ETHIOPIA
Mudslide death toll hits 146
At least 146 people were killed in mudslides in a remote part of the nation that has been hit with heavy rainfall, local authorities said. Young children and pregnant women were among the victims of the mudslides in the Kencho Shacha Gozdi District, local administrator Dagmawi Ayele said. The death toll rose from 55 late on Monday to 146 yesterday as search operations continued in the area, said Kassahun Abayneh, head of the Gofa Zone communications office. Gofa Zone is the administrative area where the mudslides occurred. At least five people have been pulled alive from the mud, Ayele said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Police warn on violence
Violence against women and girls in England and Wales is a “national emergency” with almost 3,000 offenses recorded daily, police said in a report published yesterday. The study, commissioned by two law enforcement bodies, estimates that at least one in every 12 women would be a victim every year, with the exact number expected to be much higher. The study found that more than 1 million violent crimes against women and girls were recorded by police from April 2022 to March last year. They accounted for just under a fifth of all police-recorded crime excluding fraud in England and Wales. Senior police chief Maggie Blyth said in comments accompanying the report that violence against females in the two countries had “reached epidemic levels” and called for government intervention in the “overwhelmed” criminal justice system. Meanwhile, child sexual abuse and exploitation offenses jumped 435 percent from 2013 to 2022, the report estimated, from just over 20,000 to nearly 107,000.
AUSTRALIA
Man charged with trafficking
The Australian Federal Police yesterday said that 43-year-old man had been charged with allegedly trafficking a teenager from Indonesia for sex work, while a woman was arrested in Jakarta for allegedly recruiting victims to be sent to Australia. The man was charged with one count of child trafficking, which carries a maximum penalty of 25 years in jail. He was expected to appear in a Sydney court yesterday for facilitating the travel of a 17-year-old from Indonesia to engage in sex work, police said. Several Indonesian women were allegedly sent to Australia by the recruiter and the man allegedly placed them in Sydney brothels, Djuhandhani Rahardjo Puro, an official at Indonesia’s criminal investigation agency, told a news conference in Jakarta.
COLOMBIA
President bans bullfights
President Gustavo Petro has enacted a law banning bullfighting, ending a practice that had been constitutionally recognized as part of the nation’s culture. In front of a crowd gathered at the bullring in the capital, Bogota, renamed the Santamaria Cultural Square, Petro on Monday celebrated ending the “right to kill” animals for entertainment. “Culture, and even less the justice [system], cannot say that it is culture to kill sentient beings, living creatures, for pleasure,” said Petro, in reference to a 2018 Constitutional Court ruling permitting bullfights in places with such a tradition. “If we have fun by killing an animal, we will have fun by killing human beings,” he said, addressing the crowd which included animal rights activists. Spectators chanted “No more ‘olem,’” a slogan used during the legislative process by supporters of the law, which was passed by congress in late May.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home