NEWS OF THE DAY
From Around the World
Building collapse: A four-story residential building collapsed in Nigeria’s largest city and killed at least eight people, including a child, emergency officials in Lagos said Wednesday. Authorities said at least 15 people had been rescued from the rubble of the building. Government officials did not immediately say what caused the collapse in a poor neighborhood of the sprawling city of about 21 million people. Building collapses are not uncommon in the West African powerhouse where corruption is rampant and infrastructure often poor.
Terror listing: The European Union’s top court ruled Wednesday in Brussels that Islamic militant group Hamas should stay on the EU terror list, saying a lower court should not have ordered the group removed from the EU’s terror list and sending the case back to the lower court for reconsideration. The EU originally listed Hamas as a terror group in 2001, a move that froze assets of the organization in the European Union. However the decision was annulled on procedural grounds by an EU court in 2014. The EU appealed, and Wednesday’s ruling by the European Union Court of Justice said that the 2014 annulment was wrong and must now be reconsidered taking into account arguments not ruled upon in the original decision.
“Honor rape”: Pakistani police arrested 20 members of a village council over instructing a man to rape a 17-year-old girl to avenge the rape of his sister. Such “honor” crimes are still common in some rural Pakistani areas. The 17-year-old is the sister of the man who is suspected in the rape of a 13-year-old girl earlier this month. Police chief Ahsan Younus said Wednesday a search for both men, suspected of raping each other’s sisters, is under way. A village council in 2002 ordered the so-called “honor” gang rape of Mukhtar Mai, a young woman who took her rapists to court. The case gathered international prominence, and she later opened a school for rural girls.
Terror case: One of Germany’s most prominent Islamic radicals was convicted Wednesday of supporting a foreign terrorist organization and sentenced to 5½ years in prison. The state court in Duesseldorf ruled that Sven Lau, 36, supported the Army of Emigrants and Partisans. It said Lau acted as a contact for extremists wanting to fight for the group in Syria and, in 2013, helped two men from Germany join it there. It said Lau traveled to Syria three times in 2013, handing over money to the group, which the court described as being close to the Islamic State. Lau, a convert to Islam, made headlines in 2014 when he tried to establish a “Shariah police” in the German city of Wuppertal to enforce a strict interpretation of Islam.
Mass graves: Congo military “elements” are responsible for digging at least 42 mass graves in three Kasai provinces after clashes with alleged militia members in recent months, the United Nations said as experts were appointed Wednesday to look into a growing crisis that has killed hundreds and displaced more than a million people. Human rights have deteriorated alarmingly due to the “brutal and disproportionate repression against the Kamuina Nsapu militia by the Congolese defense forces,” the U.N. Joint Human Rights Office in Congo said in a new report. Congolese soldiers have killed more than 428 people, including women and 140 children, in the once-calm Kasai provinces as of June, the office said. The militia has killed at least 37 people during that time, it said.