News in Brief

Date: 08 February 2023 - 21:31

News ID: ۱۱۲۲۵۰

HELSINKI (AP) — Firefighters worked for a second day Wednesday to fully extinguish a blaze at a U.S. company’s drone plant in Latvia. Local police said nothing had been found so far to indicate sabotage. Latvia’s State Fire and Rescue Service were alerted Tuesday afternoon that a fire had broken out at Edge Autonomy’s drone production plant in Marupe, a town that borders the capital, Riga. The Baltic News Service said that although the blaze was largely contained by 7 p.m. on Tuesday, firefighters continued work to fully extinguish the fire early Wednesday.

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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s opposition-controlled parliament on Wednesday voted to impeach the country’s interior and safety minister, Lee Sang-min, holding him responsible for government failures in disaster planning and the response that likely contributed to the high death toll in a crowd crush that killed nearly 160 people in October. The impeachment suspends Lee from his duties and the country’s Constitutional Court has 180 days to rule on whether to unseat him for good or give him back the job.

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BRUSSELS (AP) — About 1.5 million euros ($1.6 million) in cash were seized during raids in Belgium targeting an alleged criminal organization suspected of sending Chinese women to Europe and forcing them into prostitution, the federal prosecutor’s office said Wednesday. In addition, investigators took hold of four tons of coins with an unspecified value, prosecutors said. Belgian police took control of several buildings during the raids in Antwerp, Charleroi, Louvain, Neufchâteau and Brussels, prosecutors said.

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BOSASO, Somalia (Reuters) - At least 24 people were killed and another 53 injured in a second day of heavy fighting in Somalia’s breakaway region of Somaliland, two doctors said, after local leaders declared their intention to rejoin federal Somalia. Somaliland broke away from Somalia in 1991 but has not gained widespread international recognition for its independence, and has faced opposition from some clan elders in the east of the territory who seek to be governed from Mogadishu. On Tuesday Somaliland said fighters from neighboring Puntland, a semi-autonomous region of Somalia, were fighting alongside local militias in the town of Las Anod, accusations Puntland denied.

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PARIS (AFP) – One in three children worldwide does not have access to clean drinking water while at school, impacting their health and ability to learn, the United Nations said Wednesday. “Globally, almost one in three schools has no drinking water from an improved source,” the UN cultural agency UNESCO said in a new report. “One in three schools worldwide has no basic sanitation,” meaning a toilet and sewage system, the agency found, while “almost half of schools do not have handwashing facilities with water and soap”.