Haitian election losers vow challenge
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The losers of Haiti’s redo presidential election vowed challenges after preliminary results from Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council showed a political newcomer led the vote with more than 35 percentage points over his nearest competitor.
According to preliminary results from Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council, agricultural entrepreneur Jovenel Moise won 55.6 percent of the votes in the Nov. 20 election, avoiding a runoff. Turnout was just 21 percent.
Second-place presidential candidate Jude Celestin of the Lapeh political party, who had 19.5 percent of the vote, said he and the third- and fourth-place finishers would file challenges.
“We’re going to fight this. We’re asking the population to stay mobilized while we conduct the fight through the law,” Celestin said on a local radio station.
After results were announced late Monday, Moise, who was backed by Haiti’s previous elected leader, President Michel Martelly, thanked voters for handing him an easy victory.
“It’s together we will change Haiti,” said Moise, surrounded by jubilant, cheering supporters at a Petionville hotel.
Moise was the leading vote-getter in the first round of presidential balloting last year, but the official results were annulled after a Haitian commission called for the election to start over from scratch amid widespread fraud allegations.
New shelter encloses Chernobyl reactor
CHERNOBYL, Ukraine — Workers completed a shelter over the Chernobyl nuclear plant’s exploded reactor on Tuesday.
The half-cylinder-shaped shelter was locked in place over the plant’s reactor No. 4 after being moved in on hydraulic jacks for two weeks. It marks a significant step toward containing the consequences of the world’s worst nuclear accident, which occurred 30 years ago in what is now Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko described the new shelter as “the biggest moving construction that humanity has ever created.”
Workers will now begin dismantling unstable parts of the original cover, the so-called sarcophagus, which was built over the reactor shortly after the disaster to contain radiation.
The April 26, 1986, explosion at the reactor sent a cloud of radioactive fallout over much of Europe and forced the evacuation of about 115,000 people from the plant’s vicinity. A 19-mile area around the plant has remained largely off-limits, and the town of Pripyat, where the plant’s workers once lived, was turned into a ghostly ruin of deteriorating apartment buildings.
The new shelter is 843 feet wide and 354 feet tall and cost nearly $1.6 billion, according to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
Dormitory fire kills 12, hurts 22 in Turkey
ISTANBUL — A fire at a middle-school dormitory for girls in southern Turkey left 12 people dead and 22 injured Tuesday night, a Turkish governor and state-run media said.
Adana Gov. Mahmut Demirtas said one teacher and 11 students were killed in the fire in the town of Aladag and the wounded were taken to a hospital, according to the state-run Anadolu Agency, which described the building as a middle-school dormitory for girls.
Speaking to reporters at the scene, Demirtas said the dormitory had 34 people and the fire may have been caused by an electrical problem. No one was left in the building, he said.
Turkish television showed flames rising from a three-story building and firefighters battling the blaze. Several windows on the building were scorched black, and ashen debris littered the dormitory entrance. Footage broadcast by TRT showed a man wearing an oxygen mask being evacuated in an ambulance stretcher.
Thai lawmakers formally name new king
BANGKOK — Thailand’s parliament on Tuesday named Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn as the new king, completing a formal step for the heir to take the throne after the death of his father last month.
The Cabinet, after a brief meeting and in accordance with a 1924 law on succession, submitted Vajiralongkorn’s name to the National Assembly, at which members formally acknowledged him as the new monarch.
“I would like everyone to stand up and give their blessings to the new king,” said National Assembly President Pornpetch Wichitcholchai. His statement was followed by a cheer of “Long live the king” by all assembly members.
Pornpetch said he would invite Vajiralongkorn, 64, to take the throne, the 10th in the Chakri dynasty, which was founded in 1782. He did not say when Vajiralongkorn would formally accept.
Vajiralongkorn was originally supposed to assume the throne the day his father died, but Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said the prince asked for the ascension to be put off so he had time to mourn.