World

BHUBANESWAR, India/KARACHI, Pakistan — More than 100 people are feared dead in India in an early-summer heatwave which forced schools to close and halted outdoor work like construction, government officials said on Thursday.

Neighbouring Pakistan, which suffered its hottest spell in decades last year, plans to open 500 response centres to provide shelter and cold water to people if a heatwave warning is issued, a government official said. No heat deaths have yet been reported.

India's hottest months are May and June, but some states have already registered temperatures in excess of 40^oC, forcing authorities to take emergency steps.

In the southern Indian state of Telangana, 45 people have died from heat exposure, and another 17 in Andhra Pradesh, officials said. Some 43 were believed to have died in neighbouring Odisha, although an official there said each of the deaths was being investigated.

Y.K. Reddy, a director at the Indian Meteorological Department, said Telangana has recorded its highest April temperatures since at least 2006.

Reddy said there were worries the death toll in Telangana could rise and his department was issuing heat-wave warnings to advise people to stay indoors.

Schools in Telangana were shut last week two weeks ahead of their summer holidays. As an emergency measure, Odisha has ordered schools to remain closed until April 26 and banned construction work during the hottest times of day.

Some small-scale businesses were already suffering.

"I am closing my shop before noon because it is too hot," said Tulu Sahu, a small grocery seller in Bhubaneshwar city in Odisha. "You cannot stay in the shop."

Pakistan, where extreme heat killed more than 1,000 people during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan last year, has started gearing up to tackle any sudden rise of patients who report heat-related illnesses.

"We have enough supplies and staff to meet the possible situation," said Seemin Jamali, head of the accident and emergency department at Karachi's Jinnah Hospital.

ROME — The UN refugee agency said on Wednesday it feared around 500 migrants from Africa had drowned in the Mediterranean, in what could be one of the worst tragedies since the start of the migrant crisis in Europe.

Survivors who were spotted drifting at sea before being picked up by a passing merchant ship on April 16 told the UNHCR many migrants drowned when human traffickers tried to transfer people to an already overcrowded vessel somewhere between Libya and Italy.

The latest reported deaths come as Europe struggles to find a way of stemming the flow of people fleeing war, poverty and persecution in what has become Europe's worst migrant crisis since World War II.

"The survivors told us that they had been part of a group of between 100 and 200 people who departed last week from a locality near Tobruk in Libya on a 30-metre boat," the UNHCR said in a statement.

"After sailing for several hours, the smugglers in charge of the boat attempted to transfer the passengers to a larger ship carrying hundreds of people in terribly overcrowded conditions," it said, adding that the larger boat then capsized and sank.

The 41 survivors — 37 men, three women and a three-year-old child — are believed to have drifted at sea for up to three days before being rescued and taken to Kalamata on the Peloponnese peninsula in southern Greece.

Of those rescued, 23 were Somali, 11 Ethiopian, six Egyptian and one from Sudan, the statement said, adding that they were being temporarily housed in a stadium in Kalamata.

In what is believed to be the deadliest incident involving migrants and refugees trying to reach Europe, at least 740 people were feared to have perished in April 2015 after a crammed fishing boat capsized in Libyan waters.

In another incident in September 2014, up to 500 migrants drowned off Malta after people smugglers rammed their boat in an attempt to force them onto a smaller vessel.

The huge refugee influx arriving on European Union shores has sparked fierce disagreements among the bloc's 28 members and brought its system of open borders to the brink of collapse. 

Under a deal with Ankara to try to ease the burden, migrants who travel to the Greek islands are being returned to Turkey in return for billions in EU cash.

The EU also promised to resettle one Syrian refugee for every Syrian taken back by Turkey, to grant visa-free travel to Turks within the border-free Schengen Zone and to reassess Turkey's stalled EU membership bid.

Migrant arrivals in Greece have fallen sharply since the agreement took effect on March 20.

The number landing on the Greek islands has now stabilised at around 100 people a day — around a tenth of the arrivals last summer.

But about 50,000 people remain stranded in Greece since the closure of the migrant route through the Balkans in February.

More than 10,000 of them are stuck in a slum-like camp at Idomeni on the border with Macedonia, which has seen a growing number of violent incidents sparked by desperate attempts to break through the frontier. 

More than one million people crossed clandestinely to Europe in 2015 while some 179,000 have made the trip since the start of this year, according to UNHCR figures.

