The prosecutor’s office said that under a recently passed sexual consent law, Rubiales could face a fine or even imprisonment if found guilty of sexual assault.
Rubiales, a former player, had initially played down the significance of the unsolicited kiss after the team’s 1-0 victory over England in Sydney almost a month ago. He called some of his critics “idiots”.
Fifa provisionally suspended Rubiales for 90 days and opened up disciplinary proceedings against him, but he has now released a statement with his resignation to the federation’s acting president Pedro Rocha.
“My resignation? Yes, I’m going to, I cannot continue my work,” Rubiales told Piers Morgan Uncensored for TalkTV.
Luis Rubiales kisses Jenni Hermoso
“I love so much my daughters, and they love me so much, I’m very happy and proud of them. My father, my daughters, I spoke with them, they know it’s not a question about me. They say to me, ‘Luis, now you have to focus on your dignity and continue your life, because you will do damage to people you love.’
“When somebody is not thinking only about themself, because I had to in these few weeks, it’s not only a question of me. It can affect third parties, it’s very important, this situation now, it’s the thing I have to do.”
Rubiales’s statement read: “After the quick suspension carried out by Fifa, plus the rest of open proceedings against me, it is evident that I will not be able to return to my position.
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An elderly British man has died in a gliding accident in the foothills of the Pyrenees mountain range.
The unnamed 75-year-old was hurt after hitting trees by the runway as he landed at the Santa Cilia aerodrome near the northern Spanish city of Jaca. Emergency responders received an alert around 4pm yesterday saying he was conscious and complaining of neck pain. Local reports said he was alive for about 40 minutes after the accident but was pronounced dead at the scene after losing consciousness and going into cardiac arrest.
Members of an air club who knew him well because he had been visiting the aerodrome for more than 20 years are understood to have been with him in the minutes after the accident. Aerodrome director Luis Ferreira said: "We’re all devastated." The man is said to have been a regular at the aerodrome since 1999 and has been a member of another flying club in the UK where he was a chef.
The 75-year-old lost was hurt after hitting a tree near the runway (
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Photos of the accident scene showed the damaged glider in undergrowth near the runway with its left wing against a fallen tree. Police tape had been put up around the fixed-wing aircraft while they completed an investigation. The deceased man was travelling alone in the single-seat glider, according to reports.
An unnamed acquaintance quoted in a local paper said: "We saw him coming in to land from the aerodrome, perhaps he was going a little fast and high but we’ll have to wait to see what the investigation says. We’ve known him for a long time. He was chef at a very important flying club in the south of London. He’s spent up to four months of the year here at times because of the passion he had for flying."
Santa Cilia Aerodrome is regarded as one of the best locations in Spain for gliding, with the thermals and air currents in the area making it a reference point for both amateurs and professionals. Thanks to its position at the foothills of the Pyrenean range, it is possible to enjoy a pleasure flight over the spectacular Pyrenees. The aerodrome hosted the Spanish National Gliding Championships in 2010 and is visited annually by hundreds of glider pilots from all over Europe.
India has passed on the G20 presidency to Brazil with PM Modi handing over the gavel to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Brazil has said that during its presidency in 2024, it will prioritise poverty, sustainable development and the reform of global governance in organisations like the International Monetary Fund and the UN Security Council.
On Saturday, Lula also said that President Putin would not be arrested if he attended the summit in Rio de Janeiro next year.
ANICopyright: ANI
Putin has repeatedly skipped international gatherings and did not attend the summits in Delhi or Bali.
The G20 presidency will be taken over by South Africa in 2025 and the the US in 2026.
On Saturday, leaders of India, Brazil, South Africa and the US met on the sidelines of the summit and released a joint statement, saying, “As the G20’s current and next three presidencies, we will build on the historic progress of India’s G20 Presidency to address global challenges.”
The four countries reaffirmed their "shared commitment to the G20 as the premier forum for international economic cooperation".
Earthquake rescue efforts have continued in Morocco as it mourned the victims of a disaster that killed more than 2,000 people, flattening buildings in cities and villages.
Friday’s 6.8-magnitude quake, Morocco’s strongest on record, struck 72km (45 miles) south-west of Marrakech, wiping out entire villages in rural areas.
The government reported at least 2,012 people were killed and more than 2,059 injured, many of them critically. Troops and emergency services scrambled to reach remote mountain villages where victims were feared trapped.
Morocco declared three days of mourning, during which the national flag would be flown at half mast, the royal court said. The Moroccan armed forces were deploying rescue teams to provide affected areas with clean drinking water, food, tents and blankets, it added. Several countries, including Israel, France, Spain, Italy and the US, offered aid.
Neighbouring Algeria, which has had rocky relations with Morocco, opened its airspace, which had been closed for two years, to flights carrying humanitarian aid and the injured.
