News in Brief

Date: 14 July 2019 - 21:57

News ID: ۶۸۱۲۵

PARIS (Reuters) -- European leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel joined French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Sunday for the traditional Bastille Day military parade, which this year honored European military cooperation.
Flags of the 10 countries of the European Intervention Initiative, a joint military pact created last year, led the parade down the iconic Champs Elysees avenue in Paris.
The attractions included hi-tech military gear such as drones, miniature autonomous vehicles, soldiers armed with anti-drone guns, and what looked like a "flying soldier" — a man swishing in the air on a flyboard, drawing cheers from the leaders and spectators.
Bastille Day commemorates the storming of the Bastille prison in 1789, one of the key events of the French Revolution. The day has become a national holiday in France.
In 2017 President Donald Trump, as guest of honor, was so impressed he ordered a military parade in Washington for America's July 4 celebrations.
This year some 4,300 soldiers, around 200 vehicles and over 100 aircraft, some from other European countries, took part in the parade.

***

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Weakened but still potent, Barry inundated the Gulf Coast but appeared unlikely to deluge New Orleans as it continued its slow advance. The storm did bring fresh fears of flash flooding to Mississippi’s capital city on Sunday morning.
Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards on Saturday night urged residents across south Louisiana to stay "vigilant”, warning that Barry could still cause disastrous flooding across a wide stretch of the Gulf Coast.
"This storm still has a long way to go before it leaves this state,” Edwards said. "Don’t let your guard down.”
New Orleans had been braced for heavy rains on Saturday, but instead had intermittent bands of moderate showers and occasional sunshine.
Though Barry will continue to dump rain throughout the weekend, forecasters downgraded rainfall estimates for the city through Sunday to between 2in to 4in. Forecasters had said New Orleans could get up to 20in of rain, raising concerns that water pumps strengthened after Hurricane Katrina would be overwhelmed.

***

MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian Proton-M rocket successfully delivered a cutting-edge space telescope into orbit Saturday after days of launch delays, Russia’s space agency said.
Roscosmos said the telescope, named Spektr-RG, was delivered into a parking orbit before a final burn Saturday that kicked the spacecraft out of Earth’s orbit and on to its final destination: the L2 Lagrange point.
Lagrange points are unique positions in the solar system where objects can maintain their position relative to the sun and the planets that orbit it. Located 1.5 million kilometers (0.93 million miles) from Earth, L2 is particularly ideal for telescopes such as Spektr-RG.
If all goes well, the telescope will arrive at its designated position in three months, becoming the first Russian spacecraft to operate beyond Earth’s orbit since the Soviet era. The telescope aims to conduct a complete x-ray survey of the sky by 2025, the first space telescope to do so.
The Russian accomplishment comes as the U.S. space agency NASA celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20, 1969.

***

HONG KONG (AP) — Protesters demanding the resignation of Hong Kong’s chief executive and an investigation into complaints of police violence filled the streets of a northern town Sunday, adding to an outpouring of grievances against the territory’s leaders.
Some of the more than 10,000 people marching in Sha Tin called for genuinely democratic voting in the former British colony. A handful called for an independent Hong Kong.
Protests that began in opposition to a proposed extradition law have swelled to include complaints about an influx of mainland Chinese into Hong Kong and that local leaders are more responsive to the Beijing government than to the territory’s people.
On Sunday, protesters demanded an investigation into complaints police assaulted participants in earlier demonstrations against the extradition law. Some carried signs reading "Police Are Liars.” Other signs read "Defend Hong Kong.”

***

TORONTO (Reuters) -- A Canadian citizen has been detained in the Chinese city of Yantai, a Canadian government spokesman said, an incident that comes amid chilly diplomatic relations between the two countries.
Global Affairs, as Canada’s foreign ministry is known, did not provide further details or say whether the case was related to the detention of 19 people earlier in the week.
Relations between China and Canada nosedived last December after Vancouver police detained Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies Co, on a U.S. arrest warrant. Beijing is demanding her return.
After Meng’s arrest, China detained two Canadians, accusing them of involvement in stealing state secrets.
On Tuesday, police in Xuzhou, a city in Jiangsu province, said it had detained 19 people on drug-related charges and that 16 of them were foreigners. Yantai is about 620 km (385 miles) away from Xuzhou.
The British Embassy in Beijing said on Friday that four British nationals have been arrested in eastern China.

***

KHARTOUM (Reuters) -- Tens of thousands demonstrated in cities across Sudan, witnesses said, to mark 40 days since security forces killed dozens when they stormed a protest camp in the capital Khartoum.
The demonstrations were the first since the ruling military council and civilian opposition agreed in principle to a power-sharing arrangement ahead of elections. The deal has yet to be finalized and signed.
A meeting between the two sides planned for Saturday was postponed to Sunday, a leader of the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC) coalition told Reuters. But the military council denied the meeting was being delayed.