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Xinhua world news summary at 1530 GMT, April 22

Xinhua, April 22, 2016 Adjust font size:

Two people died after eating poisonous sweets in Pakistan's east district of Layyah on Friday, bringing the death toll to 10 over the last two days, local Urdu media reported.

25 people are still being treated at a hospital in the district where several of them are said to be in critical condition. The police raided the sweetmeat shop and arrested the confectioner and sent the samples of the sweets to laboratory. (Pakistan-Deaths)

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TOKYO -- A group of lawmakers on Friday visited the controversial war-linked Yasukuni Shrine which stands as a symbol of Japan's militarism and honors its war dead including criminals convicted by an international tribunal.

The visit to celebrate the shrine's spring festival follows Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe making a ritual offerings to the notorious shrine and dedicating a "masakaki" tree a day earlier. The controversial war shrine honors more than 1,000 war criminals convicted by a post WWII court, including 14 Class-A war criminals. (Japan-Lawmakers-War shrine)

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PYONGYANG -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) announced on Friday it will send families of the 13 DPRK workers, who are alleged by South Korea to have defected, to see them in Seoul, official KCNA news agency reported Friday.

The family members will be sent to Seoul via the truce village of Panmunjom. The DPRK made the decision after the families remaining in the north requested to meet face-to-face with their daughters who had been abducted by South Korean intelligence to Seoul, reported the KCNA, which carried a statement issued by the chief of the central committee of the DPRK Red Cross Society. (DPRK-S.korea-Defectors)

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UNITED NATIONS -- Leaders from 171 countries gathered here Friday to sign the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change, which is the first step toward the pact's entry into force.

Adopted by 196 parties last year in Paris, the agreement sets a target of holding the global average rise in temperature below 2 degrees Celsius, and preferably below 1.5 degrees Celsius. Taking place on the International Mother Earth Day, the signing ceremony would break the first-day record for signatures which is previously set in 1982 when 119 states signed the Convention on the Law of the Sea. (UN-Signing-Climate change) Endi