Facebook launches app in China
Compiled from news services
NEWYORK — Facebook anonymously launched a new photo-sharing app in China in a new effort to make inroads in the world’s most populous country.
China’s ruling Communist Party controls internet traffic across the country’s borders and tries to keep the public from seeing thousands of websites including Facebook.
The app, called Colorful Balloons, was launched in China earlier this year and does not carry Facebook’s name. Facebook confirmed Saturday that it launched the app.
The launch of the app comes as China is cracking down on technology that allows web surfers to evade Beijing’s online censorship.
Alibi releases man
LONDON— London police have released a man they arrested earlier this week for allegedly pushing a woman into the path of an oncoming bus.
The41-year-old man, whompolice did not name, wasreleased after he gave an adequatealibi as to where he wasat the time of the offense. Investigators are still looking for the perpetrator.
The man, who was arrested on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm, has been released “with no further action,” the agency said in a statement. BBC reported that the man’s lawyer said he was in the United States at the time of the incident, which happened in May.
A video shows a man, who was jogging on a sidewalk on the bustling Putney Bridge, shove the woman toward the road and continue running. The woman’s upper body dangled in front of the bus, forcing the driver to swerve to narrowly miss her.
Brexit proposals
LONDON — The British government is fighting back against criticism that it is divided and unprepared for Brexit, announcing it will publish a set of detailed proposals on customs arrangements, the status of the Ireland-Northern Ireland border and other issues.
The Department for Exiting the European Union said Sunday that it would release the first set of position papers this week, more than a year after Britons voted in a referendum to leave the European Union.
The government says it hopes to persuade the 27 other EU nations to start negotiating a “deep and special” future relationship that would include a free trade deal between Britain and the EU.
The EU says those negotiations can’t start until sufficient progress has been made on three initial issues: how much money the U.K. will have to pay to leave the bloc; whether security checks and customs duties will be instituted on the Irish border; and the status of EU nationals living in Britain.
Hospital runs out of air
NEWDELHI — One by one, the infants and children slipped away Thursday night, their parents watching helplessly as oxygen supplies at the government hospital ran dangerously low.
At least 30 children died Thursday and into Friday at a hospital in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh after its supply of liquid oxygen was disrupted over an unpaid bill, officials said. A home ministry spokesman told the Press Trust of India, citing police reports, that 21 of the deaths were directly linked a shortage of oxygen.
Witnesses described a chaotic scene between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. as medical practitioners and relatives — the tanks running dry — handed out manual resuscitator bags to families in a desperate attempt to save the young patients.