PARIS (AFP) -- The Gare de l’Est train station in Paris suffered a total traffic shutdown early Tuesday after a signaling malfunction that officials said was caused by vandalism. A fire broke out at a signals point during the morning rush shortly before 8:30 am (0730 GMT) in what was first thought to be an accident, but then turned out to be arson, they said. “According to early findings, we can say this was a fire set deliberately on the electrical cables,” a spokeswoman for rail operator SNCF told AFP. The Gare de l’Est is a busy commuter station and the starting point for long-distance trains to eastern France, Germany and Luxembourg. No trains would run before 10.00 AM, the spokeswoman said. Fast TGV trains to Nancy, Colmar and Reims as well as Frankfurt in Germany were cancelled or delayed, according to the station’s electronic departures display. Some 41 million people used the Gare de l’Est in 2019, according to SNCF data.

 

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PRAGUE (AFP) -- Poland and the Baltic states cried foul after Czech presidential candidate Andrej Babis said that, if elected, he would not send troops to help them under NATO’s collective defense. Asked in a debate on Czech Television on Sunday whether he would send troops if Poland or the Baltics were attacked, Babis who faces former NATO general Petr Pavel in a runoff on Friday and Saturday said: “No, certainly not.”  Aid to NATO allies is anchored in Article 5 of the Treaty which says that if one member is attacked, other members should act as if they had also been attacked. “I want peace. I don’t want a war. And in no case would I send our children and our women’s children to war,” said the 68-year-old populist. Seen as a message to Czech voters worried about being dragged into Russia’s war in Ukraine, it raised eyebrows in all three Baltic states and Poland, all NATO members. Polish government spokesman Piotr Muller told state television he hoped the remarks were “just a matter of political emotions during a debate.”

 

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HELSINKI (AFP) -- Finland said for the first time Tuesday that it had to consider joining NATO without Sweden, whose bid appeared to grind to a halt as Ankara blasted Stockholm over anti-Turkey protests. “We have to assess the situation, whether something has happened that in the longer term would prevent Sweden from going ahead,” Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto told broadcaster Yle. He added that it was “too early to take a position on that now” and that a joint application remained the “first option”. Sweden’s Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom told media on Tuesday that he was “in contact with Finland to find out what this really means”. Turkey has indicated in recent months that it has no major objections to Finland’s entry into NATO.

 

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ISLAMABAD (AFP) -- Power had returned to most cities across Pakistan on Tuesday, a day after a nationwide breakdown left the country of 220 million people without electricity.  The outage started around 7:30 am (0230 GMT) on Monday, a failure linked to a cost-cutting measure as Pakistan grapples with an economic crisis. Energy Minister Khurram Dastgir Khan said on Monday evening that power was being gradually restored. Electricity largely returned to mega cities Karachi and Lahore overnight, but with localized and brief falls in connection continuing.  The capital Islamabad and other cities, including Rawalpindi, Quetta, Peshawar and Gujranwala, also reported that the lights were back on.  However, some rural areas were still waiting to be reconnected. The country’s power system is a complex and delicate web, where problems can quickly cascade.

 

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NEW DELHI (Reuters) -- A top Indian university has warned its students’ union of strict disciplinary action if it goes ahead with a planned screening of a BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday, saying it might disturb peace and harmony of the campus. Modi’s government has dismissed the documentary, which questioned his leadership during deadly riots in his home state of Gujarat in 2002, as “propaganda”, blocked its airing and also barred sharing of any clips via social media in the country.  Modi was chief minister of Gujarat during the violence in which more than 2,000 people were killed, most of them Muslims. The students’ union of New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, long seen as a bastion of left-wing politics, said on Twitter it would screen the documentary, “India: The Modi Question”, at a cafeteria at 9 p.m. (1530 GMT).

 

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VIENNA (AFP) -- Evidence is emerging that climate-related disasters are becoming a cause of human trafficking as criminal gangs exploit a growing number of uprooted people, the UN said Tuesday. The continuing war in Ukraine is also another risk factor for increased human trafficking, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in a report. “Climate change is increasing vulnerability to trafficking,” the UNODC report said. The report is based on data from 141 countries collected from 2017 to 2020, and the analysis of 800 court cases. The impact of climate change “disproportionally” affected poor farming, fishing and other communities mainly relying on the extraction of natural resources for their livelihoods, the report said.