Iran launches new centrifuges

Greek migrant camp evacuated

Greece’s largest migrant camp was partly evacuated early Wednesday after a major blaze broke out at the overcrowded and unsanitary home to nearly 13,000 asylum seekers.

Nearly the entire Moria camp on the island of Lesbos was on fire, including in an olive grove outside the walls of the main compound where many asylum seekers sleep in tents, an AFP photographer at the scene reported.

Asylum seekers were fleeing on foot toward the port town of Mytilene but were blocked by police vehicles, the photographer added.

Firefighters said earlier there were “scattered fires” around and inside the camp, which has a nominal capacity for fewer than 2,800 people.

Stand by Me Lesvos, a refugee support group, said on Twitter it had received reports that Greek locals on the island had blocked fleeing asylum seekers from heading into a nearby village.

Iran’s nuclear body said Tuesday that it had launched a new “advanced centrifuges” facility to replace one badly damaged by “sabotage” at its main Natanz nuclear fuel plant in July.

“It was decided to create a more modern, larger and more improved station in the heart of the mountains around Natanz, and the implementation of this project has started,” Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said on state television.

“We started the preliminary work by supplying the equipment and setting up a series of production chambers for advanced centrifuges,” he added, without giving further details.

Advanced centrifuges are used in the process of uranium enrichment.

Social media death prevented

A terminally ill Frenchman who planned to livestream his death on social media has accepted palliative care after refusing food and medication for over three days.

Alain Cocq, 57, had earlier announced he was refusing all food, drink and medicine after French President Emmanuel Macron turned down his request for euthanasia.

Cocq, who suffers from a rare genetic condition which causes the walls of his arteries to stick together, said he believed he had less than a week to live.