More than 3,700 people died in 2015 trying the make the perilous crossing over the Mediterranean, with 761 recorded as dead or missing in 2016.

On Saturday, Pope Francis again highlighted the humanitarian crisis by visiting the Greek island of Lesbos and returning to Rome with three refugee families who fled the conflict in Syria.

The Pope told reporters that his gesture was "a drop in the ocean" but hoped that afterwards, "the ocean will never be the same again".

BRUSSELS — NATO and Russia ran up against "profound disagreements" over Ukraine and other issues as their ambassadors met on Wednesday for the first time since 2014, alliance chief Jens Stoltenberg said.

The two sides agreed to keep communicating following the meeting of the NATO-Russia Council, which has been on ice since the alliance cut practical ties with Moscow to protest the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in early 2014.

"I think we had a very frank, serious and actually good meeting," Stoltenberg told a news conference after the talks, adding that both sides had "listened to what each other has to say".

But former Norwegian prime minister Stoltenberg stressed that "NATO and Russia have profound and persistent disagreements."

He admitted they were far from any breakthrough on easing tensions over the simmering violence still gripping eastern Ukraine.

"There were profound disagreements related to the crisis with Ukraine," he said. "During the meeting it was reconfirmed we disagree on the facts, the narrative and the repsonsibilties for the crisis in and around Ukraine."

'Pressure on Russia'

Relations have also worsened in recent months over Moscow's air campaign in Syria and tensions have flared in the past week after two incidents involving the US military and Russian planes in the Baltic Sea.

Russia's ambassador to NATO, Alexander Grushko, insisted after the meeting with the 28 NATO ambassadors that it was the US-led alliance that was to blame for increasing military activities on Russia's flank.

"For us it is absolutely clear that without real steps on NATO's side to downgrade the military activity in areas adjacent to the Russian Federation, it will not be possible to engage in any meanifngul dialogue on confidence building measures," he told reporters.

Grushko also said Russian planes had buzzed the American missile destroyer USS Donald Cook in the Baltic Sea last week because it had sailed near Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave in northern Europe.

"This is about not the military activity but attempts to exercise military pressure on Russia," he said, comparing it to a hostile ship sailing close to the US coast or in the Gulf of Mexico.

The United States called the incident a "simulated attack" on the ship.

'Not business as usual' 

Stoltenberg said it was important to "keep channels of communication open" in both military and political terms, adding that it was necessary for "risk reduction".

"We all agree that it is in all our interest to keep channels for political dialogue open. It is both necessary and useful, especially in times of tensions as we experience now," the NATO chief added.

"However, this does not mean that we are back to business as usual."

Fears the two sides could become embroiled in violence have grown since Russia started a bombing campaign in Syria, particularly after alliance member Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet on its border in November.

Russia blames NATO for increasing the risk of conflict by building up its troops in eastern European countries, many of which have been lobbying for more Western support. 

Ahead of the talks, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said it was NATO that had frozen relations and that the alliance had "judged it necessary to contact us again".

“But, and we have made them understand this clearly, we cannot act as if it is 'business as usual’,” Lavrov said after talks with his French counterpart Jean-Marc Ayrault in Moscow on Tuesday.

Ayrault said the talks would "advance the sense of a common interest, which is peace and security".

Stoltenberg said that both NATO and Russia had at least agreed on the importance of the Minsk peace agreements, which were supposed to herald a broader settlement in Ukraine and return control of the eastern border with Russia to Kiev.

The deal has produced a tenuous calm in eastern Ukraine, parts of which are controlled by Moscow-backed rebels, but the truce has been threatened by a recent upsurge in clashes.

Crimea's future remains highly uncertain with Russian President Vladimir Putin insisting it will never be given up and NATO equally insistent it will never recognise its annexation.

BRUSSELS — The European Union charged Google on Wednesday with using its dominant Android mobile operating system to squeeze out rivals, opening a second front against the US technology giant that could result in large fines.

EU antitrust regulators said that by requiring mobile phone manufacturers to pre-install Google Search and the Google Chrome browser to get access to other Google apps, the US company was harming consumers by stifling competition.

The European Commission said such practices, which started in 2011 when the company became dominant in mobile operating systems and app stores, showed Google was seeking to shield its search engine, the world's most popular, from competition.

