NEWS OF THE DAY
From Around the World
1 Deadly crash: Ethiopia’s state-affiliated broadcaster says that a bus plunged into a ditch, killing 38 people in Ethiopia’s northern Amhara region. Fana Broadcasting Corporation reported on Tuesday that the bus veered off the road and went into the trench. It said an additional 10 people were injured. Ethiopia is upgrading its road system but dilapidated roads, inadequate driving skills and poor conditions of vehicles contribute to road traffic deaths. According to a report in Ethiopia last year, traffic accidents claimed the lives of more than 16,000 people in the country between 2014 and 2017.
2 National disaster: South Africa has declared that the drought afflicting Cape Town and other parts of the country is a national disaster. The government announcement on Tuesday allows officials to more easily direct resources to drought relief and long-term recovery plans. The government says the drought is especially severe in the three Cape provinces in the south of the country. Cape Town warned for months of the threat of “Day Zero,” the date when the city would have to close most water taps because of the drought. However, the opposition party running the city said last week that “Day Zero” might not happen at all this year because of water conservation efforts.
3 Nepal president: Nepal’s President Bidhya Devi Bhandari has been elected to a second term in voting by national and provincial lawmakers. The Election Commission said Bhandari received a large majority of the votes in Tuesday’s balloting. Bhandari, who was first elected in 2015, is the Himalayan nation’s first female president, a largely ceremonial role. She has the backing of the Communist alliance government which dominated recent parliamentary and provincial assembly elections.
4 “Perilous times”: Hillary Clinton told an audience in India that the United States did not “deserve” Donald Trump’s presidency and that these are “perilous times.” The 2016 Democratic presidential candidate spoke over the weekend at a conference in Mumbai. Clinton said the Republican president has “quite an affinity for dictators” and said Trump “really likes their authoritarian posturing and behavior.” But she said she thinks it’s “more than that” with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia. Clinton was critical of the reality campaign tactics of her opponent and questioned whether she should have provided more entertainment to voters who responded to Trump’s brash style. She also believes former FBI director James Comey’s Oct. 28, 2016, letter to Congress about her private email server cost her support from white women voters.
5 Royal protest: The European Court of Human Rights has sided with two Spaniards who set fire in public to a photograph of Spain’s king and queen, saying their protest amounted to freedom of expression. The Strasbourg, Francebased court ruled Tuesday that the 2007 protest by Enric Taulats and Jaume Capellera during the king’s visit to Girona, in northeast Spain, was political, not personal, and involved a “permissible degree of provocation” to convey its message. They were initially sentenced in Spain to 15 months in prison for insulting the Crown, though that was later reduced to a fine. The pair took their case to the European court after losing appeals in Spain against the conviction. The Spanish Constitutional Court ruled their acts incited hatred and violence against the monarchy.