Unidentified gunmen shot dead at least five polio vaccinators and injured several others in separate attacks in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Nangarhar, bordering Pakistan’s volatile tribal districts, reports said. The targeted attacks took place in the city of Jalalabad, the provincial capital. Authorities said the attacks occurred on the second day of a four-day national campaign to administer polio drops to children under five years of age. Provincial police spokesperson Farid Khan blamed Taliban for the killings. Taliban denied it had carried out the attacks.
Steep rise in Afghan Covid cases
The Covid-19 pandemic is spiralling out of control in Afghanistan, with cases rising 2,400% in the past month, hospitals filling up and medical resources quickly running out, the International Committee of the Red Cross said. Authorities registered 2,313 cases and a record 101 virus deaths in the last 24 hours. Experts have said low testing means those official figures are probably a dramatic undercount.
Top Pak cleric accused of sexual assault
Pakistani journalists and activists are questioning the silence of the clergy and religious parties over a recent sexual assault of a student by a prominent cleric inside a religious school in Lahore, a video of which has gone viral online. Mufti Aziz-ur-Rehman, who is in his 70s and has been charged with sexually abusing a student, can be seen in the video forcing himself on the boy inside the Jamia Manzoor-ul-Islamia seminary. Rehman is a member of a prominent religious political party, Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl, and was at the forefront in photos and videos leading anti-blasphemy rallies held in recent months to denounce publication of cartoons in France depicting the Prophet. Police have registered a case against him on the complaint of a victim, who appeared to be in his early 20s. In the complaint, the student said that the cleric had been abusing him for several years.
Big tech critic is now US FTC chair
A 32-year-old Pakistani-American legal expert and big tech critic has been sworn in as the chair of the US Federal Trade Commission, becoming the youngest person ever to head the top independent agency. The selection of Lina Khan is seen as signalling a tough stance toward tech giants Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple. The Senate voted across party lines, 69-28, to confirm Khan as a commissioner. The agency investigates antitrust violations, deceptive trade practices and data privacy lapses in Silicon Valley and throughout corporate America.
Suu Kyi faces sedition charge
The trial of Myanmar’s deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi entered its second day, with the prosecution presenting arguments that she incited public disorder and flouted coronavirus restrictions, part of a package of charges the ruling junta is seen as using to discredit her. The session was to cover a sedition charge brought against Suu Kyi, along with a second count of violating Covid-19 curbs. The sedition charge, which is sometimes described as incitement, calls for up to two years’ jail for anyone found guilty of causing fear or alarm against the state or public tranquility.
China media mocks US donation of 80 vax vials
Chinese media mocked the US for calling attention to its donation of 80 vials of Covid vaccines to Trinidad and Tobago. “Would this be selected for the Worst Public Relations Award of the Year?” the official Xinhua news agency said in an article on WeChat, which compiled more than 10 mocking tweets under a US embassy Twitter statement announcing the donation. The US Embassy in Port of Spain tweeted that its donation to Trinidad and Tobago includes 80 vials of the Pfizer vaccine. Typically, a vial contains five or six doses. “Little was given, but much was spoken on it,” Xinhua said. In May, China gave 100,000 doses of Sinopharm’s vaccine to Trinidad and Tobago.
Call to reinstate Marathon bomber’s death sentence
The US justice department has urged the Supreme Court to reinstate the death sentence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted in the deadly 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, despite President Joe Biden’s stated opposition to capital punishment. The department in a 48-page brief argued that a lower court wrongly overturned Tsarnaev’s death sentence and ordered a new trial to determine what sentence he deserved for carrying out with his older brother the attack that killed three people and wounded over 260. “The jury carefully considered each of respondent’s crimes and determined that capital punishment was warranted for the horrors that he personally inflicted,” acting solicitor general Elizabeth Prelogar said. White House spokesperson said the justice department “has independence regarding such decisions.”
HK pro-democracy paper’s editors held
Hong Kong police used a sweeping national security law to arrest five editors and executives of a pro-democracy newspaper on charges of colluding with foreign powers - the first time the legislation has been used against the press in yet another sign of an intensifying crackdown by Chinese authorities in the city. Police said they had evidence that more than 30 articles published by Apple Daily played a “crucial part” in what they called a conspiracy with foreign countries to impose sanctions against China and Hong Kong. Apple Daily said that the move left it “speechless” but vowed to continue its reporting. Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai is currently serving a 20-month prison sentence for role in unauthorised protests in 2019.
