News in Brief -(01-01-2018)

Zambia deploys army to fight cholera outbreak
LUSAKA, Dec 31: Zambia's President Edgar Lungu has dispatched the military to help fight a cholera outbreak, which has killed 41 people in the capital, Lusaka, and affected more than 1,500 others since September. In a Facebook post late on Friday, Lungu said "all three wings of the Defence Force" had been deployed "to escalate efforts" to minimise the spread of the disease. "Lusaka has been recording an average of 60 new cases every day. — Al Jazeera

Snow strands thousands, kills skier in France
GRENOBLE, Dec 31: Heavy snow stranded 4,000 travellers heading for resorts in the French Alps and killed one skier in an avalanche, authorities said on Sunday. The Savoie department prefecture said 3,500 motorists spent the night in emergency shelters after the snow made the roads impassable. A further 500 holiday-makers who landed at the airport in the city of Chambery also had to sleep in shelters. — AFP

Court upholds ban on Navalny running for presidential polls
MOSCOW, Dec 31: Russia's top court has upheld a decision barring opposition leader Alexei Navalny from running for president in March. The 41-year-old lawyer announced his candidacy last week, but Russia's Central Election Commission later ruled that he could not take part in the elections due to an earlier conviction of fraud. Navalny responded by filing an appeal, which was, however, dismissed by the Supreme Court on Saturday. Shortly after the upholding of the ban, Navalny used Twitter to call on his supporters to boycott the March 18 vote. — Al Jazeera

Palestinians recall envoy
ISLAMABAD, Dec 31: The Palestinians have withdrawn their envoy to Pakistan after he appeared at a rally with a radical cleric linked to the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Palestinian envoy Walid Abu Ali shared the stage with Hafiz Saeed, the head of the hard-line Jamaat-ud-Dawa movement, at Friday's rally, which was held to protest U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. The rally in Rawalpindi, attended by thousands, was organized by the Defense of Pakistan Council, an alliance of religious parties dominated by Saeed's group. — AP

Sierra Leone mudslide survivors return home
FREETOWN, Dec 31: Four months after the landslides that killed her husband and more than a thousand others, Mariama Kamara has returned to the mountainside that collapsed onto their home to live in an unfinished building. Kamara is one of hundreds of Sierra Leoneans recently kicked out of three government camps set up in the wake of the August 14 disaster. — AFP