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.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
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