WORLD - The African Mirror

Feb

26

2024

India’s Assam scraps colonial-era Muslim marriage law

WORLD

INDIA'S Assam state has scrapped an 89-year-old law that allowed marriage involving underage Muslims, against opposition from leaders of the minority community who called the plan an attempt to polarise voters on religious lines ahead of elections. Assam, which has the highest percentage of Muslims among Indian states at 34%, has previously said it wants to implement uniform civil laws for marriage, divorce, adoption and inheritance, as the state of Uttarakhand did earlier this month. Nationwide, Hindus, Muslims, Christians and other groups follow their own laws and customs or a secular code for such matters. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata…

Feb

27

2024

By LEWIS JACKSON

Australian pilot, two passengers released from brief kidnap in Papua New Guinea

WORLD

AN Australian helicopter pilot and two local workers were released unharmed in Papua New Guinea within hours of being kidnapped at gunpoint in the remote highlands, police said, following negotiations with security forces. The three had landed at a remote telecoms site near Mount Sisa in the province of Hela when an armed group took them away, David Manning, the police commissioner of Papua New Guinea, said in a statement. But they were released safe and unharmed after large numbers of security personnel responded and negotiated with the group through local leaders, he added in a subsequent statement, without further…

Feb

25

2024

By The African Mirror

Police beatings of pro-Palestinian schoolchildren spark outrage in Italy

WORLD

FOOTAGE of police beating pro-Palestinian students drew broad condemnation in Italy, with the opposition calling for the interior minister to address parliament over the episode. Student marches were blocked by police in the Tuscan cities of Florence and Pisa, with images of officers vigorously using their truncheons on school-age protesters in Pisa triggering outrage on social media and from politicians. The videos showed the students, who appeared to be protesting peacefully, retreating under a hail of blows from law enforcers wearing helmets and full riot gear. "Is this how you beat your own children," one young woman is heard shouting.…

Feb

25

2024

By OLENA HARMASH and ANGELO AMANTE

Western leaders in Kyiv pledge support for Ukraine on war anniversary

WORLD

THE prime ministers of Italy and Canada signed security deals with Ukraine as Western leaders rallied around a war-weary Kyiv on the second anniversary of Russia's military invasion, with no end in sight to the fighting. After initial successes in pushing back the Russian army, Ukraine has suffered recent setbacks on the eastern battlefields, with its generals complaining of growing shortages of both arms and soldiers. Looking to dispel concerns the West is losing interest in the conflict, Italy's Giorgia Meloni and Canada's Justin Trudeau came to Kyiv early on Saturday with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Belgian Prime Minister Alexander…

Feb

25

2024

By STEPHANIE LECOCQ and MANUEL AUSLOOS

Angry French farmers storm into agriculture fair in Paris

WORLD

A group of French farmers stormed into a major Paris farm fair ahead of a planned visit by President Emmanuel Macron amid anger over costs, red tape and green regulations. Facing dozens of police officers inside the trade fair, the farmers were shouting and booing, calling for the resignation of Macron and using expletives aimed at the French leader. "This is our home!", they shouted, as lines of French CRS riot police sought to contain the demonstration. There were some clashes with demonstrators and the police arrested at least one of them, a Reuters witness saw. Pascal Beteille, one of…

Feb

24

2024

By STEVE GORMAN and JOEY ROULETTE

Moon landing: US clinches first touchdown in 50 years

WORLD

A spacecraft built and flown by Texas-based company Intuitive Machines landed near the moon's south pole, the first U.S. touchdown on the lunar surface in more than half a century and the first ever achieved by the private sector. NASA, with several research instruments aboard the vehicle, hailed the landing as a major achievement in its goal of sending a squad of commercially flown spacecraft on scientific scouting missions to the moon ahead of a planned return of astronauts there later this decade. However, initial communications problems following Thursday's landing raised questions about whether the vehicle may have been left…

Feb

24

2024

By The African Mirror

Sweden has around 62,000 persons linked to criminal gangs, police say

WORLD

ABOUT 62,000 persons are active in, or have connections to, criminal networks in Sweden, the police said on Friday, where the authorities have struggled for years to contain violence linked to organised crime. Deadly shootings have more than tripled over the past decade in this Nordic nation of 10 million people, and are currently at levels much higher than neighbouring countries. "We have identified 14,000 as active in criminal networks," National Police Commissioner Petra Lundh told a media conference. "Moving over to persons with connections to these networks, here we estimate that there are 48,000 persons." In 2022, there were…

Feb

23

2024

By CHARLOTTE BRUNEAU

How life in Ukraine has been shattered by two years of war

WORLD

WIFES have become widows, parents long for captured sons, classrooms are empty and farmers can't find the hands to work the land. Unlikely friendships have formed; old ones have fallen apart. Even in the village of Lozuvatka, about 100 km (60 miles) from the frontlines, signs are everywhere of a two-year-old war that has irrevocably changed the face of Ukraine. Alona Onyshchuk and her five-year-old daughter Anhelina visited Lozuvatka's graveyard on a snowswept winter's day. Husband and father Serhii Aloshkin lies there alongside 10 other soldiers in a new section called Heroes' Alley. "We did not expect that there would…

Feb

23

2024

By GUY FAULCONBRIDGE

Kremlin says Biden calling Putin a ‘crazy SOB’ debases the US

WORLD

THE Kremlin said that Joe Biden had debased the United States by calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a "crazy SOB", casting the U.S. president's remark as part of a failed "Hollywood cowboy" act. The U.S. president made the "crazy SOB" remark as part of a sentence about threats to the world - including "that guy Putin and others", the risk of nuclear conflict and the existential threat to humanity from climate change. "The use of such language against the head of another state by the president of the United States is unlikely to infringe on our president, President Putin," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry…

Feb

23

2024

By JOAN FAUS

Brazil’s Dani Alves gets 4-1/2 years for rape in Spain, will appeal

WORLD

BRAZILIAN footballer Dani Alves was convicted of raping a woman in the restroom of a Barcelona nightclub in 2022 and sentenced to 4-1/2 years in prison, which he will appeal. The top court in Spain's Catalonia region also ordered Alves, who has been jailed on remand for over a year and repeatedly changed his story, to pay 150,000 euros ($163,000) to the victim. "The sentence considers it has been proven that the victim did not consent and that there is evidence, in addition to the testimony of the plaintiff, to consider the rape proven," the court said in a statement.…