News in Brief

Date: 13 April 2021 - 22:21

News ID: ۸۹۱۴۱

LONDON (Reuters) -- Britain’s government is deeply concerned that young people have been encouraged to take part in violence in Northern Ireland, the British province’s minister said on Tuesday, urging all sides to work together to uphold the peace. Saying he understood the frustration over COVID-19 restrictions and difficulties produced from part of Britain’s Brexit trade deal with the European Union, Lewis told parliament: "The violence witnessed last week is totally unacceptable.” "It is tragic and deeply concerning that young people have been engaged in, and encouraged into, this violence.”

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NEW DELHI (Reuters) -- India is to fast-track emergency approvals for COVID-19 vaccines that have been authorized by Western countries and Japan, paving the way for possible imports of Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Moderna shots. The move, which will drop the need for companies to do small, local safety trials for their vaccines before seeking emergency approval, follows the world’s biggest surge in cases in the country this month. Vaccines authorized by the World Health Organization or authorities in the United States, Europe, the United Kingdom and Japan "may be granted emergency use approval in India, mandating the requirement of post-approval parallel bridging clinical trial”, the health ministry said in a statement. "The first 100 beneficiaries of such foreign vaccines shall be assessed for seven days for safety outcomes before they are rolled out.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- A student opened fire on officers responding to a report of a possible gunman at a Tennessee high school Monday, and police shot back and killed him, authorities said. The shooting wounded an officer and comes as the community reels from off-campus gun violence that has left three other students dead this year. Police found the student in a bathroom at Austin-East Magnet High School in Knoxville, a city about 180 miles (290 kilometers) east of Nashville, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director David B. Rausch said at a news conference. They ordered the student to come out, but he wouldn’t comply, and that’s when he reportedly opened fire, Rausch said. Police fired back. The student died at the school, and the officer was taken into surgery after being shot at least once in the upper leg, authorities said.

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VIENNA (Reuters) -- Austrian Health Minister Rudolf Anschober of the Greens, the junior partner in the conservative-led coalition, said on Tuesday he is stepping down, exhausted and sick from battling the coronavirus pandemic and occasionally other officials. "I ... do not want to break myself,” Anschober said in a short-notice statement to the media, describing blood-pressure problems that have caused him to take sick leave twice recently. "In the worst health crisis in decades the republic needs a health minister who is 100% fit. That is not currently me.” Anschober, a 60-year-old former journalist and schoolteacher, is one of the country’s most popular politicians, known for his long, patient explanations of the pandemic’s challenges, often while holding up large print-outs of charts.

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SARAJEVO (Reuters) -- Sarajevo on Tuesday mourned a Serb general who helped defend the city while it was besieged by Serb forces for nearly four years in the 1990s, becoming a symbol of the multi-ethnic defense of the Bosnian capital. Jovan Divjak was a former officer of the Yugoslav Peoples Army (JNA) who quit its ranks when the former Yugoslavia begun disintegrating, and joined the Bosnian army when war began there in April 1992. He died on Thursday after long illness aged 84. Born in Belgrade, he spent most of his military career in Bosnia and identified as a Bosnian. Divjak earned popular respect when he climbed onto a retreating JNA tank in May 1992, trying to stop citizens of Sarajevo from shooting at JNA soldiers. "He was the only general who yelled: ‘don’t shoot!’ instead of ‘shoot!”, Bosnian Oscar-winning film maker Danis Tanovic said during the memorial ceremony held at the National Theatre. Divjak was the only Serb member of Bosnia’s Muslim-dominated army command during the war in which 100,000 died.

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PARIS (Reuters) -- France’s Dassault Aviation urged politicians on Tuesday to approve a deal reached with Airbus over the future of a next-generation combat jet, with Europe’s largest defense project riding on German parliamentary support. After tense negotiations, rivals Dassault and planemaker Airbus agreed this month on a share of the work on the Future Combat Air System (FCAS), an array of manned and unmanned warplanes backed by France, Germany and Spain. While political differences remain over technology rights, the industrial deal - which sees Dassault win leadership of the core fighter plane while Airbus, representing Germany and Spain, has a two-thirds overall share - is seen as a breakthrough for the project. The agreement must now be presented to governments and in particular faces tight deadlines in Germany, where the country’s powerful parliamentary budget committee has a decisive say.