News in Brief

Date: 22 October 2021 - 22:24

News ID: ۹۵۷۲۲

SANTA FE (AP) — A prop firearm discharged by veteran actor Alec Baldwin, who is starring and producing a Western movie, killed his director of photography and injured the director Thursday at the movie set outside Santa Fe, the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office said. Sheriff’s officials said Halyna Hutchins, director of photography for the movie “Rust,” and director Joel Souza were shot. Hutchins, 42, was airlifted to University of New Mexico Hospital, where she was pronounced dead by medical personnel, authorities said. Souza, 48, was taken by ambulance to Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center, where he’s undergoing treatment for his injuries. Production has been halted on the film.

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ADDIS ABABA(Reuters) - Ethiopia carried out an air strike on the city of Mekelle for the third day this week, a government spokesperson said, in a campaign to weaken rebellious Tigrayan forces they have been fighting for nearly a year. Spokesperson Legesse Tulu told Reuters the strike hit a military training centre being used by the Tigrayan forces. He said the centre was a former base, known as the Northern Command, for the Ethiopian military in the area. War broke out in November 2020 between federal troops and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which ruled Ethiopia for three decades but now controls just the northern region. Thousands of people have been killed and more than 2 million have been forced to flee.

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MELBOURNE (Reuters) -Melbourne residents flocked to the city’s restaurants and hair salons in the early hours of Friday after the world’s most locked-down city emerged from its latest spate of restrictions designed to combat the spread of COVID-19. Australia’s second-largest city has so far endured 262 days, or nearly nine months, of restrictions during six separate lockdowns since March 2020, representing the longest cumulative lockdown for any city in the world. Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires, last year went through 234 straight days of lockdown. In Melbourne, people were seen cheering and clapping from their balconies, while cars honked horns continuously at 11:59 p.m. on Thursday when lockdown restrictions in place since early August ended.

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WELLINGTON (AP) — New Zealand’s government on Friday set an ambitious target of fully vaccinating 90% of all eligible people to end coronavirus lockdowns. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had been under pressure to provide a pathway to freedom for people living in Auckland, who have been in lockdown for more than two months Under the new framework, people living in the largest city will regain many of their freedoms once 90% of people 12 and older across each of three districts are fully vaccinated. Other parts of the country without community spread of the virus will gain even broader freedoms once they hit the 90% target. However, people will be required to use new vaccine certificates to visit places like bars, restaurants and gyms. The government also promised more money to help businesses struggling under the lockdown restrictions and to boost vaccinations among Indigenous Maori, whose rates have been lagging.

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LAGOS(AP) — A Nigerian separatist leader accused of instigating violence in country’s southeast pleaded not guilty to terrorism and treason charges in court Thursday in the capital, Abuja. Amid heavy security presence, Nnamdi Kanu, who also holds British citizenship, was brought into the court for his trial, which first began in 2015 but stalled after he jumped bail and escaped the country in 2017. He was arrested abroad and extradited back to Nigeria in June this year. The Nigerian government did not say where Kanu was arrested but the British High Commission in Nigeria has asked the Nigerian government to explain the circumstances of his arrest. The U.K. would also “expect any trial or legal proceedings to follow due process,” Dean Hurlock, a British High Commission spokesman, said. Kanu leads the Indigenous People of Biafra a group pressing for the southeast region to break away from Nigeria and become an independent nation.