Google is already facing EU charges over the promotion of its shopping service in Internet searches at the expense of rival services in a case that has dragged on since late 2010 despite three attempts to resolve the issues.

The stakes are higher for Google in the Android case as it made about $11 billion last year from advertising sales on Android phones through its apps such as Maps, Search and Gmail, according to estimates by financial analyst Richard Windsor.

"A competitive mobile Internet sector is increasingly important for consumers and businesses in Europe," European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.

"We believe that Google's behaviour denies consumers a wider choice of mobile apps and services and stands in the way of innovation by other players," she said.

The European Commission said about 80 per cent of smart mobile devices in Europe and the world run on Android and that Google holds more than 90 per cent of the market for general Internet searches on Android in the European Economic Area.

Financial incentives

Google, which has 12 weeks to respond to the charges, said Android was a remarkable system based on open-source software and open innovation.

"We look forward to working with the European Commission to demonstrate that Android is good for competition and good for consumers," Google's general counsel Kent Walker said in a blog.

He said any phone maker could load Google apps and rival products and that users had freedom of choice as well.

Complainant FairSearch said Google was hindering the development of versions that might lead to new operating systems able to compete with Android, despite launching it as an open source project.

The Commission said while Android was an open source system that could be used to develop new mobile operating systems — known as Android forks — Google required phone manufacturers to sign an agreement not to sell devices running on such forks if they wanted to pre-install Google apps.

The EU also charged Google with giving "significant financial incentives" to some of the world's largest smartphone makers to pre-install Google Search exclusively on devices.

Internet Explorer-browser maker Microsoft Corp. declined to comment. Firefox owner Mozilla, Apple which has the Safari browser, and Norway's Opera Software were not immediately available to comment.

Vodafone, BT Group's EE, Orange, Deutsche Telekom, KPN, Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics were not immediately available to comment. Huawei declined to comment.

PEDERNALES, Ecuador — A magnitude 6.2 earthquake shook Ecuador's already devastated Pacific coast before dawn on Wednesday, terrifying residents and hindering rescuers searching for survivors of an even bigger quake at the weekend which killed more than 500 people.

The latest big tremor, which followed several hundred aftershocks from Saturday's 7.8 quake, hit 25km  off the island of Muisne on the northwest coast at a depth of 15km, the US Geological Survey said.

That was near the epicenter of Saturday's major quake, which leveled a long swath of the coastline and dealt a major blow to the oil-producing nation's already fragile economy.

Two strong tremors of about 30 seconds each woke people up and sent them running into the street.

"You can't imagine what a fright it was. 'Not again!', I thought," said Maria Quinones in Pedernales, which bore the brunt of Saturday's disaster. On a highway outside town, children sat holding placards saying "food, please".

No tsunami warning was issued and there were no immediate reports of deaths or major new damage. Ecuador's Geophysical Institute said there were 17 aftershocks.

Local media said rescue operations were temporarily suspended as hopes dwindled of finding anyone alive from Saturday's quake, which killed 525 people, according to a central government tally.

More than 100 people are still missing and more than 4,600 were injured in that disaster, which destroyed about 1,500 buildings, triggered mudslides and tore up roads.

Some 23,500 people are sleeping in shelters, their homes and livelihoods crushed.

‘Please, give us the corpses’

President Rafael Correa, supervising work in the disaster zone, said the weekend quake had inflicted $2 billion to $3 billion of damage and could knock 2 to 3 percentage points off growth, meaning the economy could shrink this year.

Lower crude oil revenue had already left the poor Andean nation of 16 million people facing near-zero growth and lower investment, forcing it to seek international financing.

Meanwhile, survivors in isolated communities struggled without water, power or transport, although aid was trickling in. Along Ecuador's Pacific coast, sports stadiums served as both morgues and aid distribution centres.

Scores of foreign aid workers and experts arrived to help, and about 14,000 security force members were keeping order, although only sporadic looting has been reported.

Rescuers were losing hope of finding anyone alive even as relatives of the missing begged them to keep looking.

"There is still a small margin of time to find survivors," Correa said. "But I don't want to give excessive hope."

One woman, who arrived from the highland capital Quito in search of her daughter and niece who had been on a beach trip, urged police to take care with excavators as they searched a destroyed hotel in Pedernales.

"Please", she said, "at least give us the corpses intact".

