Briefly

INDIA

1st underwater metro section inaugurated

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the country's first underwater metro section on Wednesday in the eastern city of Kolkata. Following the inauguration, Modi took a metro ride on the Esplanade-Howrah Maidan metro route and interacted with school children on his journey. The Howrah Maidan-Esplanade section has the deepest metro station in India, located 30 meters below ground level, officials said.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Heat records broken in 9th straight month

For the ninth straight month, Earth has obliterated global heat records — with February, the winter as a whole and the world's oceans setting new high-temperature marks, the European Union's climate agency Copernicus said on Thursday. February averaged 13.54 C, breaking the old record from 2016 by about an eighth of a degree. The average sea surface temperature last month was 21.06 C, surpassing the previous record of 20.98 C set in August. Climate scientists said most of the record heat is from human-caused climate change of carbon dioxide and methane emissions.

GERMANY

Rail, air workers stage strikes for better pay

Hundreds of thousands of passengers in Germany faced travel misery on Thursday as rail and airport workers staged new strikes to back demands for higher wages. The strikes are the latest in a wave of industrial actions to hit Europe's largest economy, where high inflation and staff bottlenecks have soured wage negotiations in key parts of the transport sector, including national rail, air travel and public transport.

RED SEA

Deadly Houthi attack on vessel kills three

A missile attack by Houthi militants on a commercial ship in the Gulf of Aden killed three of its crew members on Wednesday, the US military said. It was the first fatal strike in a campaign of assaults by the Yemeni group over Israel's military campaign in Gaza. The Houthis claimed responsibility for the attack, which set the Liberian-owned, Barbados-flagged ship True Confidence ablaze about 50 nautical miles southwest of the Port of Aden. The Philippine government has confirmed the death of two nationals.

Agencies - Xinhua