KOLKATA, India – Indian police on Friday detained five officials of a company constructing an overpass that collapsed onto a crowded Kolkata neighborhood, killing at least 24 people and injuring more than 80.
Rescuers cleared the crumbled concrete and twisted metal rods a day after the collapse in the crowded area of the eastern Indian city. They have pulled out 67 people alive.
“There is no possibility of finding any person alive,” said S.S. Guleria, deputy inspector general of the India’s National Disaster Response Force.
The five detained employees worked for Hyderabad-based IVRCL Infrastructure Co., which was contracted in 2007 to build the overpass. Police also sealed its Kolkata office.
The officials are being questioned over possible culpable homicide, punishable by life imprisonment, and criminal breach of trust, which carries a prison sentence of up to seven years, police said.
MONROVIA, Liberia – A new case of Ebola has been confirmed in Liberia, the World Health Organization said Friday, a setback for the country which had been declared free from Ebola transmissions in January.
Health authorities at the Redemption Hospital in the densely-populated New Kru Town suburbs of Monrovia said a 30-year-old woman died of Ebola.
The woman died Thursday night, said the head of Liberia’s Ebola response, Tolbert Nyenswah.
“She died on arrival and a swab was taken, analyzed in the lab and was confirmed,” Nyenswah said. “We are investigating the source.”
BEIJING – China’s Communist Party has a new target in its campaign against pernicious Western cultural influences: April Fool’s Day.
“The so-called Western April Fool’s Day does not conform to Chinese cultural traditions or socialist core values,” the party’s leading propaganda organ, Xinhua News Agency, said in a brief message on its official microblog Friday.
“Hope people won’t believe in rumors, start rumors or spread rumors,” the message concluded.
Along with official newspapers, Xinhua has been key in the party’s campaign to rid China of Western cultural influences seen as challenging its political orthodoxy.
ATHENS, Greece – Greece is pressing ahead with plans to start deporting migrants and refugees back to Turkey next week, despite mounting concern from the United Nations and human rights organizations that Syrians could be denied proper protection, while some are allegedly even being forced back into their war-torn country.
Lawmakers in Athens Friday were due to back draft legislation, fast-tracked through parliament, to allow the returns to start as soon as Monday.
The operation would see migrants and refugees who arrived on Greek islands after March 20 put on boats and sent back to Turkey.
Several Greek officials with knowledge of the planning told the AP that deportations are likely to start from the island of Lesbos, with migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries whose asylum claims are considered inadmissible.
Associated Press
