Lucknow, India (AFP) Indian police are searching for a teacher accused of beating a low-caste student to death over a spelling mistake, officers said Tuesday, after suppressing violent protests triggered by the incident. Nikhil Dohre was struck with a rod and kicked until he fell unconscious by his high school teacher earlier this month after misspelling the word “social” in an exam, according to a police complaint by his father. The 15-year-old died from his […]
Tag: unrest
‘Desperation’ in violence-ravaged Haiti: UN hears
UNITED NATIONS, United States (AFP) — Officials described a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Haiti to the UN Security Council Monday, as the nation hits “new levels of desperation” after two weeks of violence and attacks on food aid warehouses. Protests and looting have rocked the already unstable nation since September 11, when Prime Minister Ariel Henry announced a fuel price hike; he says subsidies are too expensive for one of the world’s poorest states. “An economic […]
Thirty-five civilians killed in IED blast in Burkina Faso
by Armel BAILY Agence France-Presse OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AFP) — At least 35 civilians were killed and 37 wounded Monday when an IED blast struck a convoy carrying supplies in Burkina Faso’s jihadist-hit north, the governor of the Sahel region said. The landlocked African state is in the grip of a seven-year-old insurgency that has claimed more than 2,000 lives and forced some 1.9 million people to leave their homes. Monday’s incident took place […]
‘Catastrophe’: East DR Congo hospital overflows amid rebel fighting
by Alexis Huguet Agence France-Presse RUTSHURU, DR Congo (AFP) — Dozens of bandaged patients lounge on beds in a hushed hospital ward in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, groans of pain occasionally breaking the silence. Rebels, soldiers and civilians make up the wounded — all victims of the latest flare-up in violence in eastern DRC’s North Kivu province. After lying mostly dormant for years, the M23 rebel group resumed fighting late last year and has […]
Insecurity, inflation deepen malnutrition in Nigeria’s northwest
by Patrick Markey Agence France-Presse KATSINA, Nigeria (AFP) — Lariya Abdulkareem’s family used to make a living farming beans and sorghum at a village in Nigeria’s northwest Katsina state. But threats of bandit attacks forced them to abandon their land and farm elsewhere. Today, worsening insecurity has disrupted agriculture and food supplies in the region, and the grandmother says feeding her family has become a challenge. “We cannot access the places we did before,” Abdulkareem […]
Trump slams ‘kangaroo court’ probing his Capitol riot inaction
Washington, United States | AFP Donald Trump lashed out overnight at the panel investigating the US Capitol riot, calling it a “kangaroo court,” trashing its vice chair Liz Cheney as a “sanctimonious loser” and reiterating his lie about the 2020 election being stolen. Hours after lawmakers wound up a forensic condemnation of his inaction during the January 6, 2021 insurrection, his social media posts confirmed he was closely following the hearing on how he […]
Gunmen kill 17 in northwest Nigeria
KANO, Nigeria (AFP) — Gunmen have killed 17 people including five policemen in separate attacks in northwest Nigeria’s Katsina state in the latest wave of violence in the region, police and a local official said Thursday. Northwest and central Nigeria are a hub of criminal gangs known locally as bandits who raid villages, killing or abducting residents after looting and burning homes. The criminals, who maintain camps in a vast forest straddling Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna […]
More than a dozen dead in Papua New Guinea violence
PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea (AFP) — At least 18 people have been killed in Papua New Guinea’s highlands, a region plagued by violence between local tribes and placed under “emergency status” by Prime Minister James Marape on Thursday. Local police chief George Kakas said 13 men and five women were killed near the mining town of Porgera on Tuesday, with the victims apparently hacked to death with machetes and axes. The rugged jungles of […]
The kidnapped Sri Lankan dissident who helped oust a president
by Sean Gleeson Agence France-Presse COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AFP) — Activist Premakumar Gunaratnam says he was marked for death by Sri Lanka’s security boss a decade ago. The architect of his abduction went on to become president, but now the dissident has played a key role in the leader’s downfall. Now 56, Gunaratnam was snatched by armed gunmen from his home near Colombo, bundled into a white van, and driven away to a secret location […]
Sri Lankans queue at pumps for days with no promise of petrol
by Sean GLEESON and Mahesh PERERA Agence France-Presse COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AFP) — Out of gas and stuck in line for days, a group of motorists kick off their shoes and settle on a sidewalk in Sri Lanka’s capital for a round of cards. Emergency curfews, tear gas plumes and the sudden departure and resignation of the president have all failed to budge the long vehicle queues snaking out of Colombo’s empty petrol stations. Chronic […]
Sri Lanka president emails resignation from Singapore: official
Colombo, Sri Lanka | AFP | Thursday 7/14/2022 by Amal JAYASINGHE Sri Lanka’s president submitted his resignation Thursday shortly after reaching Singapore, the parliamentary speaker’s office said, days after the head of state fled protests triggered by his country’s worst-ever economic crisis. Gotabaya Rajapaksa resigned by email, the speaker’s spokesman said hours after he landed in the city-state, after protesters overran his palace on the weekend. Rajapaksa fled to the Maldives on Wednesday, and left […]
Sri Lanka declares state of emergency after president flees
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AFP) — Crisis-hit Sri Lanka declared an indefinite nationwide state of emergency on Wednesday, hours after President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country, the prime minister’s office said. “Since the president is out of the country, an emergency has been declared to deal with the situation in the country,” Dinouk Colombage, spokesman for Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, told AFP. Police said they were also imposing an indefinite curfew across the Western Province, which […]
