News in English

8. April 2017, 21:58

US confirms Syria chemical weapons use likely

The United States says it has evidence that the Syrian government has likely used the nerve agent Sarin against its opponents. President Obama has previously warned the Assad regime that the use of chemical weapons would be a so-called "red line" for possible U.S. intervention, but the White House says more information is needed and it’s calling for a U.N. investigation. Republicans in Washington are pushing Obama for a strong U.S. response but analyst Chuck Cushman from Georgetown University says the President won’t let them push him around: “Senator McCain and his allies in the Senate will put a great deal of pressure on the president to do something. But I think he’s very leery of another war in the Middle East.”

North Korea rejects South’s Kaesong offer

South Korea says it will pull out all of its remaining 175 workers out from the industrial zone at Kaesong which it jointly runs with North Korea. The North withdrew its 53,000 workers from the complex this month amid spiralling tension between the two Koreas and it has prevented South Korean workers and supplies from getting in to the zone since April 3rd. Today’s move comes after the North rejected the South’s call for formal talks to resolve the standoff.

Anger grows over Bangladesh building collapse

Police close to the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka have clashed with demonstrators calling for better safety conditions following Wednesday’s collapse of a building housing several garment factories.Around 290 people are now known to have been killed and officials say hundreds more remain missing. The factories’ owners reportedly ignored warnings from safety officials that the eight-storey building had developed large cracks. Sam Meyer is a spokeswoman for the Clean Clothes Campaign, which lobbies for better safety standards in the global garment industry: “We’ve been calling and calling on their industry to do something. We should be seeing actual concrete action right now. People should be on the ground checking those factories (and) making the improvements.”

Dozens killed in Russian hospital fire

Russian officials say 38 have died in an overnight fire at a psychiatric hospital near Moscow. Many of those killed were patients locked in cells with bars on their windows. Officials say only three people managed to escape the blaze. It’s still not known if the fire was caused by an electrical short circuit or arson.

New York “was Boston bombers’ next target”

New York’s Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly says the brothers suspected in the Boston Marathon bombings planned to detonate the rest of their explosives in Times Square. He says the surviving suspect, Dzokhar Tsunavev, told the FBI that he and his brother decided that New York would be next target as they drove around in a car they had hijacked after shooting dead a Boston police officer: “That plan however fell apart when they realised that the vehicle that they’d hijacked was low on gas and (they) ordered the driver to stop at a nearby gas station. The driver used the opportunity to escape and call the police.”

The weather

The weather this afternoon: mainly sunny and warm. The far west will see some cloud and the odd thunder shower. Top temperatures are ranging from 22 to 29 degrees.

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