Al-Haouz province, at the epicentre of the earthquake, suffered the most deaths with 1,293 followed by the province of Taroudant with 452.
“I’ve lost everything”, said Lahcen, a resident of the remote mountain village of Moulay Brahim, whose wife and four children were killed.
Rescue workers recovered the bodies of Lahcen’s three daughters from the rubble of what was once their home, while continuing to search for the bodies of his wife and son.
“I can’t do anything about it now, I just want to get away from the world and mourn.”
Bouchra, another Moulay Brahim resident, dried her tears with her scarf as she watched men digging graves to bury the victims.
“My cousin’s grandchildren are dead,” she said in a knotted voice.
“I saw the devastation of the earthquake live and I’m still shaking. It’s like a ball of fire that has swallowed up everything in its path. Everyone here has lost family, whether in our village or elsewhere in the region.”
The Red Cross warned that it could take years to repair the damage.
“It won’t be a matter of a week or two … We are counting on a response that will take months, if not years”, the organisation’s Middle East and north Africa director, Hossam Elsharkawi, said.
The village of Tafeghaghte, 60km south-west of Marrakech, was almost entirely destroyed, with the quake’s epicentre about 50km away. AFP journalists reported very few buildings still standing.
“Three of my grandchildren and their mother are dead,” said 72-year-old Omar Benhanna. “They’re still under the debris. It wasn’t so long ago that we were playing together.”
Residents buried about 70 victims in the nearby cemetery on Saturday, in funeral rites punctuated by cries and screams. In the evening, television channels broadcast aerial images showing entire villages of clay houses in the al-Haouz region completely destroyed.
Residents of Marrakech, the major city nearest to the epicentre, said some buildings had collapsed in the old city, a Unesco world heritage site. The city’s famous 12th-century Koutoubia mosque suffered damage, but the extent was not immediately clear.
Initial reports said part of a minaret that towered over Djemaa el-Fna, a market square and hub for visitors, had collapsed, injuring two people, before people fled to the open area of the square to seek safety.
Morocco’s geophysical centre said the quake struck in the Ighil area with a magnitude of 7.2. The US Geological Survey put the quake’s magnitude at 6.8 and said it was at a relatively shallow depth of 18.5km (11.5 miles).
Philippe Vernant – a specialist in active tectonics, particularly in Morocco, at the University of Montpellier – told Agence France-Presse that even though the quake did not hit in Morocco’s most active seismological region, aftershocks could be expected. “Even if they are less strong, they can lead to the collapse of buildings already weakened by the earthquake. Traditionally, we tend to say that aftershocks diminish in intensity.”
The tremor was also felt in the coastal cities of Rabat, Casablanca, Agadir and Essaouira, where many panicked residents took to the streets in the middle of the night, fearing that their homes would collapse.
The prime minister of Morocco’s cross-strait neighbour Spain, Pedro Sánchez, expressed his “solidarity and support to the people of Morocco in the wake of this terrible earthquake … Spain is with the victims of this tragedy.”
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said he was “devastated” and that “France stands ready to help with first aid”.
Algerian state television broadcast a message from the presidency, declaring that the state would open its airspace to allow the transport of humanitarian aid to Morocco as well as offering aid resources, a significant shift after the complete rupture in diplomatic relations between the two nations that has lasted for two years.
This earthquake is the deadliest in Morocco since the 1960 quake that destroyed Agadir and killed 15,000 people, a third of the city’s population. In 1980, the 7.3-magnitude El Asnam earthquake in neighbouring Algeria killed 2,500 people and left at least 300,000 homeless.
Agence France-Presse, Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report
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India has defied expectations to produce a New Delhi Declaration backed by all countries at this weekend’s G20 summit, at the expense of any meaningful condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Indian prime minister Narendra Modi announced “the good news” shortly before 1600 local time [1000 GMT] on the first day of the G20 leaders’ summit in Delhi – much to the surprise of many observers and analysts, who felt that the Ukraine issue would stand in the way of a consensus on any joint statement at all, much less an early one.
Ukraine does feature in the full 37-page declaration released by the Indian foreign ministry on Saturday, which says leaders “highlighted the human suffering and negative added impacts of the war in Ukraine” without directly mentioning Russia. “There were different views and assessments of the situation,” it adds, in something of an understatement.
“We ... welcome all relevant and constructive initiatives that support a comprehensive, just, and durable peace in Ukraine,” the declaration reads.
India was also able to get all G20 members, including Russia and China, to agree that the “use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is inadmissible”. Vladimir Putin, who is not attending the summit, has repeatedly threatened the West with the “increasing” prospect of nuclear weapons being used in Ukraine and said his own strategic nuclear weapons are on “combat duty”.