KABUL — At least 30 people were killed and hundreds wounded when a Taliban truck bomb tore through central Kabul and a fierce firefight broke out Tuesday, a week after the insurgents launched their annual spring offensive.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in a densely crowded neighbourhood, which sent clouds of acrid smoke billowing into the sky and rattled windows several kilometres away.

The brazen assault near the defence ministry marks the first major Taliban attack in the Afghan capital since the insurgents announced the start of this year's fighting season.

"One of the suicide attackers blew up an explosives-laden truck in a public parking lot next to a government building," Kabul police chief Abdul Rahman Rahimi told reporters.

"The second attacker engaged security forces in a gunbattle before being gunned down."

Interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said 30 people, including women and children, were killed in the attack and warned that the toll could rise further.

He added that more than 320 were wounded, with many of them battling for their lives in hospital.

The pitched firefight appeared to die down several hours after the powerful explosion, but some security officials expressed concern that other bombers may still be on the loose.

"I saw wounded people lying on the road and screaming helplessly," said Sadiqullah, who runs a tea stall near the building which was attacked.

"It was devastating. We are fed up with such attacks. How long must ordinary civilians suffer like this?"

The interior ministry said hundreds of kilogrammes of explosives were used in the bombing, the deadliest so far this year in the Afghan capital.

The scene of the attack was littered with upturned cars, many of them mangled and charred.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed their fighters had managed to enter the offices of the National Directorate of Security, the main spy agency.

Sediqqi conceded that one of the attackers managed to breach the compound, a government office responsible for providing security to government VIPs, but said he was gunned down after a firefight.

"This attack shows the devastation caused by the use of explosive devices in urban areas and once more demonstrates complete disregard for the lives of Afghan civilians," the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said.

"The use of explosives in populated areas, in circumstances almost certain to cause immense suffering to civilians, may amount to war crimes."

The Taliban on Tuesday last week announced the start of their spring offensive even as the government tries to bring them back to the negotiating table to end the drawn-out conflict.

The insurgents warned they would "employ large-scale attacks on enemy positions across the country" during the offensive dubbed Operation Omari in honour of the movement's late founder Mullah Omar, whose death was announced last year.

The Taliban began the fighting season last week by targeting the northern city of Kunduz, which they briefly captured last year in a stunning setback for Afghan forces.

But officials said Afghan security forces drove Taliban fighters back from the city on Friday.

The annual spring offensive normally marks the start of the "fighting season", though this past winter the lull was shorter and rebels continued to battle government forces, albeit with less intensity. 

The Taliban's resurgence has raised serious questions about Afghan forces' capacity to hold their own. NATO estimates that a staggering 5,500 troops were killed last year.

Peace talks which began last summer were abruptly halted after it was revealed that Mullah Omar had been dead for two years, a disclosure which sparked infighting in the insurgents' ranks.

A four-country group comprising Afghanistan, the United States, China and Pakistan has been holding meetings since January aimed at jump-starting negotiations, though their efforts have so far been in vain.

ISTANBUL — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned the European Union Tuesday it needs Turkey more than Ankara needs the bloc, as tensions grew over promises for visa liberalisation in a crucial deal on stemming the flow of migrants to Europe.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had earlier bluntly told the EU that Ankara would no longer abide by the March migrant accord if Brussels fails to implement the pledge to grant Turks visa-free travel by June.

Tensions have also been fuelled by a European Parliament report published last week that accused Turkey of backsliding on democracy and pressure from Ankara on Berlin to prosecute a German comic over a poem satirising Erdogan.

The issues are coming to a head as Chancellor Angela Merkel and top EU officials prepare to travel Saturday to the Turkish city of Gaziantep close to the Syrian border to discuss implementation of the migrant deal.

"The European Union needs Turkey more than Turkey needs the European Union," Erdogan said to cheers in a televised speech to municipal leaders in Ankara, denouncing as "provocative" the European Parliament report.

He lashed out at the report for not praising Turkey's hosting of some 2.7 million refugees from the war in neighbouring Syria.

"Three million people have been looked after in this country so they don't disturb the Europeans. Is there anything about this in the report?" said Erdogan.

"At a time when our relations with the European Union are in a positive phase regarding the migrants... it is provocative to come out with a report like that."

'Mutual commitment' 

Turkey has been given a string of promises from the European Union — including visa-free travel to the border-free Schengen Zone and new momentum for its long-stalled membership bid — in return for stepping up efforts to stop migrants crossing to EU territory.