Man who killed, ate his mum gets 15 years in jail
A 28-year-old Spanish man has been sentenced to 15 years in prison after he killed his mother and ate her remains. He also fed some to his dog. Alberto Sánchez Gómez was arrested in 2019 after police found body parts hidden in containers around his mother’s home - some in plastic containers. He will serve a further five months for desecrating a corpse. The court rejected his arguments that he was experiencing a psychotic episode at the time of the killing. Sanchez has also been ordered to pay his brother 60,000 ($73,000, £52,000) in compensation. It is after a friend of victim Maria Gomez raised concerns about her welfare that police arrived at their home in eastern Madrid in 2019. During the trial, the court heard that Sánchez, then aged 26, had strangled his mother during a dispute.
Palestinian woman shot dead by Israeli soldiers
A Palestinian woman was shot dead by Israeli troops in the West Bank after she attempted to carry out a car-ramming attack, the army said. The incident took place outside the Palestinian town of Hizma, northeast of Jerusalem. The woman was identified as a 29-year-old resident of Abu Dis, a town east of Jerusalem. The woman drove to a place adjacent to Hizma where soldiers were “securing engineering activity”, before she attempted to run over the soldiers and exited her vehicle with a knife drawn, an Israeli military spokesperson said. “The soldiers responded with fire toward the assailant and neutralised her,” the statement read. In a similar incident, a 28-year-old Palestinian woman, who was reportedly associated with the Islamic Hamas, was shot dead by an Israeli security guard at the Qalandiya checkpoint in the West Bank.
Kenya to hold elephant-naming festival
Kenya will hold a festival to give names to elephants in August. The ceremony dubbed Tembo Naming Festival will be held at Amboseli National Park, which is home to more than 3,000 elephants out of the country's total population of more than 34,000. People who wish to adopt an elephant will pay to the conservation fund. They will then get a chance to name the elephant, Kenya's tourism minister Najib Balala said. The elephants' second names will be given by elders from the Maasai community, based on the animals' history and profile. The event is scheduled for August 12, which is the International Day for Elephants. Rwanda's Kwita Izina, the gorilla-naming ceremony held every September has given the country's tourism sector global recognition.
Ukraine’s inseparable couple parts ways
After 123 days handcuffed together to save their on-again off-again relationship, Ukrainians Alexandr Kudlay and Viktoria Pustovitova have split up, shedding their bonds on national TV and saying the experiment had brought home uncomfortable truths. Throughout the experiment, they did everything together. They took turns to use the bathroom and take showers. Pustovitova said personal space is what she missed most, although she also felt her boyfriend did not pay her enough attention while they were chained together. Kudlay said the cuffs helped him understand that the two were not “like-minded people”.
Gunmen kidnap six top civil servants in Cameroon
Gunmen have kidnapped at least six senior civil servants in Cameroon, authorities said. The abductions happened in Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute's native Ndian Division in the English speaking South West region of the country. The Senior Divisional Officer for Ndian, Lawrence Forwang described the kidnappers as “secessionist terrorists". He said the terrorists are demanding tens of millions of Central African CFA francs as ransom. The abductees include the Divisional Delegates in the Ministries of the Economy, Housing and Urban Development, Water and Energy Resources, State Property and Land Tenure, Small and Medium Sized Enterprises and the Divisional Chief of Taxes for Ndian division. One of the abductees is a woman.
Seven killed in Russia plane crash
Seven people were killed after a plane made an emergency landing in Russia’s Kemerovo Oblast in Siberia, an emergency services official said. “According to the latest data, 17 people were injured, seven others were killed,” TASS News Agency quoted the official as saying. The plane was carrying a total of 20 people. “There were 17 parachutists and two crew members on board,” the official said. The plane was in good condition and made its fourth flight in a day, according to the source. The L-410 aicraft that took off from the Tanai airfield crashed into a forest. According to the Prosecutor’s Office, the crew reported the failure of one of the engines.
Copy of Mona Lisa fetches $3.4m
A copy of Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting, fetched about $3.4 million at an auction in France. The painting was sold ten times its estimated price at the online auction by Christie’s Auction House in Paris, NHK World reported. Painted 100 years after the original Mona Lisa was created, the reproduction is said to have been painted in the early 1600s. The original hangs in the Paris Louvre. Da Vinci created his work on a wood panel, while the replica is on canvas. The copy has been dubbed the ‘Hekking Mona Lisa’, after French art collector Raymond Hekking, who purchased it from an antique shop in the 1950s. Hekking expended great effort in attempting to prove his acquisition was in fact the real Leonardo work.
