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Three People Dead, Several Missing after Heavy Rains, Flooding in Tuscany

Italian firefighters work in flooded streets in the Tuscany region, Italy, November 3, 2023. Several people died and went missing in the central region of Tuscany as storm Ciaran battered western Europe. Vigili del Fuoco/Handout via REUTERS
Italian firefighters work in flooded streets in the Tuscany region, Italy, November 3, 2023. Several people died and went missing in the central region of Tuscany as storm Ciaran battered western Europe. Vigili del Fuoco/Handout via REUTERS
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Three People Dead, Several Missing after Heavy Rains, Flooding in Tuscany

Italian firefighters work in flooded streets in the Tuscany region, Italy, November 3, 2023. Several people died and went missing in the central region of Tuscany as storm Ciaran battered western Europe. Vigili del Fuoco/Handout via REUTERS
Italian firefighters work in flooded streets in the Tuscany region, Italy, November 3, 2023. Several people died and went missing in the central region of Tuscany as storm Ciaran battered western Europe. Vigili del Fuoco/Handout via REUTERS

At least three people have died and several were missing after rivers overflowed due to heavy rains in central Italy, local authorities said on Friday, as Storm Ciaran continued to lash western Europe.
A bridge collapsed near the city of Pistoia, killing two people. Another person died in the town of Rosignano.
"Over 200 millimeters of rain have fallen in three hours," Luigi D'Angelo, who is leading the Civil Protection rescue efforts, told Sky TG24 television.
The governor of Tuscany said there were challenging issues around two large rivers in the area, the Bisenzio, north of Florence, and the Ombrone, in the southern part of the region.
"The situation is problematic, the Arno river is expected to reach a peak around midday in Florence, but there are no particular worries about this if it stops raining," Governor Eugenio Giani said in an interview with RAI's Radio Anch'io.
Patients from three separate hospitals had to be moved to other facilities and many buildings were seriously damaged, Giani added.
The defense ministry was supporting rescue efforts sending helicopters, trucks and water pumps to the flood-hit areas, Defence Minister Guido Crosetto said in a statement.
Italy's Civil Protection agency on Thursday issued a warning of heavy rains and strong winds in central and southern Italy, with a high alert "red code" for Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia in the north of the country, and a medium alert "orange code" for nine other regions.
Another person went missing in the Veneto region, the local governor was quoted as saying by Sky TG24.
Storm Ciaran, which follows on the heels of Storm Babet two weeks ago, was driven by a powerful jet stream that swept in from the Atlantic, unleashing heavy rain and furious winds that have already caused heavy flooding in Northern Ireland, parts of Britain, Belgium and France.

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Lavrov: Russia Will Abandon its Unilateral Missile Moratorium

FILED - 06 February 2023, Iraq, Baghdad: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov speaks during a press conference. Photo: Ameer Al-Mohammedawi/dpa
FILED - 06 February 2023, Iraq, Baghdad: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov speaks during a press conference. Photo: Ameer Al-Mohammedawi/dpa
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Lavrov: Russia Will Abandon its Unilateral Missile Moratorium

FILED - 06 February 2023, Iraq, Baghdad: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov speaks during a press conference. Photo: Ameer Al-Mohammedawi/dpa
FILED - 06 February 2023, Iraq, Baghdad: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov speaks during a press conference. Photo: Ameer Al-Mohammedawi/dpa

Russia will scrap a moratorium on the deployment of intermediate and shorter range nuclear-capable missiles because the United States has deployed such weapons in various regions around the world, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Sunday.
Russia's move, long signaled, will kill off all that remains from one of the most significant arms control treaties of the Cold War, amid fears that the world's two biggest nuclear powers could be entering a new arms race together with China, Reuters reported.
Russia and the United States, who both admit their relations are worse than at any time since the depths of the Cold War, have both expressed regret about the disintegration of the tangle of arms control treaties
which sought to slow the arms race and reduce the risk of nuclear war.
Asked by state news agency RIA if Russia could withdraw from the
New START treaty before its expiry in February 2026, Lavrov said that there were currently "no conditions" for a strategic dialogue with Washington.
"Today it is clear that, for example, our moratorium on the deployment of short- and intermediate-range missiles is no longer practically viable and will have to be abandoned," Lavrov said.
"The US has arrogantly ignored the warnings of Russia and China and in practice has moved on to the deployment of weapons of this class in various regions of the world."
The Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, signed by Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan in 1987, marked the first time the superpowers had agreed to reduce their nuclear arsenals and eliminated a whole category of nuclear weapons.
The United States under former President Donald Trump formally withdrew
from the INF Treaty in 2019 after saying that Moscow was violating the accord, an accusation the Kremlin repeatedly denied and dismissed as a pretext.
Russia then imposed a moratorium on its own development of missiles previously banned by the INF treaty - ground-based ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 km to 5,500 km (310 miles to 3,417 miles).
Trump in 2018 said he wanted to terminate the INF Treaty because of what he said were years of Russian violations and his concerns about China’s intermediate-range missile arsenal.
The United States publicly blamed Russia's development of the 9M729 ground-launched cruise missile, known in NATO as the SSC-8, as the reason for it leaving the INF Treaty.
In his moratorium proposal, Putin suggested Russia could agree not to deploy the missiles in its Baltic coast exclave of Kaliningrad. Since leaving the pact, the United States has tested missiles with a similar profile.
Russia fired a new intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile known as "Oreshnik", or Hazel Tree, at Ukraine on Nov. 21 in what Putin said was a direct response to strikes on Russia by Ukrainian forces with US and British missiles.