Brief

Date: 15 February 2017 - 21:10

News ID: ۳۶۸۴۰

PODGORICA (AFP) - Montenegro's parliament voted Wednesday to strip two pro-Russian opposition MPs of their immunity, paving the way for their arrest for alleged involvement in a failed coup last October.
The vote took place as several hundred people protested outside the assembly against the move, accusing the government of linking the opposition to what they said was a "fake coup."
Prosecutor Milivoje Katnic has requested that parliament allow the prosecution and detention of Andrija Mandic and Milan Knezevic, who are both leading members of the opposition Democratic Front (DF).

DAKAR (AP) — The World Health Organization has declared an end to the yellow fever outbreak that killed about 400 people in Congo and Angola, calling it "one of the largest and most challenging" in recent years.
The outbreak, first detected in Angola in late 2015, caused 965 confirmed cases and thousands of suspected cases in both countries, the WHO said in a statement Tuesday. Neither country has reported a new confirmed case in the past six months.
The global health agency said more than 30 million people were vaccinated in emergency campaigns to control the outbreak in the two neighboring countries, which have among the world's weakest health systems.

BRUSSELS (AP) — The chief of the European border and coast guard agency says migrant deaths in the Mediterranean on the Libya-to-Italy smuggling route have increased to a record level despite ever more rescue vessels trying to prevent mass drownings.
Frontex Executive Director Fabrice Leggeri said Wednesday "we face a kind of sad paradox" that as the international community increases efforts to send more rescue ships close to Libya, smuggling rings pack ever more people onto unseaworthy boats and push them out toward the open sea.
He said the recorded number of migrant drowning deaths in 2016 — 4,579 — might be much less than the true loss of life. He says this "is tragic and the reasons are well known: the number of migrants now (arriving) on very small dinghies."

WELLINGTON (Dispatches) — Hundreds of people in New Zealand's second-largest city were evacuated from their homes Wednesday as wildfires burned down several houses and threatened to encroach further into some suburbs.
The mayors of Christchurch City and the adjacent Selwyn District declared a state of emergency. Selwyn Mayor Sam Broughton said changing winds had made the fires unpredictable.
He said the region had been unusually dry for three years and the grass in the hills had turned brown over the Southern Hemisphere summer.