Report: Iran Bank Manager Fired for Serving Unveiled Woman
An Iranian bank manager who served an unveiled woman has been fired, local media reported on Sunday, as demonstrations triggered by the mandatory head-covering rule shake the Islamic republic.
Women in the country of more than 80 million people are required to cover their heads, necks and hair, a law enforced by the country’s morality police.
The Sept. 16 death in morality police custody of Mahsa Amini, 22, for allegedly breaching the dress code rules, sparked nationwide demonstrations which authorities call “riots.”
Mehr news agency reported that the bank manager in Qom province, near the capital Tehran, “had provided bank services on Thursday to an unveiled woman.”
As a result, he was “removed from his position by order of the governor,” Mehr quoted deputy governor Ahmad Hajizadeh as saying.
Mehr said the video of the unveiled woman “elicited a lot of reaction on social media.”
In Iran, most banks are state-controlled, and Hajizadeh said it is the responsibility of managers in such institutions to implement the hijab law.
Dozens of people, mainly protesters but also members of the security forces, have been killed during the demonstrations, which Iran says are encouraged by its Western “enemies.”
Somalia Joint Operation Kills 100 Al-Shabab Militants
Somalia’s government said Saturday that an operation in the country’s Lower and Middle Shabelle region, conducted by the army, backed by locals, killed more than 100 al-Shabab militants.
Speaking to the media in the capital, Mogadishu, Saturday, Somalia’s deputy information minister, Abdirahman Yusuf Omar Adala, said that the operation targeted more than 200 al-Shabab militants gathering for an attack on the Somali military.
He said the operation was conducted by the country’s national army, backed by locals and international partners, and took place on the outskirts of the village of El-There at the border of the Lower and Middle Shabelle regions, killing more than 100 al-Shabab Islamist fighters, including 10 “ringleaders.”
The government said during the operation, the army and locals “liberated” El-Dhere village and seized weaponry from the group.
Adala said the army and locals are now chasing the remnants of the Khawarijs, wanted criminals who were ringleaders planning on hurting the people of Middle Shabelle and Hiran were also there.
He also praised the involvement of international partners, who are assisting Somalia’s military from the air during their recent operations in the Horn of African country.
He called on al-Shabab fighters to surrender to the government and stop following what he called the wrong path.
The operation comes a day after the Somali military said it repulsed an al-Shabab attack on a military base in the village of Qayib in Somalia’s Galmudug state, killing scores of militants.
Al-Shabab, which claimed responsibility for the attack, said it killed 43 soldiers and wounded 51 others.
On Wednesday, the Somali government said it killed 49 al-Shabab Islamists after an operation in Bulo Madino.
Late last week, marking his first 100 days in office, the Somali prime minister said the country’s forces killed more than 600 al-Shabab fighters, wounded 1,200 others and recaptured 68 areas from al-Shabab Islamist militants, who have been fighting the Somali government and AU peacekeeping mission forces since 2007.
UK: Russia Lacks ‘Quality Forces’ Needed to Take Area from Ukraine
Both Russia and Ukraine have committed “significant forces” to the area around the Ukrainian towns of Pavlivka and Vuhledar in south-central Donetsk Oblast, according to the British Defense Ministry.
The agency said in an intelligence update posted on Twitter Sunday that the area “has been the scene of intense combat over the last two weeks, though little territory has changed hands.”
The area will likely remain “heavily contested,” the ministry said, because “Russia assesses the area has potential as a launch point for a future major advance north to capture the remainder of Ukrainian-held Donetsk Oblast.”
However, the ministry said the odds of Russia realizing that goal are slim because “Russia is unlikely to be able to concentrate sufficient quality forces to achieve an operational breakthrough.”
On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hosted a summit in Kyiv to mark the 90th anniversary of Holodomor, or the Great Famine, and to promote the Grain from Ukraine initiative to send grain to countries most afflicted by famine and drought.
The Holodomor was a manufactured famine engineered by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in the winter of 1932-33, during which as many as 8 million Ukrainians died.
Zelensky used the anniversary to reiterate Ukraine’s commitment to export grain and other foodstuffs to the global market. These are “not just empty words,” he said.
India’s Top Court to Consider Legalising Same-Sex Marriage
Four years after India’s Supreme Court scrapped a law criminalizing gay sex, it has agreed to hear petitions seeking legal recognition of same-sex marriages, raising hopes of securing another significant right for the country’s LGBTQ community.
One of the two petitioners is a gay couple based in Hyderabad who held a commitment ceremony last December to cement their nearly decade-long relationship.
Supriyo Chakraborty and Abhay Dang’s ceremony had all the trappings of a regular, colourful Indian wedding — the couple exchanged vows and rings and participated in a string of traditional rites along with their parents, relatives and friends.
The ceremony was important to them, especially for Chakraborty, for whom getting married had always been one of his childhood dreams.
“It was after the COVID-19 pandemic. We had both tested positive, and after we recovered, suddenly we realised, what are we waiting for?” he told VOA.
