News in Brief

Date: 04 April 2022 - 21:42

News ID: ۱۰۱۲۳۹

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Sacramento police said they were searching for at least two people who opened fire around 2 a.m. Sunday on the outskirts of the city’s downtown entertainment district, leaving six people dead and 12 wounded. Police Chief Kathy Lester revealed few details from the investigation and pleaded with the public to share videos and other evidence that could lead to the killers. “The scale of violence that just happened in our city is unprecedented during my 27 years here,” Lester told reporters during a news conference at police headquarters. Sunday’s violence was the third time in the U.S. this year that at least six people have been killed in a mass shooting, according to a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University. And it was the second mass shooting in Sacramento in the last five weeks. President Joe Biden called for action on gun crimes in a statement Sunday. “Today, America once again mourns for another community devastated by gun violence,” Biden said. “But we must do more than mourn; we must act.”

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ISLAMABAD (Reuters) -- Pakistan’s top court adjourned on Monday without deciding on the legality of Prime Minister Imran Khan actions in blocking an opposition attempt to oust him, a move that has led to political turmoil in the nuclear-armed nation. Khan, a former cricket star, lost his majority in parliament last week as his opponents built support in advance of a vote of no-confidence that had been due on Sunday. But the deputy speaker of parliament, a member of Khan’s party, threw out the no-confidence motion that Khan had been widely expected to lose, ruling it was part of a foreign conspiracy and unconstitutional. Khan then dissolved parliament. read more The standoff has thrown the country of 220 million people, which the military has ruled for almost half its history since independence in 1947, into a full-blown constitutional crisis.  The court failed to come to a verdict during the three-hour hearing and will return on Tuesday.

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GENEVA (AP) — The UN health agency says nearly everybody in the world breathes air that doesn’t meet its standards for air quality, calling for more action to reduce fossil-fuel use, which generates pollutants that cause respiratory and blood-flow problems and lead to millions of preventable deaths each year. The World Health Organization, about six months after tightening its guidelines on air quality, on Monday issued an update to its database on air quality that draws on information from a growing number of cities, towns, and villages across the globe — now totaling over 6,000 municipalities. WHO said 99 percent of the global population breathes air that exceeds its air-quality limits and is often rife with particles that can penetrate deep into the lungs, enter the veins and arteries, and cause disease. Air quality is poorest in WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean and Southeast Asia regions, followed by Africa, it said.

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QUITO (Reuters) -- At least 12 prisoners died and another 10 were injured during a gang confrontation at a prison in Ecuador, the government said on Sunday, in a new episode of prison violence in the Andean country. Violence in Ecuadorean prisons, which the government says is related to gang disputes over drug trafficking, killed 316 people last year. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights says the system is blighted by state abandonment and the absence of a comprehensive policy, as well as poor conditions for inmates.  The confrontation at the El Turi prison in the city of Cuenca took place early on Sunday, Interior Minister Patricio Carrillo told journalists. Prisoners were trying to gain control of the prison’s interior, he said.

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BELGRADE (Reuters) -- Serbia’s incumbent president, Aleksandar Vucic, has secured 59.5% of votes in a presidential election, the State Election Commission said on Monday after counting 87.67% of ballots. The commission also said Vucic’s ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) won 43.4% of votes in a parliamentary election. Opposition presidential candidate Zdravko Ponos, a retired army general, garnered 17.5%, while his United for Victory alliance obtained 13.1%. The Socialist Party of Serbia, a long time SNS coalition partner, came third with 11.7%.

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JAKARTA (Reuters) - An Indonesian court handed down a death sentence on Monday to a teacher for raping 13 girls at a school, upholding an appeal by prosecutors for the death penalty after he had initially received a sentence of life in prison. The case of teacher Herry Wirawan has shocked Indonesia and shone a spotlight on the need to protect children from sexual violence in the country’s boarding schools. After he was sentenced to life in jail by a court in the city of Bandung in February, prosecutors who had called for the death penalty filed an appeal. “(We) hereby punish the defendant with the death penalty,” the judge said in a statement on Monday posted on the Bandung High Court’s website. Ira Mambo, Herry’s lawyer, declined to comment on whether there would be an appeal, citing a need to see the full ruling from the court. Between 2016 and 2021, Herry sexually groomed the 13 girls, who were between 12 and 16 years old, and impregnated eight of his victims, a judge said in February.