"This is a mutual commitment," Davutoglu said on Monday of the promise to exempt Turks from visas by the end of June.

"If the EU cannot take the necessary steps required of it then of course it cannot be expected of Turkey to take these steps," Davutoglu told reporters before heading to Strasbourg to address the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).

If the June deadline is not adhered to, "of course no-one can expect Turkey to adhere to its commitments", he added.

Marc Pierini, visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe, told AFP that Ankara was "very keen" to obtain the visa-free regime but was also aware there were are 72 technical conditions to be fulfilled.

"As of today, these conditions have not been met yet," he said.

Once they are met, the issue will be put to EU interior ministers for a qualified majority vote in June.

"Turkey does not have the ability to change the voting procedures in EU Ministerial Councils," Pierini commented.

'Won't be watered down' 

EU Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker also warned Ankara on Tuesday that the "criteria [on visa liberalisation] will not be watered down in the case of Turkey".

He said Davutoglu had raised the issue in talks in Strasbourg "but he did not need to because... I have made clear that this will be done when Turkey has fulfilled all the conditions, which it is in the process of doing".

He added: "We concluded an accord and this deal is being applied. There is no need to make any kind of threat."

The March 18 accord sets out measures for reducing Europe's worst migration crisis since World War II, including stepped-up checks by Turkey and the shipping back to Turkish territory of migrants who land on the Greek islands.

But the prospect of visa-free travel for Turks has been hugely controversial in some EU countries, where leaders have been accused of bending over to fulfil Erdogan's demands at a time when he is accused of growing authoritarianism.

In his address to the PACE, Davutoglu did not emphasise the visa issue but lamented the lack of foreign assistance given to Turkey for the Syrian refugees, saying this amounted to just $500 million (440 million euros) compared to Turkey's spending of $10 billion.

He warned of the risk of a "lost generation" with 152,000 Syrian children born in Turkey and 400,000 children who do not have access to eduction.

ATHENS — Greek island officials on Tuesday began letting migrants leave detention centres where they have been held, as Human Rights Watch heaped criticism on a wave of EU-sanctioned deportations to ease the crisis. 

As the European Union pushed ahead with a controversial deal with Turkey to send back all migrants whose asylum claims were rejected, Pope Francis took fresh aim at Western indifference to the plight of people fleeing war, bloodshed and abject poverty.

"Forgive us the closure and indifference of our societies which fear the changes to our way of life and our way of thinking that your presence requires," Francis said in an address to refugees, just days after bringing home three Syrian families from the Greek island of Lesbos. 

"Treated like a burden, a cost, in reality you are a gift... a bridge that brings together people who are far apart."

Days after the 79-year-old pontiff travelled to Lesbos in a powerful gesture of solidarity, Greek officials said they had begun allowing people to leave the island detention camps where they have been held while their asylum requests are processed. 

Since an EU-Turkey deal went into force on March 20, around 7,500 people have landed on the Greek islands where they have been kept in holding centres while waiting to be processed to determine whether they can legitimately claim asylum.

But on Tuesday, the SOMP agency which is coordinating Greece's response to the crisis said those who had spent 25 days inside the holding centres and who had filed an asylum claim would be "allowed to leave" the camps.

The decision aims to ease pressure on the registration centres.

A SOMP spokesman said the "the vast majority" of new arrivals had submitted an asylum claim, and that a new round of deportations would only resume when there was "a sufficient number of people" to warrant it. 

Under terms of the EU-Turkey deal, Greece began sending back irregular migrants from the islands on April 4, with more than 320 people expelled in the first week, most of them Pakistanis. 

The expulsions are aimed at easing the pressure on the European Union which is straining to cope with its worst migration crisis since World War II.

But the EU-sanctioned deportations have drawn sharp criticism, with Human Rights Watch describing them as "abusive" and expressing concern about the fate of the deportees. 

"In the mad dash to start the deportations deal with Turkey, the European Union and Greece tossed rights to the wind, including for people who wanted to seek asylum," said HRW's Fred Abrahams. 

"The abusive deportations expose the fundamental flaws in the EU's expedited mass returns to a country that cannot be considered safe." 

It said the deportees had not been informed they were going to be expelled, were not told where they were being taken and some of them were not allowed to take their personal possessions. 

