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Xinhua world news summary at 1530 GMT, June 4

Xinhua, June 4, 2015 Adjust font size:

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Thursday cut U.S. economic growth forecast for 2015 down to 2.5 percent from its April's prediction of 3.1 percent.

IMF chief Lagarde said Thursday that the revised down forecast was largely due to the soft performance in the first quarter. (US-Economy-Forecast)

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JAKARTA -- Indonesia has evacuated nearly 3, 000 people living near Mount Sinabung volcano in North Sumatra province as its alert level has risen to the highest, an official said here on Thursday.

Mount Sinabung in Karo district, one of Indonesia's most active volcanoes, has sharply hiked its seismic activities, prompting the authorities to raise its alert status to top level before midnight Tuesday, Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, spokesman of the national disaster management agency said. (Indonesia-Volcano-Evacuation)

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ACCRA -- Over 96 people have been killed in an explosion at a fuel station in downtown of Ghana's capital Accra on Thursday, official of the fire service confirmed.

Prince Billy Anaglatey, the deputy public relations officer of the Ghana National Fire Service said the agency has retrieved the bodies from the debris of the station owned by Ghana's state oil company GOIL. (Ghana-Gas-Explosion)

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CAIRO -- An Egyptian court ruled on Thursday to have former president Hosni Mubarak retried over a case involving the killing of protesters in 2011, accepting an appeal against his acquittal last November.

The court accepted the public prosecution's appeal, filed last December, against the court ruling that acquitted Mubarak in the case of killing protesters in 2011. (Egypt-Mubarak-Retrial)

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DAMASCUS -- At least 40 militants with the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front were killed in a series of military offensives in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib, Syrian state TV reported Thursday.

In the latest operations in Idlib, much of which fell to the Nusra Front and like-minded groups over the past few months, Government forces captured the hilltops of Tal Awar and Tal Ghazal, as well as towns of Zayadiyeh and Sararif in the countryside of Idlib, according to the report. (Syria-Militants-Conflicts)

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SEOUL -- The number of South Koreans diagnosed with the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) rose to 35 Thursday as five more cases were identified, the health ministry said.

Among the five new cases were three persons directly infected from the patient zero, according to the Ministry of Health and Welfare. (S.Korea-MERS-Epidemic) Endi