UNITED NATIONS, May 14 (APP): Some 1,000 people of various nationalities, including refugee families and unaccompanied children, have been rescued from the Mediterranean Sea, the UN refugee agency said Friday.

In one operation carried out on Thursday, about 500 people travelling in two fishing boats that had departed several days earlier from Egypt were rescued off Sicily, south east of Cape Passero, William Spindler, spokesperson of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a regular bi weekly news briefing to reporters at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.

According to the Italian Coastguard, there are some Syrians and Iraqis among this group, as well as people from other nationalities.
Apart from the two fishing boats that sailed from Egypt, it is believed that there were other smaller boats that came from Libya, the spokesperson said.

NEW YORK, May 13 (APP): The Committee to Protect Journalists, an
independent watchdog body, Friday called on investigators in the central Indian states of Bihar and Jharkhand to act quickly to bring the killers of journalists Akhilesh Pratap and Rajdev Ranjan to justice.

Unknown men today shot Rajdev Ranjan, the Hindi national daily newspaper Hindustan’s bureau chief for Siwan, at close range, according to press reports.

His killing came less than 24 hours after the murder of Akhilesh Pratap,
a journalist for Taza TV in Chatra, in the neighbouring state of Jharkhand.