News in Brief
BENGALURU (Reuters) - India reported more than 2,000 deaths from COVID-19 over the last 24 hours, the highest single-day tally for the country so far, health ministry data showed on Wednesday. Coronavirus infections also rose by a record, increasing by 295,041 over the last 24 hours, the data showed. Total deaths reached 182,553. India’s overall case tally is now at 15.6 million, second only to the United States, which has over 31 million infections. At least 22 patients died in a hospital in western India after a disruption to their oxygen supply caused by a leaking tank, the health minister said, as a nationwide surge in coronavirus cases soaks up supplies of the crucial gas. The incident in the city of Nashik, one of India’s worst-hit areas, happened after the tank of gas leaked, said Rajesh Tope, the health minister of Maharashtra, the richest state, where the city is located. "Patients who were on ventilators at the hospital in Nashik have died,” Tope said in televised remarks. "The leakage was spotted at the tank supplying oxygen to these patients. The interrupted supply could be linked to the deaths of the patients in the hospital.”
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MONTREAL (Reuters) -- The Canadian province of Quebec said it would appeal a court ruling that exempts some teachers and provincial politicians from a controversial law that bans public employees from wearing religious symbols. The ruling, which upheld most of a 2019 law, stops it from applying to educators in Quebec’s minority English-language school boards since they hold special rights over education under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Quebec Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette said the decision would be appealed to ensure that it applies to all. The law still prohibits many civil servants, including judges and police officers, from wearing religious symbols such as hijabs and turbans on the job. The Quebec government has said the law was designed to preserve secularism in the mainly French-speaking province.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the Biden administration expects to set "a large cap soon” for how many refugees it will accept in the remaining months of this fiscal year. President Joe Biden last Friday drew criticism by sticking to a refugee cap of 15,000 set by his predecessor, Donald Trump. The White House backtracked in response to the criticism and said it would set a higher cap by mid-May. Psaki told reporters on Tuesday that the administration will set "a large cap soon,” probably before May 15. The 2021 fiscal year ends at the end of September.
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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A South Korean court on Wednesday rejected a claim by South Korean sexual slavery victims and their relatives who sought compensation from the Japanese government over their wartime sufferings. The Seoul Central District Court based its decision on diplomatic considerations and principles of international law that grant states immunity from jurisdiction of foreign courts. This appeared to align with the position maintained by Tokyo, which had boycotted the court proceedings and insists all wartime compensation issues were settled under a 1965 treaty normalizing relations with South Korea. Activists representing sexual slavery victims denounced the decision and said the Seoul Central District Court was ignoring their struggles to restore the women’s honor and dignity. They said in a statement that the plaintiffs would appeal. The estranged U.S. allies spent years escalating their feud in public over issues stemming from Japan’s brutal occupation of Korea through end of World War II before facing pressure from the Biden administration to mend.
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ALGIERS (Reuters) – Islamic parties in Algeria expect to win parliamentary elections in June and take a major role in government, part of a strategy to gradually build clout within a system long dominated by a secular military that regards them with distrust. While the military will retain ultimate power, the Islamic parties are taking advantage of political ructions caused by the mass protests that forced out veteran president Abdelaziz Bouteflika in 2019. The largely secular Hirak protest movement still holds weekly demonstrations to demand a full purge of the old ruling elite and is boycotting the election, viewing it as a charade so long as the military and its allies hold ultimate power. This leaves the way clear for the Islamic groups to win votes from the old nationalist parties, which had senior officials jailed for corruption after the protests, but which are still associated with Bouteflika.
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PRAGUE (Reuters) -- The Czech Republic will ask European Union and NATO allies to take action in solidarity with Prague in its row with Moscow, including expelling Russian intelligence officers from their countries, acting Foreign Minister Jan Hamacek said. The Central European country on Saturday evicted 18 Russian Embassy staff, whom it identified as intelligence officers, over suspicions that Russian secret services were behind explosions at a privately operated arms depot in 2014. Moscow has denied any of its agents were involved in the blast, which killed two people, branding the Czech stance a provocation, and expelled 20 Czech diplomats and other staff in retaliation. The dispute is the biggest between Prague and Moscow since the end of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe in 1989, and comes amid growing tensions between Russia and the West.
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MONTREAL (Reuters) -- The Canadian province of Quebec said it would appeal a court ruling that exempts some teachers and provincial politicians from a controversial law that bans public employees from wearing religious symbols. The ruling, which upheld most of a 2019 law, stops it from applying to educators in Quebec’s minority English-language school boards since they hold special rights over education under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Quebec Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette said the decision would be appealed to ensure that it applies to all. The law still prohibits many civil servants, including judges and police officers, from wearing religious symbols such as hijabs and turbans on the job. The Quebec government has said the law was designed to preserve secularism in the mainly French-speaking province.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the Biden administration expects to set "a large cap soon” for how many refugees it will accept in the remaining months of this fiscal year. President Joe Biden last Friday drew criticism by sticking to a refugee cap of 15,000 set by his predecessor, Donald Trump. The White House backtracked in response to the criticism and said it would set a higher cap by mid-May. Psaki told reporters on Tuesday that the administration will set "a large cap soon,” probably before May 15. The 2021 fiscal year ends at the end of September.
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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A South Korean court on Wednesday rejected a claim by South Korean sexual slavery victims and their relatives who sought compensation from the Japanese government over their wartime sufferings. The Seoul Central District Court based its decision on diplomatic considerations and principles of international law that grant states immunity from jurisdiction of foreign courts. This appeared to align with the position maintained by Tokyo, which had boycotted the court proceedings and insists all wartime compensation issues were settled under a 1965 treaty normalizing relations with South Korea. Activists representing sexual slavery victims denounced the decision and said the Seoul Central District Court was ignoring their struggles to restore the women’s honor and dignity. They said in a statement that the plaintiffs would appeal. The estranged U.S. allies spent years escalating their feud in public over issues stemming from Japan’s brutal occupation of Korea through end of World War II before facing pressure from the Biden administration to mend.
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ALGIERS (Reuters) – Islamic parties in Algeria expect to win parliamentary elections in June and take a major role in government, part of a strategy to gradually build clout within a system long dominated by a secular military that regards them with distrust. While the military will retain ultimate power, the Islamic parties are taking advantage of political ructions caused by the mass protests that forced out veteran president Abdelaziz Bouteflika in 2019. The largely secular Hirak protest movement still holds weekly demonstrations to demand a full purge of the old ruling elite and is boycotting the election, viewing it as a charade so long as the military and its allies hold ultimate power. This leaves the way clear for the Islamic groups to win votes from the old nationalist parties, which had senior officials jailed for corruption after the protests, but which are still associated with Bouteflika.
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PRAGUE (Reuters) -- The Czech Republic will ask European Union and NATO allies to take action in solidarity with Prague in its row with Moscow, including expelling Russian intelligence officers from their countries, acting Foreign Minister Jan Hamacek said. The Central European country on Saturday evicted 18 Russian Embassy staff, whom it identified as intelligence officers, over suspicions that Russian secret services were behind explosions at a privately operated arms depot in 2014. Moscow has denied any of its agents were involved in the blast, which killed two people, branding the Czech stance a provocation, and expelled 20 Czech diplomats and other staff in retaliation. The dispute is the biggest between Prague and Moscow since the end of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe in 1989, and comes amid growing tensions between Russia and the West.