completed "pretrial diversion," which often involves counseling or rehabilitation.

But in a dramatic July 26 hearing, the deal collapsed over whether Biden would have been immune from any other charges also investigated by Weiss, including possible crimes related to his business dealings in Ukraine, China and elsewhere.

The judge mentioned the possibility that Biden could be charged as having acted as a lobbyist for foreign governments without registering with the Justice Department.

Three weeks later, after the deal collapsed, Weiss dropped the tax charges and said an indictment on the gun charge would come by the end of September.

As the 2024 election race swings into gear, Republicans in the House of Representatives on Tuesday formally opened an impeachment inquiry against President Biden.

They alleged, without offering hard evidence, that while vice president in 2015-2016, Biden intervened to protect an allegedly corrupt Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, where Hunter Biden sat on the board.

Republicans allege Joe Biden and his family reaped large sums for helping Burisma.

Agence France-Presse

Record rainfall causes flooding in Hong Kong days after typhoon

Record rainfall in Hong Kong caused widespread flooding in the early hours of Friday, disrupting road and rail traffic just days after the city dodged major damage from a super typhoon.

The Hong Kong Observatory, the city's weather agency, reported hourly rainfall of 158.1 millimetres at its headquarters in the hour leading up to midnight, the highest since records began in 1884.

Late on Thursday, authorities in the Chinese city said various districts had been flooded and emergency services were conducting rescue operations. Members of the public were instructed to stay in a safe place.

"Heavy rain will bring flash floods," the Observatory warned. "Residents living in close proximity to rivers should stay alert to weather conditions and should consider evacuation" if their homes are flooded, it added.

No injuries were reported in the early hours of Friday.

Earlier in the week, Typhoon Haikui left a trail of destruction in Taiwan before crossing the strait and making landfall in China's Fujian province on Tuesday.

Hong Kong's observatory said the latest torrential rain was brought by the "trough of low pressure associated with (the) remnant of Haikui".

The city's Mass Transit Railway announced that it would partially suspend service on one of its lines after a station in the Wong Tai Sin district was flooded, with another handful of stations also affected.

Footage circulated on social media showed an MTR train not stopping at Wong Tai Sin station, which had floodwater on its platform.

Other video clips showed cars and buses half-submerged on main roads.

Heavy rain was also reported in the neighbouring Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen.

Shenzhen prepared to discharge water from its reservoirs, according to Hong Kong officials, which they said could lead to flooding in parts of northern Hong Kong as a result.

Southern China was hit the previous weekend by two typhoons in quick succession -- Saola and Haikui -- though Hong Kong avoided a feared direct hit.

Tens of millions of people in the densely populated coastal areas of southern China had sheltered indoors ahead of the storms.

Climate change has increased the intensity of tropical storms, with more rain and stronger gusts leading to flash floods and coastal damage, experts say.

Agence France-Presse

Hawaii fire death toll nears 100, anger grows

LAHAINA - The death toll in Hawaii from the deadliest US wildfire in more than a century was expected to cross the 100-mark Sunday, fueling criticism that an inadequate official response contributed to the heavy loss of life.

Officials updated the toll to 93 late Saturday, but warned the figure was likely to rise as recovery crews with cadaver dogs continued the grim task of searching burned out homes and vehicles in the epicenter of Lahaina.

The historic coastal town on the island of Maui was almost completely destroyed by the fast-moving inferno early Wednesday morning, with survivors saying there had been no warnings.

When asked Sunday why none of the island's sirens had been activated, Hawaii Senator Mazie Hirono said she would wait for the results of an investigation announced by the state's attorney general.

"I'm not going to make any excuses for this tragedy," Hirono, a Democrat, told CNN's "State of the Union."

"We are really focused, as far as I'm concerned, on the need for rescue, and, sadly, the location of more bodies."

More than 2,200 structures were damaged or destroyed as the fire tore through Lahaina, according to official estimates, wreaking $5.5 billion in damage and leaving thousands homeless.

"The remains we're finding are from a fire that melted metal," said Maui Police Chief John Pelletier. "When we pick up the remains... they fall apart."

Among the ruins in Lahaina, a town of more than 12,000 and former home of the Hawaiian royal family, an iconic, 150-year-old banyan tree remained standing but severely burned, AFP journalists saw.

President Joe Biden said on Sunday he was "looking at" the possibility of visiting the island.

