News in Brief

Date: 31 January 2022 - 21:25

News ID: ۹۹۵۰۹

WASHINGTON (AFP) -- Former U.S. President Donald Trump has suggested he would pardon some of those charged for their part in the assault on the Capitol last year if he were reelected in the 2024 presidential vote. “If I run, and if I win we will treat those people from January 6th fairly. We will treat them fairly. And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly,” Trump said at a rally on Saturday night in Conroe, Texas. Hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. legislature in Washington on January 6 last year in an effort to block certification of President Joe Biden’s November 2020 election victory. More than 700 people have been arrested as part of the investigation into the riot that left five people dead and the country reeling. That list grows by the day as the sprawling investigation churns on. Most of the accused are not charged with violence or vandalism but merely with having illegally entered the building and generally face misdemeanor charges. However some longer sentences have been handed down and more of the approximately 225 individuals accused of acts of violence could face serious repercussions in court.

***
BERLIN (AP) — Two police officers were shot dead while on a routine patrol in western Germany early Monday, police said. The shooting happened during a traffic check near Kusel at about 4:20 a.m., police in Kaiserslautern said in a statement. They said that the perpetrators fled but police had no description of them, the car they used or what direction they fled in. Police called on drivers in the Kusel area not to pick up hitchhikers and warned that at least one suspect is armed.

***
BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — Landslides and flooding caused by heavy rains killed at least 19 people in Brazil’s most populous state Sunday while high waters forced some 500,000 families from their homes over the weekend, authorities said. Three people from the same family died when a landslide destroyed their house in the city of Embu das Artes, according to the municipal government, while four other people were rescued by firemen. Four children died in Francisco Morato, Sao Paulo state Gov. João Doria said, and the state government said four other people died in Franco da Rocha. Deaths also were reported in Ribeirão Preto and Jaú. Three of the deaths involved people who were swept away by flood waters, the state fire department said. Doria used a helicopter to survey damaged areas on Sunday and announced the equivalent of $2.8 million in financial aid to affected cities. Overflowing rivers forced 500,000 families to leave their homes, the state government said. Several roads and highways were blocked.

***
NEW DELHI (Reuters) -- Indian opposition parties said on Monday they will move parliamentary motions accusing the government of providing misleading information around the use of technology from Israeli spyware firm NSO Group. The New York Times reported on Friday India purchased NSO’s Pegasus software as part of a $2 billion weapons package in 2017. The government has previously denied reports it used Pegasus to spy on activists, journalists and politicians. “This government is misleading the House, the Supreme Court, the people... as opposition, it’s our responsibility to raise this issue,” Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, leader of the opposition Congress in parliament’s lower house, told local media. The Trinamool Congress, a second opposition party, said it would move a similar motion in the a session of India’s parliament, that began on Monday.

***
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to travel to Australia in February to meet counterparts from Japan, India and Australia to discuss Indo-Pacific coordination, the Australian government said on Monday. The two-day meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) foreign ministers comes amid the Biden administration’s concerns about China, even as tensions with Russia over Ukraine ratchet up in Europe. China has previously denounced the Quad as a Cold War construct and a clique “targeting other countries”. Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne did not specify a date for the meeting, but said in a statement she looked forward to welcoming the Quad foreign ministers to Australia in coming weeks. The government of Prime Minister Scott Morrison is deepening Australia’s partnerships in the region amid “strategic competition, threats to liberal international order and increasing uncertainty”, she added.

***
KHARTOUM (AFP) – Sudanese security forces killed a protester Sunday as they cracked down on thousands marching for civilian rule, medics said, taking the number killed since last year’s military coup to a least 79. “Blood is the path to freedom,” protesters waving the Sudanese flag chanted, as they marched through the streets of Omdurman, which lies across the Nile river from the capital Khartoum.”Go back to the barracks,” protesters in eastern state of Gedaref shouted at soldiers, witnesses said. Pro-democracy activists have upped calls for protests to restore a transition to civilian rule, following the October 25 military takeover led by general Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. The coup, one of several in Sudan’s post-independence history, derailed a power-sharing arrangement between the army and civilians that had been painstakingly negotiated after the 2019 ouster of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir. Sunday’s demonstrations took place in the capital Khartoum, as well as in Omdurman, Gedaref, and the northern cities of Atbara and Dongola, according to witnesses.