GREECE
Ferry evacuated over fire
A fire yesterday broke out on an Italian-flagged ferry sailing through the Ionian Sea with 237 passengers and 51 crew on board, port police said. All passengers from the Euroferry Olympia, which was heading from Igoumenitsa to Italy, were safe and on rescue boats, Deputy Minister for Shipping Sector Issues Kostas Katsafados told radio station Skai. No casualties have been reported, and police said that three tug boats and three patrol boats were sent to help passengers. “The captain of the Euroferry Olympia asked the passengers to leave the boat,” police said. They were being transported to the nearby island of Corfu, the coast guard said.
UNITED STATES
Trump ordered to testify
Former president Donald Trump must answer questions under oath in a New York civil investigation into his business practices, a judge ruled on Thursday. Judge Arthur Engoron ordered Trump and two of his children, Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr, to comply with subpoenas issued in December last year by New York Attorney General Letitia James. The former president and his two children must sit for depositions within 21 days, Engoron said following a two-hour hearing. “In the final analysis, a state attorney general commences investigating a business entity, uncovers copious evidence of possible financial fraud and wants to question, under oath, several of the entities’ principals, including its namesake. She has the clear right to do so,” Engoron wrote in his decision.
MALAWI
Polio outbreak detected
Health authorities have declared a polio outbreak after a case was detected in a young child in the capital, Lilongwe. It was the first case of wild polio in Africa in more than five years, the World WHO said in a statement on Thursday, adding that laboratory analysis showed the strain detected was linked to one that has been circulating in Pakistan, where it is still endemic. “As an imported case from Pakistan, this detection does not affect the African region’s wild poliovirus-free certification status,” the WHO said. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative said the case was a three-year-old girl who experienced the onset of paralysis in November last year. “Detection of WPV1 [type 1 wild poliovirus] outside the world’s two remaining endemic countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan, is a serious concern and underscores the importance of prioritizing polio immunization activities,” the initiative said.
INDIA
Court sentences 38 to death
A court yesterday sentenced 38 people to death over a string of bomb blasts in 2008 in the western city of Ahmedabad that killed dozens of people. The court on Thursday last week convicted 49 people over the coordinated attacks that killed 56 people as shrapnel ripped through markets, buses and other public places in Gujarat state’s commercial hub.
ISRAEL
Fruit sets world record
After a year-long jam, a mammoth strawberry is entering the record books. Weighing a whopping 289 grams, the fruit was this week declared the world’s largest by Guinness World Records. It was picked on a family-run farm near the central city of Netanya in February last year, but only this week, Guinness confirmed it as the heaviest on record. “We waited for a year for the results,” said Chahi Ariel, the farm’s owner. “We kept it in the freezer for a year. It’s no longer as pretty as it was.”
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
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