Paris, Mar 18: Security forces at Paris' Orly airport today shot dead a man who took a weapon from a soldier, the interior ministry said.
Witnesses said the airport was evacuated following the shooting at around 8:30 am (0730 GMT).
The man fled into a shop at the airport before he was shot dead, an interior ministry spokesman told AFP. He said no people were wounded in the incident.
Washington, Jun 30: Indian-American Medha Raj has been named by Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden as his digital chief of staff, a key role in his election campaigns which are entirely going virtual due to the Covid-19 pandemic in the US.
In this capacity, Raj will work across all facets of the digital department to streamline and coordinate how to maximise the impact of its digital outputs, the Biden campaign said.
“Excited to share that I've joined Joe Biden's campaign as the Digital Chief of Staff. 130 days to the election and we're not going to waste a minute!” she said on LinkedIn.
Raj comes from Pete Buttigieg's campaign, who has now endorsed Biden.
The news was first reported by CNN, which the news channel said is part of the efforts of the Biden campaign to adapt to an almost entirely virtual campaign trail brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.
The US is the hardest-hit country by the coronavirus pandemic, with more than 2.64 million official cases and over 128,000 deaths.
According to CNN, Clarke Humphrey, who previously worked on Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, will act as the Biden campaign's new deputy digital director for the grassroots fundraising.
Jose Nunez is the campaign's new digital organising director.
He is from the Kamala Harris' campaign. Christian Tom is the new director of digital partnerships. Over the past few months, Biden has been relying more and more on digital campaigning and raising funds virtually.
A graduate in international politics from Georgetown University, Raj has earned her MBA from Stanford University.
Biden, 77, is challenging the 74-year-old Republican incumbent President Donald Trump in the November 3 presidential elections.
Former US vice president Biden would formally accept his Democratic presidential nomination at the party’s scaled back convention in Wisconsin’s Milwaukee city on August 20.
In view of the coronavirus pandemic, the Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC) on Wednesday announced its convention plan to broadcast from Milwaukee and across the nation to reach out to all Americans.
According to some of the latest opinion polls, Biden is leading by more than eight percentage points over Trump.
Apr 11: The number of global coronavirus deaths has increased to 102,753, while the total number of cases worldwide has surpassed 1.6 million, according to the latest update by the Washington-based Johns Hopkins University.
As of Saturday morning, the overall number of infections increased to 1,698,416, while the tally of those who recovered from the deadly disease stood at 376,677, according to the varsity's Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE).
In terms of cases, the US had the highest in the world at 501,301, followed by Spain 158,273, Italy 147,577 and France 125,931.
Italy accounted for the highest death toll at 18,849, with the US in the second place with 18,769 fatalities.
Other countries with more than 10,000 deaths include Spain (16,081) and France (13,197).
Although the pandemic originated in China last December, it now only accounts for 3,343 deaths with 83,003 confirmed cases.
Washington, Feb 1: The Indian economy experienced some abrupt slowdown in 2019 due to turbulence in non-banking financial institutions and major reform measures such as GST and demonetisation, but it is not in a recession, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva has said.
"The Indian economy indeed has experienced an abrupt slowdown in 2019. We had to revise our growth projections, downwards to four percent for last year. We are expecting 5.8 per cent (growth rate) in 2020 and then an upward trajectory to 6.5 percent in 2021," Georgieva told a group of foreign journalists here on Friday.
"It appears that the main reason for this slowdown was the non-banking financial institutions experiencing a turbulence," she said on the eve of Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presenting the annual budget in Parliament on Saturday.
She said India had undertaken some important reforms that over the longer term would be beneficial for the country, but they do have some short-term impact.
"For example, coming with the unified tax system, and the demonetisation that took place. These are steps that over time are beneficial, but of course they might, might be somewhat disruptive over short term," Georgieva said in response to a question.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director said that there is not a lot of fiscal space in India. “But we also recognise that the policies of the government on that side, on the fiscal side have been prudent. We will see how the reading of the budget, the submission of the budget goes, tomorrow,” she said.
In the medium-term, she said, the IMF remains optimistic about India. “This is why we see that upswing potential for the growth in the country,” she said.
Georgieva said that the current economic slowdown cannot be described as a recession. "No.... You're far from that. But it is a significant slowdown, not the recession," she said.
The IMF managing Director noted that the consumption in India also slowed down and that contributed to the overall slowdown in the economy. The IMF would be keen to see what India does to get relatively sound macroeconomic fundamentals to pay off in terms of better growth trajectory, she said ahead of the budget.
One thing that is important for India is that budgetary revenue have been below target. "The country knows that. The finance minister knows it. They need to increase budgetary revenue collection so they can improve their fiscal position. I said it's tight on the spending side, but I also want to stress that there is room to improve collection on the revenue side," she said.
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