News in Brief

Date: 16 April 2023 - 21:52

News ID: ۱۱۴۰۳۱

BERLIN (Dispatches) – Supporters of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party have held a rally in Nuremberg to protest against their government’s financial and military aid to Ukraine amid war with Russia, calling for peace in their continent. “We want peace with all peoples in Europe, which includes Russia as well as Ukraine. We also want to live peacefully in Europe with Russia in the future,” Tino Chrupalla, AfD party co-leader stated at the rally. Footage of the protest show the crowd waving flags and holding banners and placards reading ‘No to German participation in the war’ and ‘Ami go home!’ among others. Some protesters also carried placards and flags with doves of peace, along with Germany and party flags. “As the only party, we say unanimously and clearly diplomacy instead of arms deliveries. The arms shipments must stop and diplomacy must finally take place. That must be the goal, after a year of bloodshed,” Chrupalla added. Talking to the crowd, deputy leader of the party, Peter Boehringer, mentioned that in the case of a world war, you don’t even accept a 0.5 percent risk probability, so “Let’s not allow even small misunderstandings to trigger a major war, even nuclear war under certain circumstances.”

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NEW DELHI (AP) – A former Indian lawmaker convicted of kidnapping and facing murder and assault charges was shot dead along with his brother in a dramatic attack that was caught live on TV in northern India, officials said Sunday. Atiq Ahmad and his brother, Ashraf Ahmad, were under police escort on their way to a medical checkup at a hospital on Saturday night when three men posing as journalists targeted the two brothers from close range in Prayagraj city in Uttar Pradesh state. The men quickly surrendered to the police after the shooting, with at least one of them chanting “Jai Shri Ram” or “Hail Lord Ram,” a slogan that has become a battle cry for Hindu nationalists. Uttar Pradesh is governed by India’s ruling Hindu-nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party. Police officer Ramit Sharma said the three assailants came on motorcycles posing as journalists. “They managed to reach close to Atiq and his brother on the pretext of recording a byte and fired at them from close range. Both sustained bullet injuries on the head,” he said. “It all happened in seconds,” Sharma said.

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GUAYAQUIL (AFP) – At least 12 inmates were killed in clashes that broke out in a prison in the Ecuadoran port of Guayaquil, the prosecutor’s office said, the latest deadly violence to rock the city’s penitentiary system. The dozen inmate deaths occurred after a bloody confrontation erupted Friday -- part of a spate of brutality that began when six detainees were found hanged in the same prison and three female guards were killed earlier in the week. Ecuadoran prisons are the scene of recurrent massacres between prisoners, against a backdrop of rivalry between criminal groups fighting for control of lucrative drug trafficking. “An investigation has been opened to identify those responsible for the death of 12 inmates from the Litoral Penitentiary,” which is also known as Guayas 1, the prosecutor’s office said, adding that the bodies had bullet wounds. The country’s main port on the Pacific coast, Guayaquil has in recent years become the epicenter of drug trafficking in Ecuador, located between Colombia and Peru -- the world’s main cocaine producers. Since February 2021, eight massacres have been recorded in these prisons, with more than 400 prisoners killed, most of them dismembered and burned.

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MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Armed men on Saturday killed a child and six others after storming a resort in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, authorities said, in a region increasingly plagued by drug cartel violence. Footage widely shared on social media showed the aftermath of the attack in a palm-studded resort in the small town of Cortazar, about 65 km (40 miles) south of the Guanajuato city. It was not clear who was behind the shooting that killed the seven-year-old, three men and three women, Cortazar’s local security department said. One person was seriously injured in the La Palma resort. But in recent years rival drug cartels have been waging brutal battles to control territory and trafficking routes through the state. Video taken soon after the attack showed shocked adults and children walking past piles of dead bodies near a swimming pool.

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HELSINKI (AFP) – Hours after Germany closed out its atomic era by turning off its last three nuclear reactors, the largest single reactor in Europe entered regular production in Finland, its operator said Sunday. The next-generation Olkiluoto 3, now producing around 14 percent of the country’s electricity, is expected to remain operational for “at least the next 60 years”, according to the site’s operator TVO. Germany meanwhile officially ended decades of nuclear energy use by turning off its last three nuclear reactors on Saturday. The Isar 2 reactor in the southeast of the country, the Neckarwestheim facility in the southwest and Emsland in the northwest were disconnected from the electricity network before midnight. Europe’s largest economy had been looking to leave behind nuclear power since 2002, but the phase-out was accelerated by former chancellor Angela Merkel in 2011 after the meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan.

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SEOUL (Reuters) – A South Korean Navy vessel fired warning shots to drive out a North Korean patrol boat that crossed the western de facto maritime border last week, the South’s military said Sunday. The North Korean boat crossed the Northern Limit Line (NLL) in waters northeast of South Korea’s Baengnyeong Island in the Yellow Sea on Saturday at 11 a.m., prompting the South Korean Navy to dispatch its Chamsuri-class patrol boat, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), Yonhap news agency reported. After the North’s boat remained unresponsive to South Korea’s warning broadcasts and communication attempts, the South Korean vessel fired 10 warning shots with its autocannon and made the North Korean boat retreat. The North Korean boat made the incursion as it was chasing a Chinese fishing boat, according to an informed source.