News in Brief

Date: 27 May 2023 - 23:09

News ID: ۱۱۵۵۰۰

LONDON (Reuters) – Passengers flying into Britain faced major delays after landing at airports on Saturday due to a nationwide issue affecting the automated border control gates that scan passports upon arrival. Images posted on social media showed long queues with hundreds of people at London’s Heathrow and Gatwick airports with frustrated passengers complaining of having to wait several hours in line. “We are aware of a nationwide border system issue affecting arrivals into the UK,” said a spokesperson for the British government’s interior ministry, which has oversight of border control. “We are working to resolve the issue as soon as possible and are liaising with port operators and airlines to minimize disruption for travelers,” they told Reuters. Heathrow, Britain’s busiest airport, said it had deployed extra staff to manage the queues and was working with Border Force to help resolve the problem. While many foreign visitors to the UK need to see a border control officer upon landing, others, including British, EU and U.S. citizens, can use the automated gates known as e-gates to scan their passports and enter the country. The disruption, which comes during a busy period for travel in Britain with a spring bank holiday on Monday and a half-term break for schools next week, means all passengers have to be processed at manual checkpoints.

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BERLIN (Reuters) – Britain, France, Italy, Germany and the United States condemned Kosovo’s decision to force access to municipal buildings in northern Kosovo, calling on the authorities to step back and de-escalate the situation. “We condemn Kosovo’s decision to force access to municipal buildings in northern Kosovo despite our call for restraint. We call on Kosovo’s authorities to immediately step back and de-escalate, and to closely coordinate with EULEX (the EU mission) and KFOR (NATO’s mission in Kosovo,” the countries said in a joint statement posted on the British government’s website. Clashes erupted between Serb residents and police officers after the officers started a crackdown against the protesting crowd. At least 10 people were injured “from shock bombs and tear gas, and also visible facial injuries” and were driven away with ambulances arriving at the scene, Danica Radomirovic, deputy head of the local hospital, told local media. Five police officers sustained slight injuries from “heavy objects and shock bombs” that were thrown in their direction, Kosovo police said.

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MISSISSIPPI (AFP) – A police officer in the southern U.S. state of Mississippi has been suspended after shooting an 11-year-old boy while responding to a domestic disturbance. Aderrien Murry, who is Black, was shot once in the chest and suffered a collapsed lung, fractured ribs and a lacerated liver, the boy’s mother, Nakala Murry, told CNN. Police officials told AFP they are investigating the incident. Murry said her son, who has since been released from hospital, was shot by an African American police officer, who responded to a domestic violence call from the family on Saturday. Murry said she asked Aderrien to call police after the “irate” father of another one of her children turned up at the family home around 4:00 am. Murry said an officer arrived with his gun drawn and asked those inside the home to come out. Her son was shot as he entered the living room with his hands up, she told CNN. “Once he came from around the corner, he got shot,” Murry said. “I cannot grasp why.” She said her son “kept asking, ‘Why did he shoot me? What did I do wrong?’” The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation told AFP on Friday that it is “currently assessing this critical incident and gathering evidence.

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SEOUL (AP) – A passenger on an Asiana Airlines flight told police he opened a door on the plane minutes before it landed in Daegu, South Korea, on Friday because he was “uncomfortable,” Yonhap News Agency reported. The man, in his thirties, was detained on landing. He told police that he opened the door because he “wanted to get off the plane quickly,” Yonhap said on Saturday, citing the Daegu Dongbu Police Station. He also told police he was stressed after losing his job recently. The man opened the door when the plane was about 700 feet (213 meters) above the ground, causing panic onboard. Nine passengers were taken to hospital with breathing issues. They were all discharged after about two hours, a fire department official said. Police sought an arrest warrant for the detained man on Saturday for violation of the Aviation Security Act and other offenses, Yonhap said. A video aired on television, reported to have been taken by a passenger, showed the moments before the landing, with a door open and wind rushing in as passengers sat nearby.

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MANAUS, Brazil (AFP) – Deep in the Amazon, an experiment unfolds that may allow a peek into the future to see what will happen to the world’s largest rainforest when carbon dioxide levels rise. It is a simulation to see how the lungs of the world will endure global warming. The AmazonFACE project, co-financed by Brazil and the United Kingdom, is “an open-air laboratory that will allow us to understand how the rainforest will behave in future climate change scenarios,” says Carlos Quesada, one of the project coordinators. Quesada stands at the foot of a soaring metal tower that protrudes through the rainforest canopy at a site 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Manaus in northwest Brazil. Sixteen other towers arranged in a circle around it will “pump” CO2 into the ring, replicating levels that may happen with global warming. “How will the rainforest react to the rising temperature, the reduction in water availability, in a world with more carbon in the atmosphere?” asks Quesada, a researcher at an Amazon research institute that is part of the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology.

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MOSCOW (Anadolu) – Russia on Saturday launched its Condor-FKA satellite, which can take pictures of the earth’s surface around the clock in any weather, including in conditions of heavy clouds. The satellite was launched from Russia’s Vostochny Cosmodrome, a Russian spaceport in Russia’s far-eastern Amur Oblast, using Soyuz 2.1a, a rocket-powered vehicle, the state space agency Roscosmos said in a statement. “The separation of the spacecraft from the upper stage was carried out successfully. The first radar satellite has been launched into a given orbit,” it said. Condor-FKA was developed by the military-industrial corporation Scientific and Production Association of Mechanical Engineering.