- Questions over alert system -

The wildfire is the deadliest in the United States since 1918, when 453 people died in Minnesota and Wisconsin, according to the non-profit research group the National Fire Protection Association.

The death toll surpassed 2018's Camp Fire in California, which virtually wiped the small town of Paradise off the map and killed 86 people.

Maui suffered numerous power outages during the crisis, preventing many residents from receiving emergency alerts on their cell phones.

No emergency sirens were sounded, and many Lahaina residents have spoken of learning about the blaze because of neighbors running down the street.

"The mountain behind us caught on fire and nobody told us jack," resident Vilma Reed, 63, told AFP.

"You know when we found that there was a fire? When it was across the street from us."

Reed, whose house was destroyed by the blaze, said she was depending on handouts and the kindness of strangers, while sleeping in a car with her daughter, grandson and two cats.

In its emergency management plan last year, the State of Hawaii described the risk wildfires posed to people as being "low".

Some residents who fled the flames have also expressed anger at a roadblock put up preventing them from returning to their homes.

Maui police said members of the public would not be allowed into Lahaina while safety assessments and searches were ongoing -- even some of those who could prove they lived there.

Some residents waited for hours hoping to be allowed in to comb through the ashes or look for missing pets or loved ones.

When asked about growing anger at the response, Hirono told CNN she understood the frustration because "we are in a period of shock and loss."

Maui's fires follow other extreme weather events in North America this summer, with record-breaking wildfires still burning across Canada and a major heat wave baking the US southwest.

Europe and parts of Asia have also endured soaring temperatures, with major fires and floods wreaking havoc. Scientists say human-caused global warming is exacerbating natural hazards, making them both more likely and more deadly.

Agence France-Presse

Weight-loss drug cuts risk of heart attack, strokes: Novo Nordisk

COPENHAGEN - Shares in Danish pharma group Novo Nordisk soared to a record high on Tuesday after a late-stage trial suggested its obesity drug Wegovy could reduce the risk of heart attacks or stroke by 20 percent.

Preliminary results showed that patients taking Wegovy had a 20 percent lower risk of suffering from a heart attack or stroke compared to those who took a placebo, Novo Nordisk said in a statement.

"We are very excited about the results," the company's executive vice president for development Martin Holst Lange said, adding the drug "has the potential to change how obesity is regarded and treated."

Novo Nordisk's share price closed up by more than 17 percent on the Copenhagen stock exchange on Tuesday.

The medical community also welcomed the results.

While the trials "still need to be confirmed through careful peer review, they demonstrate the urgent need for patients living with obesity to be offered this effective and safe drug to prevent future disease," said Simon Cork, senior lecturer in physiology at Anglia Ruskin University.

"This will not only provide significant financial savings for health bodies, but provide people with a greater quality of life," he said.

Novo Nordisk, the world's biggest insulin maker which manufactures both Wegovy and diabetes drug Ozempic, in May announced a 39 percent rise in its first-quarter profit, buoyed by sales of its obesity treatments.

In mid-July, the Amsterdam-based European Medicines Agency said it was reviewing data "on the risk of suicidal thoughts and thoughts of self-harm" with three popular weight-loss drugs, Ozempic and Wegovy -- which both have semaglutide as their main ingredient -- and Saxenda, whose main ingredient is liraglutide.

The detailed results of the trial will be presented at a scientific conference later this year, Novo Nordisk said, adding that it plans to apply for regulatory approval to expand the uses for Wegovy in the US and the EU in 2023.

Competition among pharmaceutical groups over obesity treatments is fierce, with more than a billion people in the world suffering from obesity, according to the World Health Organization.

Agence France-Presse

Beijing on alert with two killed as heavy rain batters north China

BEIJING - Heavy rains battered northern China on Monday, killing at least two people in Beijing while washing away cars and forcing the capital to issue its highest alerts for flooding and landslides.

Storm Doksuri, a former super typhoon, has swept northwards over China since Friday, when it hit southern Fujian province after scything through the Philippines.

Emergency personnel recovered two bodies from waterways in Beijing's Mentougou district on Monday, the state-run People's Daily said.

AFP reporters saw tree branches and dented cars, left by receding floodwaters, strewn on riverbanks in Mentougou on Monday afternoon.

"This morning it was crazy, the water overflowed the Mentougou river and the whole avenue was flooded," Guo Zhenyu, a 49-year-old resident, told AFP.

