NEWS OF THE DAY
From Around the World
1 _ Sakharov Prize: The European Union on Thursday awarded its top human rights prize to the Belarus opposition movement and its leader, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, for their challenge to President Alexander Lukashenko’s long, hardline reign. During a speech at the European Parliament, president David Sassoli praised the Sakharov Prize laureates for their “courage, resilience and determination.” The 27nation bloc agreed this month to impose sanctions against officials suspected of election misconduct and a brutal security crackdown on protesters in Belarus. The EU has warned it is ready to sanction Lukashenko himself if he fails to enter into talks with the opposition and order an end to the repression launched after a disputed election.
2 _ Deadly landslide: Intense rains caused a landslide at a coal mine on Indonesia’s Sumatra island that killed 11 miners, authorities said Thursday. The slide occurred Wednesday in a mine tunnel about 65 feet deep at Tanjung Lalang village in Muara Enim district of South Sumatra province, according to National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Raditya Jati. Rescuers have recovered all the bodies. Seasonal rains and high tides in recent days have caused dozens of landslides and widespread flooding across much of Indonesia, a chain of 17,000 islands where millions of people live in mountainous areas or near fertile flood plains close to rivers.
3 _ Daniel Pearl: Pakistan’s top court on Thursday adjourned for four weeks the hearing of an appeal from the family of American journalist Daniel Pearl against the acquittal of a Britishborn Pakistani man convicted over the 2002 beheading of the Wall Street Journal reporter. The key suspect in Pearl’s slaying, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, and three other accomplices were sentenced to life in prison for their role in the plot. But a lower Pakistani court in April acquitted him, a move that stunned the U. S. government, Pearl’s family and journalism advocacy groups. The acquittal is now being appealed separately by the government and Pearl’s family, a process that under Pakistani law could take years.
4 _ Abortion ruling: Poland’s top court ruled that law allowing abortion of fetuses with congenital defects is unconstitutional. The decision by the country’s Constitutional Court on Thursday effectively bans terminating pregnancies in cases where birth defects are found and will further limit access to abortions in Poland. The predominantly Catholic nation already has one of the strictest abortion laws in Europe. The ruling came in response to a motion from rightwing lawmakers who argued that terminating a pregnancy due to fetal defects violated the provision of the Polish Constitution protecting the life of every individual. The challenged law was introduced in 1993 as a hardwon compromise that also allows abortions when a pregnancy endangers a woman’s health or life, or results from rape or other illegal act.
_ 5 Egypt executions: A leading international human rights group on Thursday condemned Egypt’s execution of 49 people so far this month — some arrested during a deadly crackdown on a mass protest in 2013 — and urged authorities in Cairo to grant fair retrials to those on death row. Between Oct. 3 and 13, Egypt executed a total of 47 men and two women, according to Human Rights Watch. The group said 15 of those executed had been convicted of involvement in political violence that followed the military overthrow in 2013 of Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, who had been a member of the country’s oldest Islamist group. Morsi collapsed in court last year — a death that activists said was due to the “inhumane living conditions” at Egyptian prisons.