Briefly

UNITED STATES

Sanders wins New Hampshire primary

Bernie Sanders narrowly won New Hampshire's Democratic presidential primary on Tuesday, solidifying his front-runner status in the White House race and dealing a setback to moderate rival Joe Biden, who finished a disappointing fifth. Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who narrowly edged out Sanders in last week's messy Iowa caucuses, came in a close second, after splitting much of the centrist vote with Senator Amy Klobuchar. Biden, the former US vice-president who was once the front-runner in the race, limped to his second consecutive poor finish after placing fourth in Iowa.

EGYPT

Population officially hits 100 million

Egypt's fast-growing population hit 100 million on Tuesday, the official statistics agency announced, presenting a pressing problem for the country with limited resources. The staggering figure is an increase of 7 million since the publication of the latest census results in 2017. Egypt's population has tripled since 1960, with the annual growth rate peaking in 1987 at nearly 2.8 percent. Every day nearly 5,000 people are born in Egypt, the agency estimates. The country is trying to cope with resurgent birthrates and a "youth bulge" that has reached a peak. Roughly 62 percent of the population are below the age of 29, according to the UN Population Fund.

PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Four survive 32 days adrift in Pacific

Four people survived a month adrift in the Pacific by eating coconuts and drinking rainwater in an ordeal that claimed the lives of eight of their companions, including a baby, reports said on Wednesday. The group, from Papua New Guinea's Bougainville Province, are believed to have spent 32 days at sea. The Solomon Star News reported the group set off from Bougainville on Dec 22, intending to celebrate Christmas in the Carteret Islands, about 100 kilometers away. But the small boat capsized and a number of the group drowned and the rest managed to right the vessel. They were finally picked up on Jan 23 off New Caledonia after drifting nearly 2,000 km.

SYRIA

Rebels shoot down helicopter in Idlib

Rebels shot down a Syrian military helicopter in northern Syria on Tuesday, killing its crew members in a fiery crash, while the government forces kept up their bombing campaign on the opposition-held region. The violence in Idlib Province came as government troops moved closer to capturing the last rebel-controlled section of a strategic highway linking southern and northern Syria, which would bring the road under the full control of government forces for the first time since 2012.

Agencies - Xinhua