News in Brief

Date: 12 August 2018 - 21:46

News ID: ۵۶۲۲۲

CAIRO (Reuters) -- The head of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and other leaders of the banned group were sentenced to life in prison on Sunday, judicial sources said, on charges of incitement to murder and violence during protests five years ago.
The sentence is the latest among several trials and re-trials against Muhammad Badie and other senior leaders of the party that ruled Egypt before the military ousted President Muhammad Morsi following mass protests.
The sources told Reuters that Giza Criminal Court sentenced several top leaders including Badie, group spokesman Essam al-Erian, and senior member Muhammad al-Beltagy to life terms.
State news agency MENA said another defendant was jailed for 15 years and three others for 10 years.
Badie and the other defendants were convicted of incitement to violence on July 15, 2013, including the killing of five demonstrators and wounding of 100 during protests in an area in Giza known as al-Bahr al-Azim.

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MOSCOW (Nikkei) -- Russia is stepping up its overseas sales of nuclear power plants, with state-run nuclear energy company Rosatom agreeing in July to cooperate in building a plant in the Central Asian country of Uzbekistan and reaching an accord with China to build a plant in that country.
Russia accounts for 67% of the world's nuclear plant deals currently in development. By 2030, Rosatom aims to increase its overseas sales to two-thirds of total sales, from 50% at currently. Vladimir Putin's government is looking to expand Russian influence through nuclear diplomacy, vying with China -- which is promoting its own nuclear plants -- for the status of nuclear energy superpower.
"We hope that a lot of other countries will become our partners, and as they say, 'nuclear newcomers,'" Rosatom Chief Executive Alexey Likhachev told Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev at a meeting in early July.
Likhachev reported that his company had signed contracts to build 35 nuclear power reactors, 67% of the world market for projects currently in progress, including government-to-government agreements, with total overseas orders of over $133 billion.

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NEW DELHI (CNN) -- Dozens of people have been killed, and tens of thousands more evacuated, after "unprecedented" flash flooding in a tourist hotspot in southern India.
At least 37 people have died since heavy monsoonal rains first struck the state of Kerala on Wednesday, the state's relief commissioner P.H. Kurian told CNN on Sunday.
The area, located on the tropical Malabar Coast, is famed for its network of idyllic waterways.
Another 40,000 people living in low-lying areas have now been evacuated to 350 relief camps, as the downpour caused landslides and overflowed reservoirs.
Monsoon rains are to be expected in India this time of the year. But after days of abnormally heavy rains, authorities on Friday opened the shutters of water reservoirs in an effort to prevent potentially disastrous breaches.

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JAKARTA (Reuters) -- Indonesian search and rescue teams found eight victims and one survivor after a small plane crashed in the eastern province of Papua, police said on Sunday.
The Dimonim Air passenger plane carrying nine people, including a 12-year old child who survived, lost contact with air traffic control on Saturday afternoon and was later found by local residents in Pegunungan Bintang district.
The child suffered broken bones and was being treated at the local hospital.
Indonesia has a patchy aviation safety record with frequent accidents. An AirAsia flight from Surabaya to Kuala Lumpur crashed in the Java Sea in late 2014, killing all 162 people on board.

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TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Chinese counterpart Li Keqiang on Sunday exchanged congratulatory messages to mark the 40th anniversary of their countries' signing of a peace and friendship treaty, the Japanese prime minister's office said.
A Japanese prime minister and Chinese premier have not exchanged such messages marking the anniversary since Taro Aso and Wen Jiabao did so in 2008.
Highlighting Li's visit to Japan in May, his first since becoming Chinese premier in 2013, Abe said in his message that he is "very pleased to have Japan-China relations return to a normal path."
In his message, Li said the two countries are on track to further relations while expressing a desire to "promote lasting, sound and stable relations."
The premiers also said they are eagerly awaiting a meeting in China by the end of the year, although a date has yet to be set.

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TORONTO (NBC News) — Canadian police charged a man Saturday for the deaths of two police officers and two civilians in a shooting that struck a nerve in a country that has been roiled in recent months by several instances of mass violence.
Police in the eastern city of Fredericton, New Brunswick said that Matthew Vincent Raymond, 48, was arrested and charged with four counts of first-degree murder.
Horizon Health, which delivers care for New Brunswick's Department of Health, said that Raymond was the only person being treated for injuries related to the shooting. He is due to appear in court August 27.
The victims have been identified as police Const. Robb Costello, 45, police Const. Sara Burns, 43, Donnie Robichaud, 42, and Bobbie-Lee Wright, 32.