NEWS OF THE DAY
From Around the World
_1 Blasphemy charge: A 42-year-old man who burned a Quran and posted the footage on Facebook has been charged with blasphemy in Viborg, Denmark, a striking decision by prosecutors in a country that is largely secular but has grappled with the role of Islam in public life. The decision to charge the suspect, who was not identified by the authorities but called himself John Salvesen on Facebook, stunned many Danes: No one has been convicted of blasphemy in Denmark since 1946, and the country has a long tradition of free speech; burning the flag is not a punishable crime. Simmering tensions between religious sensitivities and free speech have been a theme in Denmark since 2005, when the newspaper JyllandsPosten published 12 cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. The depictions outraged many Muslims, who consider such representations to be blasphemous. The blasphemy law has been invoked only a handful of times since its creation in 1866, most recently in 1971.
_2 Military purge: Poland’s conservative government has replaced almost all of its military leadership after hundreds of officers left, an exit that coincides with a call from Warsaw to its NATO allies for help boosting its defense. With the government moving to rid institutions of officials appointed by the former ruling Civic Platform party, which it defeated in 2015 elections, 90 percent of the General Staff leadership and more than 80 percent of the army’s top brass have gone, according to the Defense Ministry. The ruling Law & Justice Party has pledged to purge government of what its leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski has called the “worst type of Poles” — people with ties to Civic Platform or the communists who ruled the country last century. It is also thinning out experienced soldiers who have served in wars alongside their allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which Poland joined with other former eastern bloc states in 1999.
_3 Soldiers killed: A spokesman for Niger’s military says at least 15 soldiers have been killed in an attack by Islamic extremists on a patrol near the country’s border with Mali. Colonel Abdoul Aziz Toure said Thursday that the attack near the village of Interzawane in the Tillaberi region on Wednesday also wounded 19 other soldiers. He says the military is pursuing the attackers. The attack follows an agreement earlier this month among the presidents of five countries in Africa’s vast Sahel region, including Niger, to set up a joint counterterrorism force.
_4 Kashmir clash: Three Indian soldiers were killed in a gunbattle with militants in Kashmir on Thursday morning, the latest in a series of army casualties in the region, where violence has surged in recent months. A civilian was also killed. Tahir Saleem Khan, police chief of the Shopian district, where the attack took place, said militants had ambushed a group of soldiers and police officers before dawn. The civilian, a woman, was killed in her home by a stray bullet, Khan said.
_5 Subsidized sex: A councilman in Overtornea, Sweden, has a novel proposal to improve work-life balance and lift the local birthrate: give municipal employees an hourlong paid break each week to go home and have sex. Per-Erik Muskos, 42, wants to offer the municipality’s 550 employees the right to subsidized sex. In introducing his proposal this week, he told fellow members of the town council that it would give a nudge to the dwindling local population, add spice to aging marriages and improve employee morale.