Yellow bulldozers, workers in orange mackintoshes and residents cleared away the mud and debris during a period of lighter rain on Monday afternoon.

"I'm old but I've never seen flooding like this before in my life," Mentougou resident Qin Quan said.

She showed AFP a video on her phone, shared among residents of the area, of workers attempting to resuscitate an unconscious man, as well as footage of a man desperately clinging to a pole with one hand as water washes over him.

The much larger and still swollen Yongding River in the same district churned up debris in brown torrents as residents looked on in shock from a bridge.

Chen Hong, a resident of the southern Fengtai district, shared footage with AFP that showed a parked van half-submerged in fast-flowing brown water on Monday morning as the rain continued to fall.

Residents in Chen's neighbourhood cleared mud outside their homes with shovels during a brief respite from the downpour.

"Once it starts raining the road turns into a drain, and there's water on the first floor inside houses," said Chen, 52.

"The houses here are all old houses, so there are definitely concerns about safety," she said.

A section of road surface in the outer Fangshan district caved in under rising water, local media reported.

Hundreds of bus services in the capital were suspended, according to state news agency Xinhua, while the city government issued the highest flood warning for the suburban Dashihe River.

Social media users uploaded footage of vehicles swept away by muddy torrents and thoroughfares turned into rapids on the outskirts of the city.

Murky water can be seen in one clip posted on the Instagram-like Xiaohongshu platform on Monday swamping a large intersection in the outer Mentougou district next to high-rise apartment blocks. The clip was geolocated by AFP.

Rainwater also appeared to leak onto a subway platform in western Beijing's university district in another Xiaohongshu video from Sunday that was geolocated by AFP.

- Extreme weather -

The streets of central Beijing were quieter than usual on Monday morning as residents heeded official recommendations to work from home, with only a handful of delivery drivers braving pools of water seen in usually packed bike lanes.

The governments of Beijing and neighbouring Hebei province renewed red alerts for rainstorms on Monday.

China has been experiencing extreme weather and posting record temperatures this summer, events that scientists say are being exacerbated by climate change.

Experts have warned that the ongoing downpour could prompt even worse flooding than in July 2012, when 79 people were killed and tens of thousands evacuated, according to local media.

An average of 170.9 millimetres of rain inundated Beijing in 40 hours between Saturday night and noon on Monday, the Beijing Meteorological Bureau said.

That is almost equivalent to the average rainfall for the entire month of July, according to official records.

Agence France-Presse

China reports record temperature for mid-July at 52.2C

BEIJING, China - China on Monday said the mercury hit 52.2 degrees Celsius (126 degrees Fahrenheit) in the northwest of the country over the weekend, setting a record for mid-July.

A weather station in the Xinjiang region's Sanbao village "recorded a temperature peak of 52.2 degrees Celsius at 19:00 on July 16, breaking the historic heat record for the same period of the year", the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) said in a statement.

The previous record of 50.6C was set in July 2017, according to the statement.

Xin Xin, an analyst working for the CMA, said in post on his verified Weibo account that 52.2C was the "highest measured temperature at a regional station in our country that I have ever seen".

Sanbao lies on the outskirts of Turpan city, where authorities have told workers and students to stay home and ordered special vehicles to spray water on major thoroughfares, the meteorological body said.

Ground surface temperatures reached 80C in parts of Turpan on Sunday, according to the statement.

The Northern Hemisphere has endured record-setting summer heat waves in recent weeks, which scientists say are being exacerbated by climate change.

Chinese authorities have warned of extreme weather and "multiple natural disasters" this summer.

Agence France-Presse

Netherlands to ban mobile phones from classrooms

THE HAGUE - The Netherlands said Tuesday it will ban mobile phones from classrooms in a bid to stop tech disrupting lessons.

Mobiles, tablets and smartwatches are getting in the way of students' learning and will not be allowed in class from next year, the Dutch government said.

"There is increasing evidence that mobile phones have a harmful effect during lessons", it said. "Pupils are less able to concentrate and their performance suffers."

"For this reason, mobile phones, as well as tablets and smartwatches, will no longer be allowed in classrooms from January 1, 2024."

The government is asking school authorities to agree on internal rules with teachers, parents and pupils by October.

The country's center-right coalition has not yet imposed a formal ban but says it reserves the right to do so after measuring progress next year.

Education Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf told parliament he hopes the move will usher in a "cultural transformation" and improve learning.

