BEIJING (Dispatches) - Chen Xu, China’s permanent representative to the United Nations office in Geneva, sent the World Health Organization a formal request asking the global health authority to open a probe into Fort Detrick, the Maryland-based U.S. Army laboratory once known as the centre of America’s biological weapons program, and its possible role in the origins of the novel coronavirus. In a letter addressed to WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Chen reiterated Beijing’s position on SARS-CoV-2, which states that the Wuhan lab leak theory is an “extremely unlikely” scenario.

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WASHINGTON (Dispatchee) -Seven Capitol Police officers filed a lawsuit against former president Donald Trump, several of his associates and extremist group leaders on Thursday, alleging they organized a plot to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power that culminated into the violent January 6 Capitol riot. The suit argues that Trump and the other defendants violated the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act, which in part prohibited conspiracies to overthrow the federal government, Axios reported. The law prevents authorities from depriving a person of their constitutional rights, and the lawsuit alleges that Trump and his co-defendants violated this section of the law by attempting to overturn election results in cities and states with significant Black populations through false claims of election fraud.

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ISLAMABAD (Al-Jazeera) - A fire has engulfed a chemical factory in Pakistan’s Karachi city, killing at least 15 workers, officials say. The fire broke out inside the factory in Mehran Town, a congested Karachi neighborhood, rescue official Mobeen Ahmed said on Friday. At least 15 bodies have been retrieved from the rubble of a building that partially collapsed, but a rescue operation is still under way, Ahmed said. More than 20 laborers were inside the compound when a highly flammable chemical caught fire. It spread to the entire building shortly afterwards.

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NEW YORK (Dispatches) - UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned the Security Council the conflict in Ethiopia has spread beyond the Tigray region and “a humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding before our eyes”. “Inflammatory rhetoric and ethnic profiling are tearing apart the social fabric of the country,” he told the 15-member council on Thursday. “All parties must immediately end hostilities without preconditions and seize that opportunity to negotiate a lasting ceasefire.” Guterres said more than two million people have been displaced from their homes, and millions more are in immediate need of life-saving humanitarian assistance – including food, water, shelter and healthcare.

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PARIS (Dispatches) - Nigerian gunmen have freed the remaining pupils from more than 100 kidnapped from a seminary in northwestern Niger State nearly three months ago. Heavily armed criminals snatched 136 pupils from the seminary in Tegina on May 30 in one of a series of mass abductions targeting schools and colleges in Nigeria since December. Six of the pupils died in captivity and a further 15 escaped in June, according to school officials. “The pupils have all been released. We are now conveying them home,” seminary head Abubakar Alhassan told AFP news agency by telephone.