News in Brief(2023-10-06)

US offers no new cash to climate
fund for developing world
PARIS, Oct 05: The United States offered no fresh cash to the world's largest climate fund on Thursday, overshadowing pledges of financial support for nations most vulnerable to global warming and infuriating campaigners. The Green Climate Fund (GCF), seen as a key element of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, funnels grants and loans for adaptation and mitigation projects, mostly in Africa, the Asia-Pacific region, Latin America and the Caribbean. It plays a part in the promise by rich countries to supply $100 billion of climate finance to poorer nations every year, which has already missed an initial 2020 deadline. — AFP
2 Palestinians killed in W Bank raid
JERUSALEM, Oct 05: Two Palestinian militants were killed by Israeli gunfire during an army raid in the West Bank on Thursday, the Palestinian health ministry said. They were the latest deaths in a monthslong surge of violence in the occupied territory. The Israeli military said its troops carried out a raid in the Tulkarem refugee camp in the early morning hours. It said that soldiers came under fire and that troops shot Palestinian gunmen. Five border police officers were wounded in the clashes, it said. — AP
Turkey strikes Kurdish militants again
BEIRUT, Oct 05: Turkish warplanes launched a new round of airstrikes against Kurdish militant targets in Iraq on Wednesday hours after the foreign minister warned that Turkey would hit the militant group's positions in Syria and Iraq in retaliation for a suicide bombing in Ankara earlier this week. The outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, claimed responsibility for Sunday's attack outside the Interior Ministry in Ankara in which one attacker blew himself up and another would-be bomber was killed in a shootout with police. Two police were wounded in the attack. — AP
Flash floods kill 14 in NE India
NEW DELHI, Oct 05: Rescue workers were searching for more than 100 people on Thursday after flash floods triggered by a sudden heavy rainfall swamped several towns in northeastern India, killing at least 14 people, officials said. More than 2,000 people were rescued after Wednesday's floods, the Sikkim State Disaster Management Authority said in a statement, adding that state authorities set up 26 relief camps for more than 22,000 people impacted by the floods. — AP
Syria army shelling kills five civilians
ATAREB, Oct 05: Syrian army shelling killed an elderly woman and four of her children in the war-torn country's northwest, rescue workers and a monitor said on Thursday. The overnight bombardment targeted their house in Kfar Nuran, close to the front line in the last rebel stronghold in the western province of Aleppo. "An elderly woman and four of her children were killed in shelling by regime forces on the outskirts of Kfar Nuran," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor. — AFP
Spain's wildfire forces evacuation
MADRID, Oct 05: A wildfire raging on Spain's holiday island of Tenerife amid unseasonably hot temperatures forced the evacuation on Wednesday of around 3,000 people from their homes, local officials said. Firefighters backed by six water-dropping helicopters were battling the blaze hich broke out on Wednesday afternoon in an area of steep ravines in the northeast of the island that was badly ravaged by a huge wildfire in August, the regional government of Tenerife said. — AFP