News in Brief

Date: 23 May 2023 - 22:45

News ID: ۱۱۵۳۶۰

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- A man who crashed a rented box truck into security barriers near the White House was charged with threatening the president, U.S. Park Police said on Tuesday, following an overnight incident that authorities said may have been intentional. A Reuters witness said investigators found a Nazi swastika flag inside the truck, which crashed into barriers at Lafayette Square, a public area one block from the White House compound, on Monday evening. The driver, identified as Sai Varshith Kandula, 19, of Chesterfield, Missouri, faces several charges including threatening to kill, kidnap or inflict harm on the president, vice president or a family member, the U.S. Park Police said in a statement. U.S. Secret Service said it had detained the man following the crash, which may have been “intentional.” There was no ongoing danger and no injuries, it said.

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LONDON (AFP) -- Buckingham Palace on Tuesday said it has declined a request from the family of a 19th century Ethiopian prince to repatriate his remains. Prince Alemayehu was captured aged seven by the British Army and taken to England in 1868, arriving as an orphan after his mother died en route. He spent the next decade in Britain, before his death aged 18 in 1879 from pneumonia. Ethiopian leaders have previously asked the British royal family for his remains to be returned to his homeland, and his family told the BBC recently that they too had requested the repatriation. But in a statement, Buckingham Palace said it regretted that due to the need to “preserve the dignity” of others buried at the chapel it had not been possible to agree to the request.

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JAKARTA (AFP) -- Indonesia’s Mount Merapi, one of the world’s most active volcanoes, erupted on Tuesday, spewing lava more than two kilometers from the crater. Dramatic images of lava pouring from the volcano’s smoking crater were published by the government-run Merapi Volcano Observatory. Dozens of small tremors related to Merapi’s eruption were recorded on Tuesday, according to the Centre for Research and Development of Geological Disaster Technology (BPPTKG), a government agency that monitors the volcano. Merapi, which sits just 28 kilometers (17 miles) north of the provincial capital Yogyakarta, is closely monitored by the agency. Authorities implemented a restriction zone of seven kilometers (four miles) in 2022 following a risk assessment for the surrounding villages. The volcano’s last major eruption in 2010 killed more than 300 people and forced the evacuation of some 280,000 residents. It was Merapi’s most powerful eruption since 1930, when about 1,300 people were killed.

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LONDON (AP) — A London judge ruled Tuesday against Prince Harry in his efforts to pay for police protection when he visits Britain. A High Court judge rejected the Duke of Sussex’s assertion that the British government exceeded its authority when it denied him the right to hire police to provide security in the UK. The British government stopped providing security after Harry and his wife, Meghan, quit their royal duties and moved to California in 2020. A lawyer for the government argued in court that it should allow hiring of “police officers as private bodyguards for the wealthy.” Harry has said he doesn’t feel safe visiting Britain with his young children, and has cited aggressive press photographers. He is separately challenging the decision to deny him government-paid security. That lawsuit is the only one of five active legal cases he has in London courts that is not against British tabloid publishers over allegations of libel or phone hacking.

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LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — Pope Francis has sent one of his top sex crimes investigators to Bolivia at a time when the Andean nation is being shaken by an escalating pedophilia scandal involving priests. Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu, a leading member of the church’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, arrived in Bolivia on the same day as a former Jesuit seminarian landed in the country vowing to reveal more information about alleged cases of abuse. Bertomeu arrived in Bolivia from Paraguay, where he had been investigating similar accusations against church officials and in 2018 he led the investigation into abuses committed by priests against minors in Chile. The visit comes soon after case of Spanish Jesuit Alfonso Pedrajas became public. According to a private diary accessed by the Spanish newspaper El País, Pedrajas allegedly abused about 85 minors in Catholic boarding schools in Bolivia in the 1970s and 1980s. He died of cancer in 2009.

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NEW DELHI (Reuters) -- India will make tests mandatory for cough syrups before they are exported, a government notice showed on Tuesday, after Indian-made cough syrups were linked to the deaths of dozens of children in Gambia and Uzbekistan. Any cough syrup must have a certificate of analysis issued by a government laboratory before it is exported, effective June 1, the government said in a notice dated May 22 and shared by the health ministry on Tuesday. India’s $41 billion pharmaceutical industry is one of the biggest in the world but its reputation was shaken after the World Health Organization (WHO) found toxins in cough syrups made by three Indian companies. Syrups made by two of these companies were linked to the deaths of 70 children in Gambia and 19 in Uzbekistan last year.