Agence France-Presse

Typhoon Mawar leaves trail of destruction as it moves from Guam

LOS ANGELES, United States — A typhoon that slammed into Guam, knocking out power and flooding buildings with a powerful storm surge, was moving away Thursday -- leaving residents of the US Pacific Ocean territory to survey the damage.

Governor Lou Leon Guerrero was set to venture out when conditions allow to see what damage has been wrought on the island, a key US military outpost and home to 170,000 people.

The governor and civil defense groups will look for "any major damages or blocked roadways in the wake of Typhoon Mawar," a statement said Thursday.

"As Guam received the full brunt of the typhoon overnight, the assessment will help determine what damages may have occurred."

Mawar brought winds of up to 225 kilometers (140 miles) an hour, the US National Weather Service reported, generating waves nine meters (30 feet) high.

There were no reported deaths or injuries.

At one of the island's many hotels, the 30-floor Dusit Thani Guam Resort housing about 300 guests, desk clerk Casey Hattori said the lobby was inundated with a foot of water, even with the front door barricaded with boards and bags of concrete. Outside, trees snapped in howling wind.

"I can hear the walls shaking. The wind is super strong. I can hear it whistling as it comes through the cracks of the doors," Hattori told AFP.

Fearful tourists were evacuated from flooded rooms to a sixth floor ballroom, she said.

Images on social media showed the impact of winds that had uprooted trees, swept away vehicles and dislodged roofs, throwing debris everywhere.

Tens of thousands of homes were without power Thursday, the Guam Power Authority said, but noted that a total blackout had been avoided.

"We are working hard to maintain the last remaining customers through the storm, which contributes to quicker recovery after the winds die down later tonight or in the early morning hours," the agency said, according to the Pacific Daily News.

The NWS said Mawar was now a Super Typhoon, and forecasting models suggested it was heading towards Taiwan or the Philippines.

"As sunlight is starting to peek, we are waking up to a rather disturbing scene out there across Guam," one forecaster said during a morning update Thursday.

"We are looking out our door and what used to be a jungle looks like toothpicks. It looks like a scene from the movie 'Twister,' with trees just thrashed apart."

The agency said Guam remained under a typhoon warning, with destructive gusts and heavy surf expected.

Ocean conditions are still treacherous, even for large vessels, it said.

"Residents are urged to stay off the roads and remain in safe, hardened shelters" for now, emergency officials warned.

In Washington, the White House said President Joe Biden had been briefed on the situation.

"The White House is in close contact with the government of Guam and has offered as much support as needed," a spokeswoman said.

About 21,700 US military personnel and their families are based on Guam, which routinely hosts nuclear attack submarines and long-range bombers.

The territory is also home to key electronic listening posts, and the US bases have some of the Pacific region's most significant ammunition and fuel storage facilities.

Lieutenant Commander Katie Koenig, spokesperson for Joint Region Marianas said military aircraft and ships departed before the destructive winds began or were sheltered in hangars, "except for one vessel which remains in port due to an inoperable engine."

Koenig added that all military and civilian personnel were instructed to take shelter.

"Our service members throughout the Marianas routinely exercise natural disaster response and are ready and postured to respond... once the 'all clear' order is given," she said.

Agence France-Presse

World's oldest near-complete Hebrew Bible sells for $38 million

NEW YORK, United States - A Hebrew Bible more than 1,000 years old sold for $38.1 million in New York on Wednesday, setting a record for the most valuable manuscript ever sold at auction.

The Codex Sassoon -- which dates to the late ninth to early tenth century -- is the earliest, most complete Hebrew Bible ever discovered.

It was sold by Sotheby's following a four-minute bidding battle between two bidders, the auction house said in a statement.

The bible was bought by former US diplomat Alfred Moses on behalf of an American non-profit that will gift it to the ANU Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv, Israel, Sotheby's said.

"The Hebrew Bible is the most influential book in history and constitutes the bedrock of Western civilization. I rejoice in knowing that it belongs to the Jewish People," said Moses, a US ambassador under president Bill Clinton.

The sale surpassed the $30.8 million paid for Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Leicester manuscript in 1994 as the most expensive hand-written document ever sold at auction.

The most expensive historical document remains one of the first prints of the US Constitution, which Sotheby's sold for $43 million in November 2021.

The Codex Sassoon is one of only two codices, or manuscripts, containing all 24 books of the Hebrew Bible to have survived into the modern era.

