News in Brief

Date: 06 April 2016 - 21:02

News ID: ۲۵۲۹۱

ISTANBUL (AFP) - Turkish police on Tuesday detained almost 70 businessmen, local officials and teachers in a new nationwide sweep against supporters of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s arch foe, reports said.
Sixty-eight people were detained on suspicion of links to the US-based Turkish preacher Fethullah Gulen who Erdogan accuses of running a "parallel state” aimed at usurping him, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported.
The coordinated raids on suspects, which came after seven months of investigations, took place in 22 regions across Turkey including Istanbul, Ankara, the resort of Antalya and Gaziantep close to the Syrian border.
A total of 120 arrest warrants were issued and several of the wanted suspects are believed to be abroad.
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BEIJING (Reuters) - China is confident it can resolve business disagreements with Myanmar through friendly talks, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said after meeting his counterpart Aung San Suu Kyi, amid pressure from China to resume a stalled $3.6-billion dam project.
The talks with Wang in the Myanmar capital of Naypyitaw were Suu Kyi’s first official meeting since her appointment as foreign minister.
China has been at pains to ensure its formerly close relationship with Myanmar’s one-time military rulers continues under the new government, one of the reasons for Wang’s visit.
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THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. (AP) — Investigators on Tuesday were trying to figure out what caused a homemade rocket attached to a skateboard to explode, killing a Southern California high school student and injuring his friend.
Bernard Moon, 18, of Thousand Oaks died after the blast Monday night. A 17-year-old had minor injuries and was hospitalized in stable condition Tuesday.
The two senior honor students were from Thousand Oaks High School. The blast took place in a courtyard at Madrona Elementary School in Thousand Oaks.
The teens were experimenting with a skateboard attached to a homemade rocket as an engine, authorities said. The rocket was about a foot long and three-quarters of an inch in diameter, Ventura County sheriff’s Capt. Garo Kuredjian said.
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TEHRAN (Press TV) - Nearly 20 million people in Bangladesh still consume water poisoned with high levels of arsenic, about 20 years after the potentially deadly toxin was discovered in the supply, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday.
The HRW said in a report that an estimated 43,000 people die each year from arsenic-related illness in Bangladesh, mostly in poor rural areas.
The 111-page report, titled "Nepotism and Neglect: The Failing Response to Arsenic in the Drinking Water of Bangladesh’s Rural Poor,” finds a serious lack of monitoring and quality control in arsenic mitigation projects.
The report also documents how the health system in Bangladesh largely ignores the impact of exposure to arsenic on the public health.
Richard Pearshouse, a researcher with the HRW, has said that the government in Dhaka has failed to adequately respond to naturally occurring arsenic in drinking water across large rural areas.