Briefly

SWEDEN

Three scientists share Nobel Prize in physics

US-Japanese scientist Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann of Germany and Giorgio Parisi of Italy on Tuesday won the Nobel Physics Prize for climate models and the understanding of physical systems, the jury said. Manabe and Hasselmann share one-half of the prize for their research on climate models, while Parisi won the other half for his work on the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems. The Nobel season continues on Wednesday with the award for chemistry, followed by the much-anticipated prizes for literature on Thursday before the economics prize winds things up on Monday.

AUSTRALIA

World loses 14% coral reefs in one decade

Dynamite fishing and pollution－but mostly global warming－wiped out 14 percent of the world's coral reefs from 2009 to 2018, leaving graveyards of bleached skeletons where vibrant ecosystems once thrived, according to the largest ever survey of coral health. Hardest hit were corals in South Asia and the Pacific, around the Arabian Peninsula, and off the coast of Australia, more than 300 scientists in the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network reported. "Climate change is the biggest threat to the world's reefs," said co-author Paul Hardisty, CEO of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, in a statement. Oceans absorb more than 90 percent of the excess heat from greenhouse gas emissions.

FRANCE

'Massive' child sex abuse unveiled

French Catholic clergy sexually abused 216,000 minors in the seven decades since 1950, a "massive phenomenon" that was covered up for decades by a "veil of silence", an independent commission said on Tuesday. The commission's two-and-a-half-year investigation was prompted by outrage over a growing number of abuse claims against Church officials worldwide. When claims against lay members of the Church such as teachers at Catholic schools are included, the number of child abuse victims climbs to 330,000 since 1950. The report, at nearly 2,500 pages, found that the "vast majority" of victims were preadolescent boys from a variety of social backgrounds.

INDIA

Video: Farmers hit by car during protests

A leader from India's main opposition Congress party Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Tuesday published a viral video of a black car apparently running into protesting farmers and mowing them down at Lakhimpur Kheri in Uttar Pradesh. On Sunday, eight people were killed in violence during a farmers' protest in Lakhimpur Kheri. While four are said to be farmers, the other four are reported to be members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. The 29-second video clip widely shared on social media platforms has put a question mark on the version of the incident by a minister who had claimed that the vehicle was attacked by farmers which led to the accident.

Agencies - Xinhua