Once in Turkey, they were unreachable on their mobile phones and the Turkish authorities had not allowed humanitarian organisations access to them, HRW said. 

Fast-tracking applications 

With the help of around 100 European experts, Greek officials have begun examining hundreds of asylum requests under an expedited procedure which takes 15 days, SOMP said. 

Those who fail to make a claim, or whose application for asylum is rejected face being sent back to Turkey.

Since the deal went into effect, new arrivals on the Greek Islands have stabilised at around 100 a day — a tenth of the daily figure last year. 

Despite the reduction, the arrivals would still amount to "more than 3,000 a month" which would be difficult for Greece to manage "if, in parallel, the European plan for redistributing refugees who have arrived since March 20 doesn't pick up pace", the spokesman said. 

BRASILIA — Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff's government vowed on Monday to fight impeachment after the lower house of congress delivered a humiliating defeat that paved the way for her likely removal from office months before the country hosts the Olympics.

In a vote late on Sunday that sparked jubilation among Rousseff's foes, the opposition comfortably surpassed the two-thirds majority needed to send the leftist president for trial in the senate on charges she manipulated budget accounts to boost her re-election in 2014.

Surveys of lawmakers published by newspapers suggest that the opposition has the votes it needs to win a simple majority in the senate next month to open a trial against Rousseff, at which point she would be suspended from her post. She would be replaced by Vice President Michel Temer as acting president and he would serve out Rousseff's term until 2018 if she is found guilty.

"The president will not be disheartened and will not stop fighting," Attorney General Jose Eduardo Cardozo told a news conference in the early hours of Monday, citing Rousseff's fight against Brazil's former military dictatorship, during which she was imprisoned and tortured.

The government has said it will fight on several fronts by challenging the vote in the supreme court, organising street protests against impeachment and seeking to secure the votes in senate to block a trial.

"If someone thinks she is going to bow down now, they are fooling themselves," Cardoso said.

Brazil's Bovespa stock index was flat at midday on Monday, after rallying more than 20 per cent this year on hopes that impeachment would spell an end to 13 years of leftist Workers Party rule.

The central bank intervened to prevent a sharp rise in the currency, offering up to $4 billion in derivatives at an auction. The real weakened to 3.53 per dollar, while yields on rate futures fell.

The impeachment battle, waged during Brazil's worst recession since the 1930s, has divided the country of 200 million people more deeply than at any time since the end of its military dictatorship in 1985.

It has also sparked a bitter battle between Rousseff, a 68-year-old former Communist guerrilla, and Temer, 75, that could destabilise any future government and plunge Brazil into months of uncertainty.

Despite anger at rising unemployment, Rousseff's Workers Party can still rely on support among millions of working-class Brazilians, who credit its welfare programmes with pulling their families out of poverty during the past decade.

Celebrations erupted on Sunday night as deputies delivered a crushing blow to Rousseff. The floor of the lower house was a sea of Brazilian flags and pumping fists as dozens of lawmakers carried in their arms the deputy who cast the decisive 342nd vote, after three days of a marathon debate.

Fireworks lit up the night sky in Brazil's megacities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro after the vote.

The final tally was 367 votes cast in favour of impeachment, versus 137 against, and seven abstentions. Two lawmakers did not show up to vote.

Paralysed government

The impeachment battle has paralysed government in Brasilia, at a time when the country is preparing to host the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro in August and is also battling an epidemic of the Zika virus, which has been linked to birth defects in newborns.

Claudio Couto, professor of political science at Fundaçao Getulio Vargas, said that Sunday's loss dramatically weakened Rousseff's ability to strike political bargains and shore up support for her government.

"It is almost impossible the Senate will not take up the impeachment. And with her removal for up to six months, the government's power of persuasion will be dramatically diminished," he said.

Opinion polls suggest more than 60 per cent of Brazilians support impeaching Rousseff, Brazil's first woman president, less than two years after she narrowly won reelection.

While she has not been accused of corruption, Rousseff's government has been tainted by a vast graft scandal at state oil company Petrobras and by the economic recession.

Temer, a constitutional expert, has expressed strong support for the judge and prosecutors leading the Petrobras investigation and dismissed government allegations that he would obstruct their enquiries to protect his PMDB party.

Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators from both sides took to the streets of towns and cities across Brazil on Sunday, in peaceful protests. Millions watched the vote live on television.

