News in Brief

Date: 26 October 2021 - 23:28

News ID: ۹۵۸۶۲

SRINAGAR, India (AP) — Police in Indian-controlled Kashmir are investigating students and staff at two medical colleges under a harsh anti-terror law for celebrating India’s loss to archrival Pakistan in a T20 World Cup cricket game, officials said Tuesday. Police said some students and staff at the government-run colleges cheered and shouted pro-Pakistan slogans during the match Sunday night, calling it “anti-national” activity. Pakistan crushed India by 10 wickets for its first-ever victory against its archrival in a T20 World Cup game in Dubai. Minutes after Pakistan won the match, hundreds of people in Kashmir danced in the streets, lit firecrackers and chanted “Long live Pakistan” while seeking the end of India’s rule over the disputed region.

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BEIJING (AFP) -- China placed a city of four million people under lockdown on Tuesday, ordering them not to leave home except in emergencies, in a bid to eradicate a Covid cluster of just a few dozen confirmed cases. Beijing imposed strict border controls after the coronavirus was first detected in China in late 2019, slowing the number of cases to a trickle and allowing the economy to bounce back. But as the rest of the world opens up and tries to find ways to live with the virus, China has maintained a zero-Covid approach that has seen harsh local lockdowns imposed over handfuls of cases. Tuesday’s fresh restrictions came as China reported 29 new domestic infections -- including six in Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province in the country’s northwest. The latest outbreak has been linked to the highly contagious Delta variant, with the tally hitting 198 cases since October 17. Thirty-nine have been in Lanzhou.

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BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s newly elected parliament held its first meeting Tuesday and elected a lawmaker from the center-left Social Democratic Party as speaker of the 736-member lower house, or Bundestag. German Chancellor Angela Merkel attended the session although she is no longer a lawmaker. She sat in the visitor stands of parliament. Later in the afternoon, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier was set to formally dismiss Merkel and her Cabinet, though they were to be asked to stay on in a caretaker capacity until a new government is in place. Merkel’s Union bloc finished behind the Social Democrats in Germany’s federal election last month. “The citizens are looking to us, and their expectations of parliament are rightly high,” Wolfgang Schaeuble, the previous parliament speaker, said. “We all should continue to do everything we can to meet their expectations.” Schaeuble, 79, a conservative veteran and former finance and interior minister, is the longest-serving member of parliament. He has been a lawmaker since 1972.

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MADRID (AP) — A volcano erupting for the past five weeks on the Spanish island of La Palma is more active than ever, officials said, after new lava flows following a partial collapse of the crater threatened to engulf previously unaffected areas. A powerful new river of molten rock gushed out of the Cumbre Vieja volcano. The Canary Islands Volcanology Institute described it as “a giant lava fountain.” “We’re in a new phase, which is much more intense,” Pedro Hernández, a researcher at the institute, told public broadcaster RTVE. The eruption drove a volcanic ash cloud high over the island off northwest Africa. Residents watched to see what direction the new lava flow would take, and authorities prepared to move more people from their homes. Prompt evacuations have so far avoided casualties from the eruption, though the lava has totally or partially destroyed more than 2,000 buildings, mostly homes, and covered more than 900 hectares (2,200 acres) of mostly farmland.

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PARIS (Reuters) -- Activists disrupted a green finance summit in Paris on Tuesday, saying that French President Emmanuel Macron had failed to get serious on investing in combating climate change. Protesters intervened shortly after a speech by French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, with one holding a banner reading “Macron: champion of fossil fuel finance”, images published online by action group Les Amis de la Terre showed. Le Maire said he supported allocating tax revenues from fossil fuels to finance the transition to a greener economy, an idea the government has flagged since early in Macron’s mandate. About 18 activists set off alarms and chanted ‘Your finance, our lives’, while in a nod to Greta Thunberg, they complained of the “blah, blah” rhetoric they said was coming from Macron’s government, echoing the words of the environmental campaigner at a pre-COP26 event in Italy last month.

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SEOUL (Reuters) -- South Korean former president Roh Tae-woo, a decorated war veteran who played a pivotal but controversial role in the transition to democratic elections from rule by authoritarian leaders, has died, a Seoul hospital confirmed. The 88-year-old died on Tuesday, a Seoul National University Hospital official said, without citing the cause of death. Roh had been in poor health since 2002 when he received surgery for prostate cancer and he was repeatedly hospitalized in recent years. In the space of a few decades, Roh went from military coup conspirator to South Korea’s first popularly elected president, before ending his political career in ignominy with a jail sentence for treason and corruption. “I now feel limitlessly shameful for being a former president,” Roh told the public in a tearful televised apology in 1995 for secretly amassing a $654 million slush fund while in office.