The deep divisions within the G20 bloc on Ukraine had loomed large over these talks, with quibbles over the wording on the issue preventing India from issuing a joint communique after any of the ministerial meetings of its presidency so far. It raised speculation that India’s G20 could go down in history as the first not to produce a leaders’ declaration.
But Indian foreign minister S Jaishankar said considerable time was spent, right up to the last few days, in regard to “geo-political issues” – a euphemism for the war in Ukraine.
“The question of who helped [forge the agreement]? I mean, eventually, everybody helped because everybody came together for the consensus. I think the emerging markets took a particular lead on this, and many of us have a strong history of working together,” he said. “The point to be recognised is that a common landing point was ultimately fashioned out.”
Rishi Sunak, who said “putting pressure” on Russia was one of his priorities for the summit, hailed the declaration as including “very strong language about Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine”.
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“What you’ll see in the communique is strong language, highlighting the impact of the war on food prices and food security, calling on Russia to re-enter the Black Sea grain initiative to allow exports to leave that part of the world and help feed millions of the most vulnerable people as well as the communique recognising the principles of the UN Charter respecting territorial integrity.
“So I think that is a good and strong outcome. And as you can see from this summit, Russia is completely isolated.”
Mr Sunak was one of few leaders welcomed with Mr Modi’s signature bear hug as he arrived for the talks on Saturday, and he thanked his counterpart for his “country’s consummate presidency of the G20 this year”, according to No 10.
Mr Modi and Mr Sunak held one-to-one talks on the sidelines on the day’s group events, and No 10 said discussions of a prospective UK-India free trade agreement were productive. “The leaders reflected on the close and growing ties between the UK and India, exemplified in the ‘living bridge’ between our people,” a statement read.
Narendra Modi hugs Rishi Sunak on Saturday
(Getty Images)
“They agreed it was important to build on the past and focus on the future, cementing a modern partnership in cutting-edge defence technology, trade and innovation. They also discussed a number of consular issues.”
Joe Biden, who arrived with secretary of state Antony Blinken and his delegation, announced ambitious plans to build a rail and shipping corridor linking India with the Middle East and Europe, a landmark project aimed at fostering economic growth and political cooperation.
But no timeline has been set by the White House for the completion of the corridor, which will serve as a rival to China’s massive Belt and Road Initiative.
“This is a big deal,” said Mr Biden. “This is a really big deal.”
Modi with Joe Biden in the Indian capital on Saturday
(Getty Images)
The first day of the summit began with an unexpected spell of rainshowers, bringing a welcome dip in temperatures as world leaders were driven through the deserted streets of Delhi – effectively locked down as part of a security effort around the G20 summit – to the newly built Bharat Mandapam venue.
Alongside Mr Putin, the summit was skipped by China’s premiere Xi Jinping and the Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. The three were represented by their foreign minister, premier and economy minister respectively.
But there were plenty of world leaders for Mr Modi to greet regardless, with those in attendance including German chancellor Olaf Scholz, French president Emmanuel Macron, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed Bin Salman and Japan’s Fumio Kishida.
Mr Modi addressed the opening of the summit from a chair with a nameplate reading “Bharat” – the Hindi word for the country – instead of the English-language name India, sparking a ripple of reactions online here. It follows a week of speculation that Mr Modi’s Hindu nationalist party is angling to officially change the country’s name from India to Bharat.
And there was a significant announcement at the start of the day’s talks as well as at the end, with Mr Modi beginning by inviting the president of the African Union to step up and take a chair as a new permanent member of the bloc.
It is the first time the bloc has been expanded since its foundation in 1999, and will see the grouping become the G21 from next year. Speaking to The Independent at the summit venue, South African government spokesperson Vincent Magwenya hailed it as “a very significant development... one that we had been advocating for for quite some time”.
Modi embracing Comoros president and African Union chair Azali Assoumani (C-R) after welcoming him to take up a permanent chair at the G20 table
“The G20 is the premier platform for international economic cooperation, and it was never sustainable that you were excluding a continent of more than 1.4 billion people. Africa is an integral part of the global economy,” he said.
Though the declaration has been finalised already, Sunday’s talks are expected to bring more deals and commitments to tackle the G20’s core areas of concern – development and the global economy.
The declaration committed to halve the digital gender gap by 2030 and said it expects to address barriers to accessibility, affordability, adoption and usage of digital tech, an area where India is among world leaders.
It was also acknowledged that the global requirement for annual low-cost financing in the energy transition amounts to $4 trillion. This transition should prioritise a substantial presence of renewable energy within the primary energy mix, it said.
And ahead of the next round of UN climate talks beginning in Dubai in November, the declaration urged accelerating efforts towards a “phasedown of unabated coal power”, though it said this had to be done “in line with national circumstances and recognising the need for support towards just transitions”.
