AP, Berlin
Germany’s Cabinet has approved new rules that will allow migrants granted limited protection to apply for family members to join them, more than two years after such reunions were suspended.
Under the rules set to take effect in August, a maximum 1,000 close relatives per month will be allowed in to join migrants granted “subsidiary protection,” which falls short of full asylum. Family reunions were a hard-fought issue in negotiations earlier this year to form a new German government.
Japan, China agree on security hotline
Reuters, Tokyo
After a decade of talks, Japan and China agreed on Wednesday to set up a security hotline to defuse maritime incidents that could ignite tension between Asia’s two largest military powers.
The deal is the latest result of a push to improve ties strained by lingering acrimony over Japan’s wartime occupation of swathes of China and a dispute over the ownership of islets in the East China Sea.
Ebola outbreak claims 17 lives in Congo
Reuters, Kinshasa
At least 17 people have died in an area of northwestern Democratic Republic of Congo where health officials have now confirmed an outbreak of Ebola, the health ministry said on Tuesday.
It is the ninth time Ebola has been recorded in the central African nation, whose eastern Ebola river gave the deadly virus its name when it was discovered there in the 1970s, and comes less than a year after its last outbreak which killed eight people.
“Our country is facing another epidemic of the Ebola virus, which constitutes an international public health emergency,” the ministry said in a statement.
Over 100 animals dead in Kashmir rain
PTI, New Delhi
Dust storms, rain and thunder hit parts of northern India yesterday, leaving at least 100 animals dead in Jammu and Kashmir’s Rajouri district, uprooting trees and blowing the roofs off homes in Himachal Pradesh’s Shimla, but striking with less fury in other places.
Normal life was disrupted in parts of Punjab, Haryana and Delhi with the India Meteorological Department (IMD) predicting more bad weather today. In Jammu and Kashmir’s Rajouri, hailstorm preceded by heavy rains hit Thanamandi area in the evening, prompting authorities to launch a massive rescue operation, a senior official said.
3 Indian women killed as gravel falls on them
PTI, Karimnagar
Three women labourers were killed and two injured when a huge mound of gravel fell on them while they were undertaking some work at Kustapur village in the district on Tuesday, police said.
The women were clearing the gravel, which they had kept on one side of the road, when it fell on them, they said.
