NEWS OF THE DAY
From Around the World
1 Ethiopia protests: An Ethiopian official says protests in the restive Oromia region left six people dead Wednesday as antigovernment demonstrations return to some parts of the East African country. Oromia regional official Abiy Ahmed says more than 30 people were injured in clashes in Shashamane town and an area called Boke. He did not say who was responsible for the killings. Blogger and university lecturer Seyoum Teshome says more than 15,000 people rallied again Thursday in the town of Wolisso against the country’s ruling elite. Ethiopia in August lifted a 10-month state of emergency imposed after widespread protests. Oromia is the country’s largest federal state and has seen large antigovernment protests since the end of 2015. Rights groups say several hundred people were killed in a government crackdown.
2 Sick dog leave: An Italian librarian who says her English setter is her family has won the right from her employer to use family sick leave to care for her ailing pet instead of having to use vacation days. Italian animal advocacy group LAV says it helped persuade public La Sapienza University of Rome to let her use two days of family sick leave to care for 12-year-old Cucciola. LAV President Gianluca Felicetti says in a statement anyone who obtains a veterinarian’s certificate should enjoy the same benefit, citing Cucciola’s case as precedent.
3 Online scam: Cambodia on Thursday deported dozens of Chinese citizens accused of extorting money from women in mainland China with threats to circulate naked images of them online. Gen. Ouk Haiseila, chief of the Immigration Investigation Bureau, said the 74 suspects left the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh on a plane sent by the Chinese government. Online scams by Chinese gangs that operate from foreign countries and target mainland Chinese are common throughout Southeast Asia.
4 Gas car ban: In its latest initiative to reduce air pollution, Paris City Hall wants gasoline-powered cars off the roads by 2030. The controversial move announced Thursday follows Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s plan to ban all diesel cars from the city by 2024, when Paris will host the Summer Olympics. Speaking on France Info radio, the Paris deputy mayor in charge of transport, Christophe Nadjovski, said “We have planned the end of thermic vehicle use, and therefore of fossil energies, by 2030.” Many Parisians don’t own a car but Hidalgo still has angered many of them with her efforts to make Paris a greener city, notably by adding cycling paths that have slowed vehicle traffic along the Seine River. Her detractors have accused her of waging a war against cars.
5 Landmark decision: An antiapartheid activist who died in 1971 was tortured and killed by South African police, a court said Thursday, a landmark decision that raised hopes that dozens of similar cases would be investigated. The inquest into Ahmed Timol’s death had riveted South Africans as legal experts said it could set a precedent for examining similar deaths. “It is sad that it took so long,” Nobel Peace Prize winner and former archbishop Desmond Tutu said in a statement read out by Timol’s family. The court found that Timol did not kill himself by jumping from a 10th-floor window, as authorities said at the time. Timol was one of 73 political detainees who died in police custody in South Africa between 1963 and 1990. The country’s system of white-minority rule ended in the early 1990s.