Briefly

INDIA

Sugar exports curbed to ensure supply

India is restricting its sugar exports to 10 million metric tons in the current season to help maintain domestic availability and keep prices stable. The decision follows a similar measure for wheat and comes amid signs of tightening world supplies. India is the second-largest producer, after Brazil, and biggest consumer of sugar in the world, according to the All India Sugar Trade Association. It's the second-largest exporter of sugar. The export curbs are its first in six years. India exported a record 7 million tons in the 2021-22 financial year, which ended in March. Sugar mills and exporters will need government approval for exports beginning next month, it said. Sugar consumption tends to shoot up during India's major festival season from September to November.

IRAN

Mayor detained as 14 die in building collapse

Rescuers dug through debris on Tuesday of a building collapse in southwestern Iran that killed at least 14 people, fearful that many more could still be trapped beneath the rubble as authorities arrested the city's mayor in a widening probe of the disaster. The collapse on Monday of an under-construction 10-story tower at the Metropol Building exposed its concrete blocks and steel beams while also underscoring an ongoing crisis in Iranian construction projects that has seen other disasters in this earthquake-prone nation. Video from the initial collapse Monday showed thick dust rise over Abadan, a crucial oil-producing city in Khuzestan province, near Iran's border with Iraq. The Metropol Building included two towers, one already built and the other under construction, though its bottom commercial floors had been finished and already had tenants.

NAMIBIA

Germany to loan back 23 looted artifacts

A Berlin museum was expected on Friday to send 23 ancient pieces of jewelry, tools and objects back to Namibia, a former German colony, on indefinite loan as part of a project to encourage rapprochement between the two nations. The artifacts will be handed over to the National Museum of Namibia and made available to local artists and academics for research, Berlin's Ethnological Museum said. This is a step toward reassessing "the long, complex history that Namibia and Germans have", Esther Moombolah, director of the National Museum of Namibia, told journalists in Berlin.

Agencies - Xinhua