News in Brief

Date: 19 August 2023 - 21:54

News ID: ۱۱۸۴۳۶

KARACHI (Reuters) – Pakistani opposition leader Shah Mehmood Qureshi was detained on Saturday, his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party said, just hours after he said it would challenge any delay to the country’s election in the courts. Party spokesman Zulfi Bukhari told Reuters the specific reason for the detention of Qureshi, twice Pakistan’s foreign minister, was not immediately clear. The caretaker information minister did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Bukhari condemned the arrest on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, saying he was “arrested for doing a press conference and re affirming PTI stance against all tyranny and pre poll rigging that is going on currently in Pakistan.” PTI party chairman Imran Khan is currently jailed for three years after being convicted on graft charges and is barred from contesting any election for five years. He denies any wrongdoing. Khan won the last election in 2018 and became prime minister until he was ousted in a no-confidence vote in 2022. The election is meant to be held within 90 days of parliament being dissolved last week, by November, but uncertainty looms over the date as the nation grapples with constitutional, political and economic crises.

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STOCKHOLM (Anadolu) – The Swedish government will review the Public Order Act because of repeated attacks on the Qur’an, according to media reports. Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, along with partners of the coalition, Ebba Busch, the leader of Christian Democrats and Johan Pehrson, the leader of the Liberal Party, wrote an article for the Dagens Nyhete newspaper where they noted that the law will be reviewed without changing the Constitution and stressed the importance of police taking into account national security while considering applications for gatherings and demonstrations. The government will investigate ways to change rules and prevent attacks on the Muslim holy book, it said. Recent months have seen repeated acts of Qur’an burning and desecration by Islamophobic figures or groups, especially in northern European and Nordic countries.

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BEIJING (Dispatches) – China has censured the United States on the grounds that it is engaged in more biohazardous laboratory tests for military applications than any other country across the globe. “We all know that America is the most active country in the field of biomilitary which raises serious questions for other countries regarding Washington’s true intentions,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said. The Chinese official made the remarks in response to a recent review by the Pentagon of countries posing a biological threat to the world. In the Biodefense Posture Review, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) listed China as the key long-term threat to the world, allegedly due to its development of biological weapons. Americans, Wang said, often fabricate reports on the so-called threats “to deter and suppress other countries” and to protect the “hegemonic interests” of the United States. In contrast to the United States, China supports the international community in reviewing how the U.S. is complying with the Biological Weapons Convention, Wang said.

ATHENS (Anadolu) – A major wildfire that broke out near Greece’s northeastern town of Alexandroupolis is raging and threatening nearby settlements, state news agency AMNA said on Saturday. The fire broke out in the early hours, with dozens of firefighters, assisted by fire engines and aircraft, engaged in efforts to put out the blaze. Some sections of the Egnatia Odos, a major motorway that links northeastern Greece to the northwestern part of the country, were temporarily closed as a precautionary measure.

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CAMP DAVID (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden and the leaders of South Korea and Japan have agreed at Camp David to deepen military and economic cooperation. The Biden administration held the summit with the leaders of the main U.S. allies in Asia, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, in a bid to project unity in the face of China’s growing power and ‘nuclear threats’ from North Korea. In a summit statement the three countries committed to consult promptly with each other during crises and to coordinate responses to regional challenges, provocations and threats affecting common interests. They also agreed to hold military training exercises annually and to share real-time information on North Korean missile launches by the end of 2023. The countries promised to hold trilateral summits annually.

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KAMPALA (Anadolu) – UNICEF in the Congo says that there have been at least 31,342 suspected or confirmed cholera cases in the country with 230 deaths in the first seven months of 2023 -- many of them children. It said the worst affected province, North Kivu, has seen more than 21,400 confirmed or suspected cases, including more than 8,000 children younger than 5. “The size of the cholera outbreak and the devastation it threatens should ring alarm bells,” said Shameza Abdulla, UNICEF DRC Senior Emergency Coordinator. “If urgent action is not taken within the next months, there is a significant risk that the disease will spread to parts of the country that have not been affected for many years.” He said there is also the danger it will continue to spread in displacement sites where systems are already overwhelmed and the population, especially children, is highly vulnerable to illness and potentially death. In 2017, cholera spread across Congo, including the capital, Kinshasa, leading to almost 55,000 cases and more than 1,100 deaths.