"Impeachment sends a clear message that the politics of this country needs to be cleaned up," said Alesandra Dantas, a 28-year-old social worker, who joined anti-Rousseff demonstrators on the grass esplanade outside Congress.

Critics of the process say it has become a referendum on Rousseff's popularity — currently languishing in single digits — and sets a worrying precedent for ousting unpopular leaders in Congress in the future.

Rousseff — who would be the first Brazilian president impeached for more than three decades — is accused of a budgetary sleight of hand employed by many elected officials in Brazil: delaying payments to state lenders in order to artificially lower the budget deficit.

While Rousseff herself has not been charged with corruption, more than half the lawmakers who decided her fate on Sunday are under investigation for graft, fraud or electoral crimes, according to Congresso em Foco, a prominent watchdog in Brasilia.

However, business lobbies have thrown their weight behind her ouster, as they look to Temer to restore business confidence and growth to the $2 trillion economy.

Adriano Pires, head of the Rio de Janeiro-based Brazilian Infrastructure Institute, said Rousseff's departure could lead to an opening of the country's crucial oil sector. Union leaders have voiced concerns about privatisations and job cuts.

Once regarded as an emerging markets powerhouse, Brazil has been hit by the end of a long commodities boom and lost its coveted investment grade credit rating in December. Fitch, which has a negative outlook on Brazil's “BB+” sovereign rating, said it would focus on a new leader's attitude to the corruption probe and efforts to stem the steep rise in government debt.

LONDON — British Finance Minister George Osborne told voters that leaving the European Union (EU) would do permanent damage to the country's economy, costing them thousands of pounds a year and sapping funding for public services.

In a move immediately challenged by anti-EU campaigners, Osborne pointed to treasury figures which said breaking away could cost each household £4,300 ($6,100) a year by 2030 .

Three days after official campaigning began for the EU membership referendum on June 23, Osborne said all alternatives to staying in the union would leave Britain's economy smaller than would be if it stayed in the world's biggest trading bloc.

Leading institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund, and economists have also warned about the short-term economic harm a so-called Brexit could cause. But they have been more reticent about the longer-term effect.

"Britain would be permanently poorer if it left the European Union. Under any alternative, we'd trade less, do less business and receive less investment," Osborne said as he homed in on what a Brexit could mean for voters and their living standards.

"The price would be paid by British families. Wages would be lower and prices would be higher," he said in a speech at a research centre specialising in composites for the aerospace industry, which has deep ties with other EU countries.

A poll last week showed just how sensitive voters are to what a Brexit meant for their own finances. Pollster YouGov said respondents who were evenly split shifted to 45-36 per cent in favour of staying in the EU if they were told that the cost of a Brexit for them would be 100 pounds a year.

Most opinion polls show the rival campaigns running neck and neck, although one published on Monday showed the "In" campaign had kept a 7 percentage-point lead.

Canada-style deal

Brexit supporters accuse Prime Minister David Cameron and Osborne of running a scare campaign. They say a post-EU Britain would flourish as it pursued its own trade deals and cut back on rules and regulations.

The Vote Leave campaign group raised one of the issues that has fuelled much of the opposition to EU membership in Britain, highlighting assumptions in the treasury's report that migration to Britain would remain unchanged in coming years.

But Osborne focused on the economy, saying that even the least disruptive Brexit option for Britain studied by his ministry — a deal with the EU similar to Norway's access to the bloc's single market — would mean national output would be nearly 4 per cent smaller by 2030 than if it stayed in.

One of the leading "Out" campaigners, London Mayor Boris Johnson, has sketched out a different future for Britain. He points to the trade deal reached by Canada with the bloc as a way for Britain to stop contributing to the EU budget and end its obligation to keep its borders open to all EU workers.

Osborne, a rival of Johnson's for the future leadership of the Conservative Party, said that kind of deal would not cover Britain's huge services industry and would leave the economy 6.2 per cent smaller by 2030, or £4,300 per household.

That would lower tax revenues by £36 billion a year, the same as the security and justice budgets combined, he said.

His calculations of the income loss for voters were based on the value of the estimated growth shortfall divided among Britain's roughly 27 million households. "Out" campaigners accused the government of resorting to unreliable estimates.

"Few forecasts are right for 14 months, let alone 14 years. Such precision is spurious, and entirely unbelievable," a former finance minister, Norman Lamont, said in a statement published by the Vote Leave group.