IN BRIEF (Page 11)

Spain

500 migrants saved in one day

Spanish rescue services said on Tuesday they had plucked nearly 500 migrants from the Mediterranean in a single day who were trying to reach the country's coast. The Spanish Maritime Safety Agency said on Twitter that it had picked up a total of 484 people in 30 makeshift vessels in the Strait of Gibraltar and Alboran Sea, which separate Spain from Morocco. They are mainly from sub-Saharan Africa - notably Guinea, Mali and Mauritania - as well as Morocco.

India

World's cheapest car may not survive

Indian automaker Tata Motors may stop selling the "world's cheapest car" Nano by 2019, local media reported. The current Nano "cannot continue beyond 2019", the largest carmaker in India said, adding that the decade-old Nano may need fresh investments to survive, according to the New Delhi-based financial daily Mint. When Nano was first unveiled in 2008, it branded itself as the "people's car" at an average price of $2,500.

Mexico

Another journalist killed near Cancun

A journalist was murdered on Tuesday, not far from tourist hotspot Cancun, the government said - the seventh such killing this year in one of the world's most dangerous countries for reporters. Ruben Pat, the editor-in-chief of the Playa News weekly, was shot dead outside a bar in Playa del Carmen in the early hours, the Quintana Roo state government and prosecutors said. The killing prompted outrage in Mexico.

South Korea

Childbirth rates continue to drop

Childbirth in the country kept falling for 30 straight months through May, boosting worry about a so-called demographic cliff, a government report showed on Wednesday. The number of newborn babies was 27,900 in May, down 7.9 percent from a year ago. The continued fall fueled concerns about the demographic cliff, which refers to a sudden drop in the heads of households leading to a sharp plummet in consumption.

United Kingdom

Complaint over French strikes

British Airways-owner IAG, easyJet, Ryanair and Wizz Air on Tuesday filed a complaint to the European Union over what they said is France's failure to tackle strikes by air traffic controllers. Repeated strikes by France's controllers are having a devastating impact on schedules and denying passengers their legal right to free movement, the airlines said. The French ministry for transport entered the debate on Tuesday by stressing that in France "the right to strike is a constitutional right which should not be brought into question".

France

560,000-year-old milk tooth found

French and Spanish volunteer archaeologists have discovered a child's milk tooth dating back 560,000 years in the mountains of southern France - an "exceptional fossil", researchers said on Tuesday. The fossil was discovered in the Arago Cave, a vast prehistoric grotto at Tautavel on the French side of the Pyrenees mountains bordering Spain.

Afp - Xinhua - Ap

(China Daily 07/26/2018 page11)