It is substantially more complete than the Aleppo Codex and older than the Leningrad Codex, two other famous early Hebrew Bibles, Sotheby's said.

The manuscript bridges the Dead Sea Scrolls -- which date back as early as the third century BC -- and today's modernly accepted form of the Hebrew Bible.

It is named for previous owner David Solomon Sassoon (1880-1942) who assembled the most significant private collection of ancient Jewish texts in the world.

The document was auctioned for the first time in more than 30 years and had a pre-sale estimate of between $30 million and $50 million.

Agence France-Presse

9 dead in shooting rampage at Texas mall: authorities

WASHINGTON  — A man who went on a rampage at a Texas outlet mall on Saturday shot dead eight people before he was himself killed, authorities said.

"(We) found seven deceased individuals on scene. We transported nine individuals to the hospital... Of those we transported, two have since died," said fire chief Jonathan Boyd of Allen, Texas.

The shooting sparked panic at Allen Premium Outlets, a sprawling shopping complex in Allen, 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Dallas, filled with weekend shoppers.

A police officer was in the mall on an unrelated call when gunfire broke out around 3:30 pm (2030 GMT), said chief Brian Harvey of the Allen police department.

"He heard gunshots, went to the gunshots, engaged the suspect and neutralized the suspect," Harvey said. "He also then called for ambulances."

The identity of the shooter was not released. His body, sprawled on a sidewalk, was one of the seven deaths at the mall when more police arrived.

Among the wounded at area hospitals, "three are in critical surgery, and four are stable," Boyd, the fire chief, said.

Some of the victims were as young as five years old, a hospital official told NBC News.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott called the mass shooting an "unspeakable tragedy."

President Joe Biden "has been briefed on the shooting," a White House official told reporters.

Local officials hailed the actions of the police officer who charged and killed the shooter.

"We owe a debt of gratitude to first responders that ran toward the gunfire and acted swiftly to neutralize the threat," said Keith Self, a Republican congressman whose district includes the city of Allen.

Video footage aired by CNN showed the shooter getting out of a sedan in the parking lot of the mall, and beginning his rampage.

Authorities believed initially that a second shooter might be on the loose. As police combed through stores in the mall, frantic shoppers and store employees rushed into parking lots.

Harvey later said police believe the unidentified shooter, who CNN said was wearing tactical gear, "acted alone."

Janet St. James, a spokesperson for Medical City Healthcare, which operates multiple trauma facilities in North Texas, said it received eight patients from the shooting, ranging in age from five to 61, NBC News reported.

A father who arrived at the mall after his daughter, who was inside, phoned to tell him about the shooting, also told CNN that police had informed him there may have been a second shooter.

"We saw the police outside the door, and they told us we had to go, and that they are still looking for the person," Jaynal Pervez said, according to CNN.

"There's no more safe places. I don't know what to do."

Pervez later told broadcaster CBS that scenes in the mall parking lot were chaotic.

"I saw the shoes around there, people's cell phones on the street," he said.

With more firearms than inhabitants, the United States has the highest rate of gun deaths of any developed country -- 49,000 in 2021, up from 45,000 the year before.

There have been more than 195 mass shootings -- defined as four or more people wounded or killed -- so far this year in the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

Agence France-Presse

Foreign nations scramble to evacuate citizens as Sudan battles rage

KHARTOUM, Sudan - Foreign countries on Sunday rushed to evacuate their nationals from battle-torn Sudan where deadly fighting raged into a second week between forces loyal to two rival generals.

As gunfire again echoed through Khartoum and fighter jets roared above, foreigners also fled the capital in a long United Nations convoy, while millions of frightened residents hunkered down inside their homes, many running low on water and food.

Across the city of five million, army and paramilitary troops have fought ferocious street battles since April 15, leaving behind charred tanks, gutted buildings and shops that have been looted and torched.

More than 420 people have been killed and thousands wounded, according to UN figures, amid fears of wider turmoil and a humanitarian disaster in one of the world's poorest nations.

US special forces launched a rescue mission early Sunday for around 100 embassy staff and their relatives, swooping in with Chinook helicopters to fly them to a military base in Djibouti.

US President Joe Biden condemned the violence, saying it is "unconscionable and it must stop".

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said UK forces had also evacuated diplomats and their families "amid a significant escalation in violence and threats to embassy staff".

