Briefly

YEMEN

Clashes between govt forces, rebels kill 30

At least 30 fighters have been killed in clashes between Yemeni government forces and Houthi militias in the northern province of Saada over two days, a local government military source said on Thursday. The battle took place on a frontline in Baqim district in northern Saada. Yemen has been mired in a civil war since late 2014, when the Iran-backed Houthi rebels seized control of much of the country's north and forced the Saudi-backed government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi out of the capital Sanaa. Also on Thursday, the rebels said they "reject any fragmented solutions or agreements", in reference to the last call for a nationwide cease-fire in Yemen made by the United Nations Security Council.

DENMARK

Builders get 2021 nod for longest tunnel

Construction of the world's longest immersed tunnel connecting Denmark and Germany will begin in January next year, the Danish transport minister said on Friday. The Femern Belt link, which includes an 18-kilometer-long rail and road tunnel with an electrified double-track railway and a four-lane motorway, will connect the Danish island of Lolland and Puttgarden in Germany. In contrast to a bored tunnel, an immersed tunnel is made up of hollow concrete elements, cast on land and assembled section by section at sea to form the tunnel. The tunnel is expected to open for traffic in 2029. Currently, travelers have to take a 45-minute ferry ride to cross the Femern Belt. When the construction is finished the strait can be crossed in only 10 minutes by car or seven minutes by train.

UNITED STATES

Decline in insects raises food fears

The world has lost more than one quarter of its land-dwelling insects in the past 30 years, according to researchers whose big picture study of global bug decline paints a disturbing but more nuanced problem than earlier research. From bees and other pollinators crucial to the world's food supply to butterflies that beautify places, the bugs are disappearing at a rate of just under 1 percent a year, with lots of variation from place to place, according to a study in Thursday's journal Science. That's a tinier population decline than found by some smaller localized studies, which had triggered fears of a so-called insect apocalypse. But it still adds up to something "awfully alarming", said entomologist Roel van Klink of the German Centre for Integrative Biology, the study's lead author.

Xinhua - Agencies