NEWS OF THE DAY
From Around the World
_1 Refugees rescued: Spain’s maritime rescue service has saved more than 600 refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea from Morocco in the past 24 hours, making it one of its busiest days so far this year. The service said it rescued 16 migrants early Thursday in the Strait of Gibraltar, a narrow passage that separates Spain from Morocco. On Wednesday, its vessels rescued 601 migrants, including two in a canoe and six in a beach paddle boat. The service said of the 601, 432 migrants were rescued in the Strait and 169 further east in the Mediterranean. Some 550 of the migrants were from Maghreb countries of northwest Africa and the rest from sub-Saharan African countries. Joel Millman, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration in Geneva, called the influx “a big number” for Spain, though Italy has received far more migrants this year. More than 9,000 migrants have reached Spain by sea so far this year, more than the total for all of 2016.
_2 Abortion case: A 10-yearold Indian girl who was raped by an uncle, and then lost her legal battle to have an abortion, gave birth Thursday to a girl in Chandigarh. The girl, who was under general anesthesia while the baby was delivered by cesarean section, had not been told she was pregnant and had no idea that she had given birth, doctors said. She was told instead that she had a kidney stone that needed to be removed. The baby was premature and weighed a bit more than 5 pounds. She was placed in an intensive care unit and will ultimately be put up for adoption. “Neither the girl nor her family even saw the child,” said Dr. Dasari Harish, head of the team that performed the surgery, adding that the family wanted nothing to do with the newborn. The case, which many Indians found shocking, was watched closely by activists working to overhaul India’s abortion law. In India, it is forbidden to abort a fetus after more than 20 weeks unless an exception is granted.
_3 Conservationist slain: A U.S. conservation group says its South African co-founder has been shot and killed in Tanzania. The PAMS Foundation said Thursday on Facebook that Wayne Lotter was killed Wednesday night in the Masa-ki district of Dar es Salaam. It says Tanzanian police are investigating. The foundation says Lotter helped to train thousands of game scouts throughout Tanzania and developed an “intelligencebased approach” to antipoaching that has had success in countering wildlife trafficking there.
_4 Hunger strike: One of Iran’s most prominent opposition leaders ended a one-day hunger strike Thursday, after the government agreed to meet some of his demands, his son reported on social media. Officials promised the opposition leader, Mehdi Karroubi, 79, that the 12 guards watching over him around the clock would no longer be permanently stationed in his house, his son, Mohammad Taghi Karroubi, said. Mehdi Karroubi, who has been held under house arrest in Tehran since 2011, will remain so.
_5 Arrests for insults: At least eight people have been charged with insulting the monarchy for allegedly burning portraits of members of Thailand’s royal family, a legal aid group said Thursday. Thai Lawyers for Human Rights said the suspects were first arrested in May in the northeastern province of Khon Kaen and faced multiple charges for vandalizing portraits of Thailand’s late King Bhumibol Adulyadej and his son and successor King Maha Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayav-arangkun.