Briefly

UNITED KINGDOM

EU's big two push for trade concessions

Germany and France on Tuesday pressured the United Kingdom to make concessions in three key areas of Brexit trade negotiations－fishing rights, corporate governance and fair competition－or face a Jan 1 no-deal rupture that would further harm a UK economy battered by the coronavirus pandemic. German Europe Minister Michael Roth warned that "no one should play down the risks of a no-deal. This would be very bad news for everyone, for the European Union and even more so for the United Kingdom". Ireland, which is at the heart of the negotiations because it has the EU's only land border with the UK and is very trade-dependent on its neighbor, predicted that Britain would let its Thursday deadline for a deal slip and would go on talking for at least two more weeks. Roth indicated more time would be needed since "in terms of substance, we haven't really made progress."

KAZAKHSTAN

Russian-US crew on fast track to the ISS

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying a US astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday and successfully reached orbit, live footage broadcast by Russia's space agency Roscosmos showed. The crew members traveling to the International Space Station are Kate Rubins, a NASA microbiologist who in 2016 became the first person to sequence DNA in space, and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov. The mission, using a fast-track maneuver to reach the orbiting outpost in just three hours, is the last scheduled Russian flight carrying a US crew member. Since the space shuttle program ended in 2011, NASA has relied on Russia to ferry its astronauts to the space station, an orbiting laboratory 400 kilometers above Earth that has housed international crews of astronauts continuously for nearly 20 years.

INDIA

Wall collapse amid heavy rains kills 10

At least 10 people died and five were injured when a wall collapsed in India's southern state of Telangana early on Wednesday, local police said. The incident occurred in Telangana's capital city Hyderabad, which has seen incessant rains since Tuesday. The area where the wall collapsed lies in the old city of Hyderabad which, according to residents, is a low-lying area. Due to the incessant rains many parts of the city have been flooded and the power supply cut. TV channels showed cars being washed away in gushing waters, while at other places parked cars were seen fully submerged in water.

Agencies Via Xinhua