But in real terms, the “wedding” ceremony did not change their status.
Kidnappings, Looting Cited in Ethiopia’s Tigray After Truce
Allies of Ethiopia’s federal military are looting property and carrying out mass detentions in Tigray, according to eyewitnesses and aid workers.
The accounts raise a fresh concern about alleged atrocities more than three weeks after the warring parties signed a truce that diplomats and others hoped would end suffering in the embattled region home to more than 5 million people.
Tigray is still largely cut off from the rest of Ethiopia, although aid deliveries into the region resumed after the Nov. 2 cease-fire deal signed in South Africa. There’s limited or no access to the region for human rights researchers, making it difficult for journalists and others to obtain information from Tigray as Ethiopian forces continue to assert control of the region.
Eritrean troops and forces from the neighbouring Ethiopian region of Amhara — who have been fighting on the side of Ethiopia’s federal military in the Tigray conflict — have looted businesses, private properties, vehicles, and health clinics in Shire, a northwestern town that was captured from Tigray forces last month, two aid workers there told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because of safety concerns.
Pakistan Arrests Senator over Anti-military Tweets
Authorities in Pakistan arrested an opposition senator Sunday for launching what they said was a “highly obnoxious campaign of intimidating tweets” against the country’s outgoing military chief and other officers.
Azam Khan Swati, who represents the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party in the upper house of parliament, was picked up early morning by operatives of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) from his residence in the capital, Islamabad.
The 75-year-old senator, charged with sedition charges under a controversial cybercrime law, used foul language in his tweets while referring to the army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, who is set to retire Tuesday.
An FIA criminal complaint described Swati’s comments against Bajwa and state institutions at large as a “mischievous act of subversion to create [a] rift between personal of armed forces to harm the state of Pakistan.”
It was the second time in less than two months that the veteran politician, a close aide of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, was taken into custody over the same allegations.
2 Dead in Italian Landslide, 4 Injured
Italian rescue workers are continuing their search for victims of Saturday’s landslide on the island of Ischial.
Authorities say at least two people have died in the mud-induced landslide in the town of Casamicciola that also injured four and displaced 167.
There was confusion earlier over the death toll when Vice Premier Matteo Salvini said eight people were dead.
“The situation is very complicated and very serious because probably some of those people are under the mud,” Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi told RAI state TV from an emergency command centre in Rome.
Heavy rain, as much as 126 millimetres in six hours, triggered the landslide. A wave of mud hit Casamicciola Terme, one of the island’s six towns, engulfed at least one house and swept several cars out to sea.
Ischia is a volcanic island in the Tyrrhenian Sea and is about 30 kilometres from Naples, the nearest major city.
Emergency workers from Naples have been dispatched to the island.
In 2017, an earthquake in Casamicciola Terme killed two people.
Ceasefire Holding in Eastern DR Congo, Residents Say
Protesters pushed to the brink by China’s strict COVID measures in Shanghai called for the removal of the country’s all-powerful leader and clashed with police Sunday as crowds took to the streets in several cities in an astounding challenge to the government.
Police forcibly cleared the demonstrators in China’s financial capital who called for Xi Jinping’s resignation and the end of the Chinese Communist Party’s rule — but hours later, people rallied again in the same spot, and social media reports indicated protests also spread to at least seven other cities, including the capital of Beijing, and dozens of university campuse.
Malaysia’s New Government Fraught with Thorny Divisions
Fundamental tensions over race and corruption inside Malaysia’s disparate new government are likely to test its survival past the first one or two years and will keep its progressive prime minister from pushing long-promised reforms for racial equality, analysts say.
In a first for Malaysia, November 19 national elections ended in a hung parliament, with none of the competing party blocs managing to win a simple majority of the 222 seats up for grabs.
After days of negotiations among the blocs that still failed to pull a majority alliance together, King Al-Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah, the country’s constitutional monarch, appointed longtime opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim to be the new prime minister and swore him into office Thursday. It marked a remarkable turnaround for a man who had spent nearly 10 years in jail on corruption and sodomy convictions he says were politically motivated.
To finally bring a majority government together, the king also ordered Anwar’s multi-ethnic Pakatan Harapan bloc into an awkward alliance with arch-rival Barisan Nasional, which champions privileges for the country’s majority ethnic Malay Muslims.
Key US Legislators Vow Continuing Ukraine Support
Newly empowered US Republican lawmakers set to take leadership roles in the House of Representatives in January promised Sunday that Congress would continue to support Ukraine militarily in its nine-month fight against Russia but said there would be more scrutiny of the aid before it is shipped to Kyiv’s forces.
Congressmen Michael McCaul of Texas and Mike Turner of Ohio, likely key officials overseeing new Ukraine aid packages, told ABC’s “This Week” show there would be continued bipartisan Republican and Democratic support for Ukraine as Republicans assume a narrow House majority, even though some opposition from both parties has emerged.