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By Laurence Peter & Maria Zaccaro
BBC News
The death toll from a powerful earthquake in Morocco has soared to more than 2,000, with a similar number of injured.
The interior ministry says more than 1,400 have serious injuries, and the heaviest casualties are in provinces just south of Marrakesh.
King Mohammed VI declared three days of national mourning and ordered shelter, food and other help for survivors.
Many people are spending a second night out in the open.
The magnitude 6.8 quake hit Marrakesh and many towns on Friday night. In remote mountain areas, entire villages are reported to have been flattened.
The epicentre was in the High Atlas Mountains, 71km (44 miles) south-west of Marrakesh - a city with world heritage status which is popular with tourists.
But the tremors were also felt in the capital Rabat, some 350km away, as well as Casablanca, Agadir and Essaouira.
The interior ministry says Al Haouz province has the highest death toll, followed by Taroudant province. There are far fewer deaths in Marrakesh, though the Unesco-protected old city has suffered considerable damage.
It is believed that many simple mud brick, stone and timber homes in mountain villages will have collapsed, but the scale of devastation in remote areas will take some time to assess.
When he arrived in one such village, BBC reporter Nick Beake says, an elderly woman was wailing as 18 bodies had been recovered in that one place.
Many people are camping out for the night there, he says, as they fear aftershocks. They say they are desperately short of food and water. But such places are hard to reach, with mountain roads strewn with rocks and other debris, making access difficult for the emergency services.
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Flags will be at half-mast on all public buildings in the country for the next three days, the royal palace said in a statement.
The king ordered the armed forces to assist rescue teams, and Moroccans are donating blood as part of the national effort to help victims.
It was Morocco's deadliest earthquake since Agadir was devastated by a 6.7-magnitude quake in 1960, which killed more than 12,000.
Friday's quake was also the most powerful to hit Morocco for more than a century.
The UN said it was ready to assist the government of Morocco in its rescue efforts - and similar pledges have come from several countries including Spain, France and Israel.
Neighbouring Algeria has had hostile relations with Morocco in recent years, but is now opening its airspace for humanitarian flights to Morocco.
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Many families were trapped when the quake struck at night.
Montasir Itri, who lives in the mountain village of Asni, close to the epicentre, told Reuters: "Our neighbours are under the rubble and people are working hard to rescue them using available means in the village."
Houda Outassaf had been walking around Jemaa el-Fna Square in Marrakesh when he felt the ground start to shake.
"I have at least 10 members of my family who died... I can hardly believe it, as I was with them no more than two days ago," he told AFP news agency.
A mosque minaret collapsed in Jemaa el-Fna Square and many narrow streets in the city's old Medina were filled with rubble.
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Mangosuthu Buthelezi, a towering figure in South African politics and outspoken Zulu chief, has died at the age of 95.
During the racist apartheid regime, he founded the Zulu Inkatha party after becoming disillusioned with the African National Congress (ANC).
Thousands were killed in clashes between supporters of the two parties in the early 1990s.
But he was later welcomed back into the fold, serving as President Nelson Mandela's minister of home affairs.
Chief Buthelezi was a shrewd but controversial politician, who disagreed with the ANC's tactics of armed action against white-minority rule and trod a moderate path as leader of an ethnic-Zulu homeland.
He was opposed to international sanctions on South Africa, arguing that they would only harm the country's black majority.
During the clashes in the early 1990s, Nelson Mandela's ANC accused him of collaborating with the white-minority government.
Some feared the violence could lead to a civil war and derail the transition to democracy which saw Mandela become president in 1994.
Many believed that members of the apartheid security forces were working with the Inkatha movement to fight the ANC but Buthelezi always denied that.
President Cyril Ramaphosa led tributes, describing Chief Buthelezi as a "formidable leader".
He said he had "played a significant role in our country's history for seven decades".
The president added: "Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi has been an outstanding leader in the political and cultural life of our nation, including the ebbs and flows of our liberation struggle, the transition which secured our freedom in 1994 and our democratic dispensation."
He said Chief Buthelezi had died in the early hours of Saturday, two weeks after celebrating his 95th birthday.
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Chief Buthelezi was hereditary chief of the Zulus, South Africa's largest ethnic group.
He was born into the Zulu royal family - his mother was Princess Magogo kaDinzulu, the sister of the Zulu king. Chief Buthelezi played the role of his own great-grandfather, the Zulu King Cetshwayo, in the 1964 film Zulu.
He was prime minister of KwaZulu, the Zulu homeland, and in 1975 founded the Inkatha Freedom Party, a Zulu political and cultural movement. He stepped down as party leader in 2019 after 44 years at its helm.
