IN BRIEF (Page 11)

Pakistan

Army thwarts attack plot

Pakistan's military said on Saturday it had thwarted a plot to launch a major terror attack in Lahore on Easter Sunday, after an army raid in the city that killed a suspected militant. Lahore suffered one of Pakistan's deadliest attacks in 2016 - a Jamaat-ul-Ahrar suicide bomb in a park last Easter that killed more than 70 including many children. The eastern city, the country's cultural capital, has been on edge since a fresh wave of attacks struck Pakistan earlier this year.

United States

Airline changes check-in policy

United Airlines has issued a new policy that would require its staff to check into flights one hour before departure, local media reported on Saturday. The policy change, made by the company late on Friday, would require United commuting staff and crew members to check in for all flights 60 minutes before departure, according to CNN. The policy change came after its violent removal of an Asian-American passenger from a flight last Sunday evolved into a public relations crisis.

Child killed at restaurant

A 5-year-old boy sustained fatal injuries at a rotating restaurant atop a skyscraper in downtown Atlanta when his head became lodged between a stationary wall and a table affixed to the slow-moving floor, officials said on Saturday. The Sun Dial restaurant's automatic systems stopped the floor's rotating motion when the child became stuck on Friday and then employees dislodged him from the tight space, Atlanta police said in a statement. But the child was critically injured and died later that day at a hospital.

Austria

At least 9 injured in train accident

At least nine people were injured in a train-crash accident on Saturday in Vienna, police told media, no deaths were reported. Two trains crashed at Vienna's Meidling station, one of the main railway stations in the city, in the afternoon. A witness told local media that the accident took place in the station when both trains collided head on head in a low speed. At least nine were injured in the collision, but the drivers of the two trains were not injured. Some of the passengers have been sent to hospital in Vienna, while many of others got out of the train themselves.

Papua New Guinea

Police to probe 'drunk rampage'

Drunk soldiers "went on a rampage" and fired shots in the air at an Australian asylum-seeker camp in Papua New Guinea, police said on Sunday, in the latest violence to rock the scandal-hit facility. PNG police announced an investigation into the unrest at the Manus Island facility, an offshore processing center reopened in 2012 to detain people who try to enter Australia by boat. The incident was sparked by an altercation at a football game played by asylum-seekers at a navy base outside the compound late on Friday, according to detainees and refugee advocates.

(China Daily 04/17/2017 page11)