Germany and France meanwhile announced Sunday that they had begun evacuating their nationals and those from other countries.

A French plane carrying around 100 people of multiple nationalities "landed in Djibouti", according to French President Emmanuel Macron, with a second flight of another 100 people expected to leave Sunday evening.

Long convoys of UN vehicles and buses were seen leaving Khartoum heading east to Port Sudan on the Red Sea, 850 kilometres (530 miles) away by road, carrying "citizens from all over the world", according to one Sierra Leonean evacuee.

Taking advantage of a recent brief lull in fighting, residents of Khartoum rushed to organise buses out -- mainly north to Egypt -- sharing drivers' numbers, safe routes, and advice on visa restrictions on social media.

'Living in darkness'

The fighting broke out on April 15 between forces loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his deputy turned rival Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Daglo's RSF emerged from the Janjaweed fighters whom former strongman Omar al-Bashir unleashed in the Darfur region, where they were accused of war crimes including genocide.

The military toppled Bashir in April 2019 following mass citizen protests.

The two generals seized power in a 2021 coup, but later fell out in a bitter power struggle, most recently centred on the planned integration of the RSF into the regular army.

Multiple truces have been agreed in recent days and ignored.

Khartoum's airport, where the blackened hulls of destroyed aircraft lie on runways, is under the control of the RSF.

At least one jailbreak has taken place in the capital, according to lawyers.

Reports of prisoners also being freed from two other prisons -- including the Kober jail where Bashir has been held -- could not be independently verified.

In Khartoum, the conflict has left terrified civilians sheltering inside their homes, with power largely off amid sweltering heat and the internet out for most.

"We were living in darkness... first we didn't have water and then we didn't have power," Khartoum resident Awad Ahmad Sherif said.

"We ask God for our safety."

'Stop the violence'

Pope Francis on Sunday renewed calls "for the violence to stop as quickly as possible and for dialogue to resume".

Fighting has broken out elsewhere across Sudan, Africa's third biggest nation.

Battles have raged in Darfur, where aid group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said their medics had been "overwhelmed" by the number of patients with gunshot wounds, many of them children, in the city of El Fasher.

Some hospitals have been shelled and others ransacked, with more than two-thirds of hospitals in Khartoum and neighbouring states "out of service", the doctors' union said.

In the first large evacuation, more than 150 Saudi citizens and nationals from 12 other countries reached Saudi Arabia by sea on Saturday.

Turkey began rescue operations at dawn Sunday via road from the southern city of Wad Madani, but the effort was postponed from one site in Khartoum after explosions near a mosque designated as the assembly area, the embassy said on Twitter.

European countries including Italy, the Netherlands and Greece also said they were planning rescue efforts.

The scramble by foreigners to escape has heightened fears among Sudanese of what will happen when diplomats who could act as potential mediators have gone.

"Pushing for safe passages to evacuate internationals without simultaneously pushing to end the war will be terrible", said researcher Hamid Khalafallah.

"International actors will have less impact once they're out of country," he said, adding in a message to foreign nations: "Do all you can to leave safely, but don't leave the Sudanese people behind unprotected."

Agence France-Presse

Shooter kills 6 at Nashville school in targeted attack

WASHINGTON  — A heavily-armed former student killed three young children and three staff in what appeared to be a carefully planned attack at a private elementary school in Nashville on Monday, before being shot dead by police.

Chief of Police John Drake named the suspect as Audrey Hale -- a 28-year-old female, who the officer later said identified as transgender.

Hale had maps of the school, left behind a manifesto, and was "prepared for a confrontation with law enforcement," the police chief told reporters following the latest outburst of gun violence to stun the United States.

Armed with at least two assault rifles and a handgun, Hale entered the Christian Covenant School from a side entrance, allegedly shooting through a door -- firing multiple shots while advancing through the building, according to police.

They said officers were on the scene within about 15 minutes of receiving the first emergency call around 10:00 a.m. (11 p.m. in Manila), engaging the shooter who returned fire before being shot dead.

Police identified the six victims, saying one of the three children was eight years old and two were age nine, while the adults killed were age 60 to 61.

Television images showed young children holding hands as they filed out of the school, and one searing photograph showed a child sobbing through the window of her yellow school bus as it pulled away from the crime scene.

Avery Myrick said her mother, a pre-kindergarten teacher at Covenant, hid as shots rang out through the school.

