OHIO (Dispatches) – Three people were shot dead and five others injured at a bar in Youngstown, the midwest U.S. state of Ohio, on early Sunday morning, according to a CNN report, citing police sources. Police responded to the reports of shooting at the Torch Club Bar & Grille in Youngstown shortly after 2 a.m. local time (0600 GMT), said the report. There were dozens of casings in front of the bar as well as a parking lot two doors down, where a house was also struck by gunfire, local media outlet WKBN reported, adding that there was a four-car accident across the street from the bar that came after shots rang out. Gun-related violence in mid-sized and large American cities has risen dramatically during the pandemic, and, according to criminologists, coronavirus-related socioeconomic loss in many communities is the major cause. A study by the Council on Criminal Justice also showed a 30% increase in homicides overall in a sample of 34 U.S. cities in 2020 as well as an 8% rise in gun assaults.

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MOSCOW (Tass) – UK Secretary of State for Defense Ben Wallace described Russia as his country’s “number one adversary threat”. “We have tried de-escalation, we have tried methods but at the moment until Russia changes its attitude, it’s quite hard to see where we’re going to go,” he said in an interview to Sunday Telegraph. Wallace also claimed that Russian warships were increasingly active in the vicinity of UK borders. “We’re regularly visited by nosy Russian ships, and we are regularly visited now by a number of Russian warships,” the UK defense chief continued, adding that a Russian kilo class submarine was detected in the Irish Sea late last year, which the UK had not seen “for a very, very long time. The UK Navy announced last December they had been observing significant presence of Russian warships near the kingdom’s territorial waters. According to Sunday Telegraph, a total of 150 Russian warships have been spotted by the UK Navy since 2013. Earlier, the Russian Embassy to the United Kingdom repeatedly noted that UK political and military officials often cite the alleged Russian threat in an attempt to justify their country’s growing military budgets and increased military presence in other regions.

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Gansu (AFP) – Twenty-one people were killed when extremely cold weather struck during an ultramarathon in rugged Gansu province in northwestern China, sparking public outrage on Sunday over the lack of contingency planning. The 100-km (62-mile) race began on Saturday from a scenic area at a bend in the Yellow River known for its sheer cliffs and rock columns. The route would take runners through canyons and hills on an arid plateau at an elevation of over 1,000 meters (3,300 feet). The race kicked off 9 a.m. (0100 GMT) with runners clad in t-shirts and shorts under overcast skies, according to photographs posted on the social media account of the Yellow River Stone Forest area in Jingtai, a county under the jurisdiction of Baiyin city. Around noon on Saturday, a mountainous section of the race was hit by hail, freezing rain and gales that caused temperatures to plummet, officials from Baiyin told a news briefing on Sunday.

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GOMA (Al Jazeera) – A river of boiling lava from the eruption of Mount Nyiragongo has come to a halt outside Goma, sparing the city in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the military governor of the region said on Sunday. After a volcanic eruption that sent thousands fleeing during the night, “the lava halted near Buhene on the outskirts of Goma… the city was spared,” said General Constant Ndima, adding that, according to a provisional estimate, “five people were killed” in related accidents. On Saturday, thousands fled during the night and many families slept on pavements surrounded by their belongings under a night sky turned red by fire and fumes. Officials said the lava had reached Goma city airport although residents said it had stopped at the edge of the facility. Goma appeared relatively calm as dawn broke, but people said they are still wary. By early Sunday, between 5,000 and 7,000 people had arrived in neighboring Rwanda, according to the country’s national broadcaster.

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STRESA (AFP) – A mountaintop cable car plunged to the ground in northern Italy, killing at least 12 people and sending two children to the hospital, authorities said. The Stresa-Mottarone cable car takes tourists and locals from the famous town of Stresa, on Lake Maggiore, up almost 1,400 meters (4,600 feet) above sea level to the top of the Mottarone mountain in 20 minutes. The ministry of infrastructure said in a statement that the accident occurred around 12:30pm (10:30 GMT) on Sunday as the cabin was about 100 metres (328 feet) from the summit. Rescue crews were continuing to search the area given possible indications that a 15th person might have been in the cable car, said Walter Milan, spokesman for Italy’s Alpine rescue service Milan earlier told RaiNews24 television that two children had been transported by helicopter to a pediatric hospital in the nearby northern city of Turin.