Muslim teen in US beaten, abducted, found murdered
DULLES: A 17-year-old American Muslim girl was beaten and abducted after leaving a mosque in Virginia on Sunday by a man who police later arrested on suspicion of murder after her body was found dumped in a pond, authorities said.
The attack spurred grief and horror in a Muslim community that has been gathering to pray at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society mosque about 30 miles outside Washington in observance of the last 10 days of Ramadan.
The attack happened early on Sunday after the victim and several friends walking outside the mosque got into a dispute with a motorist in the community of Sterling, the Fairfax County Police Department said in a statement. At one point, the motorist got out of his car and assaulted the girl, police said. PARIS: France voted a record number of women into parliament, election results showed on Monday, after President Emmanuel Macron’s victorious Republic on the Move (LREM) party fielded a gender-balanced candidate list.
Of the 577 newly elected lawmakers, 223 were female, beating the previous record of 155 set after the last election.
That sent France leapfrogging from 64th to 17th in the world rankings of female parliamentary representation and to 6th place in Europe, overtaking Britain and Germany, according to Inter-parliamentary Union data compiled at the start of June.
LREM, which won an overwhelming majority in Sunday’s ballot, had the highest proportion of women elected, at 47%.
“For the first time under the (postwar) Fifth Republic, the National Assembly will be deeply renewed - more diverse, younger,” the party’s acting president, Catherine Barbaroux, said. “But above all, allow me to rejoice, because this is a historic event for the representation of women in the National Assembly.” Female representation in the National Assembly has risen steadily, from 12.3% at the 2002 election to 38.6% this time.
But most parties still put up more men for election, despite France having a system in which a party’s funding is restricted if women do not make up at least 49% of candidates. Female candidates have also tended to stand in constituencies they are unlikely to win, keeping the numbers of women who make it to the PalaisBourbon low.
LREM also boasts scores of lawmakers never before elected unprecedented in France and central to his promise to clean up the country’s politics.
Opponents had urged voters not to allow so much power to be concentrated in the hands of one party and warned Macron’s lawmakers would serve simply as an army of ‘godillots’, or yes men. Macron says they reflect French society.
Those elected include Herve Berville, 27, a Rwandan-born economist who survived the east African country’s 1994 genocide and was adopted by a French family in Brittany, western France.