Briefly

ASIA

Region's growth seen at weakest since 1967

The coronavirus pandemic is expected to lead to the slowest growth in more than 50 years in East Asia and the Pacific, while up to 38 million people are set to be pushed back into poverty, the World Bank said in an economic update on Monday. The bank said the region this year is projected to grow by only 0.9 percent, the lowest rate since 1967. Growth in China was expected to stay positive, boosted by government spending, strong exports and a low rate of new coronavirus infections since March. The rest of the East Asia and Pacific region was projected to see a 3.5 percent contraction, the World Bank said.

UNITED KINGDOM

Ponds find fuels hope for life on Mars

A network of salty ponds may be gurgling beneath Mars' South Pole alongside a large underground lake, raising the prospect of tiny, swimming Martian life. Italian scientists reported their findings on Monday, two years after identifying what they believed to be a large buried lake. They widened their coverage area by several hundred of kilometers, using even more data from a radar sounder on the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter. In the latest study appearing in the British journal Nature Astronomy, the scientists provide further evidence of this salty underground lake, estimated to between 20 and 30 kilometers across and buried 1.5 kilometers beneath the icy surface.

AFGHANISTAN

Roadside bomb kills 14 on shrine trip

Fourteen civilians were killed and three children wounded when the vehicle they were traveling in set off an improvised bomb in Afghanistan's central Daykundi Province on Tuesday, the provincial police chief said. The vehicle, which was carrying 17 people, touched off the roadside bomb in the Dasht-e-Sulaiman locality of Kujran district at about 9 am, Ghulam Sakhi Ghafoori said. Among the killed or injured were women and children, the police chief noted. The victims were traveling to a shrine in the mountainous region some 290 kilometers west of the country's capital Kabul, he said.

Agencies - Xinhua