NEWS IN BRIEF

Date: 14 July 2015 - 21:03

News ID: ۱۶۰۹۳

PYONGYANG (Press TV) – North Korea has dismissed as "hysteric rage” Washington’s allegations that a bio-tech institute in Pyongyang produces biological weapons, including anthrax, challenging the entire US Congress to come and inspect the facility.
A spokesman for North Korea’s National Defense Commission said that the facility is only used to manufacture pesticides, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Monday.
He made the comments in reaction to a report that appeared on the website of the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University last week, claiming that the North Korean government mass-produces anthrax for the military.
"A thousand pairs of ears cannot match a pair of eyes,” the unnamed spokesman said, adding, "Come here right now, with all the 535 members of the House of Representatives and the Senate as well as the imbecile secretaries and deputy secretaries of the government who have made their voices hoarse screaming for new sanctions.”
He said that the entire US Congress and others then could observe "the awe-inspiring sight of the Pyongyang Bio-technical Institute.”

OTTAWA (Press TV) – Canada and Ukraine are scheduled to sign a free trade agreement during a visit by Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk to the Canadian capital, Ottawa.
Yatsenyuk and his Canadian counterpart, Stephen Harper, are slated to hold a signing ceremony in Ottawa on Tuesday, when the former is due to arrive in Canada.
"A free trade agreement between Canada and Ukraine would further strengthen our partnership and create jobs and prosperity for Canadians and Ukrainians alike,” Rick Roth, a spokesman for the Canadian Trade Minister Ed Fast, wrote in a Monday email to Canadian broadcaster CBC News.
Harper met with Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, on June 6 and pledged to send negotiators to conclude the agreement "as soon as possible.”
Trade between the two countries reached $192 million last year, down from $332.5 million in 2013.
The Ukrainian economy has taken a nosedive following three years of recession and over a year of conflict in the eastern parts of the country.
Ukraine’s mainly Russian-speaking regions in the east have experienced deadly clashes between pro-Russia forces and the army since Kiev launched military operations to silence pro-Moscow forces there in mid-April 2014.

NEW DELHI (Press TV) – A deadly stampede on the onset of the Maha Pushkaralu festival on the banks of India’s Godavari river leaves at least 27 participants dead.
The Tuesday incident in the city of Rajahmundry, on the border of the twin states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in southern India, took place about two hours after the festival started at dawn.

"Twenty-seven people have now been confirmed dead in the stampede and another 29 are injured," Parakala Prabhakar, a spokesman for Andhra Pradesh's Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, told AFP.

Meanwhile, a local district official, H. Arun Kumar, said the number of injured was 40. However, he confirmed that 27 people were killed.

Satyamurthy Chebolu, a volunteer for an organisation that helps run the festival, said the stampede happened when crowds around the steps leading to the water, known as ghats, started pushing from the back and that turned into a stampede where people got trampled.
"The police tried to stop them but the crowd easily pushed the police away," he said.
"The crowd was huge -- there were maybe 20,000 people in the area, and maybe 3,000 people in the stampede. The ghat is just not built for that many people. It was also unbearably hot, so many people were anxious to cool off in the water," he added.