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 fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
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