News in Brief
LONDON (Reuters) - Thousands of junior doctors in England will stage a full walk out for 72 hours in March, including a refusal to provide emergency care, if a ballot for industrial action is successful, their trade union said on Friday. The British Medical Association (BMA) will begin balloting its more than 45,000 junior doctor members on Monday for possible industrial action and urged the government to meet with it to negotiate over pay. The BMA says that in real terms, junior doctors’ take-home pay has been cut by more than a quarter over the last 15 years. As part of a four-year pay deal agreed in 2019, junior doctors were given a 2% pay rise in 2022/23.
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DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Chad’s government has foiled an attempt to destabilize the country and undermine the constitution, the government spokesman said in a statement. Eleven people conspired in the plot, including soldiers and a human rights activist, said Aziz Mahamat Saleh on Thursday. They were arrested last month and transferred to the high court in the capital, N’Djamena. “A judicial investigation has been opened against these people for undermining the constitutional order, criminal association, illegal possession of firearms and complicity,” said Saleh.
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COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — A construction crane crashed onto a shopping mall in central Norway on Friday amid strong winds, killing one person and injuring at least two others, police said. The winds likely caused the unmanned crane, which was at least 50 meters (165 feet) high to slam onto the mall in Melhus, which is south of Trondheim, the Scandinavian country’s third-largest city, police spokesman Ebbe Kimo told the VG newspaper. The crane collapse caused damage to the first and second floors of the shopping mall and firefighters went through the building searching for people, said police, adding they used dogs and a drone in their search.
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MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — A doctor says the death toll in a pair of suicide car bombings in Somalia has risen to at least 35, including nine members of the same family, in one of the worst attacks by al-Shabab militants in retaliation for a government offensive described as “total war.” Dr. Yahye Abdi, who works at the single, overwhelmed hospital in Mahaas district said that more than 80 people were wounded, with 30 of them airlifted to the capital, Mogadishu. Some of the dead were found in the rubble of houses on Thursday, he said,
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MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican security forces have captured drug cartel leader Ovidio Guzman, a son of jailed kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, triggering a wave of violence ahead of a visit by U.S. President Joe Biden next week. The violence took place largely in the city of Culiacan in the northern Sinaloa state, home to the powerful drug cartel of the same name that El Chapo headed before his extradition to the United States in 2017. State governor Ruben Rocha said seven members of the security forces had been killed, including a colonel, and 21 had been injured as well as eight civilians. Rocha said there had been 12 clashes with the security forces, 25 acts of looting, and 250 vehicles had been set on fire and used to block roads.