U.S. Virgin Islands

Twelve nations led by the United States on Wednesday jointly warned Yemen's Huthi rebels of unspecified consequences unless they immediately halt sea attacks that are increasingly disrupting global commerce.

A federal judge said Wednesday that he won't block JPMorgan's legal efforts to blame a former executive of hiding Jeffrey Epstein's decades-long sex abuse to keep the financier as a client.

Romania's National Committee for Emergency Situations (CNSU) updated on Friday its list of countries or areas with high COVID-19 epidemiological risk. "The classification of the countries/areas by the cumulative rate of COVID-19 cases in order to sort the persons arriving in Romania accordingly and subject them to quarantine is hereby approved," reads CNSU Decision 39.

Romania ranked 15th in the rankings of the most polluted countries in Europe in 2020, and the capital city of Bucharest ranked 51st in the world in this regard, in a hierarchy led by Delhi, India, reveal the latest data centralized in the global platform on air quality IQAir, informs Greenpeace Romania, in a release sent to AGERPRES on Tuesday.

France suffered a shock loss to Bulgaria in FIBA Basketball World Cup qualifying on Thursday, while Germany stayed perfect.

Unbeaten in the first round of qualifying, France started the second with a surprise defeat in Botevgrad.

Germany and Greece had no such issues, while a pair of NBA stars led the way for Canada.

AMERICAS

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim’s family is among the rich and powerful named in the latest dump of confidential documents, according to Cumhuriyet, the only Turkish news outlet that collaborated in the international investigation.

The State Statistical Office of Ukraine published data on the volume of foreign investments in the country's economy for the period January-June 2017. For the first six months of the year, Russia has invested USD 4.4 billion in its neighbor country, which is 11.4% of the total volume of investment, said Russian newspaper Moskovski Komsomolets quoted by FOCUS.

Hurricane Maria slammed into the Caribbean island of Dominica as a Category 5 storm with "merciless" 160 mph winds Monday night, and the storm, deemed "potentially catastrophic" by the National Hurricane Center, is now headed for the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

Maria blew up from a tropical storm into a major Category 5 hurricane in barely more than a day, bearing down on Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands that are still bailing out from Hurricane Irma, NBC News reports.

Miami Beach was left deserted after tourists and residents fled in anticipation of the largest storm to hit the Atlantic in a decade, Hurricane Irma.
A state of emergency has been declared in South Florida, where more than half million people have been ordered to evacuate ahead of the storm.