AFP

The global COVID-19 death toll passed three million on April 17 as the pandemic speeds up despite vaccination campaigns, leading countries like India to impose new lockdowns to fight spiralling infection numbers.

The gunman who killed three people at a Christmas market in Strasbourg was shot dead by French police on Thursday as the Islamic State jihadist group claimed him as one of its "soldiers", reports AFP. 

More than 700 French security forces had been hunting for 29-year-old Cherif Chekatt since the bloodshed on Tuesday night -- the latest in a string of jihadist attacks to rock France.

Seventy-nine school pupils abducted by gunmen this week in a troubled English-speaking region of Cameroon have been freed, the country's communications minister told AFP Wednesday.

The Guardian - The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has condemned two days of far-right street violence that has left several people injured, which flared up after a Syrian and an Iraqi were accused of killing a German man on Sunday.

A child of 3 years of age has been seriously burned after being deliberately attacked with acid, AFP reported, citing the British police.

The attack took place in a department store in Worcester, West England.

The attack on the child is purposeful, AFP reports, citing investigators. The boy is placed in a hospital with wounds on his face and hands.

A 28-year-old woman born in Uzbekistan and living in St. Petersburg was sentenced to four years in prison for the sale of her child, AFP reported.

The woman traded her newborn son in October 2016 for $ 11,500 and immediately spent the money to buy a ticket to Central Asia, the court spokesman in St. Petersburg said.

The son of the French foreign minister is the subject of an arrest warrant for writing bad checks at a Las Vegas casino the night before his father assumed his position.
 
Thomas Fabius wrote bad checks totaling more than $3.5 million to cover gambling debts the night of May 15, 2012, according to the arrest warrant, obtained on Oct. 29 by AFP.
 

Some 48% of Bulgaria's 7.2 million people live in "material deprivation" with 7.8% of them being the so-called "working poor", AFP reminds citing an EU-wide survey.

according to Business Insider, an online news outlet which has run the story of AFP.

The author, Diana Simeonova, met Katia Kolesheva, a 49-year-old chemical engineer who falls into that category.

At least two people were killed as heavily armed Australian police early Tuesday dramatically stormed a central Sydney cafe to end a day-long siege sparked when an Iranian-born Islamist took several people hostage.
      

950 kilos of cocaine seized, Serbian among those arrested

MADRID -- Spanish authorities seized nearly one ton of cocaine from a yacht off the Canary Islands and arrested its three crew members, among them a citizen of Serbia.