News in Brief

Date: 31 January 2018 - 20:57

News ID: ۴۹۵۴۸

LONDON (Reuters) -- Britain's government should immediately publish a leaked report about the economic costs of leaving the European Union, the lower house of parliament's Treasury Committee said Wednesday.
Earlier Wednesday the government said it would allow lawmakers to see the report "on a strictly confidential basis" if parliament voted in favor.
Extracts of the paper were published by news website BuzzFeed late Monday and showed that Britain's economy will be worse off after Brexit whether it leaves the EU with a free trade deal, single market access, or with no deal at all.

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SYDNEY (Dispatches) -- Secret Australian government documents relating to national security, immigration, welfare, communications and controversial racial discrimination laws have been inadvertently revealed to the country's national broadcaster, after two government filing cabinets were purchased at a second-hand store.
The embarrassing revelation was reported on Wednesday by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, after several days of reports exposing unpopular and controversial government decisions and discussions held in secret between 2013 and 2014.
The ABC reported on a plan from the former immigration minister to delay security checks on refugees so they would miss the deadline to apply for residency in Australia, and a plan floated by former Prime Minister Tony Abbott to ban anyone under 30 from accessing welfare payments.
In recent days, fellow journalists and political insiders had theorized on whether these stories had been leaked from inside the government, but on Wednesday the ABC revealed a far less scandalous source for their stories ? two filing cabinets bought at a second-hand shop in Australia's capital city of Canberra, which contained hundreds of top secret government documents.

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NIAMEY (AFP) -- The UN refugee agency appealed Wednesday for $157 million to help over a quarter of a million people affected by the insurgency led by the militant group Boko Haram.
The UNHCR, acting with more than 40 other agencies, said it needed to help 208,000 Nigerian refugees and 75,000 of their hosts in Niger, Cameroon and Chad, where infrastructure has been strained by the influx.
Since 2013, the Boko Haram conflict has internally displaced another 2.4 million people in northeast Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger, it said.
"The Boko Haram crisis lingers on and is far from over," UNHCR deputy high commissioner Kelly Clements said, while launching the appeal.
"The world should not forget the victims of this deadly conflict, especially as there appears to be little hope for a return to peace and stability in the near future."
"Devastating" side effects of the conflict include a huge rise in food insecurity and severe malnutrition, the agency said.
More than seven million people in the Lake Chad Basin region were food-insecure as of September 2017, with potentially severe consequences for child health, it said.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Special counsel Robert Mueller is seeking to interview the former spokesman for President Donald Trump's legal team as part of his investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
Mark Corallo was the spokesman for several weeks, representing Trump's outside lawyers amid the federal and congressional Russia inquiries, until he resigned last summer.
No interview date has been set, according to the source, who asked not to be identified given the ongoing investigation. Mueller's team is also investigating whether there was any collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign.
Corallo's departure in July came amid other staff changes and media reports that Trump's legal team was reorganizing and considering ways to try to limit Mueller's probe.
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NEW DELHI (AFP) -- An eight-month-old girl raped in Delhi has suffered internal injuries, a leading rights campaigner said Wednesday, as she launched a 30-day protest to demand the death penalty for child rapists.
Swati Maliwal, who heads the Delhi Commission for Women, visited the infant in hospital after the attack and has urged a change in the law to deter such attacks in the city known as India's rape capital.
Media reports say the victim had to be fitted with a colostomy bag after the attack, which occurred while her mother was out at work.
Maliwal announced a month-long protest to urge tougher laws in India, which has some of the world's highest rates of sexual violence against children.
"People are just fed up with the system, they feel there's no hope. They don't know how to express their anger anymore," she said.
India has a horrifying record of sexual crimes against women, with nearly 39,000 rape cases reported in 2016, according to government data.
A UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2014 said one in three rape victims in India was a minor and expressed alarm over the widespread sexual abuse of children.

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NAIROBI (Reuters/AP) -- Kenyan police arrested an opposition lawmaker who administered the oath during a symbolic "swearing in" of opposition leader Raila Odinga Tuesday, an opposition senator said Wednesday.
"He has been arrested and taken to Nairobi area police headquarters," James Orengo told Reuters.
Meanwhile, former Kenyan Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka said gunshots and a grenade were fired at his home in what he called "an assassination attempt," as a government shutdown of three major TV stations continued the day after the mock inauguration of Odinga.
Musyoka told The Associated Press that the attack occurred hours after his police security was withdrawn and he was blocked from attending the Odinga ceremony Tuesday, which was meant to protest President Uhuru Kenyatta's new term after months of deadly election turmoil. Musyoka was to take the oath as Odinga's deputy as the opposition leader declared himself "the people's president."