"She said she was hiding in the closet, and that there was shooting all over and that they had potentially tried to get into her room, and just that she loved us," Myrick told WSMV4 television, an NBC local affiliate.

When she heard her mother was safe it brought "a ton of relief."

"But you know, you're still hurting for the people out there who might not get that call," she said.

School shootings are alarmingly common in the United States, where the proliferation of firearms has soared in recent years.

President Joe Biden described the latest shooting as "sick" and said gun violence was tearing the nation's "soul," as he urged Congress to pass a ban on the assault weapons commonly used in mass shootings.

"It's ripping our communities apart, ripping the soul of this nation, ripping at the very soul of the nation," he said.

A Nashville fire department spokesperson, Kendra Loney, said all unharmed students were escorted out of the building with faculty and staff.

"But we are sure that they heard the chaos that was surrounding this, so we do have mental health specialists and professionals that are at that reunification site for both the students and the families."

AN AMERICAN EPIDEMIC

The Covenant School is a private Presbyterian institution with just over 200 students in preschool to roughly age 12.

Local newspaper The Tennessean quoted a police spokesperson as saying the suspect Hale, a former student at the school, was now an illustrator and graphic designer who used he/him pronouns. Police had initially identified him by his birth gender.

Drake said investigators were working on a possible motive but said it was "not confirmed."

Asked whether Hale's gender identity may have been a factor, Drake said: "There is some theory to that, we're investigating all the leads."

There have been 129 mass shootings -- defined as incidents in which four or more people were shot or killed -- so far this year, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive.

Biden's calls for Congress to reinstate the national ban on assault rifles, which existed from 1994 to 2004, has run up against opposition from Republicans, who are staunch defenders of the constitutional right to bear arms and have had a narrow majority in the House of Representatives since January.

Just hours after the shooting, pro-firearm organization Gun Owners of America assailed Biden as "the man responsible for making schools soft targets," and repeated their call to allow teachers to arm themselves in classrooms.

"When will we start to have conversations about real solutions for hardening schools & protecting kids? Armed teachers are a 100% effective deterrent!" the group tweeted.

The deadlock in Washington has come despite public uproar over high-profile massacres such as the one at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut in 2012, when 26 people, including 20 children, were killed.

Last year a shooter in Uvalde, Texas, killed 19 students and two teachers.

Between those two tragedies, the murder of 14 students and three staff members in Parkland, Florida in 2018 fueled a nationwide movement, led by young people, to demand stricter gun controls -- but failed to spur significant action in Congress.

Agence France-Presse

Indonesia sends more rescuers as extreme weather hampers search after landslide

J AKARTA—More rescuers and heavy machinery will be sent to Indonesia’s disaster-hit Serasan Island to search for dozens still missing after a deadly landslide, a disaster official said on Tuesday. 

The landslide struck Monday in the remote Natuna region between Borneo and peninsular Malaysia.

Poor weather and downed communication lines have complicated rescue efforts on the island, which is home to about 8,000 people.

Pictures provided by Natuna's communication and information agency showed houses reduced to rubble, with fallen trees and torn roofs visible.

Body bags were lined up on top of a blue tarpaulin as officials gathered to pray for the victims.

Rescuers have managed to find 11 bodies so far, but villagers put the death toll at 15, according to Abdul Muhari, spokesperson for the national disaster mitigation agency (BNPB).

Another 47 people are still missing, while at least 1,200 people have had to seek shelter because of the disaster, he added.

"There are 82 search and rescue personnel on Serasan Island. Fifteen more officers from Jakarta will join the effort tomorrow," Muhari told AFP on Tuesday evening.

Heavy-duty vehicles, along with two helicopters, will also help the search and aid distribution efforts. 

WEATHER HAMPERS RESCUE

Heavy rain has forced intermittent pauses in the rescue operation.

"The rain intensity is still quite high in Serasan," Muhari said, adding that the downpours have been lashing the island since the end of last month.

"The team's safety is of utmost importance amid the high-intensity rain," he said. "We keep observing the weather, so as (it) improves, we will continue the search."

Rescuers were focusing their efforts along a stretch of road near a cliff where around 30 houses were reportedly buried by the landslide.

Muhari had earlier said that the agency was sending food and tents, as well as satellite communication equipment and two helicopters in a bid to establish communication lines and speed up aid.

Indonesia is prone to landslides during the rainy season, aggravated in some places by deforestation, and prolonged torrential rain has caused flooding in different areas of the archipelago nation.

Experts say the country's weather-related disasters are likely being made worse by climate change.

Floods further south in Banjar district, in the Indonesian part of Borneo, have inundated more than 17,000 houses and disrupted lives for a month.

Neighboring Malaysia has also been hit with torrential rains and vast floods. At least five people have died and nearly 41,000 were evacuated last week in several states of the country.

In 2020, the Indonesian capital Jakarta and nearby cities saw some of their deadliest floods in years after downpours triggered landslides.

At least 67 people died in that disaster.

Agence France-Presse

'Tragic human error' caused Greece's worst train crash: PM

LARISSA — Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Wednesday said a "tragic human error" was likely responsible for a train collision that has left at least 38 dead in the country's worst rail tragedy.

Two carriages were crushed and a third engulfed in fire when a passenger train and a freight train late Tuesday collided near the central city of Larissa, on a route plagued by years of safety warnings.

The fire department had earlier increased the death toll to 38, adding that 57 people were still hospitalised, six of them in intensive care, while several were missing.

"Everything shows that the drama was, sadly, mainly due to a tragic human error," Mitsotakis -- who is seeking re-election this year -- said in a televised address.

He said it was a "terrible train accident without precedent" in Greece which would be "fully" investigated.

"I've never seen anything like this in my entire life," said one rescue worker, emerging from the wreckage. "It's tragic. Five hours later, we are finding bodies." 

The accident left a tangled mess of metal and shattered glass in a field.

In some cases, passengers are being identified from body parts, volunteer fireman Vassilis Iliopoulos told Skai TV, warning that the death toll would rise.

Seventeen biological samples have been collected from remains, and from 23 relatives seeking a match, the police said.

"It was the train of terror," Pavlos Aslanidis, whose son is missing along with a friend, told reporters.

Greece's transport minister submitted his resignation just hours after the accident.

"When something so tragic happens, we cannot continue as if nothing had happened," Kostas Karamanlis said in a public statement.

On Wednesday evening, police in the capital Athens fired tear gas at protesters throwing rocks at the offices of the railway's operating company, Hellenic Train.

- Years of safety concerns -

The passenger train, carrying more than 350 people, had been travelling from Athens to the northern city of Thessaloniki.

The 59-year-old station master of Larissa was arrested several hours after the accident and charged with negligent homicide.

Government spokesman Yiannis Economou said the two trains were left running on the same track for "several kilometres".

But train unionists said the station master was likely a scapegoat as the safety shortcomings of the Athens-Thessaloniki railway line had been known for years.

In an open letter in February, train staff said track safety systems were incomplete and poorly maintained. 

A safety supervisor had resigned last year, warning that infrastructure upgrades pending since 2016 were incomplete and that train speeds of up to 200 kilometres (124 miles) an hour were unsafe.

The president of the train drivers' union Kostas Genidounias told AFP from the scene that the accident "would have been avoided if the safety systems were working".

 'Complete panic'

Health Minister Thanos Plevris said most passengers were "young people", with the train carrying many students returning to Thessaloniki after a long holiday weekend. 

"It was a nightmare... I'm still shaking," 22-year-old passenger Angelos told AFP.

"Fortunately we were in the penultimate car and we got out alive. There was a fire in the first cars and complete panic.

"The collision was like a huge earthquake."

"I was stained with blood from other people who were injured near me," a passenger named Lazos told the newspaper Proto Thema.

Some 150 firefighters and 40 ambulances were mobilised for the response, according to Greek emergency services.

Crews were still struggling to lift one of the smashed carriages, lying on its side, to enable a search inside, Iliopoulos said.

"My thoughts are with the people in Greece this morning," tweeted the head of the European Council, Charles Michel. 

"Shocked by the news and images of the collision of the two trains," he added.

Neighbouring Albania, Italy, Serbia and Turkey were among states to send condolences, as did China, the United States, France, Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and the Vatican.

Nicosia said two Cypriots were among the missing.

 'Windows exploded'

On the local media site Onlarissa, a young woman said that the train "was stopped for a few minutes when we heard a deafening noise".

Another passenger told Skai TV that "the windows suddenly exploded. People were screaming."

"Fortunately, we were able to open the doors and escape fairly quickly. In other wagons, they did not manage to get out, and one wagon even caught fire," he added.

Authorities have declared three days of national mourning.

Agence France-Presse